“She smiled. That was all. She sat there smiling at no one in particular. I felt it though. That strange air around her, like a suffocating miasma of ill will and… Then she looked at me. Her green eyes pierced my soul and I could feel her intentions flooding into me. I couldn’t stop them, or was it that I wouldn’t stop them? I had never experienced anything like this ever before. What she felt, I felt. And at that moment I felt her malice grow. It grew larger by the minute, like a monster embracing her until she disappeared entirely.

“Then it started eating everything else in the room. The furniture, the walls, the floor and ceiling until it reached my chair, a gaping void ready to devour me. And it didn’t seem to matter how much I struggled, screamed or begged it to spare me, it wouldn’t listen.

“It started by eating my feet. I couldn’t move because I was paralysed with fear, I just watched as it ate its way through my limbs and body. It ate my eyes last…”

The figure sitting in the chair shifted slightly as he spoke of the recurring dream. He found it hard to think with the sun sneaking its way through the blinds like that and the air conditioning barely working. He wanted the therapy session to be over so he could get out of there, out of that stuffy room and back into his room. At least his room had a window you could open.

The therapist spoke, but the young man didn’t hear him very well. “Mr. Richards? Are you paying attention?” the therapist had raised his voice a bit, but Mark Richards still didn’t snap out of his daze. Running his hands through his hair, the therapist wondered if the other was deliberately ignoring him or just affected by the heat.

The ticking of the clock seemed louder to both of them now. Mark nodded and smiled at his assigned therapist, heaving himself up into a proper sitting position. A quick glance at the clock and he was up on his feet, holding his hand out to shake the therapist’s. “That’s good for today, don’t you think, Mr. Wallace?” The therapist shook his hand. Usually it was him who declared the sessions over, but he couldn’t blame the young man for wanting to get out of there. And as Mark Richards walked out of the room a small thought echoed in Mr. Wallace’s head: “It ate my eyes last…”

The young man walked the hallways of the asylum accompanied by a nurse (it was protocol), his shoulder-length brown hair tied loosely back, and he smiled. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d managed to spook Mr. Wallace this time. Of course the dream was real, and it was something he had to talk about, but that didn’t change the fact that it was morbid.

"Don't hide. It's alright. You know me. I'm your best friend..."
"Come with me. I'll take you to places you've always dreamed of. I'll make all your desires come true..."
"You know you want too. Just do it already. No one will care. No one will miss..."
"We both know you don't belong here. We both know you're the only normal one in this place..."

"STOP IT! JUST SHUT UP! PLEASE JUST SHUT UP!" The slim being covered his ears with his hands, trying to drown out the voices he knew weren't real. He didn't realize he had been shouting until a nurse came in and gave him a small tranquilizer. The voices were supposed to be going away, things were supposed to get better here, but it just seemed to be getting worse. Especially with the addition of the new voice that told him to kill another patient. He'd only seen the guy maybe three times, but this voice wanted him dead, and Asher Etherton had no idea why. He had no reason to hate the other young man, but he did and his hatred was intense. He tried to push the thoughts out of his mind, but they kept popping back up when he wasn't consciously controlling them.

Once the tranquilizer had taken effect and he calmed down the nurse returned to escort him to his therapy session with Dr. Montgomery. The doc was nice, but Asher had a hard time opening up to her. He'd gone to ten sessions with her and the most they talked about was the weather and how he was feeling on a day to day basis, most of which he lied about. He ran a hand through his short, choppy, untidy hair and took a deep breath to prepare himself for today's session. When he and the nurse turned the corner he saw the other boy. Asher stopped in his tracks, tensing up, not sure about what to do. He had nothing on him that could actually kill the boy, but he wanted to try nonetheless.

After about thirty seconds passed, he regained control enough to continue walking. As he passed the other boy he shot him a look of deep hatred and physically resisted the urge to kick, scratch, bite, and all the other ways he could hurt the young man. Asher was glad the encounter would soon be over; he hated feeling this way with no reason. He stared at the other person as he walked, still having a look of complete loathing on his face.

It was strange how the halls of the asylum seemed to shrink every now and then, and suddenly expand a few seconds later. There weren’t that many people walking around either, just a handful. Mark supposed he could be seeing… no, imagining was the proper word, things like all those times a few years back, but maybe it was just the heat. It was the heat. The doctors had stopped the imaginations with medicine almost as soon as they’d started, and seeing as he was still taking those drugs there was no way he could start imagining such outrageous things.

As he walked the halls with Nurse Alice an old mantra from those days snuck its way into his thoughts: I don’t have a sister, I don’t have a brother, and we are not descendants of royalty from a world I thought up in my head, nor are we waging a war against the Gods I thought up in my head. I don’t have a sister, I don’t have a…
Nurse Alice tapped his shoulder. “We’ll go around the corner soon…” she said in that voice of hers, the sweet voice that could make you angry in a second, that voice full of sympathy for the patients. “Right,” he muttered back, his mind still fixed on that old mantra.

Mark saw a boy turn around the corner. Their eyes met for a second and Mark tipped an imaginary hat to him, but instantly regretted it when he saw the boy go tense. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. But socialising was healthy, no matter how shy or closed off you were. ‘Consider it a favour’ he thought at him and smiled.
It seemed that the other didn’t think so, and Mark felt a chill run down his spine as he was glared at. How could anyone be as full of hatred as this boy? It was almost eerie, that feeling he got when he looked over his shoulder at him, only to find that the glare and what could most likely only be described as murder intent were still there.

