The Paineswich Asylum

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Christina’s been very encouraging to post my experiences in the Asylum. I haven’t told anyone yet what actually happened to me inside, although there’s plenty of evidence. I hadn’t been surprised there had been security footage of it; Dr. Dingo seemed the sort to keep it and Matt the sort to find it. Nevertheless, Christina didn’t talk of anything unless I spoke first. They’re extremely kind in that way. And now that the trial is over, it is time to finally share my experience with you all.

Time.

Time has little meaning when days pass by with the same repetition as a wheel rolling along the edge of a dusty highway. There are no cars, no sounds, and there is no diversity in the smells; the only changes in the tire underneath the hands are minute. There is only dust, gravel, and musty pebbles to wear away at the monotony.

Please bear with me if I seemed confused. Even after all this time, reality and drug-induced . . . nightmares . . . are still tangled.

During my time in the New York hospital, voices would come, but were not the only sounds. Noises abounded in fact, became echoes in the fields of my eyes: soft, loud, and babbling. They didn’t talk at first, but when they did, the language was incomprehensible. Bees would sting my arms and wrap adhesive wings to my skin, while liquids pumped into my veins from their fangs. Cold, rubbery flesh would press against my eyelids and wrists, and then touch my cheeks and mouth. Warm flesh would compress my hands, and then brush my cheeks and lips.

When I wasn’t busy seeing nothing, I saw blood and demons. When I could sit up without being gently thrown back against a reclining, soft throne of stone pillows, the world saw fit to hurl me across its yawning expanses. When I could speak, it was in dead tongues that they understood but I did not.

However, they didn’t listen.

A thin mattress didn’t pad a hard pressure straight across my back and body. The world swooned all around me. Thick straps constrained my limbs to a rake-like frame. Perhaps I was being buried in a mobile grave. Would that be akin to chill hopelessness? A nest of men surely caged me into the mattress, must have watched me close and wouldn’t let me go. Somewhere in the smaze of incomprehension, I knew what was going on. And I wanted to warn her about it.

This, of course, was after Push saw me and recognized me. Maybe I better tell about that, first. it was during my New York Trip. Hannah was with me, and we had just finished lunch and were headed back to our booth when somebody hailed me “improperly.” That is, by my old name, before Celeste. I didn’t recognize her voice, but Hannah’s description of her was familiar enough; short, sallow-skinned, with dyed stripes of red and black, mopped locks surrounding the tiny circle of blond roots at the top of her head and hugging her face. I had my doubts about the glazed look in her eyes, but I agreed to follow her, anyway.

Push mentioned a bar just a few blocks away where we could talk, and Hannah assured me she’d be okay watching my booth for fifteen minutes alone. Push led me by the hand, the strength of her pulls erratic; Hannah hadn’t told her about my blindness and it was back when I was still . . . comfortable wearing glasses. Taking a moment at the curbside while we waited to cross, I Opened myself wide. Flashes enveloped me; my body tilted as something tugged insistently. It took a moment and the burping signal several tries before I realized the white walk light must be blinking. Reorienting myself and allowing her to drag me, I mentally felt about her, stopping just shy of entering her mind.

Her nervousness was so acute, I could almost taste her sweat. But the origins of her nervousness . . . I still don’t know. I could guess, but what would be the use in that?

Entry into the bar was made abundantly clear by the acrid blanket of smoke entwining about us as readily as walking into ten centuries’ buildup of a spider’s web might, the dry flavor stinging the back of my throat. Compounded with the heavy music hammering into my skull as only jackhammers could, I already knew this would be an interesting visit.

Push ordered two beers; I amended it to include a water; she could drink if she wanted, but I wouldn’t. Push didn’t seem to mind, just gladly downed the first as it had been the water and the second nearly as fast. I sipped at mine. Tasted like bottled water.

“Y’always were the straight chick, Cougar,” she patted my cheek and called me by another nickname I’d had before my Celeste nights. My cheeks flushed at her words and the affection that didn’t belong. To conceal it, I took another gulp of water.

“Listen, Cougar, I was wondering if you could help me with something,” she lowered her hand to my thigh. “You’re the only one I can turn to.”

“Oh?” My free hand anchored hers and kept it from wandering any further.

I was trying to keep an open mind about it all. But the odds were just stacked against her. To start, she was treating me as though I were a man and could be seduced like one. Secondly, she beat around on just how I could help her, detecting my reluctance. The third issue was I had already guessed what she wanted from me: money; and lots of it. Fourthly, the longer she talked, the heftier the skeleton of pain became in my mind from all the cigarette smoke erecting timber after timber. Fifthly, I couldn’t forget that she had been the one to get Bastion using; it might not have been the start of all our problems, but it certainly enhanced them, and it’s the reason I call her ‘Push’ in this telling.

I lifted my hand to forestall her from going on and on about how good I looked and how I must be doing so well and how I surely had some extra money lying around and how I’d always been willing to help out friends in need.

“Push, wait a second,” I begged. “The atmosphere in here is giving me a monstrous headache. We’ve been here for over twenty minutes and you still haven’t told me what you want. I have a friend who’s minding a stall for me at the fair and I really need to get back there. Can you just tell me what kind of help you want, please?”

“You have a headache?” She asked as though just catching on.

Considering I wouldn’t have been surprised if the sides of my skull split and fell at my feet, I thought it was safe to be honest on that count. “Yes.”

“Want an aspirin?”

“That would be lovely,” I replied. Hannah had my purse where I kept my own stash when needed.

Push’s ‘aspirin,’ I am told, was actually a prototype, heightened compound of lysergic acid.

She sent me to my 7,952nd trip to hell; intentionally or by accident, I haven’t discovered.

[Grace]

You're really going to have to introduce me to this 'Push' person some time, Wie.

So what happened next?

[Eilonwy Solstice]

You're really going to have to introduce me to this 'Push' person some time, Wie.

So what happened next?

If you’re thinking what I think you are . . . not yet, Darcy. Not until I know why she did it.

For the most part, I just recuperated; which seems to be my hobby of choice, lately. And tried to find out what was real and what was . . . drug-related.


It has been said that at its peak performance, the mind can operate at an efficiency beyond many computers. That thought can stream complete sentences and complex logarithms through the brain before the eye can complete the revolution of a twinkle.

But what do I know about eyes?

Madness, in all its deranged renown, might be considered one of those peaks. With any hope not the highest peak, but a peak nevertheless.

They rolled me away before I finished tearing out my own throat in a scream. At the time, I didn’t know why Hannah didn’t react to my warnings, shrieked and whispered alike. She says I was delirious, hallucinating at the time, which would explain why she at times assured me that she was perfectly safe, and at others when she told me she was doing all within her power to watch for her enemies. Yet I could sense that she wasn’t doing anything really, after my eighty-seventh warning, other than telling me what I wanted to hear to quiet me. She says I was hallucinating about demons, fire, and blood.

But I’d swear that it was real; so real.

