Patricia opened her eyes with a start.
Four glaring fluorescent tubes buzzed unpleasantly above her. The concrete, grimy ceiling of the assylum's infirmary waited just behind. Patricia tried to move, but the air felt like pudding.
"Welcome back, Patricia," came Dr. Ames' most pleasant greeting.
Patricia fought hard to get up. What little she could even feel of her body burned like someone had poured whiskey in her veins. A marble flame coursing through her, making her muscles muddy. After an epic struggle, exerting the entire force of her will, she learned she was indeed strapped down. She tried to scream her frustration, but it ended up coming out as nothing more and a guttural moan. She felt herself begin to sob incoherently, drool falling down her chin in great swaths. Weak, helpless, strapped down,and undignified. She couldn't take any more of this.
"Please..." she tried to say. But that, too, was just an embarrassing sound of pure pleading. She writhed as much as her rebellious body could.
"Had enough, have you?" asked Dr. Ames. He smiled benevolently at her. He reached for I.V. monitor beside her cot. He grasped one of the knobs, and gave it a sharp twist. She writhed involuntarily, as the gentle heat of the whiskey had gradually gotten sharper, until it was like shards of glass inside her. She ground her teeth, shrieking.
"Give it a moment," Dr. Ames said patiently. All the fire in her veins started to recede sharply, as a frosty wave of adrenaline replaced it. Her chest was moving so fast on its own, and for a moment she couldn't fathom what it was doing. Then she realized she was breathing. Not only that, she was hyperventilating.
The restraints were obvious to her now. Her body flailed and kicked wildly, making their presence both a frustration, and a necessity. She choked at first, and gasped, but after a moment she started screaming. She howled, and cried out incoherent sounds.
Finally, she tired herself out. She breathed heavily, but regularly. Her body was slack, her sheets and restraints soaked with cold sweat.
She was still alive, she thought weakly.
"You gave us all quite a fright, Patricia," said Dr. Ames.
She turned to look at him with a flop of her head to the side. Her lips hung open life limp flaps of meat. She couldn't see well. Her eyes had streamed tears, and released of nearly every fluid imaginable had occurred to her by this point. Blinking a few more times only did so much to clear her vision. She opened her mouth to speak, but the drugs hadn't worn off. Her mouth formed a vague shape, but as if her mind and tongue were both numb, no more came of the attempt.
"You shouldn't speak yet. You've already had a very big day," said Dr. Ames. Patricia blinked, and frowned.
"Huuuhngn?" she asked at length. "Gehh, eh?"
"Shhhn, don't try to speak. I just came here to check up on you. It was time for you to wake up, after all," said Dr. Ames. He sounded... strangely excited. Patricia's frown deepened. He pulled out a small flashlight from one of his pockets, and reached towards to face, flashing it in her eyes. He seemed pleased with his unpleasant inspection.
He sat back down on his stool, and began taking notes on the clip board. He tapped at it. He looked pensive, and thoughtful. In the same way someone might when they're doing a crossword puzzle. After a moment, he smiled, wrote something down on the chart, and set it aside. He turned the smile on her.
"Well. We'll see in the next few days if it worked."
"Wuh wooorh?"
"Hush now. You can go back to sleep," said Dr. Ames. He reached for the I.V. Monitor again, even thought Patricia's protests, and rising panic.
Then there was blackness.
For a time, it was complete. But whatever eternities might have passed in that state was lost. Unrecorded history. By the time Patricia's mind was present to account for the darkness, it was starting to fade.
Voices were weaving in an out of her concious state.
"Miss Brosnen has vanished."
"She was right here! How did she get out?"
She fretted, and frowned, trying to find them. It was Caldur and Sebastian talking. Talking about her. Bt somehow it was... distant. So far away. She couldn't find her way there.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to find some way of managing these... episodes."
She tried to open her eyes.
"...She slipped out of your sight?"
Searing white lights greeted her. Four of them. Four walls. With four panels of padding on each wall. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the light.
The bucket in the corner had been emptied. The walls had even been hosed down a little. The drain in the floor had been unclogged, too. What was the occasion?
Her throat was dry, and raspy. Her muscles were lingeringly weak and unresponsive. But when she dragged herself up, and swung her feet over the edge of her cot, they obeyed her. Still, she needed to use the walls for support to actually stand. She felt... Odd. Something was missing.
She tried to take a step, maybe walk around for a bit. But her leg brushed against the wall, and shot with pain. She muffled a scream, biting down on her lip to stop it. She fell to the ground as she did, which revealed more places where the same pain was roused. Her other leg. Her arms! The back of her neck. All of them flared with pain. She let out a few whimpering moans to keep herself quiet. She sobbed, and breathed through the agony long enough to get her bearings. When the initial pain finally wore down to a dull thrum, she looked at the first offending limb to examine it.
Down her left leg ran two long, straight, fresh cuts. The first went from just below her ankle, to just below the knee. It had two more lines cut in, like someone had cut open a door for themselves. The same was repeated on her thigh, from just above the hip, to just above the knee. The pattern was on her forearms, though there were even more cuts around her wrists. Wait, that was what was missing.
She wasn't in her straight jacket.
In fact, as she rose up on one elbow, she inspected her hand more closely. Soft, milky skin, with tidily cut fingernails. She was clean, and groomed. She turned over her palm, staring at it in wonder. None of the cuts on her body had actually been stitched, but all of them seemed to be... Well, they hurt, but there was a thin layer of healed flesh over top of obviously raw cuts. She could see her own blood pooling underneath the fine hair on her arms.
"Big day..." she said.
She didn't want to give these monsters the satisfaction of her crying. She didn't want to cave. But this was... She felt her whole body trembling, trying to hold in the tears. She knew she was going to fail at it, too, but she held them in until her chest burned.
"Why!" she bawled at last to the empty room. "Why are you doing this to me! Please I just want to get out!"
"Ah, there we are, Patricia," came Dr. Ames' smooth voice.
Patricia gasped violently, sucking in all the air around her as if yo catch her sobs before they could reach him. She looked at him with bloodshot eyes, shuddering on the lip of her cot. Desperate didn't begin to cover it.
"Now we're making progress," he continued. Dr. Ames grinned toothily. "I told you that you couldn't escape from it forever."
...
