20 - Chapter Twenty - 20
I was more than happy not to take those pills. Dr. Hermond had came back to ask if I had taken them and I had told him that I had. He did not notice how my left eye twitched when I said this, he just took the water. The water didn't look purple any longer, it looked mainly like normal water. Dr. Hermond wouldn't have noticed it since he had not seen it change. I, however, had watched it from the moment that I had dropped the pills into the water.
The water had gone from red, blue to purple. After that, the purple had gotten lighter and lighter until there was just the faintest hue of color to it. It was almost unnoticeable unless if one would stare at the water, which was unlikely. Dr. Hermond surely would not notice it, and he didn't.
However...
Perhaps those pills might have been a good thing.
'One, two, three.'
There are some days that I can act normal. Those days are the ones that I can talk to the doctors and to the nurses as if I was on the same level as them. They still thought that I was insane and stupid, but they were wrong. I could think and even decipher what was behind the mask of what they were telling me. No, I wasn't stupid as they thought I was.
But then there were those other days. I will admit they happen more than I would like them too, but thankfully the only happened maybe three, four, days a month. If I'm lucky a day every two months. But those are the days that I just seem to snap. It was these kind of days where insanity is truly my only friend in the world.
It consumes me, devours me whole and throws me into the darkness where all that I have is my mind. That is not a good thing to have when insanity is lurking near to turn what seems like the darkness into a true and utter nightmare.
'My dear old friend.'
Maybe I should have taken those pills. Maybe they would have been able to stop it, but I did not trust the head doctors. I didn't want to know what they had put in those pills and I would rather suffer my insanity than to take mysterious pills that they had created.
For, I was sad to say, that this was one of those days.
It was the day that I would lose my mind to something that I would never be able to control. No matter what the doctors try, it never works. No matter what type of drug they give me to knock me out, it never does. It was like my body knew what to do and they didn't work on me.
During these kinds of days, they would normally lock me up in my room and ignore my bloody screams of insanity. Not this time. This time I was still in the infirmary, there were no walls that I would have to claw at, no doors that I would throw my body against countless times. I felt sorry for poor Dr. Hermond at that moment, because he didn't know what the hell to do with me. He was just staring at me with wide fearful eyes.
'The rain is coming.'
"Are you afraid?" I asked the air, more pointedly towards the doctor who was still gawking at me with wide filled eyes.
'Fear of the madness.'
I started laughing hysterically as I opened and closed the curtains as if I was playing a game of 'peek a boo' with the thin air. Dr. Hermond was looking worried by his desk, his eyes locked onto me no matter what I did or where I went. He didn't know what to do with someone who had truly gone around the bend. "Oh Alice, where are you oh ALICE!" I sang and screamed out her name as I twirled and spun my hair. "OoooOOOooooh, my hair is so so so pretty," I giggled and ran my fingers through it.
'Dribble Dribble Dribble.'
My head was spinning, I could feel the thoughts coming and going as they pleased. Maybe that was what insanity was, losing one's thoughts. A thought would trail over my mind, then it would be mixed up with the others. Mixing and mixing there went my thoughts, they go.
"Do you like to sing?!" I asked no one in particular, I could be talking to the wall for all I cared. Nothing mattered to me at this moment, nothing at all. "Will the sky start crying today?" I started twirling, moving out more into the open of the infirmary and laughing my head off. "So so so much space! I like space, when was the last time we were able to play like this? When was the last time we heard the birds sing? We mist he birds, we miss the treas. Oh how we miss our own little world," I giggled and moved across the infirmary again.
Dr. Hermond just stood back and watched me with uncertainty. There was more than a hint of fear about him. I didn't even have to look at him to know that much. He wasn't sure if he wanted to come near me or not. Right now he didn't want to affect me. I think that he was just afraid to come close.
Closer and closer the rabbit goes.
He had thought that the medicine would help, he told me as much. Now that I was acting like this, was more than likely thinking that it was some kind of side effect of the new pills. I could see his fingers twitching towards the phone, wanting more than anything to just call someone to deal with me rather than him having to deal with me.
Where does the world spin to?
'Flower petals fall from earth.'