Only, having witnessed her being torn apart by demons, ghouls, and Mr. Fluffers three times each with my own eyes, it does cast a little doubt that the demons I sensed were real. But as Matt is so fond of saying, that was my perception. To me, it was real, even though no one else shared my visions; so it was. Even though Hannah was slaughtered three times, turned into a demon herself four times, and married to a diabolic Forest Spirit once, Hannah was still the first one to visit me in the hospital after I escaped the asylum.



Wheels squealed shrilly underneath me, my body hiccupping with each protuberance we went over. I was with two men at least, when I was admitted into the New York hospital the first time. Their loud footsteps were muffled and their voices spoke over my protests as if I wasn’t present. The wintry frame of sorts I could feel containing me hadn’t left. Further inspection from my searching hands was cut off by the starved circlets biting into my wrists with each struggle to learn about my immediate environment. The men finally stopped and secured my wrists more tightly and strapped my body to the mattress. I had begun clutching one of the stiffly chill rods I was chained to and foisted myself to and fro in an appeal to study my immediate surroundings. My legs were strapped down when I scissored them back and forth.

That was how I learned about the ribcage surrounding me.

I had left 7,952 hells to discover 666 more.

[Hannah]

Wie,

I speak for a lot of us in saying that we are so glad you are no longer in that place and we would have moved Heaven and Earth to get you out of there had we realized what was going on.

Thank you for coming back to us Wie.

Hannah

[Cybermancer]

Hannah does indeed speak for a lot of us, Miss Solstice.

I know how hard it must be for you to relate all of this. So I'm glad that you're finding the strength to do so.

What you've related so far could be entirely a drug induced hallucination. It's equally plausible that psionics or magic were involved. It seems to me that ever since the late 1990's, certain occult factions have become increasingly sophisticated in combining what have been traditionally divurgent techniques.

Those of us who must oppose these forces must respond in kind.

The first step is, as always, to share those experiences so that we can all learn from them. Even when those experiences have been less than positive.

So again Miss Solstice. Thank you for sharing.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Thank you, guys; so much. Nearly everything I put down here is prewritten; the prosecution asked that I do that so the trial could go a little more smoothly. But if I merely pasted the case files down, I fear it would just prove sickening instead of the properly informative design I think Dr. Lazlo would have preferred. So I find myself editing a great deal; 1,469 pages is a little much to ask anyone to read, and that’s only the crimes perpetuated against me, without the possible nuances of supernatural involvement. If it feels like I’m going about it in a strangely detached manner, it’s possibly because I am. Reliving the agony was necessary for the trial, or so I am told; I’d prefer not to a third time.


Tales of my drug-inspired madness, events I now know or deduce were induced by the overdose, would be incomprehensible to most people; including me. Once I have made sense of them, or if I make sense of them, maybe I’ll relate them. Until then, however, please let a summarizing sentence suffice.

I clawed a bloody path from the very depths of the abyss of madness to the chill, impersonal caverns of heart-numbing sanity.

While in the Paineswich Asylum, I have yet to choose which realm of those two perceptions was preferable to the other. Or which was which, for that matter; but I’ll tell as best I can.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Initially, upon retrieval of my health and sanity from New York, I had admitted myself to the Paineswich Asylum because I needed time to think, ponder, meditate, and sort through the emotional maelstrom my life had become. The actual details are personal and need not be related further here. They have no bearing on the supernatural. Originally, in spite of the name, Paineswich was considered one of the best in the state. A number of celebrities had gone there, although I won’t say whom. The warden of the facility promised me solitude and privacy to brood over my devices at my leisure. It was all I asked.

She gave me so much more. A kind woman who understood my desires better than most, she had always ensured I was free to roam the halls when I pleased, keep the hours I wished, and told the orderlies about my wish for peace; I became friends with quite a few, patients and employees alike.

A week before the chosen date I had set to return to society and Ron’s companionship, one month after admitting myself, I had a troubling dream. It was my first “blind” dream; that is, there were no sights, only sounds, impressions, and portents . It was cold and ebony black all around me; not the same as my blindness. I remember the color black; my blindness isn’t any shades of black. It’s nothing .

This blackness was worse.

Sounds were muted, as though there were twelve feet of unyielding stone between me and them. I heard screams, faint and rebellious. Steel clanged echoingly, like prison bars securing shut. Machinery grinding. There was a pressure at my temples, like water in the deeper trenches of the ocean. When I reached out with my hands, for I had hands in this dream, roughly hewn rock met my fingers, chipped, moist, and unyielding. A sort of tunnel opened up before me. I followed it down. Despair was chained to the pressure I felt, spongy and cloying.

A creaking. That’s all I can describe the next sound as. Like great wooden wheels carting along an immense weight. Unlike all the other sounds, the creaking was loud, unobstructed, and grew louder as I descended and moved forward.

So did the pressure and despair.

I woke panting and chill with sweat, my clothes sticking to my body. Sleep wouldn’t come, so I finally crawled out of bed, sat at the foot of the bed, and meditated. About an hour later my breathing was ordinary, my heartbeats steady, and I sensed someone was watching me. Stepping out of my trance, I remained sitting, quiet, and listened. There didn’t seem to be anybody else inside the room; rather, the presence seemed almost disembodied.

Abruptly, my mind shut in on itself. The observer put up a feeble, alarmed struggle, and finally backed off as my mind’s door shut and locked. Alarmed at the night’s events, I determined to tell the warden about it in the morning. Tossing about came more naturally than sleep; but at last, fitful slumber came.


My door opened without announcement, waking me. It was strange; normally, the orderlies and warden would knock before entering. Coupled with the previous night’s episodes, I was getting nervous. Someone entered, feet muffled in slippers or something of the sort; that was also unusual.

“Who’s there?” I asked, listening and sniffing the air.

There was no answer; only the quiet scrape as a light weight was set on the tiled floor and Old Spice aftershave. This was also unusual, since there was a table in the corner. The muffled weight retreated and the door shut quietly. The rasp of the lock clicking was very distinct.

“Wait!” I objected, rushing forward. Something on the floor clattered loudly as I stepped on its edge, something throwing up against my shin.

I paused in surprise, knelt, and felt about. The object was a tin plate, dented from my misstep. Breakfast was runny gruel, liberally blanketed with a lid of garlic woven together with a thin mesh of burned cheese. There was no spoon or fork alongside the bowl; at least, not that I could detect. The slight mess cost me first a beating.

Later that same day, the silent person returned, followed by others that mumbled and hissed to themselves. They dragged me out of bed, two hands to each of my wrists pinning me to the far wall. Alarmed from their unknown intentions as they continued to handle me, I fought back madly.

“Hurry and stick her!” a man to my left cried, adjusting my arm so he could hold me between my forearm and biceps.

Something bit into the crook of my arm, reminiscent of my days spent recuperating from the drug overdose. My thoughts slurred and a metallic taste quelled the garlic coating my tongue, but saliva began to well up in response. I gagged and spit, my breath coming with increased difficulty. My third eye bleared as I panicked, seeking even harder to fight back. Then, my consciousness weighed at the edges by stones, I fell.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

When my mind blinked open its eyes, a migraine like I’ve never experienced since or before accompanied it. Gnashing boulders could have been attached to my temples by a vice for all the pain; my mouth felt fuzzy, dry as a baked scab, and cankerous. Every fiber of my being ached and screamed.

