Grin

The voices are back.

And I fucking hate it.

I don't know. Maybe I was normal, once upon a time. Maybe I had a family, a little brother and a big sister who loved me, and a darling dog who would always greet me every time I came home for dinner. Maybe I was the apple of every teacher's eye, the one they said would most succeed in life, who would conquer the world with his determination. I wouldn't know.

The fact that I'm in here explains a lot.

The only thing I remember from my past life is when I said something to my parents, something that spooked them out so horribly. I went to bed, not knowing I had sealed my fate.

The next morning, I found myself here.

I should have known that it wasn't normal, my deep secret. I had hoped that it would go away, to disappear like everyone said it would, but it didn't. It just kept on appearing and reappearing, sometimes whenever I least expect it.

Nobody else has ever had this problem that I live with. And with good reason. My life hasn't exactly been sunshine and daisies. In fact, I wouldn't even want my worst enemy to have this life. My first few days here were among my worst. I even contemplated ending the pain altogether, but I knew it was the coward's way out.

But every day is a struggle, especially for me. The 'doctors' have moved me to the darkest place of the 'hospital'. I can hear the wailing of the patients around me, engulfing me with their pain and dying serenades. It's a morbid place. The only thing I can do is cross down the days I've gotten through with a little piece of brick I found. I hope for the best that my next 'session' doesn't end up being my last, and I wait, hoping against hope that there is a God out there who will save me from my torment. Why would he turn me into this? I don't want to be different, I never wanted to be like this in the first place.

Is there a God?

It's a full moon tonight. For once I can see the moon, in all its splendour. The voices tell me it's just my imagination and that it's not like that in real life, but I can feel it. I have this gut feeling that I'm not having a hallucination. It's really there, surrounded by Orion and Polaris and Sirius the dog star and the Big Dipper. Its eerie yellow glow is enough to make me feel alive, enough to numb the swelling of my arms and head. It's enough to make me forget about this place. I can get lost in its light, visible through the small bars of the window. The 'doctors' can take away my feelings and thoughts of my past, but they can't take my appreciation of nature, that's for sure.

My body hurts more than ever. It takes all my strength, both mind and soul, to pull myself to the corner and curl my pain away. Today the 'sessions' did nothing for me. I can still hear the voices. They're even stronger now, a chorus or a symphony of screeches, yelps and taunts that invade me until I can't take it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if they're just trying to make me hurt so badly that I don't wake up anymore. If this is the dawn of modern times I hate to know what the future would do to others like me. My left hand is shaking uncontrollably. The doctors have damaged my nervous system so badly that I can never write with that hand anymore. It's not my fault, but it's bad enough that I write with my left hand and not with my right hand. In their eyes, those who write with their left hand are demons and don't deserve to live.

It's funny. The only thing I remember from my old life is the scorn of my teachers when they saw me writing with my left hand. None of them did anything until I reached my preteen years. A very old teacher had beaten my hand with a ruler so badly that my parents took me out of that school.

Well, the old teacher got his wish: my left hand has been destroyed permanently. I will never be able to use it again.

I turned my head away from the moon. It was beginning to be too bright for my eyes.

Just as I was blinking the red away from my line of vision, I heard a loud bang echo through the room. I figured it came from the hallway. By now, most of the patients have screamed themselves to sleep, so it's almost quiet, all except for the whimpers from the neighbour to my right. From the voice, I can tell it's a little girl. The 'doctors' have gone way too far if you ask me. It's probably her first month here, I can't recall exactly what week I had started to hear her pitiful sounds.

The bang was so loud I was astonished that none of the inmates heard it. I tried standing up, but my knees were too weak and I fell face forward. My nose started to hurt like crazy and I knew it was broken, because I could see the growing pool of blood that was starting to get into my eyes. So I stayed there and waited for the noise to come again.

All I heard was the sound of the door opening and the bright sting of a flashlight was all I could see, apart from a red tint. It was the same type of light the doctors used to look around the cells.

Someone was fumbling the flashlight. I could see the shadows it created. "Fuck." From the voice, I guessed that it was a man.

The first thing I thought was that this man was a looter. It wasn't uncommon. Sometimes they took and sometimes they even killed. The doctors didn't care. All they cared was that we were gone, that the black dot that marred the skin of society was finally wiped away.

I closed my eyes.

I never thought I'd die alone.

[-]

"Fuck." The flashlight almost fell out of my hands. The light landed on an outline of a small person.

I never wanted to go through this in the first place. Bill and Connie thought it would be fun to break into the madhouse across the street and terrorize the patients. As for me, I just wanted to see if the rumors about the supposed mistreatment was real.

