Within My Sisters Absence

It's raining outside, thick drops of water on the window distort the image of the outside world.
Or perhaps the outside world is normal, and this place is distorted.
Its dark outside already, I can't even see the black metal fence that separates me from the outside world.

I look at the reflection in the window.
I hardly recognise the young women looking back at me any more.
Her messy short blond hair, her pale skin with dark cirlces under her eyes.
Certainly this is not the girl father had once loved so much.

I can hardly imagine that this is the girl that used to be his sweet, good girl.
Then again this is another life, here in the cold asylum.
Maybe that is why Jeanette left me here, because I wasn't the same any more.

Jeanette are you there? I ask in my mind.

But I know she won't answer me, she is gone.
I can feel it, its like part of my mind has been cut out of my head.
But its just shock therapy and drugs.
It killed her, and it has killed most of me as well.

I remember how we ruled Merreh, land of the seas together.
As well as Kokiri a world covered in forest, inhabited by African children.
All would die by the age of fourteen so there were never any grownups there.
Once we were queens of those worlds.

And now I was alone, a patient, and even if I would be cured I would never be free again.
Well again might not exactly be the right word, but still I would never be free.
Because I killed him, and now without Jeanette there was no one left in the world who loved me.

I long for her, so deeply to hear her voice inside my head.
I even long to wake up in the most impossible situations like the time I woke up in the morning with two young men in fathers bed.
He had been away for business but would come back that morning.
I had a hell of a time fixing things so he would not notice, and had been furious with Jeanette.
But now as I remember that day a smile plays my lips.

She was fire, wild and burning, I was ice strong and consistent.
And now, without her I was doomed to be cold forever.

"Miss Voerman, its time to go to your room."

I find the nurse's reflection in the window, its nurse Grace.
She is young maybe twenty or so.
She hasn't been working here for too long, its clearly noticeable, she is still sweet and hopeful.
Not cold and frigid like most doctors and nurses here in the asylum.

She looks up at the window and finds me starring back at her.
Her warm brown eyes set on my blue and green eyes.

"It's late miss Voerman, everyone is heading back, why don't we walk together?"

I want to say something to her.
Something to give this young woman, who works effortlessly for us all, some hope or gratitude.

But my mind no longer works the way it used to.
I cannot feel right, think right, let alone find the right words.

As I look back at her reflection in the window, I hope she can feel it.
Feel my intention, because she so much deserves recognition for her efforts even if it doesn't work.
None of the patients probably feel a thing, and if they do still have feelings they aren't right.
Just messed up fragments of their emotions.
But she tries, treats and sees us as human beings.

Which is why I want her to understand that even though happy is no longer a feeling I know, that I do appreciate her efforts.
But she doesn't understand, doesn't know what I'm trying to tell her as I look back at her in the window, because she continues to try to get me to my room.

She smiles ever so gently.

"Come on, we'll go together."

So I just nod, get up from the chair and follow her, as we walk out of the main room to the corridor.

Her shoes click and clack against the floor as she walks next to me.
Mine drag across the floor silently and shoeless, and if I still could I would hate the medicine they give me, for making my body and mind this weak.
I would hate the fact that we weren't alowed to have proper shoes, hate the nurse who cut off my hair and hate the doctors who gave me shock therapy.

But there is no hate in this body, nor love or sadness.
My body carries nothing but my beating heart and my sister's absence.

She stops at my room and then turns to me.

"Have a goodnight miss Voerman." She says smiling gently as she always does.

"Oh and don't forget, Mr. White won't be working night shift again since he retired."

I nod, trying to give her some kind of reaction.
And her smile widens just slightly, happy to know that I understand what she is saying.

"Mr. Freeman will be working night shift now each Wednesday. It's his first day of work."

She frowns slightly.

"Well night of work would be more proper I think."

She shakes her head slightly and then her gentle smile returns again.

"Either way just try to keep silent okay? Don't want to scare off the poor man on his first day now do we."

I nod again, she's just trying to make small talk.
I don't scream at night like some of the other women here, at least I'm pretty sure I don't.

I enter my room and look back at her as she says goodnight once again before closing and locking the door.

It is when the lights are turned of when it starts.
The screaming, the relentless crying.
The woman across from my room has a good throat that she knows how to use, they sedate her I think, but in a few hours she'll start talking about how the demon will come to us.

I don't scream like that, I'm to empty for screaming.
Or perhaps I am to sane to scream.

No not sane, because there is just this, as I hear him pace the corridors, the expectation that his footsteps will stop.
That slowly my door will open, that fingers will brush away hair from my ear and warm sticky breath will hit my ear as he tells me to be a good girl.
No not sane because sane girls do not expect such things, or perhaps they do, I can't really be sure.

I carefully listen to his footsteps as he gets closer to my room.
And when he nears it I hold my breath until the distance between him and my door is big enough again for me to breath again.
It is almost a mantra with his gentle, consistent pace.

The other night shift worker didn't walk like that, he lingered looking through the small windows in our doors to check on god knows what.
And I decide that I prefer this night shift worker, who's name I forgot.

