Disclaimer: I. Own. Nothing. So I guess the joke's on me, then. Oh well.
Author's Note: This is a largely experimental fanfic involving many odd little things and concepts. Suggestions, comments, and all that are very appreciated, as I want this to be something people enjoy. So…I suppose I'll just give you the first chapter now.
Two WrongsThe light started as a small glimmer, not daring to become a raging glow until its lifespan was nearly over. It was a pretty little spark, shy in nature but still kind, flitting about in the looming darkness with a wallflower sentiment that was quite sad, really. Little starbursts fell from the light's edges, splattering pink and green all over the black floor. The glow-in-the-dark nature of the light formed a neon mess all over the dark canvas, carving out the interior of the possible room. It was difficult to see if it were a room or not, the way the light moved. It would zig, zig again, then maybe zag, using all four dimensions fluidly. It moved forward, back, up, down, diagonally, sideways and longways. Most importantly, it used time to its advantage. The little light would milk its time at first, plodding along and shedding star-children by the thousands. Then, suddenly, it would speed up, leaving its babies behind, zipping around in tight spirals and long strings before slowing again, hanging painlessly and lying in wait. What it was waiting for, nobody would ever know. After just a second, it disappeared altogether, taking its world along with it.
"Kim?" The voice was sharp, somewhat irritated. The man had been repeating that same three-letter name for the past minute or so to an uninterested audience. His voice reverberated off the walls, sending 'Kim' sublets all around the wide, white room. It was like sitting inside a hollowed-out sugar cube, he thought. Dr. Jacobs always liked to relate things to food. Somehow, if he could compare it to something he would put in his mouth, he felt more familiar with it. Maybe that's why he was never comfortable around Kim. The only thing he could compare her to was the skeleton hanging in the corner of his college science lab; you couldn't pay Dr. Jacobs enough to stick that grody old thing in his mouth.
Finally, the skeleton he was speaking to animated, tossing her head slightly. Her eyelids were heavy, drooping most drearily over her misty, nearly transparent gray eyes. If it weren't for the darker rim around the outside of her irises, one would think her eyes to be expanses in just various shades of light gray. She still managed to stare at the doctor, her every breath filling her chest to the maximum, raising her shoulders and bobbing her head before hissing out again, leaving her lungs free to re-start the cycle. "It's not Kim." The voice was hazy, groggy. Maybe it was the medication. Probably it was the medication. But there was that little shard of possibility that she were born to be this vague, created in the image of a specter stuck between life and death and damned to spend an indeterminable number of years in an Ohio mental institution.
"But…" As always, Dr. Jacobs' response was succinct and on the ball, really with it. Instead of defending how he had to be right, he looked down to the file sitting on the tope table in front of him. The manila cover was lifted, revealing a scattering of papers with tiny scrawls and neat typewritten text on them. After a bit of nervous shuffling, he finally found the sheet he was looking for. It had once been the cover sheet, but the file probably had been dropped on the way to somewhere and hastily put back together with the front in the middle and the back in the front. No matter. Shaking the sheet out once, as if trying to dash wrinkles from it, Dr. Jacobs squinted to read the little loopy letters that formed her name. "Isn't your name…Kimberly Anne Southington?"
"Yes." Response as limp and lifeless as the mass of curly carrot ginger hair that hung from her scalp and ended in a mass just above her shoulders, Kimberly shifted slightly in her chair. Her hands were knotted in her lap, long fingers twisted around one another and bent back against her slim palms, pressed together and resting on the knee-length mint green frock that every patient in Cleveland Institution wore.
Somewhat confused, the doctor scratched his head, looking from the files to the largely sedated patient sitting in the chair across from him. "Then, if that's your name, why can't I call you by it?" It wasn't intentional, his shortening her name automatically to 'Kim.' His high school sweetheart's name had been Kimberly, and he always called her 'Kimmy,' though she was Kim in public. The secrets she enshrouded their relationship with had eventually terminated it, and in that respect, his relationship with Southington was similar. Though they had therapy and monitored mandatory journals, all attempts to get inside their patients' heads, it seemed that the doctors only succeeded in turning the hapless people into more maddening puzzles. Such was the case of Southington.
