A/N: Whew. I almost forgot to upload. During summer vacations, I have no idea what day of the week it is. The next chapter, next week will be after I start school, so I will do my best to remember with all of the craziness going on. Now I can officially say I'm sophomoric! But it's funnier now. Ha-haa.

They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa.
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa.
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy
to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming
to take me away, ha-haaa!
To the happy home, with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket
weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're
coming to take me away, ha-haa!
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time...

Neurotic Fish - They're Coming to Take Me Away

Chapter Five: Lunatics and Free Time

72 Days Left

I peer over Quinn's shoulder at the mass of soggy food on the tray. It looks like something a God of Death would sneeze.

The cafeteria is large with two food queues. The different wards are assigned different tables. Orderlies and nurses patrol around so that no one tries to choke to death on the gruel they're being served.

Quinn is sitting at the end of a long cafeteria table. Her side is abandoned, of course. You don't have to be me to realize she's not very desirable. The other end of the table is filled with other patients, but they're not looking at her. Quinn pokes an unidentifiable glob of food with her plastic spoon (which doesn't make any sense. You can do just as much damage with a spoon as you can with a knife. Ever hear of scooping someone's eyeballs out?) and sighs.

"Are you going to eat that?" I inquire at Quinn. She straightens up some.

"Why, do you want it?"

"No," I answer. "I just want to know if I can count on you dying of starvation any time soon." She rolls her eyes and shoves a spoonful of something into her mouth. I shudder.

"Can't you see my lifespan?"

"That's foul," I say, referring both to the mysterious substance and the fact that I just watched her eat something.

"So don't look."

"I'm trying not to, but I'm obviously a glutton for punishment. I enjoy thinking horrible thoughts about you, therefore, no matter how hard I try, I can't look away from your unsightly face."

She growls and brandishes the spoon at me.

"Darling," Pyre says. She's appeared by Quinn's side, fresh out of the cafeteria "food" queue. Her bandanna is off again, probably stuffed down her shirt. I don't want to think about whether the matches she had are there as well, or back in their original hiding place."That's not how we solve our problems with the paranormal beings. We must simply light them on fire." I clench my jaw.

"Come on," she says. "You're sitting by us or I'll cut your chest open and pour banana slurpee into your right lung until the blood vessels swell up and turn yellow." She adjusts her tray in her hands and grabs Quinn. Quinn tries not to move, but with a fair amount of maneuvering on Pyre's part, she's slid to the other end of the table, beside a sallow looking girl. Pyre walks over the top of the table and sits across from her.

"Everyone!" Pyre announces. "This is Quinn and she's insane! We all have something in common with her, so I want all of you to be nice." The three patients look up at Quinn, who's leaning towards me for some inexplicable reason. Protection? Of the people here, I'm the least likely to be on her side. Everything in this world harks back to my earlier statement: Humans are utterly stupid.

"This is Aidan," Pyre says, pointing at a boy with lank, greasy hair and black shadows under his eyes. He looks like a younger version of my human form, actually. "He's mute. And…I think that's it. Mute and severely apathetic."

"This is Thompson. He's the one I told you about earlier," Pyre informs Quinn. Thompson's vivid green eyes dart up to her when she says this. He leans to the side and whispers something in her ear, but she just shrugs. "She's not an alien, don't worry." Thompson doesn't look convinced. He sinks down on the bench until only his eyes and up can be seen from over the edge of the table. He's about eighteen, with messy blond hair. His eyes fix themselves on Quinn and watch her, narrowed. Quinn shifts uncomfortably.

"And last but not least, this is Chloe!" Pyre sings. She stands up and leans across the table, pecking the black haired girl beside Quinn on the cheek. "She's bulimic, depressed, and a suicide failure. Aren't you, my sweet pearl?" Chloe lifts her chin towards Quinn by way of greeting, and then looks back down at her food.

Aidan is slowly and mechanically shoving spoonfuls of food into his mouth. Thompson is still slunk down, glaring across the table at Quinn. Chloe is just playing with her food. Pyre is eating hers with gusto. Quinn is twitching.

How did I come to be among the scum of the Human World? What did I do to deserve the one Death Note owner who'd get locked in a Psych Ward among its drooling occupants? It's so unfair.

After dinner they get a few hours of recreation. Thompson and Chloe play ping pong while Aidan sits and stares at the television.

