He lies flat on plain white pillows, staying motionless and silent, watching the world with lifeless eyes. People walk around him, some staring, some shaking their heads. Alois ignores them. They mean nothing. Their voices echo but hold no tone. Their hands feel and poke and prod. Their heads float around vaguely but behold no face.

Calm down, Alois.
Be still, boy.
Everything will be fine.
This won't hurt a bit.

They pricked his arm and the world turned black.

He wakes up later. He does not know what time, what day, what year, what world. Is it a dream?
The blank faced nurses in long white coats smile.
Their smiles strain until their grins stretch past their slender faces and crimson blood spills from the tears in their heads.
They gargle something inaudibly, their voices are out of sync with their mouths.
He tries to read the nametag on the long white coats. The letters are all jumbled, they don't make sense, he cannot form a coherent word.

''Who are you?'' Did he just say that? Is that his voice?
His voice sounds odd, it doesn't sound like it's his.

And the blank faced nurses laugh, they say something else, but there's a shrieking in his ears and it's blocking out any other sound.

He closes his eyes and sees black.

It stretches beyond what his mind can hold until he sees obscure patterns slowly forming.
It's a spider, making her web.
Wrapping around his brain until his head aches and feels like it's about to snap.

Concerned voices echo around him but he's not listening.

''A hopeless case,'' says the faceless nurse.
''Pathetic, really. A pity it is.'' says another.
Alois does not know what he has done. He cannot remember, he does not want to. He can only see the darkness and the spider in her web - he focuses his mind on that. Mesmerised, he watches the thin silver strands connect and form yet another strange pattern - what's that? He knows that pattern.
He remembers...

Golden eyes flash behind frameless glasses, gloved hands hold the knife behind his back. The child before him looks up, precious, vulnerable love shrouding the tear-filled, icy blue orbs.

''I love you, Claude.'' he says. ''You will always be my highness.''

And Claude opens his mouth, his sharp teeth bared, not even a false smile hiding his disgusted snarl.
He does not hesitate a moment to drive the blade through.
Not a sound is heard as he does.

Alois remembers.

A cold horror grips him as well as a strange sense of glee.
He is proud that he is alive. Claude couldn't even kill him after all.

That's pathetic. Isn't that pathetic?

He laughs a laugh, a laugh that holds no happiness.
More faceless nurses run over, their blank heads hovering over him.

He laughs.
He laughs at the nurses, he laughs at Claude, he laughs at himself.

He's crazy!
Insane!
Lock him up, throw away the key!
Worthless scum!
He's finally lost it!
That child is pure demented!

The nurses stare questionably.
''He's quite the puzzle, that one is.''