"Where am I?" I stopped suddenly and looked around the unfamiliar place. I looked down at slender hands and started to feel a panic start to sink into my chest. "Where are my rings?! I'm missing my rings and I'm missing my charms! Grammy said that I should always keep them on me, but where are they?! I must find them, I have to find them." I started to search under the pillows and the blankets blindly. Getting down on my hands and knees I started to look underneath all the beds to find them. "I have to find my charms!" I started to get hysterical, my breathing picked up. "Where are they?" I screamed and started to actually rip things apart.
'They dance with the wind.'
Where are the trees?
"Jayden!" someone called over and my eyes flashed over to them. When I saw Dr. Hermonds face, the memories returned making me scream even louder, clawing and ripping at my hair instead. "Jayden you have to stop!" he said and I just continued to scream, digging my nails into the tender flesh of my cheeks. He grabbed my hands and forced them down, I squirmed and tried to get away from his touch, but his grip tightened. "You have to calm down, just breathe," he told me and I blinked slowly at him.
Tears started to flow from my eyes and spill over down my now raw cheeks. "I can't find my charms!" I started to cry, the tears stinging where the scratches were. I wanted to wipe the tears away, but Dr. Hermond wouldn't let go of my wrists, so I opt out for shaking my head violently. "They're gone! Gone gone gone! All my pretty necklaces, my pretty rings! They took them away from me and Grammy said to always have them on me! They took them away and now I have nothing! They've taken everything away from me!" I cried, my knees started to shake and buckle out from beneath me.
'We will go and dance with them.'
Dr. Hermond gulped, looked back and forth as if finding someone that he could turn to. He didn't really know what to do at all. "Jayden," he finally said, turning back towards me. "Sit down, I'm going to go call someone." He finally let go of my wrists and bolted over towards the phone on his desk.
Once he did that, through watery eyes, I saw flower petals dance and I laughed. I bolted over to the petals as the danced in mid air, purples, pinks, blues, greens, all colors of the rainbow and more. I started to laugh, the tears drying from my eyes as they twirled around me, wrapping me in a vortex that started a wind and slightly picked up my hair with it. I giggled, spinning with the vortex of flowers and letting the tear drops mix with them.
'We will be home again.'
"I'm not sure what to do," I heard Dr. Hermond say into his phone. I paid him no attention, I was too busy looking at all the flowers petals dancing around with me. "She just started crying one minute, yelling something about missing charms. In the blink of an eye she's not crying and she's spinning around the room with a huge grin on her face and laughing. Are we sure that those pills were ready for human testing? I thought that it was supposed to be a finished product. Of course I'm keeping an eye on her, but frankly I have no idea how to contain her. She could hurt herself with some of the things in here. When? Alright." He said before he hung up the phone and leaned back against the desk as he carefully watched me to make sure that I was either not going to hurt myself, or wouldn't hurt any of his stuff and myself in the process.
And the jewels sparkled in the light.
'There once was a time.'
I closed my eyes and spun again, then opened them as the room blurred. Everything was normal so I closed my eyes and spun once more. When I opened them, streaks of color smeared and blurred together. Closing my eyes, I spun another time, when I opened them, I saw something else. It was something that seemed to be moving on its own. Spinning again, I saw the shadows starting to darken the room and those bright colors faded with them. I blinked, no they were actually there.
Sparkling and gleaming.
"There was a time, that I once told," I sighed, letting my hair tickle against my face, the raw parts it just faintly brushing against them. "That you can write your own life," I said watching the shadows intently. "That what we do is our decision and ours alone." Dr. Hermond was still watching me closely. "I don't feel like I'm writing my own story." The shadows started to moving, creating one massive form. "I feel as if I'm trapped, with the prison bars so tight around me that I can't even lift a hand. I'm not writing my own story at all." Closing my eyes, I continued to spin nonstop. "Everyone has already decided what they want to do with me. I cannot choose who I want to be, I can't even remember what it means to be happy. And in the end, either by shadow or by man, I will end up as nothing at all." I stopped and slowly began to open my eyes.
'When we were all happy.'
The gems did behold a special light.
The shadows came closer, I frowned at the large mass that was still forming. It looked like there were shadows that were just jumping into a mass until it formed some kind of lumpy shape that had no shape at all. It moved towards me on awkward looking limbs, I cocked my head to the side when I saw it coming towards me. I sidestepped the thing and it slammed back into the wall behind me, sluggish and slow. Just a few moments ago I had been spinning nonstop, I wasn't dizzy or anything. When it moved, it was really slow and almost like there was a very heavy weight pressing down on the thing. I sidestepped it again and I think it became angry. The lumpy clumps became jagged, sharp, and edgy, like it was angry that I kept dodging it and because it was so slow.
