Asylum

I walked into the room to my left, my paper shoes silent upon the cold concrete of this asylum. You could never sugarcoat this place, call it a "Correctional Institution" as you damn well please, but it's still going to be the looney bin, and those bars on the windows aren't to keep people out. I could have told you that I've seen it all, every case of delirium, dementia, insanity, stark raving madness, the works, I could say that, but I would be lying, lying to a severe degree. I thought I had seen it all, that was until I was assigned to Ward Nineteen, The Unfixable Ward. My first and last case was supposed to be the easiest one here. So they said.


I had been caught performing some questionable acts with a nurse in the storage area around a year ago, I should have been dismissed on the spot, but they didn't want to lose my great talent for fixing people. So instead of canning my ass, they sent me to Ward Nineteen. They said I had a gift, a special sight. I remember once, this man with these intense blue eyes told me I had The Touch, whatever the hell that is. They sent me there as a punishment, to make me get my act together. I got something there, in that cold harsh room I stand in now, the former room of Marshall Vega, and it came from the very mouth of madness in which he dwelled.

Last Year...
Black Thoughts And Bitter Words - Chapter One

I walked into room and the first thing I noticed was the charcoal drawings on the walls. It seems he was writing riddles, for questions filled every surface, and all seemed to concern Renor, a person or place, it was unclear to me. I sat down at the table Bruno had left for me, the steel chair squeaking with a metal hiss as it accepted my weight. Mr. Vega's hands were shackled to the table top, veins popping up on his hands, the ones with the spiral scars. I took a first glance at him, my first subject in Ward Nineteen, and noticed the dull look in his eyes. He appeared heavily sedated, his eyes dropping and glazed. He seemed to be looking at something just beyond his reach, that unfocused looked strangely similar to a coma patient. I reached across the table and tapped him on the hand, and his facade fell to the floor. His eyes, what I would have first described as distant and cold, the look of a man lost in his own world, were shockingly vibrant, that murky brown transforming into a thrilling hazel. His slacked jaw appearance, bestowing upon him the look of a body in bad shape, had slipped in the sharped chin vision before me, his face becoming slightly hawk like with his large nose. I noticed a beady scar that ran across the bridge of his nose, and ended under his left eye. His facade of empty pod person was soon replaced by the cool, calculated man before me. The thing that kept drawing me to him was those eyes. It amazed me how they had been able to deceive me so fully, and then show the true intelligence behind them, it was frightening. I began to understand one of the many reasons Mr. Vega was always on suicide watch. I heard a shuffling behind me and whipped my head around, and there was Bruno, in all of his fat ass glory, with the case file in his hand. I leaned back in my chair, that metal squeak grating at my ears and snatched it from Bruno's grubby little fist. He turned around without a word, as cold to me as he had always been since the "incident" last year. He was still bitter, but hey, things couldn't be helped. I lay the cream colored file before me, in plain view of Mr.Vega's watchful eyes. I flipped it open, and a picture of Mr. Vega was smiling back at me. I scanned the info that was on a card that was papercliped to the picture.
I made some mental notes, and the first day of the treatment began

Black Thoughts - Chapter One

"Mr. Vega, your files says that you suffer from psychotic delusions and also have violent tendicies to others and yourself. Is that correct?" I asked, my plan beginning to unfurl in my mind, a clockwork web of shadow, filled with witty remarks and delightful banter. He stared back at me, the look of catatonia slowly sinking back in as his eyes began to un focus again.
"Mr. Vega, are your listening?" I asked, waving my hand before his face, his eyes not tracking the movement at all. I snapped but he remained unaware. A minute passed, the uncomfortable silence of the air conditioner recycling cool air permeating the room, masking the heavy breathing of Mr. Vega and the slow intakes from me. I ponder in my head of a question that will bring him back to reality, to our plane, and back to speaking terms.
"Mr. Vega, what is Renor?" I asked, taking the theme from the walls and applying it. His eyes instantly refocused and the intelligence from before flooded through them once again. His face twitched and he took a deep nasal breath.
"Why do you ask?" He replied, his voice a complete surprise. I was expected some high pitched whiney thing, but this deep guttural voice instead reached my ears. His voice was rocky, as if he had suffered from several throat injuries in the past, which was very likely from the scarred appearance he presented.
"I ask, because, as it is plain to see, you have taken a keen interest in it. Is it a person? A lover perhaps?" I voiced, my brain already working two steps ahead, trying to predict his statement.
He was silent for a few seconds, and his eyes darted around the room before he answered.
"Renor is where I am. Renor is where I live. Renor is where it all happens, and everything ends in Renor." He told me, his voice trembling out of what seemed to be fear, or anticipation. I write down his exact words in my yellow legal pad, the scratching noise of my Bic on the paper echoing in the room.
"Okay, can you explain what that means Mr.Vega? How are you living in Renor when you are in the Trinumarate Correctional Institution, in Castle Rock, Maine?" I replied after finishing my transcript of a note on the top of the paper. Note to self: Buy a DAMN tape recorder, writing is a bitch.
"Marshall." Vega replied, his arms flexing as he tried to remove his hands from the shackles, but the attempt only pinched his skin.
"Excuse me?"
"Call me Marshall. I hate my last name, makes me sound like that faggot from Pulp Fiction."
I looked down at my legal pad and wrote down this little tib-bit of information. Always Marshall, never Vega, thinks John Travolta is gay...

