Don't Scream (Original)

Chapter 18

        At bed time, I was moved back to my regular room where I slept the night away in relative peace. I did have an Andrew dream, but it wasn't the traditional kind. This time, I actually dreamt of a day right before his disappearance. I had been playing outside while Andrew ran in the house to get a glass of lemonade, but I fell and scraped my knee on the side of the house right after he went in. Not two seconds later he dashed back out to find me on the ground crying and holding my bloody knee. He told me he just felt that something bad had happened, and I believed it because there were no windows near where I was. Then that memory bled into another, earlier one: Our tenth birthday. All our friends were over, but we slipped away as frequently as we could to play with our gifts alone. As much as we loved seeing our friends, sometimes we just preferred our exclusive company to each other rather than anybody else's. It had always been that way, as far back to when we could first start playing with toys. After the dreams, I woke up with tears in my eyes.

         We were forced to go outside again once breakfast was over, and Eva had a hold on my arm as we silently circled the courtyard. The cold, January air barely affected me though, probably because I was already numb from the inside out.

"They gave up on me, Eva. They gave up. Now I'm going to be stuck here forever." My lower lip trembled as I stared, unfocused, at nothing. "They're just going to keep feeding off me. And I did nothing. I only told the truth about what I saw." I whispered, and two hot tears burned trails down my icy cheeks. Eva stopped walking and turned me to look at her. I also noticed that we were under the same tree as last time we ventured outside, deja vu and irony raising flags in my head. Eva stared up at me with a curious expression, like she was reading my mind. After a long while, she finally spoke.

"It's killing you." Her words weren't a question, but a fact. "I've never seen anyone so destroyed as you. Then again, everyone who comes here is mentally ill to some degree, so it probably affects them less." She gave a short, bitter chuckle. "I guess now I see what hospitalization does to a sane person."

I nodded absently and sniffled, then wiped my tears away with the back of my gloved hand. My friend heaved a great sigh, then planted a large mitten on my shoulder.

"You need to get out of here, Abigail."

I looked down at her, slightly puzzled. I knew I needed to get out of here, but it wasn't going to happen. Eva stepped closer to me, and I noticed a determination and hardness in her eyes I had never seen before.

"You need to escape." She whispered. I stared at her, and in an effort to not burst out laughing, I burst into tears instead.

"Listen to me, Abigail. In the year I've been here, I've crafted an escape plan. The only reason I haven't executed it is because I have no place to go." She shrugged her bony shoulders. "I'd be caught in no time flat, or my parents would bring me back here in the blink of an eye. But you- You have a friend on the outside. And no new snow has fallen, so climbing this-" She indicated to the wall behind us. "Shouldn't be too hard. But if you do it, I want you to try and get help. Sound the alarm, if you will. Because a lot of stuff goes down here that shouldn't." She gave me a long, serious look before continuing. "Now, are you with me?"

I hesitated a bit before nodding, because the idea of escape seemed so surreal. I had a much larger chance of failing than succeeding, but in the end, my desperation forced me to hop on board. I needed to get out of this place by any means possible.

"Alright!" Eva clapped me on the shoulder, and we continued on our walk. "Okay, so at nine o'clock every morning, there's a shift change..."

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 Author Note: Sorry for the super short chapter, but I wanted a small build-up before the events of the next chapter. It just didn't feel right to lump them together, especially when the next chapter is quite pivotal.