And in those gems was something special.
Where was Shadow Man? Somewhere in that darkness? I wondered my head reeling and spinning just from so many thoughts that were entering and leaving my mind like a second glimpse of a picture and then gone in the next second.
"What's going on?" I heard someone ask behind me, I didn't turn around to face them. I was more focused on the strange shadow thing that was getting angrier and angrier every time that I dodged the thing. "Jayden?" Someone called and my eyes flickered over to the voice that was asking, but I quickly focused them back on the shadows. "What is she doing?" the voice asked.
"I'm not sure, she just stopped spinning a second ago. It looks like she's watching something, she's been moving abruptly too." Dr. Hermond answered. "Jayden," I heard him call out my name, which I did not acknowledge. 'What do you see?" he asked.
He didn't ask 'what do you think you see'. That gave him some points in my book for not sounding like I was someone completely insane, but I would never dare tell him otherwise. Nor would I be answering his question any time soon. Not because he would think that I was insane, but because I didn't want the shadows to come after him.
I feared that if the shadow thing saw me talking to him, they would go after the one doctor that I could for once stand.
'We would sing and dance.'
As the shadows moved again, I jumped away from it. The sharp edges actually spiked even higher and started to poke out everywhere. It was like an angry spiked ball that could shorten and elongate its points, which it was doing now. I never knew that shadows could get angry, but it seemed like this one was. It came after me again and I got out of its way easily. It may have been angry, but it was still pretty slow.
"There once was a little girl..." I started as the shadows kept coming after me time and time again. It was starting to feel like an strange form of dance the way that this kept going. My movement's fluid as I moved out of the way of it. "That found a little pond where she met some friends. She had been a lonely child looking for something," Is aid softly, not wanting the doctors to hear me.
"Jayden what are you doing?" Dr. Hermond grabbed me and my head snapped up to him. He was looking down at me with real true worry in his eyes. I felt sorry for him again, feeling a sadness weigh down on me. He had to deal with someone like me when he didn't deserve it. For now, however, I would deal with the shadows.
The shadows were already coming. I spun my head around towards them just as they were starting to lunge for me. It was slow, but it was using Dr. Hermond to grip me down and hold me into place of it. Dr. Hermond couldn't see the thing, but that may have been an advantage for it.
I let out a sharp scream, loud and high pitched. It made Dr. Hermond let of me. His eyes went wide and he put his hands to his ears because it had been so loud. That was my chance to move. I shoved Dr. Hermond out of the way, for I knew that the shadow thing would take him down also. Dr. Hermond was the one good person in this entire place, someone who actually cared for me when no one else did.
I wasn't going to let him be engulfed. Yet in doing this, the shadows enveloped me in its darkness.
'We miss our own time, our own world.'
It was like slow motion, the way that I felt my body drop to the floor. The shadows were twisting and morphing around me. In the far distance I could hear someone calling out my name. They were yelling it, screaming it, as if something very very bad had just happened to me.
Yet even that seemed far away, even if it should sound as if it was right next to me. It was like they blocked out the world around me, these shadows did. I knew that I hadn't had much of a world in the first place, but when I looked around, this place was just blankness. The shadows twisted in different shades of black and around me it was so deadly quiet that it sent a chill over my body. I knew that my body was lying on the floor of the infirmary, but my mind was somewhere else. It was hard for me to explain such a sensation. Even as I looked around, I knew that I was disconnected from my body and somewhere else.
Did that even make sense?
I guess, my world never made sense.
'In both the realm of darkness and of pain, we don't know where to turn to.'
The voices were still around me thought. I looked around the darkness like I was expecting to see them here. Like always, they were just voice that I could hear.
Something brushed against my arm and I looked down at my arm where it had touched me. There was nothing there. I didn't like this place, it made me think things that even in my deluded state didn't make me think. It was starting to play with my already fragile mind and I didn't like that in the least bit.
Had the shadows just thrown me into my own state of insanity then? I really hope not. I didn't know what was going to happen to me if they had. If I ever woke up, I feared that I would be stark raving mad. It would be the kind of madness where I wouldn't even know who I was anymore. Maybe I would be so crazy that they would finally put me down.
