As you will find, the last shreds of any clinging sanity are finally gone. Not sure if I miss it yet :D

Chapter 43: Sound of Madness

APOV

"Oh, not this again," I heard someone say. I was currently in that place between sleep and consciousness. I could feel Jasper's arms in a slack embrace that made my stomach tickle. My eyelids twitched when they turned red instead of black, but I didn't want to open them to see why.

"Up and out, up and out!" a man shouted. My eyes snapped open then as I was snapped out of my dreamlike awareness. The same guy that made me leave Jasper's room before was standing beside the bed. Well, this was embarrassing.

Jasper still hadn't woken up. He just moaned in a cute way and shifted a little, his arms tightening around me. I felt myself blush.

"You've got to be kidding me," the worker guy muttered. He got close to Jasper's face and yelled, "Get up!"

Jasper jumped, and his eyes flew open. He shuddered in surprise again as he saw the worker who had just screamed in his face – quite rudely, I might add.

"Out, now, and I had better not catch you in here again. It's—after—hours."

Jasper let go of me and slid off of the bed. I already felt cold without him there. Worker Man took a fistful of the back of Jasper's shirt and started to drag him out of the room like he couldn't just walk out himself without being forced. I stuck my tongue out at the man childishly. Jasper saw me and chuckled, which earned him an extra shove before the worker slammed the door.

I sighed and got up to go to the bathroom. Eye makeup made black rings under my eyes that made my nose wrinkle. I washed my face and brushed my teeth before changing into something to sleep in.

It was nearly one in the morning, I saw from checking the clock on the wall. I turned off the lights since the worker guy didn't when he left and crawled under the covers.

I easily drifted back into that semiconscious state, but I couldn't fully fall asleep. Colors of half-formed dreams swam around in my vision, but then I snapped awake enough to get rid of them.

I was finally almost asleep when I felt an annoying, almost painful itch on my forearm. My hand went up to scratch it, but then something held it down. I opened my eyes weakly and saw someone standing over me, but I was fading into sleep fast. Why couldn't I wake up…?

Then I was out.

When I woke up again, I couldn't see because it was so dark. I was in a huddle on the smooth, cold floor that I didn't want to spread from because it was so chilly wherever it was I was lying. What the heck happened?

I groaned and sat up, hugging my legs to keep somewhat warm. I heard a shuffle somewhere in the room, but I was too disoriented to figure out in what general direction it came from. "Hello?"

Before I could get a response, a door opened to my right. I squinted against the sudden light. The sliver of illumination only let me see a sea-foam green linoleum tiled floor and a pair of white shoes in the corner.

My eyes quickly adjusted only to have them tear up when whoever walked in went to the center of the room and tugged a cord to turn on a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

It was a man that had walked in. He was wearing what looked like a blue-gray janitor's uniform. His black hair was a mess, and there was a glint in his charcoal eyes that made the hair look like what a madman would have. I had a really bad feeling that I wasn't too far off base.

The man was smiling a twisted grin which made him look even crazier than his first impression had told. That manic smile was aimed at me. "Glad to see you're awake, Alice Brandon."

My heart jumped around frantically in my chest. How did this guy know my name? I was getting seriously creeped out here. "Who are you?" I asked shakily. I thought my heart would have taken the opportunity of my speaking to escape through my throat, but it stayed trapped.

The crazy grin widened. "Fair enough, seeing as I know who you are. My name is Richard Raymer."

My stomach dropped. Richard… Raymer? I recognized both of those names: Richard being who Mrs. Stevens was talking to, and Dr. Raymer. Jasper had told me what Dr. Hetzer said about this guy. He had said that Dr. Raymer had wanted to "take a different direction" with patient treatments and got fired for it. I had had no idea what that had meant when I heard it, and I sure didn't want to find out.

"What are you going to do to me?" I whimpered. I was on the verge of crying in fright, but I bit it back.

Manic laughter bubbled from his crazy grin. "I'm going to make you all better."