Hazy gaze falling short of Dr. Jacobs, landing on the soothing table before her, Kimberly tightened and relaxed her fingers as if mimicking a heartbeat. Her head dropped just slightly, causing her shoulders to rise a bit and create deep hollows behind her collarbones. They looked almost like two bottomless pits reaching deep into her animated carcass. The sight startled the doctor; had she really gotten that thin? It must have been a gradual process, since he never noticed it before. Then again, her broad shoulders combined with the looseness of her crazy-wear probably projected a false healthy thickness on her dwindling frame. He would have to mention that to the nutritionist. Clicking open his pen, he scribbled a little note to himself on her coversheet before looking over at her and arching a brow slightly, waiting for her answer. "Only my friends call me 'Kim.' You call me 'Kimberly.'"
Sadly enough, Dr. Jacobs couldn't recall ever seeing Kimberly with friends. Instead of flat-out doubting her, he decided to actually use all his psychiatric training and use this statement to provoke some sort of discussion. That's why she was in that room, anyway. "So, Kimberly, who calls you 'Kim'?" His tone was plain and soothing, almost paternal. In a way, he tried to truly care for all his patients. Even if he disagreed with them, even if they drove him nuts, he always tried to hollow out a space in his heart for them. It made giving them medication that much easier on his conscience, as he could convince himself that it was really for their own good, and that he was just being a good friend.
Looking down at her hands, Kimberly shifted again, straightening up her spine for a second before letting it relax again, resuming the horrible posture she had slipped into over the year and a half she had spent in Cleveland Institution. "Brian." Her voice had hushed so radically that the name was nearly lost, escaped to the far corners of the sugar cube room. "Brian calls me 'Kim.'" Nodding to herself, she finally looked up to Dr. Jacobs, her hazy eyes landing barely focused on his face.
Well, that was surprising. Though Dr. Jacobs wasn't the best at remembering names, he was quite certain he had never heard of any patient in Cleveland Institution named Brian. In fact, he was entirely positive. That left only one possibility; an imaginary friend. She had had them before, though he was praying that the newest medication he started her on would have fixed her problem by then. Oh, well. Best to learn about this one, all the while trying to figure out how to cure her. It seemed that every time they attempted a cure, they found a new ailment. Was the institution really going down the tubes? "And who is Brian?"
Instead of responding right off, she sucked on her thin lower lip, running her tongue over the little self-inflicted scabs that she left every time she got bored or nervous. After a moment, she felt her hands twitch again. Her gaze never left Dr. Jacobs. "He's my friend." She replied, voice rather dead. However, she knew that this answer wouldn't be acceptable. It was silly. Of course he was her friend, he called her 'Kim.' She needed a real explanation, a real way to define Brian to this stupid-eyes doctor. "He's smart." She started, giving him the sort of response that she had been trained to give. "And he tells me things."
"What kinds of things?" Though Dr. Jacobs tended to stay aloof during these one-on-one sessions with his multiple patients, he had always found Kimberly more interesting. Maybe it was the exact nature of her psychosis. Or, maybe it was her journal entries. Every patient in Cleveland Institution had a journal that had to be written in every day. The doctors then read their patients' entries every day, while the patients were away from their rooms. There was some debate among the doctors as to whether or not the patients knew about this. Dr. Jacobs liked to believe that his patients were blissfully unaware. It made him feel better.
"Lots of things." Her eyes leapt from Dr. Jacobs to her far left, rolling radically to the sides before returning again. Another twitch carried into her hands, causing her forearms to bunch and her fingers to squeeze. It released quickly, leaving her with no evidence of it. But Dr. Jacobs had noticed. He was waiting for her to say something more, and she knew it. Or at least, she had a vague idea that he wanted her to say something else. At the moment, she was rather unable to reply. There was nothing else to say. However, just as the doctor was about to speak, she interrupted. "He says you're bad in the head." She looked down to her hands, nodding her head gently before looking to him again. "He says you're going to do something wrong."
This was odd. Her tone was almost hostile. There had never been evidence of hostility in her sessions before. Kimberly Southington had always been a placid, nicely medicated, happy patient. Her journal entries were muddled and confused, which suggested a disjointed thought process. But she was never violent. Staying calm, Dr. Jacobs folded his hands on the table and looked at her curiously, wearing a placid, pleasant expression on his face. "What am I going to do, Kimberly?"