But when I decide that as I hold my breath, his footsteps stop.
I close my eyes as hard as I can.

Walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on... My mind sings.

But he cannot hear my thoughts and if he can he ignores them because the next thing I hear are keys jingling.

"Please don't, please don't, please don't, please don't." I whisper, pulling the covers tightly over my shoulder.

I can hear him shove the key in the lock and hear how the lock opens.
I bite my lip trying to stay quiet, trying to seem asleep, though I am not sure why I would do such a thing.
How it would help to seem asleep, but right now it seems like the only thing there is to do so I simply try.

Slowly the door opens, and I can hear him, feel him, step over the threshold.
I tremble and I try to fight it but my body does not listen to my commands and I feel something warm and wet slip out of the place between my legs on seep into the thin mattress.
Shame should be a feeling to feel right now, fear, but my reactions are physical even now.
He enters my room, I hear his footsteps close in and my body relaxes in reaction.
Turns limp since there is no reason to fight, nothing to win if I try to fight him.

"Don't fear me." His voice not father's less deep.

Night shift worker. my mind tells me.

"We have no intent to harm you, one eyed girl."

We? Perhaps the night shift worker has gone mad on his first day of work.
Or is it some game he likes.

"You do not fear the man of night." He says.

His words vibrate through me, through my skin and bones, and perhaps I have finally become completely mad.
Because I feel the fear leave my body and slowly open my eyes and look up at him.

He is tall, but slim, with blond hair that is pulled back in a ponytail and a sharp jaw line.
Jeanette would find him attractive surely.

"See, there is no reason to fear me."

He frowns.

"Well there are many reasons to fear me, but we do not intent to harm you."

I know it should fear me, but now that the physical fear has left there is only my mind telling me he won't hurt me.
Yes I have gone completely insane if I believe that, but I can't help believing he wont hurt me, so I just sit up and look at my lap where I wet myelf.

"Its wet." Is all that I can manage.

I see him nod from the corner of my eye.

"Most of us agree to that, we do all agree to do nothing about it though."

I nod and think that he must surely be as mad as the rest of us.
And I wonder why they would hire a madmen to watch the mad.

Perhaps the doctors have gone insane.
But that doesn't make much sense because that would be crazy, then again this is a madhouse perhaps it just makes perfect sense.

My thoughts ramble until he snaps me out of them by speaking.

"You miss her do you not, one eyed girl."

I look up at him.

"Miss who?"

"You sister of course." He says as if it is the most normal thing in the world.

"You know Jeanette?"

He shakes his head.

"The voices told me about her, they told me how you can find her again."

I shake my head this time.

"She is dead." And I am surprised at the grief my voice carries as I speak those words.

Allot of sadness for the voice of someone who does not feel.

"You are wrong, I can bring her back, but I'm afraid you will have to die in order for her to come back."

I look up at the strange man, surely this must be insanity, but I want to agree to this.
My mind tells me that he must be crazy, and that he most likely wants me dead.
But in no way am I afraid of this man.

Even if he will kill me, surely Jeanette will some how live on because I do truly know with every inch of my being that this man would never harm me.
And if that is true, which it is, it is only a question of if I should live or if she should.
And that is a question to easily answered.

"She deserves to live, please I long for her so much."

He nods and then grabs his key chain. and takes two keys out of it.

"One for your door, one for the door to the barred door at the end of the hall."

My mouth falls open as he offers me the two keys.

Is this real, perhaps I am hallucinating, perhaps right now I am being tied to the bed to keep me from hurting myself or anybody else.

"Go tommorow night, once your at the stairs go up one level and jump out of the window. Then run straight towards the gate. They tell me that this is the only way you'll have a chance to get out."

I nod at his words, completely aware of the fact that I have lost it.

But if I have perhaps I can make myself believe I can escape and make myself believe that Jeanette will return.
Perhaps even she will truly return if I try this, even if it isn't real.

"Why do you not take me away now, you have all the keys you could get me out of here." I whisper at him.

He grins his k9's shimmering in the bit of moonlight that creeps through the barred window above my bed.
And he grabs my wrist with his free hand.
Leans over me until his mouth hovers above my ear so close I can feel his cold breath against it.
I close my eyes fighting the memory's that come in my head and try to focus on the here and now.

"Because, girl with one eye, that would be allot less fun." He whispers playfully.

And then I feel him pressing the two keys in my hand, that he is holding by my wrist.
I do not fear him, my body does not react to him, only to my own memories.
I open my eyes and turn my head to look at him.

He is so close our noses almost touch each other.

"Soon, one eyed girl, you shall rule once again."

And with that he turns on his heels and leaves my room, closing the door behind him.
I hear him pace the halls again, and I stare at my ceiling still lying on the wet bed.
And I would wonder if it was real, I would wonder if I had gone mad, I would wonder if I was dreaming.
But I don't, because the cold metal keys in my hand answer all those questions.

Thank you for reading.
This was supposed to be a oneshot but as you can read it has gotten a bit out of hand, so I will probably write one or two more chapters for this story.
I know Therese is a bit off character but I simply could not write her to be strong, alone in the asylum without her sister.

Stravvberry