I know my milieu well. There are 36 perfectly fabricated white buttons, holding excessive padding to the walls of my room. They are aligned in a grid fashion, 2 vertical rows of 3 on all walls, floor and ceiling. Embedded in the front wall, is the outline of the door. I can only see it in the right lighting, sometimes. It's seamless with the wall. Silence at all times filling my room, at all times.
The lights run on a schedule I have routinized into my bio-alarm clock. Fourteen hours a day, Ten hours a night, I sleep through the day. The lights are supposed to "regulate," my "mental ability to reconcile my surroundings. Adapting the artificial for tangible." I could care or less, still in a box, still not redeemed, still persecuted.
When they first threw me in here, I would sit screaming my throat bloodied and raw. Raspy for weeks afterwards.
Whenever let out of my pen, I ran my head violently into every metal door I could find in the building. If left alone, the same door for hours, painting it a blood red. The guards gasping as they clasped my arms and took me away.
I asked if I could grow my hair out one autumn and Warden Elvira (another story, another time,) agreed.
"As long as you maintain it." She sneeringly repeated as it grew.
They caught me two years later, on Christmas Eve, trying to swallow my shoulder-length, bleach blonde, well-conditioned hair, with much success. The other patients jumping up and down. Some screaming, some crying. My eyes rolling back into my head. "White Christmas," lulling on as mood music.
So they, drugged me, put me in a jacket and shaved my head.
"Never again. I should've known better, little rat you, never be a model citizen, little rat." Elvira hissed away, as she held the trimmers down hard enough to draw blood.
For six months I said absolutely nothing. My security jacket felt awfully constraining back then. I had terrible thoughts that kept me up: I could hardly believe something like this could happen, to someone like me. I hate everything in this place and everyone in the world, and that will never change.
One day I awoke, shooting straight up, to a peculiar, loud humming. The sound was not the lights kicking off, (yet). It was loud enough to jolt me awake, as soon as I noticed it.
The humming was more of a breathing as it began to grow rhythmically louder. Looking around the lit cell I could see only the faint light reflecting off the soft cushioning. I was more tense than my first encounter with the grabbers. Being awake in the "day," hours unnerved me.
Was something breathing in my close proximity? Something was breathing. How? I had never heard anything like this in here. To my dismay, I heard a dark, hollow voice.........
".....I can get you out of here."
It surprised me so much I stood straight up and started to bash, frantically into the padded door. Screaming madly for help, something I learned not to do. Unless I wanted a guard throwing me around like luggage.
The voice came from behind me, somewhere in grid 12-18, the wall directly across from my door. I slowly turned, seeing an impossible, hideous sight before me.
Where button 12, (upper left,) nice, safe, comforting button 12, used to be. Was now a large, blood-red eyeball. A starch contrast to the pale white. The eye looked around the room hurriedly as if it was scanning for something.
I could see the seam of the wall underneath the button begin to break apart. Splitting rapidly from one edge to another. The wall pulsing now. Yellow, broken teeth began pushing through the split. Padding being spit unto the floor, from what appeared to be mouth. Under the eye, a vicious mouth had appeared.
I could hear button 13 start to rip from the wall. Pulsating, as if alive, it popped out of its knitting and hit the floor next to button 12. Another blood red eye appeared in its place.
A grotesque, demonic face was now visible. Two evil eyes staring right through me. A ghastly mouth just underneath. The face bulging the white padding, as if trying to push through.
Under the eyes, those horrible eyes, the mouth stretched open. In a morbid, whispered voice it said "I can get you out of here."
Trapped in a padded tomb with a wretched face. The face in the wall was talking to me. I had resisted insanity for a long time, apparently only to succumb to it now.
I could see it's red eyes focus on me. There was a long pause. The eyes, intense in their glare, seemed to await my response. I expected hands to reach out from the walls and grab me. Then hideous, cow-like, tongue flopped out of the wall and ran across the edges of its jagged mouth.
I asked in a frightened, half audible voice,"Are you real?"
"I can get you out of here," the face whispered in response.
There was a long silence. The face in the wall noisily breathing, sounding heavy and strained. Me standing in a padded cell, in a straight jacket, staring at a face in a wall. I couldn't tell anyone what was happening.
I went to speak and felt a warm liquid pouring from my lips. It was blood. I had bit down on my bottom lip tensing up. The blood spattering my jacket, a few specks reaching the floor.
"How," I sputtered, flicking droplets of blood.
The face sneered at me. Silence. The lights flickered for a brief second. The door behind me slammed open.
I quickly turned, immediately blinded by the harsh light crashing into the cell. Bright beyond bright.
"What the hell was all that screaming about " A staff guard appearing in the doorway as I blinked vision back.
Before I could say anything, still blinking away. The guard grabbed a radio from his hip.
I heard a hurried "code 6," before I was thrown to the ground. Two hands sternly grabbed and threw me in a split second. My head bouncing back from the padded floor on impact.
