A/N: Goodmorning, starshine, the earth says hello! And I have a new chapter for you. YAY! I love this chapter... it's broken up into little bits, so it's disjointed, and I love the effect that makes. I'm hoping you can all guess who the 'woman' I mention several times in this chapter is. Let me know if you're not sure, or tell me if you think it works ;)
Again, thanks so, so SO much to my loverly reviewers. Some of you didn't have accounts, so I couldn't reply to you, but I appreciate everyone's input! Don't forget to keep reviewing to make sure you get more fast updates like this week :P Enjoy!!!
Edited 16/10/09: I've just added a little bit to this chapter, kudos to anyone who can guess who it is :D
A baby cried and Mary Alice turned her head around to the sound—Cynthia? There was nothing there. But the baby continued to wail in her ear, insistent. An emotion bloomed inside her; an urge to pick up the baby and run. Hide his weak little body away before anything could harm him... before he can hurt him.
A woman's face—young but mature, kind but wary. A letter flutters to the floor. She looks down, her hand presses to her stomach, and a new determination fills her gentle eyes. Motherly concern; protection. And she leaves.
Mary Alice sank back onto the cold linoleum floor, and returned to staring at the cracked ceiling. She was tired—she was always tired—but she was much more comfortable here than on the bed. Though the room was dark and cool, even the ragged blanket was too warm and the material of the sheets made her itch even worse.
Mother. She supposed she should miss her mother, and her father too, but she couldn't find the appropriate longing for them within herself. They had become merely words to her now—they were hazy figures in her mind's eye. Cut-out figures in a dolly chain of people she couldn't remember.
The shadow of someone running past flashed in the corner of her eye and she whipped her head to the side again, but there was still nothing there. There was never anything there. Nothing but nothing.
She sniffed, trying to stem the constant drip of her nose. It did little, except to tickle the back of her throat and she hacked up a cough. She was hungry, and the small meal she'd eaten only an hour ago seemed as far distant to her as the warm wind or unhindered sunshine did when, in her world, it was snowing.
Again, she reminded herself. She couldn't recall, now, just how long she'd been here, but her time in the Asylum stretched back in her memory far enough that logic told her that this was not the first snowy season of her stay. Nor her last—snowing, still snowing, it builds in big white drifts against the window.
Her eyelids suddenly felt like they were made of lead. It was morning, but she was exhausted and hungry. And hot. She turned her head to the side, pressing one blazing red cheek to the cold floor, and sighed.
So tired... the inside of her lids was just as interesting a view as the blank room. And the visions followed everywhere her eyes went. Her head felt light, her limbs floating on the stream of conciousness, and she drifted into sleep.
The woman glances at the door. Before she knocks, she hides her small suitcase in the front hedge. Fear of disapproval. She is anxious as she waits for the door to be answered; she has to get away soon.
"One last visit," she whispers, and knocks again.
The door is answered and her mother frowns slightly. Disapproval. But she will leave soon.
The green of the grass was fluorescent. Mary Alice didn't know such a colour existed any more. She could sometimes see a small patch of the sky through the window, so blue was real; easy to believe in. But not green—it was not real, could not be real.
She slid out of her chair and dropped to her hands and knees, feeling the cool green on her skin. But it wasn't real, couldn't possibly be real. A hand wrapped around her tiny white arm and pulled her away from it.
"Whatever are you doing?" a female voice demanded. A nurse. "Stay on your seat child—you'll get filthy rolling on the ground like that."
Filthy... dirty. Dirt was brown—brown existed. But not like this brown; it was a dull, choking colour. Cloying dust and dried blood on half-healed scabs. This brown was rich and vibrant. It was the brown of made life, not destroyed.
The sunshine was weak, but growing stronger and brighter. The images on the edges of her vision were brighter too. A new fern frond curls slowly out of its tight spiral, the feathery green opening to the light... a man in a military uniform looks up from the deck of a ship at the blazing sun, and he looks colourless against the electric blue sky and tossing waves... a bird jumps out of its nest and sings its anticipation to the skies. The eggs in its nest shudder and the bird swoops and swirls around the branches—a final celebration of freedom before the first egg hatches...
Mary Alice wished she could just fly away like that. The blue sky was particularly inviting when seen like this—stretching to the horizon, contained by no man-made boundaries. If she could fly, she would go far away from this place. Maybe she could even leave her strange premonitions behind her.
She giggled, suddenly remembering that she had once thought that her ability to see these things that others couldn't might be a gift. Her special gift from God, she'd told herself then, to be able to warn everyone of all the bad things that were coming to get them; save them from getting hurt.
