I am warning you. What they did in mental aslyms back in the 1800s, 1900s was utter cruelty. They had absolutely no idea how to treat mental conditions and resorted to torture to "heal" their patients. In this one-shot we have Alice, she suffers from schizophrenia and is sent to a mental aslym. It has mental problems, mistreatment, torture, and rape.

Stephenie Meyer owns any Twilight characters that may appear in this story. The remainder is my original work. Copyright 2009 by That Girl There x. No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without my express written authorization. (Yes I realise it is now 2010 (woo!) but I wrote it in '09)

Thanks to Project Team Beta for editing and the title!

Summary: A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the hero or heroine, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains.
Sometimes there are no happy endings. Series of One-Shots. Serious content; Drug abuse, suicide, rape etc. Rated M for a reason. All Human canon and non canon couples.

Build my fear of what's out there
Can I breathe the open air
Whisper things into my brain
Assuring me that I'm insane

Welcome Home (Sanitarium) - Metallica

Craving Death

Mary Alice Brandon

I curled up as much as I could with my arms and legs strapped to the bed. I felt tears leak out of my eyelids. I shivered; I could never be warm in this place. My hair was gone, cut on the first day. They said it was for delousing purposes, but it didn't stop them from cutting into my scalp with the rusted scissors so much that there was blood pouring down my face. This is not the place you come to get better. This place makes you lose your mind.

It all started with the mirrors. I could not have a mirror near me; I didn't have one for vanity purposes in my room. I couldn't. I avoided them around the house. If I looked into a mirror I could see the demons that were speaking to me. They would laugh at me, come nearer trying to touch my hair. But mostly they whispered about how they would like to hurt me, to make me scream. My mother helped me keep my secret by keeping me quiet if I mentioned the voices near someone. Her grandmother had the same 'condition'. They say she killed herself out of sadness when her husband died. But I know that the monsters got her, just like they were trying to get me.
It was easier when my grandmother was around; she remembered how her mother was and could remember how to keep the demons away from me for a little while. It was all kept very quiet. My father could not know and neither could my sister. It was our secret: my grandmother's, my mother's and mine. But when she died, my father decided that it was time I grew up, and I had to move out of my childhood bedroom. I moved into the one room that I always avoided- the one with the mirror that could not be moved.

After my mother died, my father made sure that I did not see my grandmother again. He never got on well with her, and he thought she was influencing me too much. With my secret-keepers gone and the mirror in my room, the demons came back - and they brought friends. I could see them through the mirror, all over the room, crawling up the walls and peering over me as I tried to sleep. Only my screaming would send them away. Unfortunately my screams alerted my father. He called on doctors and priests. They had no answers, as I would not tell them anything about what I was seeing. My mother had made me promise that I would never say anything about the demons to anyone. I keep my promises.

Things got progressively worse. More demons appeared in the mirror and I could see them coming towards me, coming to get me. I punched the mirror until all the glass fell out and my hands were covered in blood. The demons were gone for now, but it was the final straw for my father. He sent me here.

He has left me here to rot.

The doctors here are cruel, cruel monsters; they do not do anything to make the demons go away. They shock me with electricity until I black out with pain. They starve me. They jab me with needles and pins until I bleed. They do other things too, and block my mouth with their hands so I cannot breathe, so I cannot scream.

Their treatments do not make the slightest bit of a difference. The demons flourish here. They love the cold, damp, dark rooms. They love to hear my screaming in agony and to taste the blood streaming down my skin. They love the holes that the pins create. They love my misery.

The doctors believe that sunlight is the cause of my illness. They tie me to chairs and beds for days at a time in complete darkness.

I am going to die here.

There are men here called helpers. They are the ones who are meant to give us food and keep us from disease. But they do not help. They are just as bad as the doctors. They leave food on the ground when I am tied to the bed; my food goes to the rats. I am thrown into baths of dirty ice water when they cannot ignore the stench of my sweat, blood and urine. They also like to do other things, although unlike the doctors, they like to hear me scream.

The demons like the helpers.

I hear the others at night. The demons love it when a new person arrives here, they like their screams. The patients- who, like me, have been here for a while- know that screaming is useless. All it does is make you weaker.

There was one man who was unlike the others. He used to wash the blood off my skin carefully. He would put ointment on the holes in my skin, to stop infection. He would untie me from beds and chairs. He showed me sunlight once, it made the dust in the room sparkle and glimmer and it made the air taste differently. He used to try to help me to eat, but by the time he came along it was too late for me. I could not eat; anything I tried to would not stay down. So he would douse my dry, cracked lips with water until I could drink drops of it. He knew that I was slowly starving to death. Sometimes at night he would give me something other than water. It burned my throat as it went down, but it made the pain and demons go away and it helped me sleep. His eyes used to fill up with tears when he had to drag me to the doctors. I used to scream at him, beg and plead with him.
"No, no, no more pins in me. No more, please no more pins in me." I would scream desperately.

Then one day he left and never came back. This was the day I knew that there was no hope.

I curled up as much as I could with my arms and legs strapped to the bed. I felt tears leak out of my eyelids. I shivered. All I could see was darkness. I was getting weaker, I could not feel anything. There was no pain anymore, and the demons had quieted down. They were waiting patiently in the hidden corners of the room. They ignored the scent of my tears; they knew that they could get more out of me than that. They would not have to wait long now. It was what I had been waiting for since I first came here. I was dying; I could feel it.

I was finally bleeding out.

Hope you have a great 2010. As a gift, a review, maybe?