Shuddering, he continued his walk down the hallway to his room. It only took a short while to get Nurse Alice to leave, and then he was alone. Flopping down on his bed, he picked up a book and started reading.

Asher had to force himself to move forward. Just about every nerve in his body wanted to turn around and fulfill his strange urge to commit murder. He was more than relieved when he could no longer see the other young man. Now he could concentrate on trying to act normal, well as normal as one could be when committed to an asylum. Asher glanced at the nurse, but her face gave away nothing. 'She's probably seen things like that before...' he thought just as they reached the doc's office. He opened the door and stepped inside the brightly lit room.

"Good morning Asher," a warm, almost motherly voice greeted him. He tried to smile, but he was still tense and worried about what had just occurred moments before. 'Calm down, or else you'll have to talk about it...' The doc motioned for him to take a seat, and he did so gratefully. He sat on the comfortable black leather couch and placed his right root on his left knee. Dr. Montgomery smiled at him once more before speaking again. "So what's going on with you Mr. Etherton? Anything new? Anything you feel a dire need to talk about?"

Before answering, Asher took a deep breath to steady himself. He gave a shy smile to the doc. "No, nothing really," he said quietly. Asher was a very, very quiet person. At least when he was interacting with other people. In his own mind was a different story. In his mind he was loud and he was in control of everything, even though he knew that was not the case. "There isn't anything on your mind? It doesn't have to be bad. You can talk about good things in here too." Asher just stared at the doc in silence. 'What in the world could happen in here that would be considered good?' he thought to himself, while trying to think of something to say to Dr. Montgomery.

He almost wanted to tell her about the addition of the new voice in his head, but decided against it almost immediately. He was here to get better, not worse, and who knows what they would do with him if they found out he was indeed getting worse. Dr. Montgomery just looked at him smiling, waiting for him to say something, but Asher had nothing to say. He looked around the room so he didn't have to sit there staring at the doc. He caught sight of the clock. Only five minutes had passed...

Fifty-five minutes later, Asher stepped out of the doc's office and was greeted by another nurse. In that whole session he spoke about twenty words, none of them really giving away anything. He wondered if he frustrated the doc. The nurse walked him back to his room. He only had about half an hour until lunch would begin. Asher wanted to sleep, to momentarily forget what was happening in his day to day life, but there wasn't time. He sat at the desk in his room and pulled out a sketch pad. Within minutes he was drawing, and what came out of the pencil in his hand was morbid. It was a very detailed scene of him killing someone. The person in his drawing had no face, but Asher knew who it referenced. He quickly shut the sketch pad and put it away. 'What in the world am I going to do?' he thought as he put his head in his hands.

A knock on his door awoke the young man from his slumber. “Mark. It’s time for lunch! Get out here!” the person on the other side of the door was shouting. “You’re already late!” Mark sat up, the book slipping off his chest and falling down on the floor with a thud. As he picked it up to set down on his desk across the room the person knocked again, twice now, clearly growing impatient. “Yes, yes, I’m coming… just give me a small moment to wake up properly.” He glanced at the clock on his wall and shook his head. He really was late for lunch. With that in mind he walked to the door, opened it and stepped out.

The male nurse waiting for him outside looked annoyed. “Hurry up, otherwise you won’t get anything to eat…” he urged and started walking in down the corridor. Stretching his hands over his head and letting out a small yawn, Mark followed.
They continued their journey down the hall in silence. “What’s for lunch?” the patient finally asked once he saw the doors to the lunch room. The nurse accompanying him didn’t answer the question, but looked at him instead as if to say ‘you’ll find out soon enough’.

Once inside, Mark walked to the lunch table and picked out some things to eat while the nurse found them a table. “I’ll never understand why nurses have to sit with us at the tables…” he mused. The nurse scratched his head. “We’re humans, just like you. And as such we have to eat to function. Now stay here and out of trouble while I get something to eat.” With that, he stood up and walked to the lunch table, picking up a plate. Mark’s eyes scanned the room as he ate his bread. The room was quite large and still filled with people chatting as they ate. He saw a girl with hearts doodled on her face drinking juice, but she wasn’t very interesting so his eyes quickly wandered elsewhere. A small and fragile looking boy was picking at his food with his fork. “Can’t really blame you, most of the food here is processed garbage…” Mark muttered to himself as he took another bite of bread.

The sound of a plate being set down on the table distracted the patient from his thoughts for a while. The nurse was back. “Smells nice, what is it?” Mark gestured with his bread at the nurse’s lunch. The food on the nurse’s plate didn’t really smell nice, he was just trying to make conversation, but the nurse didn’t answer. Shaking his head and stuffing the last bit of bread in his mouth, Mark let his eyes roam across the dining hall, looking for anything remotely interesting. It soon came clear that the dining hall was an extremely dull place, but then again, wasn’t this entire hospital boring? Just as he was about to turn back to finishing his lunch something caught his attention out the corner of his eye. It was the young man from before, in the hall when he was on his way back from therapy. His eyes widened and his head shot back up to get a closer look.