Despite what my life was, I liked being conscious, being able to tell what was going on around me. To be able to think. What if this place was just somewhere to banish me because I did something wrong? What had I don wrong?
'What happened to the happiness? What happened to the life we were supposed to have?'
I wrapped my arms around myself and looked towards the darkness, where the shadows twisted and turned. Was Shadow Man somewhere in them? What was he waiting for then? I was sitting here in the darkness, the prime place that he could come after me. I just sat there, staring at the darkness, waiting for him to show himself.
What was I supposed to do here? I wondered and looked around again. The real world had seemingly melted away behind me, where I couldn't touch it any longer. My life was all pain and miser, but it was better than the darkness where all I did was... think.
Was I dead?
Was this was death was like? Sitting here and thinking about the life that I had miserably. But I had been around nothing to kill me, right? Not at that currant time anyways.
'Call out to the darkness, see if they answer.'
I didn't want to do that, I thought and stuck my bottom lip out at the voices. What if Shadow Man was really there, would he come out when I did decide to ask? It wasn't like they had been paying attention about this anyways, they decided to speak up when they wanted to and when they thought that it was the appropriate moment. Otherwise the voices made no sense at all, most of the times. That's why my brain had pretty much fried. Just trying to understand what they said made my head hurt and reel. Yet... when had they ever really and truly been wrong?
Never.
"Hello?" I asked very softly and then my eyes flickered around to see if there was a familiar dark shape emerging from the shadows to come and get me. "Hello? Is anyone there?" I called a little bit louder, still nervous.
'Where could everyone be, we wonder? Is up now down? Is down now up? Where are we?'
"I want to go back..." I started with a sigh and then paused. "Kinda," I admitted under my breath, not really wanting to go back after all. I stood up and dusted off my knees. The shadows kept turning and twisting together as if they were one mass together.
What was going on? I've never had any hallucinations like this before, I didn't understand. Where was I?
"Helloooo?!" I called out louder this time, putting my hands around my mouth so that I could make my voice even louder than before. "Is anyone there?!"
Instead of getting an answer, my voice just echoed right back at me.
'We don't like this, not at all. Something bad could happen. We don't know where this is.'
What else was there to do? Nothing. There was nothing to do except to just start walking. And that's exactly what I did. I moved one foot forward at a time and looked around to make sure that nothing was going to jump out at me. They still could and I wouldn't be able to see them. It was almost like I was going to be walking forever and in no general direction. That was until I thought I saw something in the far off distance in front of me. I started running towards it, running as fast as my feet could carry me before I was upon the thing. It seemed like forever, like I had been running for years until I was finally at it.
It didn't even register in my head that I should have been out of energy long before I started running.
What I saw in front of me, what I had ran such a long distance for, was a wall. Well that was what it looked like at first, a wall with a white screen covering it. When I put my hands against the thing, it felt like a wall.
'What is it?'
Knocking my knuckles on it, I heard the reverberations of my sharp knuckles hitting against it. The sound ricocheted somewhere from behind it, sounding somewhat like glass. I took a couple of steps back and looked up at it again. The wall was much bigger than me. It more looked like the side of a building with a very large tarp covering it. Yet when I looked closer, I could almost see the other side of it, like it was see through.
I gasped when I did see the other side too.
On the other side, I saw trees, so many trees. The sun was shining brightly as the wind toyed with the grass and the leaves. There was a small clearing with so many colorful flowers that it made my eyes hurt they were so bright. I felt tears come to my eyes. Even in here the outside world still eludes me.
'THEY TORTURE US!' The voices actually started to sob. 'The flaunt us with what we want and what we can never touch again!'
This was the first time that I had heard the voices sobbing and crying. It was usually me the one that was being hysterical and they were the ones to pull me up out of it. They didn't make sense when they did it, but at least they brought a smile to my face and made me stop crying my eyes out.
And it was like a light bulb had gone off, like the voices had triggered something when they spoke. I jumped back as something sprang to life on the screen, making me cover my eyes at how bright it had suddenly gotten. It took me a moment to recover myself and when I peeked though my fingers, I saw that the screen now had images floating across it.
It reminded me of the movies the oh so rarely play at the institution. A light was coming from somewhere behind me to cast the images on to the screen and I knew that if I raised my hand into the light, my hands shadow would be on the screen. When I turned to look back, the light looked as if it was coming from nowhere, there was just a bright spotlight that was showing on the screen. Turning back around, I focused on the pictures that were beginning to play. The images on the screen were what caught my attention and made my heart stutter in my chest.
