Madness At Noon {COMPLETED}

A Charitable Soul 1/12

It all started with a strawberry muffin. It happened to be the last strawberry muffin in the dessert section of the Sceptre Asylum cafeteria and since this particular day happened to be one of the few where I was allowed to roam free outside my cell, I had wanted to treat myself with some well-earned, much-needed, sugary comforts. For a nuthouse, the food was quite good. We had our own private chef and when he was not poisoning our food, it was to die for.

Terra Evens – who was now calling herself 'Fever' – was new blood, committed to the asylum for the very first time two weeks prior for accidently spilling a vat of radioactive material into the city water supply.

It was an understandable, honest mistake.

Fever had wanted my strawberry muffin. Wrapped in two straight jackets, ten feet of irons chains, and a plastic face mask, I did what any reasonable person would have done: I smashed my head against the concrete wall, splintering the bottom half of the mask, and bit two of Fever's fingers off.

The muffin had been bloody delicious. The fifty thousand volts that raced through my body had tingled. The baton that cracked down on my head had hurt.

Once the Warden got wind of this little event, he, as usual, blew everything way out of proportion. My minimal freedom was immediately discontinued as I was labeled 'an extreme threat to others.' My cafeteria privileges were revoked, I was barred from group therapy, and visiting rights were reduced to one per year. Unsurprisingly, I was moved from my general cell in the West Wing into solitary confinement in the East Wing.

I made my displeasure clear by breaking out on the first day and setting the Warden's office on fire. It did nothing to solve the unfair treatment but it made me feel better about myself.

Now there was nothing to do but wait.

And have a little fun along the way.

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The screams that forced their way through the cracks of the door to my tiny cell in solitary confinement were unlike any I had ever heard in all my life.

Such sounds were ordinarily commonplace here. Asylums are places of nightmares, built from darkness, where the only method of survival is cannibalism. The very walls are diseased with madness. Like a miasma, it spreads through the cracks and devours those naïve enough to claim themselves sane.

On this night, Sceptre had been dark and silent, except for the few shattered shrieks of the insane losing their minds. The shadows lay thick on the walls, darkness dripping down from the ceiling and pooling in every black corner. The air was hot and stagnant, the winds driven off by some dark omen, a warning to any who could read such signs.

Then the real screaming began.

It was not the usual howling of the madmen caged within as my fellow inmates engaged in routine screaming matches with their inner demons. We were taught during group therapy that it was healthy to convey our inmost feelings to those who we have wronged in the past; however, since most of us had violently murdered said people, we had to resign ourselves to yelling at the walls instead.

Nor was it the scream of the dying that came every now and then when some careless nurse was caught from behind when distributing pills or was too slow in locking a cell door. That last shriek, the desperate blast of sound the body expended in the knowledge that every day of life was suddenly being ripped away, the final scream that was sharply silenced as the neck was snapped, the spine ripped apart, or the jugular cut, it was beautiful and as familiar to me as the sound of the Gentleman's heartbeat.

No, this sound was unmistakable: someone was being tortured.

I had a deep appreciation for the torturing arts and prided myself in knowing its intricacies and subtle delicacies. A tortured scream was one of pure pain and a complete lack of hope. The tortured can no longer remember any memory where the burning, the searing, the tearing of limb from limb, the cutting and maiming, the ripping of flesh, the pouring of blood, and the sheer cruelty did not exist. Not only has the pain consumed the past, but it embodies the future, for there is no hope of release. Torturing is a slow art, carefully crafted to keep the victim alive for days, weeks, months even. Time becomes the worst enemy, the cruelest by far, because it offers no escape, barring the way against the kindness of Death.

Cruelty is its own killer, an assassin without a knife; it kills while leaving the victim very much alive.

I knew Sceptre frequently engaged in medical practices that were "experimental." Experimental in that normal people often experimented with their own insanity on the criminally insane for the sake of science and their own curiosity. Tuesday's shock therapy was wonderful.

But there were no procedures scheduled at such an off-hour of the night. None that I knew about, and I knew the workings of Sceptre better than the Warden did.

So someone was torturing for fun... Without me knowing...

I stood and pressed my ear against the keyhole of the titanium door, listening. There was no doubt about it: the screamer must be experiencing some glorious torturing, and had been for quite some time. It was a sound ripped from the throat by force, so animalistic, primal, crazed, and flooded with fear.

"Oh... This is not good." I ran a hand along the edge of the door as a familiar stirring began churning in my blood. "Someone is having fun without me? I received no invitation.

"That is so, so very rude."