I knew what they had done. Celeste would have hunted them down and shredded them to cheese in turn in front of each other. I shrank in mortification, wondered at their depravity, and plotted my escape.

Unfortunately, calculating escape plans and carrying them out are two entirely different subjects. My third eye was nearly fused shut; it took three times as long to Open myself and when I did, I was disoriented and breathless as a newborn kitten in a room full of rabid werewolves. I couldn’t reach the dream stream. All my psychic abilities dropped flat. My wrists and ankles were doubly secured, looped with chains and ropes.

New orderlies came to inspect me without regard to my privacy, minimal interest to my well-being, and none whatsoever to my dignity. At first I objected, but quickly realized they had their own set of twisted rules. When I complied to their plans, which was done simply by being mute and complacent (which I didn’t often do) I was most often treated like a guinea pig than anything else. And when I didn’t accede to what they had in mind . . . it wasn’t pleasant. Mostly, this came about when they interrogated me, asking questions they shouldn’t, and did things that had me feeling more like an object or an animal than ever.

My schedule became chaotic at its best; only one of my orderlies gave me the silent treatment each time; unless it was a man with different tastes, the watered perfume worn and the slighter size suggested a female. Even through the thin, rubber gloves, her hands were rough and calloused. Most of the others beat me, spat on me, described all the cruel things they were going to do to me, and worse. Sometimes I was occasionally let out of my cell. These times, I was told, were to be spent in exercise.

This I did in various conditions, dependent on the current orderly and his or her mood.

Outside my cell, there was a long hallway. There were other cell doors lining each side, kept closed and locked at all times. If there were other inmates behind the doors, either they were kept silent or the doors were too thick to hear their cries of anguish. I was herded away when I reached what could be the end of each side of the hallway. Towards one end, however, I thought I could hear faint screams. That is, if Marco wasn’t hissing threats into my ear in his thin, crusty voice wrapped in the scent of putrefied mayonnaise.

At the start of each month, the silent orderly would come in again with three or four others, crowding the cell. They would unshackle me, hold me against the wall, and then something would bite the crook of my arm again, injecting me with a venom that left me dizzy, sick, and unable to use my psychic abilities. The venom was an extremely potent drug, yet I could always feel my abilities pushing back. Never enough to use, unfortunately, but it was never enough to deter me from trying to escape, either.

Always, to no avail.

I came to dread the days and nights in my cell when the orderlies chained me to the rack that was my bed. Then they tortured me, subjecting my mind, body, and will to a plethora of tests, experiments, and beatings. Periodically, they crucified me. But they rotated me prone before the damage became permanent, before my organs began collapsing in on themselves. They drove all manner of implements into my palms, wrists, and veins. Some of the implements were thick, others thin, barbed, dull, razor, and more than a few injected me with chemicals.

I preferred the acid tablet Push had slipped me in lieu of an aspirin. At least Hannah had been there to hold my hand and tell me the demons weren’t there, I think. At least, that’s what she says, and I believe her.

In the asylum, all I had was my determination to survive without a word crossing my lips in answer to the questions they plied me.

Sometimes, when everything else was silent, I thought I could hear the faint sound of wooden creaking far below my feet and the faint echoes of screams.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

There were three events that broke the monotony of unscheduled torture, my failed escape attempts, and my captors’ interrogations, done to see the results of their “experiments.” To keep pace with my sanity, I learned the names of my orderlies, the sound of their voices, and the taste of their favorite style of torture.

Most assuredly, some of the experiences I had while in the Asylum are fiction, products of a frenzied mind kept shackled by chemicals; some of the events I know to be true. Then there are those, like this one I’m about to share, that have elements of both. I still wonder about it; it frightens me if it’s true, knowing there are creatures out there like these; if, however, this tale is false, I wonder what truly happened.

Margret Sattler; I learned my silent orderly was actually one of the doctors in “charge.” She never spoke, but her laughter sounded like a tenor gargling to death. She was as rough as her blister-scarred hands indicated, and enjoyed the undiluted, simple technique of physical pain.

Dobbs Krueger; what can I say about him that wouldn’t be crude, vulgar, and perverse? Nothing, really. He was big in most aspects of his life. Those that weren’t, he thought up ways to enlarge; carnality was his weapon of choice. Thankfully, his brute size was needed elsewhere later on, so he didn’t visit me quite as often as he would have liked.

As near as I could tell, the first event was approximately three months after the change in management. I awoke from an erratic sleep; surprise had me cornered, though it took a full fifteen seconds to understand why.

Silence had become my cellmate; absolute, unyielding, and palpable. It’s difficult to find such a silence, perhaps hearing’s equivalent to sight’s pitch blackness. In the country, there is the sound of wildlife or nature; in the city, there is traffic. But in the asylum at that time, even the muted whir of the heaters and the gentle hum of phosphorescent lights outside my cell had been extinguished. Even the deep-seated creaking that stirred my bones had its attention turned elsewhere.

As chill air swept over my skin, only the living sound of my paced breathing stood between me and despair; only the pulse of my blood in my ears held death at bay. When my cell door unlocked and an easy, rhythmic clicking kept pace with my rapid heartbeats, I held my breath and wondered if this was some strange new attempt to get me to speak or just madness settling in, uninspired by LSD. Something cold, wet, and wrinkled touched my palm and worked in uneven paths across my body, sniffing. Stiff air gasped at my flesh, bringing with it the scent of dog food and unwashed teeth. My visitor could have been a dog, but for two facts; first its smooth nose touched my ear and nuzzled my hair as easily as it bumped against my feet.

“Well, my dear,” a high-toned, reedy voice warbled the second fact why I believed it not an ordinary dog. “How are you coping with our hospitality so far? Do you have any . . . suggestions . . . for improvement?”

Was it actually asking if I was enjoying myself here? It certainly seemed to be, for it waited with grand patience; warm, stinking, moist breath crawled across my flesh like maggots, swirling my hair into my face and behind my shoulders. A dry, itchy odor, inexplicably reminiscent of lice, grew in my cell as the seconds passed by. Irritation pressed against my mind, enlarging. The unkempt breath huffing against my face expanded until my entire body was awash in a gigantic, hot breeze that pushed and pulled at me with the physical strength of a man’s hands.

I flinched away as best allowed by my restraints, shutting my eyelids and pressing my cheek to my shoulder, keeping myself from gagging on the scent by breathing through my mouth. The impression of a gigantic maw, stuffed with teeth as long as my arms and powered by jaws powerful enough to bite through an elephant, was inescapable. I wanted to master my churning stomach and face the unknown, so that at least I might die with my defiance intact, terrified though I was. But that didn’t happen.