'Is that?'
"Yes that is," I frowned at the images of a little girl running around in a field. Wild flowers were woven into her black curly hair. She was smiling and laughing, running around and just having fun. The wind blew her dark curls across her face as she giggled at something invisible. "That's me," I whispered and watched the screen with wide eyes. The girl that had been me so long ago seemed to be happy, seemed to have a real smile and have huge wide innocent eyes that nothing could touch. I sat down, my legs were about to buckle, they couldn't support my weight any longer. Sitting down, I stared up at the large screen. I watched the little girl's life unfold out. I watched as she chased a big brother that laughed and played wither her.
I watched her confusion from the looks on her parents face.
'It had started so long ago.'
I watched as they had so many arguments about her.
'We were all so happy then.'
I watched as they made the call.
'We laughed and played.'
I watched as the white van pulled up.
'And then the hope vanished from us.'
The shadows twisted behind me, I didn't turn around to see what it was. The images before me were was had been my life, replaying over and over again. When I stared at it like this, it was more like a move, not my life, not something that was livable. I watched as we had first arrived at the hospital.
'Yet we kept ourselves together.'
The doors opened and the doctors had all been smiley then. I had been so terrified of what was going on. The entire trip, I had just kept crying and crying about where my parents were, about where my brother was. There was nothing more in the world that I wanted, but them.
'We kept ourselves whole and yet...'
I didn't want to see anymore. Spinning my head around, I put my hands over my eyes as the tears started to escape and the younger me started to scream her true insanity.
It may have been more like a movie on the screen, but when I looked at it, it brought back everything that I had been through.
'We are scarred more than ever.'
Something moved again and I looked up to see that something was finally in the shadows. Although, it wasn't Shadow Man as I had thought it would be. It was someone else, someone that made my heart lurch in my chest.
He was tall, with broad shoulders and he was looking at me curiously. His head cocked to the side. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt, yet he looked so alien. He was beautiful really, that was the only word that I could find to describe him. His bright purple eyes were glowing through the darkness, burning holes into me. I somehow knew that he wasn't going to hurt me. I lifted my head up to get a closer look at him, but all that I could really make out were those bright purple eyes of his, the only thing in the darkness that burned brightly.
Like a month to a flame, I wanted to go towards him.
"Time to go back now Jayden," I heard his velvety voice that made me close my eyes. That so very familiar voice that I've heard before, the same one from my hallucinations. It was deep and rich trailing over my skin and giving me goosebumps. It sounded like silver running over honey and mixing together as one. "You don't want to be stuck here watching your life for eternity, now do you?" I had heard his voice, but this was the first time that I was actually able to make out details about him, rather than just a shadow form.
'He really has come back.'
The darkness swirled around me, I didn't scream, I didn't do anything but stare at this boy. Rather, I tried to get away from it, to reach this boy. I stretched out my hand as far as it went, as if I could somehow touch him.
"No wait!" I screamed and I suddenly felt him next to me. I sucked in a sharp breath as I felt firm arm wrap around me. They were not the arms like the ones from the institution to carry me away to somewhere awful. No, they were strong, but they were comforting. I leaned back against him, wanting to look at him, but unable to. "Don't leave me," I whispered so very softly.
"Do you want to be caught in the darkness forever?" that voice whispered in my ear, so different than the voices that I heard.
"No," I answered.
"Then you have to leave." He turned and I felt his hand travel up my neck, making a chill go through my body. His hand went up to my cheek were he turned my head towards his. My eyes closed themselves as if I was afraid to see what he looked like. I felt his breath fan across my face. "I've already told you, you have to say the word." He whispered.
"I don't know the word." I answered back at him.
"Yes you do, you simply do not remember it." He said sadly
He let go of me and it was suddenly so very cold without him. I began to scream as the shadows tightened around me. My head snapped up as I desperately looked for him. He was here somewhere, I didn't know how I knew, but I did. It was like I could still hear his voice through the air even though he said nothing.
'We didn't think he would come back again.'
"Good bye for now Jayden," I heard his voice laugh softly.
The shadows tightened around me, making it hard for me to breathe.
'He had left us to die, without even a glimpse of a memory to keep us company.'