Prelude
"How do I get there? Why? What do I want? What do I want? What do I want?"
"Jill? Jill, you're talking to yourself again," said a man in a white outfit. "I need you to stop now."
"Stop. Stop. Right. I need to stop. I need to concentrate. I can hear him breathing. I can see his face. I will stop. I will stop his breathing."
"Jill, you're not stopping anything at this point except your talking," said the man again.
Jill stopped talking. Then she stopped the man from talking. Then she walked past his body into the hall. The piece of broken mirror she held in her hand dripped with blood, mostly his, some hers. Her dark brown hair was in tangles, stray hairs trying to fly away. The room she just left was barely big enough for her, with only a bed that bore black straps, changes of clothes in one corner, four walls with no windows, a broken mirror on the floor, and now a man lying in a pool of blood, convulsing. The yellow walls in the room matched the walls in the hallway, but the floor in the room was not nearly as shiny as the floor in the hall. The hallway felt cold to Jill's bare feet.
"Goodbye, man-in-white. I know he's not in here, so you're safe now. Don't worry, he can't get you."
Most of the lights in the hallway were out. The only lights on were the one right above her, which the man turned on before he entered the room, and the two at either end of the hall. Jill staggered toward one of the lights at one end of the hall. When she got to the light, she looked up at a grate on the wall, which she opened and entered. She crawled on her elbows through the duct she was in, passing over grates that looked down into several rooms like her own, but bigger. She finally came to the grate she wanted and opened it, dropping down into a locker room. She opened one of the lockers and pulled out the white uniform that was inside. It was much like the man's was, but it didn't have pants; instead, it was a short white skirt, and she put the whole thing on and threw her ragged white clothes away, along with the piece of broken mirror.
"How do I get there? Where are the children? Are they safe? Have I checked them? No, I must concentrate. Stop his breathing."
Then Jill walked out of the room and into the hallway again. The door she was looking for was at the end of this hall. She walked toward the door and through it like she knew what she was doing. The security guard, who was just now sitting down, didn't give her a second glance, but when he looked at the screens in front of him, he jumped up and slammed a button, which made an alarm sound. As she walked into the dark street, she looked back at the building. The sign on the front read "Napton State Asylum".
"Goodbye."