The impression vanished before I could swallow the bile in my throat; slim hands, fingers capped with fangs, palmed my cheeks, driving my neck forward with incredible strength. Something lean and covered in short fur pressed into my face from forehead to chin, my lips kissing a long . . . something before I could close my mouth. Large marbles pressed into my empty eye sockets, forcing my eyelids to give space.

“Speak freely your mind, dear lady,” the high, reedy voice patronized me, a warm, moist, rough tongue bounced against my breast while sweltering, pungent breath huffed down my front. “I promise you no ill will toward you if you have found it . . . less than satisfactory.”

Its tongue flicked upward, scraping my neck. Images flashed in my mind, reeling so swiftly I couldn’t make sense of them beyond tantalizing glimpses of knowledge that were forgotten as swiftly as they were given. I pinched my eyelids shut even tighter, but the blood came anyway, using the path ordinarily reserved for tears.

It was all too much. My mind convulsed in the mental equivalent of an epileptic attack, shaking off the images; my body responded in kind, trembling until the misshapen face and hands retreated. I leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed, gagging, retching, and finally, spitting up bile.

“Does that answer your question?” I replied hoarsely, wiping my lips and cheeks on my shoulder. “I’m barely coping. I’m tortured constantly; what have you done with Megan? Bring her and the others back; or why not just kill me?”

“I’m afraid that’s quite out of the question;” it said. Surely, the creature knew I was aware it was mocking me.

“In order to better accommodate a bet I and another have going on, we decided to put this delightful facility under new leadership. As for killing you . . . what would be the sport in that? If you die, then I lose. And I hate to lose.”

“What was the bet?” I asked; I hadn’t planned on consorting with this creature, whatever it was, nor did I. Nevertheless, any knowledge on my part could only help. But theb creature didn’t give me a chance.

“No, no; I want you to survive your first tortures unbroken so that I may win, but you cannot be told, or they would suspect my interference. No, you must survive until I break you, I’m afraid. It will be vastly more entertaining if you do so without knowing the end.”

“Not a risk taker, I see,” I taunted, but flinched inwardly at the statement of ‘first tortures;’ I turned my face away when my strange visitor cackled with childish abandon, large drops of what might have been spittle slapping my face and body.

“Oh, ho! The dear lady seeks to rise from pawndom to become a player in a game she cannot even guess at the rules! How fashionably droll of you! And why would you seek to play our little game, dear lady? Are you already bored? Why, then, shall I make it more interesting for you? Hmm?”

I didn’t answer, gritting my lips and eyelids shut against the approaching smell and the gobs of viscid slime. It spoke again after waiting in vain for me to reply.

“Hmm . . . well, traditionally, silence is often construed as agreement or consent. So, I shall therefore assume you agreed, and shake up our little game. I’m sure they won’t mind, and you certainly won’t find it boring, I promise you!”

It took my wrist; somehow, the straps and chains didn’t hold onto me when my visitor pulled until my arm was stretched out in front of me, my palm pointed up and my fingers stretched out by its unshakable grip.

“Brace yourself, dear,” it warned maliciously. “Because this is really going to hurt. But it will be a lot of fun . . . for me.”

[Eilonwy Solstice]

A spindle-thin point of something sharp was pitted against the middle of my palm. Fire erupted throughout my hand as a tiny blade stabbed through my palm and carved forth a path. I screamed as agony penetrated my hand and wrist, thrashing madly. Its grip was too strong to break; even with my blood and its saliva to slime up my wrist, I couldn’t shake free. Calmly, it released my limb, moving to my other arm to repeat the same procedure.

“There, there,” it patted my head in a mockup of a soothing gesture, then pulled me free of the restrains entirely. The chains and straps parted as easily as if they had been made of putty, and I crashed to the floor, writhing, unable to put out the briquette flames that surely lit up my palms and wrists like neon signs. “I daresay you’re hardly bored with those to shake you up, yes? Farewell, dear. The game is afoot now!”

I don’t know where the creature went, or how long I tumbled across the floor, shrieking, beating my wrists against myself, against the floor; anything to dull the agony. But somewhere in the cacophony of my own mind, I heard the squeal of a heavy cell door, my cell door, unlock and open. A deep voice cursed and swore; another, lighter-toned one, moaned and gargled angrily.

“What do you want me to do?” The first voice I recognized as Krueger, demanded; he sounded panicky.

The second, whom I guessed as Sattler breaking her silent treatment for the first time, growled back in bestial savagery.

“I don’t understand you,” Krueger whined. “So you do whatever you want me to do. I’ll stay with her, make sure she don’t bleed to death . . . NO! I’ll keep the lantern. You take that dinky flashlight.”

Apparently, my situation was too grave to argue; Sattler grunted, and her footsteps echoed briefly before vanishing under the cymbals of my voiced agony.

“SHUT—UP!” Krueger barked, maybe at me.

When his rough hands grabbed me, the horrific pain retreated into a corner of my mind. As his intentions were made clear, voiced in trying to reassure himself, I focused onto a new objective. Fear, anger, resentment, nausea, and disgust; they jumbled together as my survival instinct slammed into the forefront of my mind. Determination to fight back, to make the cost of his intended goal dearly bought, if at all, became my primary concern. I lashed out, the pain intensifying, but no longer a factor. I would survive.

The first to go was the lantern he had set aside to have both hands free. The second, I learned later, was Krueger’s kneecap.

[Cybermancer]

This creature you describe, I wonder if it is the same that my god-father encountered during his late night reconnaissance of the facility? We might have gotten to you that night had it not been for it.

As it is, I'm glad others were able to get to you sooner than we were able to manage.

[Daichan]

I don't think I like this Krueger fella much.

No, I don't like him much at all.

[Ron Caliburn]

I've been making a list. . .

[Eilonwy Solstice]

This creature you describe, I wonder if it is the same that my god-father encountered during his late night reconnaissance of the facility? We might have gotten to you that night had it not been for it.

As it is, I'm glad others were able to get to you sooner than we were able to manage.

It could be, Matt, but I’d have no way of knowing. The creature your godfather came across sounds a little more savage; driven by instinct and need. Of course, it could have been an act.

I don't think I like this Krueger fella much.

No, I don't like him much at all.

That’s a sentiment many women would agree upon, Daichan. Thankfully, he was among the convicted and will be under lock for a long, long time.

[Daichan]

I've been making a list. . .

I suppose you're entitled to 'dibs' in this case, Mr. Caliburn. Still, if you need help in checking it twice, I'll be in the area for awhile.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

I've been making a list. . .

I suppose you're entitled to 'dibs' in this case, Mr. Caliburn. Still, if you need help in checking it twice, I'll be in the area for awhile.

Ron. . . you remember how I feel about that.

Daichan, I appreciate your willingness to help me out, but . . . I’m sure Ron can tell you how I feel in this matter. I’m not by nature, a vengeful person. For now, I’ll leave it at that and post the next portion.


After the unforeseen, canine-like visitor had departed and I’d fought off Krueger, he began screaming more loudly and girlishly than I had. Despite the blood, heat, and agony, the creature had wounded me in such a fashion that a medical team had gotten to us before I lost consciousness.

