Neverland: Forsaken Dreamscape (Peter Pan Version)

Chapter One

Neverland: Forsaken Dreamscape

Chapter One

1

Five Years Later

Peering out through the dark of her room, Wendy could hear the sounds of nurses and doctors bustling down the hall in their soft-soled shoes.  They had just put her to bed, so she knew that the footsteps were not leading nurses to her.  She could see the shadows of orderlies as a patient in the drab room across the hall shrieked endlessly in fear and confusion.  Wendy could hear the tears in the patient’s yells as the disturbed girl was picked up and carried down the hallway, her shadow flailing about, her limbs slinging violently in all different directions.

Wendy Darling lay still in the dark room, and after a few moments, the distressing noises stopped and the hallway was again quiet.  The squealing patient outside had been silenced, unconscious now; off to dreamland and the bloodletting chambers.  Wendy kept herself quiet.  She did not want to be next.  Instead, she rolled over and pulled the thin blanket up to her chin.

I must try to sleep, she told herself.  Good children obey their bedtimes, and I mustn’t stay up.  But she never did sleep.  Not anymore.

If a person was curious and asked any doctor or nurse at the asylum about this resident – Wendy Moira Angela Darling – they would all say that Wendy was always such a well-mannered girl, not to mention quite beautiful to look upon.  Her eyes were blue and sparkling: filled with innocence.  Spilling over her shoulders were curls of a dusty blond which the nurses took quite a bit of pleasure in combing.  She always curtsied and was very polite to everyone, and in all cases seemed like a proper young lady.  In fact, this girl, now eighteen, was looked to for comfort among the other patients, a spark of sanity in a dirty, indifferent world.  She was a mother figure to them.  When they were sad, they would come and talk to Wendy.  She would always make them feel better with her sweet voice and warm smile.

Perhaps an onlooker would begin to wonder why Wendy – such a sweet and seemingly pleasant girl – was kept here in the dark institution.  She was never rude and always cooperated with the doctors.  She ate her meals and took her medicine without complaint – like a good girl should.  She even pleased the nurses and other patients with her magnificent storytelling.  But those wonderfully imaginative stories were the source of what kept her here – here, in this dark room under the observation of several doctors.

Wendy had killed her brothers because of one of those stories.

She wore the same pale nightgowns always, rotating them by days, no matter how inappropriate it was to walk about so improperly dressed.  It was always night time for her.  In the middle of the day she would begin to put some of the other residents to bed and then get under her own covers, but it made little sense, because Wendy suffered from insomnia.  Nurses would see her to bed at least three times a day, sometimes more.

Doctors had been observing Wendy for five years.  There were many journals on record about this girl, but none of them could explain what was truly wrong with her.  She was simply unexplainable.  The only link to understanding her was through her stories, yet no one had ever been able to interpret them.  There were certain obvious patterns to her tales, however, that had been recorded time and again.  Many of them centered around one specific character: a young boy, called Peter Pan.  Wendy would often speak of his adventures in a place called Neverland, which was a magical island in the sky.