She looked down again, the overhang of her brow casting a shadow over her eyes as she jerked her chin towards her chest, simultaneously pitching her shoulders forward. It looked as if she were listening for something, but Dr. Jacobs couldn't assume that yet. She had no history of hearing voices. Imaginary friends and voices were entirely different matters. When talking to imaginary friends, the patient often conversed openly as if speaking to a normal, solid, real person. Voices came from various points seemingly around the patient, rendering her confused. Taking a few heavy breaths, Kimberly stopped looking at the doctor, clenching her hands together a few times. "I can't tell you." She responded huskily, hands spasming again. "If I do, I'll be wrong. I don't want to do a bad thing." Heat was rising in her pasty-pale cheeks, coloring them red beneath the freckles. "But Brian says I'll do it even if I don't want to."
Getting concerned now, Dr. Jacobs leaned forward, trying to see her eyes. They were still obscured by that damned shadow, and it didn't seem as if it would lift anytime soon. Trying to stay calm and patient, he lightly prodded at her again with a tender question, hoping to settle her down. "What is this bad thing, Kimberly?"
Breath hanging dangerously in the air, Kimberly jerked forward again, pulling her chin in closely to her chest. In the blink of an eye, it seemed as if she had changed. The tremors in her hands were growing, causing them to shake and pulsate with a life seemingly of their own. "I…" She started, looking about nervously. A few beads of sweat began to form on her forehead, sliding down to mingle with her eyebrows. She couldn't feel them. "I…" There was no clear way to define how she was feeling at the moment. All the thoughts in her head were muddled, floundering about in murk while she was left with a colander trying to sort them out. It wasn't helping, and her hands continued to seize.
"Kimberly…" Dr. Jacobs repeated sternly, leaning farther forward. "Kimberly, look at me. Who is Brian?" If she were to have a fit, if she were to seize, this would undo everything he had done for her. It would destroy all his previous work. She couldn't seize. "Kimberly, who is Brian?" He asked more firmly, pushing against the table and getting even closer, urgency filling his face.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Kimberly let out a piteous squeak and released her hands, clamping them down on the sides of the chair she sat on. Immediately, she disappeared. Or, she seemed to, at least. What really happened was that the chair collapsed beneath her, sending her sharply to the ground. Unsure of where she was, Kimberly looked around in confusion. "B…Brian…" She choked out, finally looking down. Once sitting in a chair, she was now sitting in a puddle of metallic liquid. Transfixed, she reached down and jabbed her two forefingers into the puddle, retracting them and staring at her distorted reflection in the smear on her fingers. "Brian…"
Gasping, Dr. Jacobs leapt from his seat and dashed not to Kimberly's side, but rather, out of the room and to the cabinet just to the side of the door. Inside said cabinet was a phone for emergencies. This was most certainly an emergency. Almost too weak to dial, he had to gather his gall and soothe his nerves before he was able to punch in a few neatly memorized numbers. "Hello? It's Jacobs. I'm here with Southington, Kimberly Southington. Yes, we've had another incident. It…her chair turned into a liquid." He paused, listening to the voice on the line. Anger flickered over his face. "Do you think I failed basic chemistry? I know the difference between solids and liquids, and this chair is definitely a liquid! Just…just get somebody in here to clean her up…she's getting her hands all in it, she's making a mess." Sighing in exasperation, he leaned his forehead against the wall. Why hadn't he just been a family physician? "I know. I know this is the third time. You don't need to remind me. Look, just…just do what I said, alright? Okay." Finally, he hung the phone up, crossing his arms and sighing again. They would have to actually address it this time. No number of pills would change this about her.
Inside the sugar cube room, Kimberly sat transfixed in the chair puddle, staring down at her near perfect reflection. "Brian…look what we've done. We're going to do it, Brian." She paused, daubing her fingers in the puddle again and staring at them. "I feel different already…" Her voice trailed off as she continued staring at the metallic chair, bringing her fingers closer and closer until they touched the tip of her nose. War paint. How fitting.