But really it was a curse. When she tried to help, she scared away her friends, her family; when she tried to warn them they turned their backs, pushed her away and left her all alone. Nobody she knew now actually cared about her. They said they were helping her—they "wanted to cure her"—but they only gathered the curse more tightly around her, until it crowded her mind. Her world was just as much fantasy and phantom as it was solid reality now. Where before the visions danced through her mind safely behind closed eyes, now they cavorted openly in the air around her; mixed into everything she saw so thoroughly that she could no longer tell what was real and what was not.
She'd been pushed so far away now, that she wasn't even sure that flying up and out of it could do any good, make any difference. It all clung to her till she was sure that she couldn't get away—till she clung to it too, invited it in. No, it would do no good to fly away. So she wouldn't even try....
It seemed like forever since she could remember not seeing the hurts of other people. The shadows were her constant companions—the people in them almost as welcome to her as the good ones, the happy ones. Even if they were cruel, or suffering, or depressed, they cared enough about her to tell her their stories. To lift a little of the pressing claustrophobia.
oOo
She was outside again, though she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there from her small room in the red-brick building behind her. But the sun that blazed down on her through a large crack in the bank of white clouds pressed in on her just as much as the greying walls of her cell. It was too open here, too bright and exposed. So the visions—even dark ones—where just as welcome as ever.
This woman had visited her several times now. It was strange how Mary Alice could remember her story, when her own history—so bogged in the depths of her failing memory—took such concentrated effort to recall to her mind.
She also stands in the strangely blinding light—a final bright ray before the sun sinks below the horizon—and she stands on the edge of a precipice. Her caramel hair swirls about her face and the wind throws sparkling drops of her tears over the steep decent. Her arms pull into her chest and she cradles an imaginary baby in her arms, her body still soft with the roundness of bearing a child.
Her vision suddenly flashed to dark.
A strangely familiar man runs across a dark field toward the ragged edge of a forest ahead. Something pale and silent ghosts his path.
Then the light returned.
"Sleep child mine, there's nothing here, while in slumber at my breast, angels smiling, have no fear, holy angels guard your rest..." she murmurs, the haunting tones of a lullaby. "My little Cullen... gone too. He disappeared so quickly—too soon."
Dark again.
Sweat drips into his eyes, making his close-cropped brown curls slick back to his skull. His chest is heaving with laboured breath as he weaves through the scrub and he stumbles—it's getting closer.
Bright light.
Her arms drop to her sides and her swimming eyes close.
"I'll find you," she whispers, her lips barely moving.
Darkness.
He is suddenly on the ground, leaf litter pressed against his nose and in his mouth. A hard hand holds him down and something icy smooths against his neck.
"Stop me if I linger too long," a sweet high voice commands.
Light.
"I'm coming to find you... my Cullen."
Dark.
And hard, sharp blades slash at his throat.
And she steps over the edge.
Screaming. Mary Alice pressed the heals of her hands into her eyes, trying to force the images back into the darkness. Her bones crack, her eyes flutter. "Wait for me..." she croaks. Blood bubbles on his lips. "I'm sorry... Char-aaaaarrrrgghh!" It was over but the pictures lingered, one superimposed onto the other. Tears poured down her cheeks as she continued to stare at the body of the broken young mother, at the struggling deadman.
"What's the matter?" firm hands held her up. "What happened, uh... Alice?"
"Gone... she's gone... he's gone..." she whispered a hoarse reply. "Jumped. Broken. Dead."
The same person clicked their tongue. The image was fading now, and Mary Alice could see the nurse shake her head and roll her eyes. Her hands were still hard as she held the thin girl on her feet and lead her slowly to the back door, in the building's shadow. The girl embraced the cool darkness—she didn't ever want to be in the light again. She didn't trust the light any more. Only the dark could protect her now.
oOo
Screaming. The girl was still screaming. Stella wanted to press her hands to her ears to block out the sound. The screams were scratching, constantly breaking as the pitch wavered.
The girl was normally so quiet; it was often creepy, how silent she was in comparison to the others. She didn't make strange noises, or spasm uncontrollably, or shout for no reason, though she did jump and start at the smallest things—but living in Whitfield Mental Asylum for three years would make anyone paranoid, especially such a fragile young girl. Stella had wondered if there was even anything wrong with the child.
But apparently she'd been screaming like this, without break, for two and a half days now. She didn't stop—not to eat, not even to sleep. Stella had gone in there an hour ago to make the routine morning check, bearing the usual small tray of breakfast. The girl—Alice, she remembered—had been huddled in the darkest corner, and she hadn't responded with her usual interest to the announcement that her meal had arrived. When Stella had got near enough to touch her, she'd writhed and shrieked, impossibly louder than before, and Stella hadn't dared try to force her medication down her throat.
Stella stared at the door, indecisive. She'd only just finished the rest of her rounds, and she was debating if she should go to see Mr Lividston. He would be seeing patients from the west wing today, and he was always so cross when he was interrupted from his work. And he gave her the creeps just as much as any patient in this building.