Vaguely, before fainting, my ear to the floor, I thought I heard a muted, disturbing scream far below me. A loud, sharp crack sounded, like a long, wooden branch being snapped over a knee. The scream was drawn out and joined by another, even worse than the first. By then, my thoughts were too groggy, and wouldn’t be able to tell you if it had been me or something else screaming. Somewhere, someone ordered Hopkins to get something called Edmund to tend to me while the team would see to Krueger’s injuries.

The first scream slowly faded. The second morphed into an inhuman growl. And then, something’s fingers were brushing me in a way that I hadn’t been touched in a long while: not sexually, or with the intent to hold me down to inflict pain, but coldly professional. This, I guessed, was the thing they called Edmund. Under its unfeeling touch, I became numbed and unwillingly fell into an abyss that might have been a distant relative of sleep.

I woke twenty-four hours later, suspended and hanging in some sort of gauze that left me unable to move most of my body. This instinctual knowledge disturbed me because of its inexplicability. I wasn’t tortured then; at least, not by tools or drugs. Beyond the venom, anyway. And yet, my recovery was its own kind of torture; I was a woman in a spider web, almost literally. I knew benumbed senselessness would come to take the pain away once more, yet I dreaded both; the pain, because it would escalate until Edmund came again. The abyss, because it was the closest thing to that unfeeling, unthinking, senseless death I’d heard about.

Senseless not in the same manner as meaningless; rather, senseless because the rest of my senses were cut off from me. I couldn’t hear, smell, taste, touch, or even think, reason or remember. I lost my identity during my visits into the abyss. These visits into the abyss weren’t a part of my life or time in the asylum. They were holes in my life, during my time in the asylum.

Four weeks after my wrists were cut, I was confident I’d gain full use and range of motion in both hands and wrists; I don’t know how. Perhaps it was through the enigmatic Edmund and the benumbed oblivion he would send me to. He was disturbingly human, yet . . . I could never picture him as one. He might have had cat’s feet, for all the noise he made whenever he stopped by my cocoon side. He touched me except to examine my hands, wrists, and elbows. Then he would do so with my feet and knees. He never replied when I spoke to him.

The greatest response he gave me in fact, was a quiet exhalation from his nose. And I’m not sure it was even directed at me or my words.

Another week later, after his nonconformist, unknown ministrations, I was confident my body would be back to the regularly scheduled program of spontaneous torture. My palms and wrists still throbbed abominably, but were healing well; reduced pain was a small price in compensation for keeping both limbs whole and a modicum of my dignity intact.

[Ron Caliburn]

I am well aware how you feel about it Wie, that's why it's only a list for now.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

I am well aware how you feel about it Wie, that's why it's only a list for now.

Thank you.

[Grace]

Don't worry Wie, I don't think any of us intend to take an action that would make you feel worse about this situation. We're all just very frustrated that this happened to you. And at the same time, a little powerless.

And maybe a little ashamed that we failed to protect one of our own.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Don't worry Wie, I don't think any of us intend to take an action that would make you feel worse about this situation. We're all just very frustrated that this happened to you. And at the same time, a little powerless.

And maybe a little ashamed that we failed to protect one of our own.

Please don’t say that, Darcy. Ron thought he was obeying my wishes when he stopped writing or coming. How else were you to know? In any event, I’ll put down some more in hopes that something might be gained or understood. . . .


Hopkins; at first, I had trouble telling Hopkins apart from Vince. They sounded very alike in voice and tone. But then I learned to recognize the faint squeak in one of Hopkins’ shoes; he didn’t like to like to buy new things. Like his packrat tendencies, he didn’t have a favorite method of torture, either; he liked to dabble in them all and was given the freedom to ‘adlib’ on some of the other’s techniques. It was he that thought of using the ball gag and the eye visor that later maximized my continuous discomfort. He was also into things of a less than . . . orthodox nature.

Vince; he spoke so quietly it was difficult to hear him if he wasn’t right beside me. It was like foam insulated every word out of his mouth. In his own words, he was a craftsman in torture; he was queasy around too much blood, but if there was a mental, emotional, or spiritual torture being used on me, it was very likely a brainchild of his. With Marco’s help, he discovered my password at Lazlo and read to me various private messages. I never discovered if they were true or not; he always erased them after reading them aloud to me.

“Wonder if this chick will last through the night,” Hopkins speculated from outside my new cell door. “Whatsherbody almost did. Closest we’ve had yet, don’t you think?”

“What do you care whether she lives or dies?” Vince sneered inside velvet, almost unheard. “Broken, unbroken, alive, or dead . . . she’s taken, no matter how you spin it, Hopkins.”

I dropped my chin when my cell door opened, unspeaking, only listening, as they unlocked my restraints and carried me between them through the halls; possibly, they would let slip something important. Even after seven weeks of recovery from the strange visitor’s cutting my hands and wrists and being moved to a new cell closer to the medical office, most the orderlies still spoke as though I either couldn’t hear them or understand them. Maybe they were just used to the old accommodations. Or maybe they thought that little of me.

“I care,” Hopkins muttered. “I hope she breaks, but dies when they plant the seeds. That hasn’t happened before, has it? Maybe then they’ll let me have her.”

I flinched, from his words as well as his touch. Like always it seemed, they ignored me, though.

“You and your necrophilia,” Vince spat. “If she dies, she’ll be tossed in that hole like all the others. Remember that. . . .”

I ignored their banter then, focusing on gathering my gathering any reserves of strength.

Nevertheless, Vince showed little concern toward me except to be cruelly rough in unshackling me and dragging me out of the cell. I was taken to a room that I had never been to before; I had once been told it was a janitorial closet, but as they unlocked it, hauled me inside, and tossed me in a chair before fleeing and relocking the door, it seemed to me the room was bigger than any janitor closet had a right to be.

The floors were wooden planks. The air was stagnant, musty, and chill as a grave 666 feet under. I huddled against the nerveless cold, although it felt good against the burn of my wrists, and wished not for the first or last time that I could push my psyche through the veil of cloying mist that fused my third eye shut.

The air moved back and forth against my skin as though a stack of mouths a hundred long and wide breathed simultaneously an inch from the goose bumps on my flesh. Something thin, scaly, and dry curled about my wrist, forcing my arm out and my palm up.

“Hmm . . .” a dry voice husked from somewhere; it vibrated against my face and hair, held my hand and unbound the dressings from my wrists. “Coyote’s action was rash, not entirely foreseen, but rectifiable.”

I shuddered delicately as a nigh insubstantial, moist threads of incredible thinness draped across my wrist, running along my palm and spreading to take in all my fingers. It left my hand feeling dry and flaky for a few breaths, before the impression mellowed and dissipated entirely.

“Since Coyote acted first, it shall not complain as I make you mine,” the dry voice sounded dead in tone, but it felt impious with annoyance. I shuddered as four long, smooth . . . fingers, only longer than my arm and more prehensile, slithered up my back, patted aside my hair, and caressed my neck, worming down to my collar bone. “No . . . it shall not complain.”