"H-h-how?"

"Do you want to hear a story?" Richard took a wooden chair that I hadn't noticed before from the corner and sat down. I finally peeled my eyes away to see that there were some cardboard boxes up against the wall beside me and in front of me. Where was there a storage room in the building? Maybe there was a way to get out, and it would help to know where I was.

Dr. Raymer didn't wait for my answer. "I used to be the best therapist in this entire building. I knew minds just like yours inside and out. I had gone to Princeton for my education. Recently, I started to wonder. Was there a more effective method of treatment for troubled minds? So I took that question and did some research. Old methods of treatment had to have some kind of reason behind them, and I found some of them to make sense with a bit of work. So, I talked to some other members of the faculty who agreed with me on bringing back old methods of treatment with changes that would make the methods last this time, and I even shared some new methods. They thought that I was onto something.

"That was when I decided to pitch the idea to the other members of the hospital. I was thinking that I would be backed up in the meeting, but guess what?" He chuckled, and then laughed louder. "They didn't! They saw how the less-educated, narrow minded therapists were reacting, and they went along with them! They turned against me!" he laughed madly some more. "And then I got fired for my ideas!

"Of course," he continued without laughter, "some of them came crawling back with their sincerest apologies. One of them – your own therapist, actually, Alice – told me about the old mental institution's ruins that served as the foundation of the newer building when they remodeled it to make it more modern. She said that this basement held some of the old equipment that used to be used for my ideal treatments. It was all too perfect.

"We had enough people on our side to pull this off. The man in security that spoke with you earlier, Alice? Dalton? He made sure that the coast was clear for me to slip in and take you away. Another worker that has access to the entire building, one who you've met before, kept tabs for me. And your darling therapist… she provided me with just the notes I needed for your treatment. And also got me this one here," he said with less crazed fervor as he jerked his chin towards the corner. "She thought she would be a good test run, with her being an orphan. Sad to say, I've lost my interest."

I peeked around a box to see who he was talking about. "Oh my God, Rachel!"

She was huddled in the corner, hugging her knees like I was. Her mousy brown hair was even thinner and a mess. Tears were pouring down her face from eyes that looked void of emotion. I haven't seen Rachel in so long that I had begun to think that she had gotten better and left. How long has she been down here?

My question was answered by Richard. "Shame; I've only had her for less than a week, and she's already broken. Maybe you'll last longer."

My fear was momentarily replaced with rage. He talked about Rachel – a human being – like she was just a toy here for him to play with until he got bored or "broke" her. And she really did look broken with her empty eyes.

"What have you done to her?" my voice now shook with anger instead of terror.

"A new method I decided to try, just for this case," he replied proudly. It made me sick. "You see, she's had a nervous disorder of some sort ever since daddy shot mommy and then himself. Hearing screaming and gunfire in the pitch dark can really mess up a little girl. So what I decided to do is put her in a small, dark room with sounds of screaming and gunfire. Easy to get what I needed from movies these days. But now she won't speak. Not even a whimper. And she doesn't seem to like bright lights or quiet very much anymore." He shook his head and muttered, "Such a shame."

"You bastard," I spat at him. "She's a little girl who's gone through enough! Look at what you've done to her!" I flung an arm out towards her in my anger, but she didn't react at all. She was worse than ever because of this guy's "treatment."

"I never said that I've perfected the treatment yet," he replied innocently. "There's still work to be done, improvements to be made."

"You're sick."

"You may be too young to understand, Alice dear, but I'm creating the future of mental health care." He stood up and put the chair back into the corner of the room where he got it. "Once you're better, maybe you'll understand what us adults are trying to do. Don't be ungrateful." He said the last sentence harshly before tugging on the cord to bathe the room in darkness and slamming the door.

That is absolutely amazing! You are truly done with this chapter. If you want to make it longer do so, but the ending of it is so perfect…. I mean, it's sad and a cliff hanger, but it's written really well.