"Come on!" Pyre says, grabbing Quinn's hand. "I'm going to give you the royal treatment!" I follow them into a small computer lab. All of the monitors are facing the nurse's desk, so they can see what the patients are looking at. Pyre doesn't seem concerned with this, and immediately types a web address in. When it loads, I forget to float and crash into the ground with surprise. Has she lost – oh, wait.

Quinn's face is a mask of horror and fright. Pyre is looking supremely satisfied with herself. She crosses her arms and leans back in her chair.

"Normally they block this kind of website," Pyre says proudly. "But as a nymphomaniac, I have needs. I found a way to get through the firewalls. This stuff is like crack to me."

Quinn is turning green, and I can't really blame her. I dust myself off and rise into the air again.

"And you have to sleep in the same room as her," I say to Quinn, who goes even greener.

"Rebecca, what on earth are you doing?" a nurse who is not Anna says, walking over. I glance up at her name: Katherine. Katherine looks over Pyre's shoulder and blanches.

"Get out," she thunders, pointing toward the door. Thompson and Chloe stare at Pyre and Quinn as they walk out of the lab while Katherine struggles to close out the raunchy webpage.

"Damn," Pyre mutters. "Now I have to hack into it all over again."

Quinn is glaring at her. She turns on her heel and walks up to the nurse's desk.

"I want to go to my room. Where is it?" she demands. The nurses are looking reluctant, but then Anna pipes up.

"I'll take you there. Normally you wouldn't be allowed to leave the lobby at this time unless you were ill in some way, but as it's your first day, I'm sure you want a little bit of quiet time." She walks around the desk and puts a hand on Quinn's shoulder, escorting her out of the lobby.

"She's your roommate," I remind her. "You can't really escape her."

Anna shows Quinn inside a room. There are two twin beds on either side, but other than that, the room is barren and impersonal. Exactly like you'd imagine a hospital room. I'd almost forgotten where we were – that Pyre brat seems to have odd effects on people. She was so hatefully cheerful that it was hard to think we are in a miserable imprisonment.

Anna tells Quinn that there will be someone by to check on her regularly, but to go ahead and relax. Quinn nods and Anna leaves, leaving the door slightly ajar.

I'm surprised to see a smile curl Quinn's lips.

"What?" I ask. "Are you back to your old self? You seemed so depressed when we first arrived…I suppose this has been a whirlwind of emotions for someone as mentally frail as you."

She sits down on the edge of a bed and it creaks under the new weight.

"Back to my old self…I don't think that's a good way to say it. My old self wasn't exactly a patient in a mental institute. But I am feeling better."

"Not that I give, but why is that?"

She bounces slightly on the bed.

"I'm not sure. I guess it's because I was sort of a mess after I killed my shrink. Maybe it was just a side effect of the shock of killing someone," she muses. "The influence that the Death Note has on a person…it changed things so much. It was enough to land us in here – so what do you think would happen if I played around with the Death Note, to see what I can see? I could experiment for awhile – I'm sure I could survive Pyre. I don't dislike her. She's interesting, actually."

"I don't really care," I say honestly. "And you see monsters. I don't think it will cure your insanity."

She hisses.

"Stop saying that. I'm not insane. The only reason I'm in here is because I killed someone."

"Those things go hand in hand," I comment, just to piss her off.

"You've used the Death Note," she says. "Does that make you insane?"

"I am a God of Death," I say immediately. "I am nothing like a human. I'm a superior figure to that of you. You're less than a rat. I refuse to be, nor can I be, associated with any human terms."

"Sheesh," she scolds. "You have such a short temper. Are you really that defensive of yourself?"

"I am merely stating a fact. Although, I don't know why I bother. I don't have to have anything to do with you, strictly speaking. I told you the rules of the Death Note. My obligations have been carried out."

She closes her eyes and smirks.

"So why do you talk to me? Why do you follow me around? You could go anywhere in this hospital you want to, but you stay beside me. You need a kick in the ass, Mr. Holier than Thou. Or should I say, Unholier."

I narrow my eyes and sweep across the room towards her, so that I am face to face with her. I hate the proximity, but I'm too angry to care.

"You think you could even begin to comprehend the mind of a God of Death? My, how incredibly powerful you must be. No – you are low. You're an infant. You're insignificant. You occupy this world for less than a nanosecond on the grand scale of time. Your pathetically short life, your pathetically low brain function," I spit. "You disgust me."