No, Alice hadn't appeared hurt in any way, so it couldn't be anything major. Other patients screamed, and nobody bothered about them—this wasn't really any different, was it? The nurse on duty before Stella had said as much as they chatted while she finished her shift. Nobody else thought it was necessary to talk to Dr Lividston, so she didn't need to bother him yet.
But it bothered her. If she wasn't even eating—surely that was a problem. And she wasn't taking her medication either. How could she be cured if she didn't take her medication? Stella hesitated another moment, then returned to her usual duties.
She would try again at lunch, she finally decided, and if nothing had changed then she'd again consider talking to the doctor.
oOo
Burning, they are burning. He burns and she burns and I burn as they burn and it hurts so much. Screaming. It doesn't help, but we must scream—it hurts so much. Soothing whispers in her ear, they comfort me too, but he is all alone in the dark and we still scream. Even with the cold breath on her cheek, the icy fingers tracing her hands, the sweet melody of a piano in the next room; she burns, so I burn. He burns. And we scream.
oOo
"Why was I not notified of this immediately?" Dr Lividston's hard eyes flashed. "Explain yourself Nurse Jackson."
"I'm sorry doctor," Stella hung her head, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I was told by the nurse before me that it was nothing worth troubling you over. But when I read in the patient's notes that she'd been screaming for so long, I thought that maybe this was more serious than they thought."
The screaming had gotten too much for her to handle—with the girl's room so close to the workstation, she could hear nothing else, couldn't block it out—and she had hoped that the doctor would be able to do something to quiet her.
The doctor scowled, but let it go. He glanced over the record sheet, his frown deepening.
"I assume," he grumbled ominously, "that you have been just as unsuccessful in administering the patient's medication today as have the other incompetents before you."
He didn't bother looking up to see Stella's small nod of assent. He heaved an irritated sigh and strode across his office to pull open a cupboard above his head. His hand came out of the recess clutching a syringe and a small glass bottle of clear liquid.
"Three days without medication will not make much difference in this case, I suppose," he muttered to himself. "The patient has been on this treatment for three years now, with little change. The only interesting development in all this time and I have been left unaware! This would not happen in a better funded facility..." he stopped ranting, as though he just recalled that Stella was still in the room.
"Well, lead the way, Nurse Jackson. Step lively!"
oOo
She could feel the end coming now. A few hours ago, it had reached this same screaming peak, then suddenly diminished for a time; halved as the man's face stuffed out like a candle. But it still burns—hotter and hotter again!—but fading, more vague... less touchable. She could almost separate herself from it now, but she continued to scream reflexively, out of habit. And when the woman screamed louder, when the heat beat even hotter with every frantic thump of her heart, Mary Alice screamed louder with her.
The door opened again, spilling a square of light into the pitch dark room. Light. Light was hot and hot was bad. Light was bad—she huddled closer into her dark corner. Hotter and hotter; tighter and tighter; faster and faster; smaller and smaller. Screaming. Excruciating.
Mary Alice was vaguely aware of voices. One voice in particular she recognised with mild horror. That voice didn't belong here, why had he come here? Even if the bad heat had invaded her safe darkness, that voice should not have come too—it was too much. Too hot, too fast!
And then it was gone.
Her scream choked off, she swallowed it down instinctively as the source of it suddenly vanished. It left her, helpless, as the man with the voice crouched over her and spoke to her, but she couldn't understand. She tried to bring back the screaming—she couldn't think while it was with her. There was no remembering with it, there was no forgetting. But it was really gone.
Then the gnarled fingers had her arm and a sharp pain stabbed the inside of her elbow. Her eyes sprung open, for the first time in over three days, and she caught the flash of metal and glass. Cold seeped into her arm and the voice grumbled, barely comprehensible.
"Poor... medically induced... reduce dosage... one... morning and evening... food... protect experiment... health board... questions... can't..."
The door closed. Shadows began to flicker on the edges of her vision. Different to the normal ones—these were vague shadows. They were shapeless, soundless, harmless. Safe darkness. For once, she wanted to thank the voice. Thank him for the first kindness he had ever done her.
Maybe he did want to help.
oOo
Cold and dark. Snow fell outside the window and she watched in silent fascination. The flakes of white on grey were the only moving things in her stationary world. Everything else was still, except for the rattling twitch that was the breath moving in and out of her lungs. Nothing else.
She didn't worry any more, about remembering and forgetting. She knew that there were lots of things she should remember—what day it was, her age, where she was, how she got there... what had happened to her... her name.... Her name.
A vague memory stirred and she looked down. The word was upside-down and back-to-front to her view, but she could read it easily enough. Alice. Not quite right. She thought for a slow moment. M...ary. Mary Alice.
She smiled, and looked back at the falling snowflakes. She had remembered. As long as she could remember that much, she knew she would be okay. Everything would be fine, as long as she could just stay here alone in the cool, silent dark.
And remember her name.