"Alright, Marshall, please explain Renor in greater detail, it has piqued my interest." I told him, folding my hands upon the legal pad on the table, my elbow resting on the case file. He took another long nasal breathe, his chest expanding and biting into the steel table.
"Renor is...Renor is idea. Renor is everything, and as cliche as it may seem, Renor is nothing."
"What does Renor mean to you?" I asked as I jotted down his first response, along with details on his voice and facial features.
"Renor is my nightmare, the hell I cannot escape, but Renor is the only place I am safe. If i leave Renor, I'll die, and I can't let Mitch down."
"Mitch? Who's he?"
"Mitch, oh he's my...I don't remember." He told me, a confused look shuffling to his face. He began to bite his lip and rock back and fourth, his chest smacking against the table with a hollow thud.
"Marshall! Stop that, your scaring me, please..."
He stared back at me, and for some strange reason, the words "The Little Impotent One" came to mind, leaving that vague sense of a memory that refuses to be recalled etched into my brain. It was like a itch, the one you get in public places but you don't dare scratch, but it was a itch of the mind. I shook my head and blinked twice to clear my head. When I looked back at Marshall, a smile was plastered to his face, a little kid's toothy grin if I ever saw one. He had stopped the rocking, and the confused look was gone, but there was something else, couldn't put my finger on it, but it was there.
"You don't remember? Was he a family member, a brother? A cousin? Maybe a uncle?"
"I can't remember. It's been a long time since I thought about him..."
"Did he hurt you? Was he mean to you?"
"I don't want to talk anymore."
"Why Marshall? We are starting to make some good progress, if you let me, I could help you get better."
"I don't want to get better. If i get better, I won't be safe anymore, I won't be safe in Renor."
I lean forward, and make direct eye contact.
"Marshall, no one can hurt you, not in here. Okay?"
Nothing but silence from him. I sit in that air conditioned hum silence, that natural oxymoron of modern man. It was silent, until the dam burst, and the tide water came fourth.
"I'm...trying to hold it together. My head is lighter than a feather, but I don't want to get better! I won't! I don't want top hurt no more, I don't want Mitch to hurt no more! Go away! Go away you quack, I don't need you!"
I was stunned, I had never expected such a Grade-A personality change, but I had seen it before, and there was only one way to deal with it.
"Fine, I won't help you. To think we wanted to help Mitch, such a shame you refuse my help..." I told him as I stood up and gathered my things. I tucked the file and legal pad under my arm and turned around. I always felt weird about this, putting on this show, but it always helped me in the long run. He had let enough slip for me to see where his real values lied. I walked out the door, and nodded for Bruno to close it. The door scrapped along the concrete floor, that grinding noise that could drive you mad. When the door clicked in the jam, I heard the muffled yell from Marshall. Bruno understood what had happened, having seen it work many times before. He held his hand up and with his finger sprayed out, he began to bring them down one by one, one every second. When five seconds had passed, he opened the door and I turned around and looked into those cold eyes that lay behind that steel table.
"He's the Little Impotent One! He see's all, and in the silence, something will rise!" He exclaimed, the fanatic gleam in his eye being all too familiar. I waved my hand at him, and flipped him the bird with the other as Bruno stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

I know I look like a total asshole, but rage only makes them open up, rage only makes them rant and rave more, makes them reveal more about their problem, makes them show the way to the cure. I hate these sick fuckers, but the pay is incredible. Sure, these black thoughts are evil, but it's no sin to think is it?

Bitter Words - Chapter 1 - End

As I was taking a nap in the faculty room, my thoughts drifted from the tits on the nurse in ward three to the words Marshall yelled as I left. The Little Impotent One he has said, the same words that I had thought when I looked at him. I am quite liberal when it comes to ESP and mind reading, but I had never expericed something this close to it, it was slightly disturbing in its own regard. As my thoughts wandered back to the T & A of Nurse WetDream, the words played in the background...

"Wake up!"
I grinned in my waking sleep, that was one sexy female voice, even if it was going to be hostil to me. I was already awake when the shove came, but I was completely suprised when she kicked me.
"Ow fuck!" I grunted as I bent over to clutch my shin, sitting on the sofa left too many things exposed. When I looked up, I realized why the voice sounded familiar, it was The Nurse from back in September, the one that helped me get assigned to Ward Nineteen, and damn did she look hot as usual.
"Brenda...you know you can be a real ballbuster! I was just laying here, enjoying my cat nap when you come and- " I slap my hands together. "scare the shit out of me!"
"Yeah well, I don't give a shit. Your on the clock, and Mr. Vega has asked for you."
"Really? Hmm..." I reply, sctraching my skin, wondering if I could remember where the mole on Brenda's thigh was.
"Hello? You in there?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll get right over there." I said, standing up, stratching myself and streching at the same time.
'Say, you wouldn't mind if we headed over to the..." I began, placing my hand on her lower back, a smirk on my face.
"Ah, no. I barely got to keep my job from last time." She replied, peeling my hand from her body.