Jack
I didn't know how long I stayed there. I screamed, my voice muffled, into the silk until my throat was hoarse, and then I cried out softly for something that I would never have. Humanity.
It was the cold that bought me into my senses. After several months in the sunniest place on earth, the seeping cold felt alien.
I wrapped the silk curtains around my shoulders more tightly, thinking of how fortunate it was that they were grey, same as our uniform gowns and every other thing in this place. At least, it would be fortunate if I had any thoughts of leaving this safe haven, which I sure as hell didn't.
My eyes made out, in the dim light, the healthy shimmer of my arm, golden and sun drenched, even after weeks in this insane asylum. This was the only physical memoir of the island days, this and a burn where I had burnt myself from the fires. Only two souvenirs. It didn't matter. The mental scars would never leave.
Other assets from the island were long since gone. The long, tangled hair that brushed past my eyebrows had been cut off with shears the very minute I had arrived at this place, which was a shame, because if I was going to have to be a savage, I would rather have looked like one.
It was funny how healthy my arm looked, anyway. Inside, I was such a screwed up mess, but one look at my arm and you'd never have guessed. Except that the "Mentally Disoriented" bracelet on my left wrist proved it.
This insane asylum houses different patients, or as I like to call them, inmates. It's the same thing, since we're all trapped like caged animals. The ones with the "Mentally Disordered" bracelets are the ones with the most heaviest, unrepairable mental scars. That's most of us. They say the insanest people, the ones gone batty, have to wear the bracelet for the rest of their lives, and they can never get out of the asylum. The rest of their existence is marked by the number of times they are experimented by the doctors, prodded and poked at by the sharp faced strangers, plagued by the nightmares and visions for life. I would have a breakdown if I was one of them.
I tightened my grip around the bracelet, making the mental dig into my tanned wrist, trying to grapple at the pain to keep me focused. I deserve pain, I think. Pain for the two kids who died on the island.
Sharply, suddenly, the smell of blood caught in my nostrils, alerting every sense in my body. I saw red, thick, tainted blood, running like a tiny red river in the desert, down my wrist.
It was all I needed.
And the horrifying visions started again, undertoned by the demonic, familiar beat...
Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood...
I tried to grasp at my wrist to stop the blood, to stop the nightmare. No...I didn't want...
My mind flashed over the images. Percival crying, the signal fire burning out of control, Piggy falling, the naval officer frowning at us all, blue sea, red blood, throwing my black choir robe into the sea in a moment of frenzied excitement, Simon's doe-eyed look, Roger's triumphant sneer, the fire he set raging, eating everything up, blood, blood, blood, Ralph's eyes wide and pleading, Ralph, Ralph...
Ralph! My eyes flew open, momentarily distracted from the sickening visions and the gushing blood. He was here. Weren't they all, the biguns whose minds were beyond hospital repair? Ralph, Roger, SamnEric, Maurice? They had to be here. They would understand, they had to. And Ralph... He hated me. He hated me, but I had to find him too, to make him understand, to talk to him.
I shakily got to my feet, staggered, and then full out crashed into the door, falling out into the cold stone floor outside. Cursing, I got to my feet again and stumbled to the door, where the sudden light, fluorescent and unnatural, nearly blinded me.