If this is real, then the world is fucking sick.

The outline of the person was in fact a patient. There was blood slowly oozing from what would have been a head, only it was covered the bloodstained bandages. The figure was so emaciated that I was shocked it was still alive. But it was moving, as if it was only sleeping.

I crouched down and checked if there were any more wounds. The body was half-naked and covered with scars that looked suspiciously like lashes caused by a belt.

Without pausing to see if any guards were looking in on me, I grabbed him carefully and ran up the stairs to the van parked outside.

Bill was in the driver's seat smoking a cigarette. When he saw me, he immediately opened the door and yelled, "What the fuck are you doing faggot?"

"Saving an innocent victim!" I yelled back. I opened the back door and put the on the middle seat. I fumbled around the back, looking for some tissues. Grabbing a blanket, I covered her, because I couldn't find any extra clothes in the back.

"Looking for this?" Bill asked, holding up a tissue box.

I looked up and sighed in relief. "Thanks, man."

"No prob, bro."

I quickly stemmed the flow of the bleeding nose and added more tissue to the head. "What I don't get," I said, propping up the head with an old blanket from the back, "is that something like this happens in our goddamn town, and they don't do anything about it."

"The world is full of bitches, Alan."

"Yeah yeah," I impatiently said, making a makeshift cast for the left hand, which was twitching every few seconds.

The other door swung open and a breathless Connie clambered into the back. She took one look at me and screamed.

"Fucking shit, woman, tone your voice down!" Bill shouted, covering his ears. "Get in the stinking van and be quiet!"

Connie did as she was told. Bill kicked the car into gear and sped towards the hideout.

"What happened to you, kiddo?" Connie asked, looking at me.

I looked at her. "I saw him dying on the cell floor and I couldn't just leave him there."

"Ya did the right thing, boy." Connie smiled approvingly. She looked at Bill and huffed angrily, facing the front.

"By the way, what time is it?" I asked.

"4:30 in the fucking morning." Bill answered from the front. I nodded and sat down beside the kid. As I stared at him, I realized he looked more porcelain and fragile than scary and menacing. What were my parents trying to say about the mental hospital? This guy was no monster!

He looked so peaceful, sleeping there.

I wonder where he's from, what his story is.

"What a doll," Connie said, twisting around to look at the guy. "Who would want to hurt a cutie like him?"

I tucked her even more into the blanket. Connie smirked. "Who's being all motherly, eh Mother Alan?" she started laughing hysterically.

"Shut your trap."

"Great," Bill sighed matter-of-factly, "we went into the madhouse being idiots and we came out as conscientious fags. Just great. Why don't we all go join a rally later, like some stoned hippies?"

"Fuck off, Bill," Connie said angrily, "you didn't even go into that damn place! I'd like to see you act all high and mighty in that shithole!"

"Of course I goddamn didn't wanna go in the madhouse! I had to stay in the goddamn car. Who drives the fucking car, Connie?"

"YOU DO!" I yelled. Both of them looked at me. "DRIVE THE FUCKING CAR, BILL!" Bill quickly turned around and avoided a lamppost.

"Fucking hell."

I don't know how long it took us to get to the outskirts of the town, but I had managed to get a quick nap. When I woke up, I saw the familiar abandoned trailer, with its red and blue peeling colors, the faded words "Arthenius' Circus of the World" engraved in bold letters across the front door.

"Hurry UP!" Connie shrieked, shaking me and smacking me upside the head.

I wrenched the van door open, grabbed the kid and carried him across the field towards the trailer. Connie trailed behind me, while Bill was holding the front screen door for me. I jumped in and put the kid on Bill's moth-eaten couch near the window.

"Adam! What do we have here?" A man wearing a long dark robe pushed the bridge of his glasses, his red hair askew.

Connie pushed past me and went straight to the man. "Greg! You're back!" she cried, wrapping her arms around him. Dr. Greg Dorian was my sister's boyfriend.

I hated him with a passion.

I gritted my teeth. "Dr. Dorian, there's a patient waiting for you."

Greg raised an eyebrow, still holding my sister. "Where are you injured, Adam?" He inquired.

"Me? Look at the kid!" I almost shouted. Greg looked at the bundled-up person on the couch and sped forward, grabbing his medical bag along the way.

I staggered outside, rubbing at my face. Pulling my hand back, I saw that some of the girl's blood had dripped onto my face. No wonder Greg was wondering what had happened to me.

Why did we have to go on this silly stunt anyway?

[-]

A/N.: There'll be bigger chapters when the time comes. For now, the prologue. :)