She frowns and starts to say something undoubtedly borne from her painfully narrow opinion, but the door opens and Pyre walks in, holding a box. All of my anger immediately drains away. Curse that despicable whelp.

"Hey Roomie!" she says. "I ran into Cathy and she said that you had a box of Scrabble in the other room earlier, so I decided to bring it!" Quinn rearranges her face and turns toward Pyre.

"Oh," she says simply, but I can detect traces of her annoyance at me.

"I thought maybe the phantom could play with us too! How about it, Mr. Phantom?" Pyre says cheerfully, turning in a circle as if trying to locate me. "I suppose it could be Ms. Phantom too…hey, what if you ARE a miss? I bet you're really cute. You should come out where I can light you – er, see you."

My brow wrinkles against my will. She's so ridiculous. But I'm beginning to feel like a spectator in Quinn's dreadfully dull life. It's time I do something for myself. It won't benefit Quinn at all to have me play, so I see no harm in it.

Pyre lies down on the floor and unfolds the gameboard. She sets up the racks and plops the bag of tiles into the center. Quinn sighs and sits down on the floor. After a moment's hesitation, I reach into the bag and pull out a tile. I see Pyre's eyes widen but she clamps her mouth shut. Good. The last thing I need is a smug remark from her.

A few minutes into the game, Pyre strikes a match and proceeds to try to light me on fire. It doesn't catch though, so the flames just fizzle out by her fingers. It doesn't seem to hurt her, even though she is burned several times. Quinn has half her attention on this phenomenon.

"So your imprisonment here has something to do with your pyromaniac antics, am I right?" Quinn asks.

"Aha!" Pyre laughs. "I see you've gotten over your muteness. I'm sorry that I acted so outlandishly, but I just returned from the Red Ward, and I was deprived of…everything."

"You were in the Red Ward?" Quinn frowns, placing a tile on the Scrabble board. "What for?"

"Weeeelll," Pyre drawls, enthusiastically slapping a tile down beside another. "I've been in and out of all of the wards a couple times. I'm actually here because I lit my hair on fire awhile back. That's why it's so short." She runs a hand over her extremely short, buzzed brown hair.

"I don't think being a pyro makes you a masochist as well," Quinn says. I smirk underneath my chain mask. I could picture the little moron lighting her hair on fire.

"Nah. That's just me. Anyways, after it was burned and cut so short, I just kept it that way." Pyre says. She puts another tile down beside my recently completed word, (MORON) making it plural (MORONS). She can read my intentions like a book. "I stayed in the Red Ward for awhile, then got moved down to Yellow, where I met Thompson, Chloe, and Aidan. Then eventually was moved to the Green Ward. Then I guess they didn't like the way I was acting. I think they defined it as suicidal tendencies. Anyways, I was moved back up to Yellow Ward."

"And then what happened?"

Pyre grins crookedly.

"I bounced between those two wards for awhile, then my older brother came and visited me. Apparently my parents hadn't told him that I was here. He was off at college. He came by and gave me a few strike-anywhere matches."

Quinn snickers and slides a few tiles into place.

"It must be nice to have someone on your side," she said, with a significant look at me. I ignore her and play with the tiles on the rack in front of me. Pyre is giving it a look, so I immediately stop and straighten up, throwing her a rude face that she can't see. She's making this difficult. They're lucky I'm even playing with them. I wait for her to place a tile, then immediately build off the "I" she just used, turning it into Idiot.

Pyre looks at it for a moment, then leans back and cackles.

"But why would he bring you matches, even if he was on your side?" Quinn presses.

"Eh. He's my brother. We've got some kind of special bond that somehow formed when he moved out. I guess he misses me or something. Or feels sorry for me because I'm in a mental hospital. But anyways, with the matches…I lit my eyelashes on fire so they moved me to the Red Ward. The nurses put me out before my eyes could be harmed at all, and my eyelashes eventually grew back, but it took about two months. The nurses all know I carry matches, but they look the other way. I'm not sure why. They'd probably lose their jobs if anyone found out."

I disregard my anger at Quinn for a moment so I can glance at her.

"She lit her eyelashes on fire?" I say incredulously.

Quinn fights to keep a straight face – Pyre notices and says, "What'd Mr. Phantom say?"

"Don't say anything," I instruct Quinn.

She just smiles wider, but doesn't answer either of us. What a little twit.

A/N: Thank for reading. Feel free to review.

You should check out Andruindel's Escape With Ease!