I tried to stand, to throw off the fingerlike tendrils from my shoulders. But they were strong and heavy; two pairs of odd, malformed hands grabbed my wrists and biceps . . . two left hands on one arm and two rights on my left.

“You will obey me,” it insisted when I strove to my feet; even in my weakened condition, I was stronger than whatever strange arms that held me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the superfluous, freakish limbs I needed to worry about.

It was the tendrils draped over my shoulders.

Now.

I cried out in alarm when the tendrils stabbed into me, injecting me full of . . . something.

[Daichan]

This isn't the first time I've heard of supernatural creatures in some sort of 'competition' or 'bet' involving mortals. In fact my brother and I are involved in a bet made between two dragons, one representing chaos and one order... but enough about me.

You say the trials for the humans involved are done... but these creatures (assuming of course they were not hallucinations-sorry I don't mean to suggest you didn't experience this but the possibility must be considered), have they been dealt with?

[Eilonwy Solstice]

You say the trials for the humans involved are done... but these creatures (assuming of course they were not hallucinations-sorry I don't mean to suggest you didn't experience this but the possibility must be considered), have they been dealt with?

That’s okay, Daichan; I’ve been considering the possibility, too. I still don’t know why my palms and wrists were the only things to scar up. In fact, I don’t even know how I can still use my hands. Everything else healed just fine; slowly, of course, but just fine.

Unfortunately, I think, if these beings exist, and I’m pretty sure at least one at least does, they would have escaped. The police have mentioned nothing. However, when I’m fully recuperated, if any plans are made to revisit the asylum, I want to go, too.

In the meantime, I’ll post another part of my experience.


Arms and tendrils released me alike; I slowly sat back down in the chair, slumping forward and panting heavily through my mouth. An unusual sense of relaxation and ease permeated my body, roughly stomping down every emotion, feeling, and concern, save a tremendous desire to be unceasingly submissive.

Your blood reeks with the shadow of vampire, human woman, the dry, reptilian voice reverberated loudly through every cell of my body except my ears. Tell me . . . how is this possible? You wish to relate to me the secret you have kept so long; answer ‘yes,’ now.

Nearly every fiber of my being urged me to obey; I was, after all, not being tortured for that answer, anymore. I didn’t hurt any longer, and nearly everything insisted that, by answering the question, my pain would be gone forever, if I submitted. This strange impression beat at me as deep as a pack of throbbing bulls’ gigantic hearts set against every inch of my skin.

But another, small cognizant portion reminded me of all that I had learned through failure, trial and error, pain, mistakes, and another time, so long ago it seemed, when my will had been forcibly removed. And that still, small voice, wondered if I really wanted to give my will away this time.

I didn’t.

“I won’t,” I rejected that offer of painlessness and pleasure if I but gave the power and control to this strange being of whom I knew nothing; an epitome of folly.

Immediately, the false sense of ease and security vanished. I found myself panting again. The throbbing impression of a gigantic heart vanished, replaced by an utter stillness, a silence frozen in brumal rage and cracked by my own ragged breathing and a tiny pulsing in my ears; my heart.

“You have no choice in the matter, human woman,” the dry voice husked sneeringly. You will yield! You cannot deny me this right! I am superior!

I gasped and sucked in air, coughing, as the tendrils pierced my flesh in different regions of my body, including my navel and sides. Again, nearly every feeling was wiped from my body, replaced by orgasmic bliss. The flood was stemmed when it battered against my will. It began to bend. But as the flood pushed my will deeper, grinding it against the core of my being, it stopped and could go no further.

“I can,” my growl was unimpressive, but not the point. “And I will.”

The tide of intruding bliss vanished again. The alien, deathly still rage doubled back on me, not my own. The tendrils pulled out and tried to find new purchase in my eye sockets, ears, mouth, and nose. There were no words this time, just an immense will crashing against my own, seeking my domination through pure, animalistic brutality alone. I bit down on the fibrous, sleek tendrils in my mouth, shaking my head in just as much anger as denial. Mentally grappling with the desires and feelings awakened by the phlegm-like secretion oozing through my blood and tissue, I pushed back against the thoughts that, if they weren’t perversely unnatural, were at least unhelpful to my situation.

“You won’t get my will,” I vowed around the tendrils deep in my mouth and throat; I gagged with the effort and my words may not have been clear, but the meaning behind the incomprehensible garble was. “Not now, not ever.”

Something alarming happened then. I could feel the tendrils convulsing, flexing as though straining to pass a large stone. There was no further secretion. In fact, the tendrils retreated, and even as I hacked and coughed, I could feel the aching sites where they had burrowed . . . cap over with something. Pus, blood, and some other mixture, I think; the gargantuan rage and hate it felt in the wake of its failure was so fantastic, I nearly blacked out.

“Before your life is through,” the dry voice seethed between fits, a reptile shedding its skin. “You will beg for death! You will BEG to scream me your secrets in blood! I swear it!”

A thousand maracas and an orchestra of frantic violins playing nothing but the highest, screeching notes might be able to recapture the sounds that came. But they couldn’t replicate the sensations. Something wet and sticky touched my feet; I brought my knees up and hugged my shins to my chest, but, after an armada’s series of quiet clicks, the sensations marched on, from everywhere. An impression of buzzing crept across my body, starting everywhere my body touched the chair, and began to spread out. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tiny limbs crawled across my skin.

I jerked and flailed, brushing and scraping my hands to dislodge the creepers; they were too large to be ants. Maybe they were bloated ticks, as evidenced by the bulbous sacs I sometimes slapped away. Yet, I’d never known ticks to have antenna or feelers, strong as fingers. Sometimes they wrapped about me as I tried to brush them off. They came and they came and came, either millions or dozens strong that simply got up and climbed the chair legs anew.

I knew I shouldn’t scream as the things began to envelope me; but knowing and implementing are two entirely different subjects.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

I must have beaten the horrible things off a hundred times; some were as big as baseballs, others nearly the size of a cherry. I got lucky and crushed one between my shoulder blades and the back of my chair. It burst like a pimple, spraying my back and neck with a sickly effluvium. On reflex, I stood, bringing my foot down and catching another. The stench was thickening in the air, mothballing my brain.

My mouth split open in a monstrous yawn. My palm was halfway to covering it before I realized there was a living golf ball hitching a ride on the back of my hand. I jerked my limb away, swinging my arm frantically.

Exhaustion was cornering me. The vestiges of a deadly nap tugged at my consciousness. My body ached with my injuries and a bizarre predisposition akin to lactic acid. Antenna tapped my bloody lips, reminding me one had reached the valley of my neck. I swatted it aside and nearly overbalanced with the gesture. It was only a matter of time before I fell off the chair, perhaps to fall asleep, never to wake.

The things were getting higher on my body faster, with less resistance from me. I moved with slow drunkenness, as though there was water up to my mouth. I screamed, but immediately clamped my mouth shut. Just seconds before something settled onto my lips. I grit my eyelids shut and wondered if it would be weak to pray to God to knock me out before I died; or at least to make this death quick.

“Lord Gulsralodnim,” the dry voice husked anew. “My god commands you to recall your purpose here; you shall not kill her.”

The bloated things stopped moving. I exhaled through my nose, swaying, exhaustion weighing me from all sides.

“My god also reminds you that domination is a hierarchy,” the dry voice continued, laced with smugness in its thirsty tone. “First, it is my god. It is up to you and Coyote to vie for second and third place. My god is also amused that a mere woman has outlasted both your attempts. By our very decree, agreed upon, she would be second, should she aspire to it. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

To say that the husked voice laughed is to say an orange peel dried in the sun is still a fruit. It didn’t laugh; it spoke the words ‘ha’ each time, arid as dust. I wished, prayed to God, that the mold gumming up my Third Eye would fall away like a scale. It seemed obvious to me that there was some sort of telepathic communication going on. I could feel the immense anger, not directed at me, although it was blurry and unclear without my psychic abilities to focus on it.

But my abilities didn’t return.

“My god further informs you shall be destroyed if you cross the lines previously set by agreement.”

Instead, I fainted.

[Nemesis]

This is the problem with many supernatural creatures. They often lack the patience not to kill a subject of torture. I'm glad that this creature was prevented from carrying out its desires on you.

I would have been tempted to claim the second in command spot right then and there. Not only would it have brought immediate relief it would have resulted in a superior tactical from which to determine your next course of action.

Though I suppose they may have required some sort of test of loyalty that would have been repungent to you.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

This is the problem with many supernatural creatures. They often lack the patience not to kill a subject of torture. I'm glad that this creature was prevented from carrying out its desires on you.

I would have been tempted to claim the second in command spot right then and there. Not only would it have brought immediate relief it would have resulted in a superior tactical from which to determine your next course of action.

Though I suppose they may have required some sort of test of loyalty that would have been repungent to you.

Thanks, Cynthia; at the time, I would have been glad if it had. Now, though, I’m grateful it was stopped as well. And, actually, the new torture, among other things, was offering me a place as “second in command.” But you’re right; one of the requirements was very repugnant. So repugnant, in fact, that I’d rather not say what I was supposed to do.

Even had the tests not been so revolting, however, I’d like to still think I would have refused it, anyway. Saint Matthew 16:26 says, “ 26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? . . . what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

In that verse, “man” can easily be substituted with “woman.” Or even, “boy, girl, or intelligence.” I’d lost my soul once already; and bought it back at great personal sacrifice and effort; along with that of friends willing to help who gave much as well. I don’t know if I could do so again.


The orderlies’ torture not only resumed shortly after my awaking, but increased in duration and intensity as well. The reprieves of quiet solitude and walking a length of the hallway lessened. Those were also sutured with new restraints to add to my pains, disquiet, and embarrassment; fettered reins with buckles tightened to such a degree, when my body wasn’t cramping from being unable to move, a dull, throbbing ache permeated the sites.

The weight of the interrogative techniques became too much for me to bear. I wish I could say I remained strong throughout. Instead, I pleaded for them to stop, to kill me, to do anything to make the agony cease. They held back the pain some and asked me the questions once more: the story behind the precise burn scars enmeshing the inner lining of my eyelids; why had those burns stopped at my eyelashes; why my tear ducts had healed the way they had.

However, I did refuse to answer. The answers were of the sort that demanded work on their part. They wouldn’t comprehend what they wanted to hear. Any who have read my story know, of course, although I have left the details out. My interrogators wanted those details, among other things.

When the balance between the throbbing agony and the dull numbness was at its greatest, I found ways to attempt rebellion; to prove I wasn’t broken. These times never exceeded an hour a day and never came all at once. An orderly would come, loosen my numerously varied shackles, and depending on the orderly, watch and laugh when I collapsed to the floor, gagging and coughing. He or she then held me up to administer some new type of contrived agony, or leave me where I fell.

Sometimes I found my restraints were loosened by the orderlies to such a degree they still held me, but only just. These were the times I used to make my attempts at escape; all to no avail. During the worst of these, I either couldn’t wriggle free of the straps or make it beyond my room. The best, my fingers would touch the doors leading to the grounds each attempt, however, was barred for whatever reason. Most of the time, I inexplicably found myself back in my cell, restrained. It never occurred to me that those watching me wanted me to try to escape; that I played right into their desires. Or that, I never left my restraints at all.

Christina informed me that these escape attempts never happened; it never showed on the security footage the asylum had been recording of me. I’d been hallucinating. That makes sense, but . . . it still seemed so real. Or so my perpetually fuzzy mind told me. Perhaps the venom they injected into me shared elements of the acid during my first New York Trip. Or maybe it was a new drug entirely.

We’re still trying to decipher Ron and Hannah’s visits. Or what I initially took for Ron and Hannah. They always visited one at a time. But instead of the respite I so desperately needed, they too, asked things they once promised never to ask. What they said and how doesn’t matter; their decision to turn their backs on my need hurt cruelly.

It was all part of the interrogative techniques, I suppose, because they stopped visiting when I refused to tell them as well. But why they chose to work with these fiends . . . hurt the most. In the end, I sank into myself in defense, because I was afraid they’d find a weakness if I interacted too closely with them. Friends, allies, foes, acquaintances; all were paraded, one at a time, in front of me. Their tactics ranged from sweet cajoling to savage intimidation and threats.

The torture transcended physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual; it took on so many facets it became difficult to trust my own senses. However, as I sank deeper into my own consciousness, I bore their efforts without revealing what they wanted to know.

That didn’t stop them from their tests and experiments, however; nor did I stop trying to escape. I was so close. Yet they caught me each time. They never tightened security. I never came closer. A thousand times a thousand I tried, but they thwarted every effort. My psyche was worn to the nub, my mind clogged with perplexity, my muscles and fibers screaming with abuse.

Real, imagined or half-dreamt, I continued my escape attempts while my mind still had the capacity to think. But my chances were becoming slimmer as I drifted away into the safe haven of my own restricted subconscious.

At the last possible hour, It came; providing me with an unintentional threshold beyond the worlds the drugs had trapped me between. I used that threshold to set foot solidly in waking. And I plotted one final escape . . . the escape where I would at last leave the asylum’s clutches . . . or die.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Marco; he spoke with a lisp, with lips pressed right to my ear so that the others wouldn’t hear. He traded in secrets and tried to persuade me to tell him some of mine in exchange for some of his. I never told mine; nevertheless, he freely told me the secrets he had garnered from the others.

Eaton; to a girl starved for some kindness and mercy, he seemed a dream nearly true. He almost could have been a lover, had I allowed myself to open to his small acts of sympathy, kept hidden or minute lest he be discovered and transferred. He refused to tell or listen to the crude jokes, made by Vince about me or the other women that had once been in the facility. Eaton never called me Noeyes. He apologized for the ways his coworkers treated me. He came, I believe, to hate his job, the cruelty, the inhumanity. His “cures” for various hurts stung as only lemon juice liberally salted with brine can sting when applied to lacerations. But they were cures anyhow in their own way, and kept me from other tortures.

But something told me to hold out even against him.

Maybe it was because Eaton never actually had the courage to fight back against the cruelty perpetuated against me. Metaphorically, he merely offered tiny band aids for the physical and mental pains. Unfortunately, it was when my injuries demanded the equivalent of stitches.

Or perhaps it was simply because I didn’t love him in return.

But mostly, I kept myself from loving him because his technique was just a little more refined than the others. His kindnesses were a foil to earn my trust and thus, get me talking.

For my own conscience’s sake, I’m glad he betrayed me with his methodology before I acted.

[Nemesis]

Never trust the ones that try to get you to love them. They're the ones that always hurt the most.

Clearly you have a very strong will, Miss Solstice. And you're smart too, to see that ploy for what it was.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

Never trust the ones that try to get you to love them. They're the ones that always hurt the most.

Clearly you have a very strong will, Miss Solstice. And you're smart too, to see that ploy for what it was.

Thank you; again, Cynthia. Your responses enable me to continue writing. I’ll post a bit more, for now, but plans will have me very busy today. But thank you, very much.


The track of his laughter woke me from the thoughtless daze I had sunk into weeks, months ago. It was a daze I once thought inescapable, fashioned through narcotic drugs, endless interrogations, solitary confinement, and poisonous lies wheezed through a mouth only half-formed.

Hideous, Its laughter. So close to his, yet . . . wrong. Mirrored through broken glass taped together by greed and covetousness. It was hearty, like him, deep and sonorous, and came in spurts like the warm, rapid bursts of a beating heart right after orgasm. For the briefest of shameful moments, I thought it was him: at last allowed to visit me once more, only to mock my desperate plight.

But then my mind seized on me as It tried to reach out to me. It chuckled, amused, and spoke in his voice when It couldn’t get through my mental barriers; taunting; smug; spiteful, arrogant, and vile.

“As fitting a prison for you as could be hoped for, you shameless whore,” It sneered vocally. “Fettered, friendless, helpless, hopeless, and humiliated.” It had meant for Its words to be the final blow shredding hope completely; I admit that, for a moment, I feared Its last words were indeed true. My chin sank weakly to my breast in realized sorrow.

It didn’t need to come any closer, to deride my physical bonds or to hiss further; with Its taunting complete with the twisted, spiteful words echoing in my mind, Not Ron vanished from my senses. Slowly, my mind unclamped and relaxed as the potential danger passed me by. My breathing was jagged, my feelings mixed; It lied. It always had. Yet . . . as I later learned, It was telling the truth as well; partially, at any rate. Not that It had meant to tell the truth, as that would have brought someone joy, at least. Someone I knew, by personal experience, It loathed too much to allow anything positive to come to her by anything It said.

Fortunately, as many can attest to, my stubbornness knew no bounds. While Its words had brought little else but more pain to be endured, that ‘little else’ was just enough. I had come to terms with the worst of the lies told, their possibility of being true even before admitting myself to Paineswich Asylum. That reduced the fiery pain It had tried to carve into my heart into a spark. A spark in a field of oiled determination; that spark was enough to ignite me to action, whether Its words were lie or truth.

The only thing that had barred me from acting to escape was the drugs that, when administered, held me suspended in a constant state between the worlds of dreaming and awakening; It had pushed aside those drugs, wanting me, I suspect, to fully appreciate Its visit. And I did.

As the mental anguish and confusion of the venom disseminated, newly felt, physical sensations centered into my thoughts. My body ached abominably; joints, muscles, bones; imagination even suggested hair and fingernails, burned with a cacophony of angst and torment. I was weak; the torture continuously administered and altered in hopes of finding a weakness had taken its toll.

Weak, but not hopeless; I knew where I was, and I knew I wanted to live. But I would need help. Staving off despair with a hair, I raised my chin, perhaps in an appeal to God. But my chin lolled several times before I could muster the force required to lift it, my strength nearly vanquished. Marshaling my will, searching the darkness of my soul and blindness, I sent out a plea, so frail it was a shell of a whisper.

Help me.

Things I’d rather not dwell on responded to the mental side of my call, writhing as a pit flooded with vipers, slicked eel voices rubbing unctuously, demanding release. Despite tumbling in and out of consciousness in the last few weeks of my incarceration, not a moment had been soothing or even hinted at rest. I was exhausted on nearly all counts.

[Gotham Witch]

I have to admit, Wie, most of the reason I have continued reading this story so closely despite how disturbing what you describe is is simply because I want to see the part where you end up escaping.

I admit I've never heard much about these folks until this. I might take a closer look at any so-called institutions in the future.

[Eilonwy Solstice]

I have to admit, Wie, most of the reason I have continued reading this story so closely despite how disturbing what you describe is is simply because I want to see the part where you end up escaping.

I admit I've never heard much about these folks until this. I might take a closer look at any so-called institutions in the future.

I understand, Mel; sorry if it’s been . . . uncomfortable reading this. Unfortunately, this portion doesn’t begin on my escape attempt, either. However, the next one should.


When I woke again, I took stock of my surroundings. What felt like thick, leather belts cinched my wrists, waist, and ankles tightly to a skeletal rack of frigid steel. A wide, leather band of sorts wound about and invaded my face, reminding me sickeningly of the sunglasses I used to wear; before Vince replaced them with his own contraption and hissed his own philosophies in my ears.

Strapped to my mouth, a gag-ball forced my jaws open to their limit. Cramps wedged my neck and mouth. Breathing through my nose was a necessity; thankfully my body had already turned it into a habit.

Fastened at strategic points of my body were an army of steel clothespins of sorts; similar to car cables, but with netted filaments webbed all about. The pinching sensations ranged from minor discomfort, the adhesive patches, to downright acidic, harsh clamps biting tender areas of my flesh.

Yet my mind was clearer than it had been in a year. The venom injected into my system had been burned away. I was awake and knew I was awake. Hopefully, the orderlies wouldn’t realize that for a long time yet.

Despite all my previous escape attempts, the orderlies hadn’t increased security measures in the slightest; at least, from what I can tell. Another point for the hallucination explanation.

They still asked the questions they should never know the answers to, however; though it became more of a ritual for them, because, before Not Ron’s visitation, they clearly thought me unconscious. I didn’t break them of their expectation, feigning benumbed lethargy. Taking me out of the cell to stretch my limbs was a thing of the past, although new methods had been implemented to facilitate me. They “exercised” my limbs, probably addressing other tests as well, by turning on the web of filaments surrounding my body and sending minute volts of electricity that sent my muscles into a panic attack. It was all I could do not to scream out, to limit my responses to nothing but quailing and flopping realistically about with each charge.

Most of the orderlies took these opportunities of my pretended stupor to mock me, humiliate me, and further try to extract the information they sought; including Eaton. It seemed, by the way they talked to each other about my recent development of silence, that I occasionally replied to them beforehand when they addressed me directly; fortunately, my will had been strong enough to resist the answers they sought, even when drugged into a state of thoughtless stupor.