The Drawings

"She's not getting any better" says Dr. Crawford to his assistant nurse. They had been talking about the patient today for an hour or more. His assistant, Emma Miles, had a worried look on her face. they were in the 16th floor of a mental health hospital in New York; down both ends of the hallway were the holding cells for the mental patients of this floor.
"I know. The poor girl" says Emma, shaking her head and looking down. They talked about her for a few more minutes then separated as Dr. Crawford went down the hallway towards the elevator, while Emma stayed behind her desk. At the far end of the hallway, on the opposite end of the elevator in the last cell door to the right, was the patient they had been discussing with each other. Her name was Drusilla. At the moment she was lying on her small white bed, awake and was listening in on what they were saying. When she heard Dr. Crawford leave she closed her eyes and instantly went to sleep.
Drusilla had been in the mental hostel for at least six years, even though she was young looking almost like a teenager, she was nearly the oldest in terms of the amount of years she was there. From the day she was pushed into the cell room up until now she had not said a word, not even a whimper. Nothing. For the first few years the hospital staff were very worried and tried to get her to talk, they tried everything from shouting at her to electric shock therapy. The attempts were all in vain as not one word came out of her mouth, not one. But after those years had passed they began to get more relaxed around her, they believed that her silence was just something she wanted until she sorted out whatever problems she had.
The following morning all the patients of the 16th floor were in a large room, they were all seated in a circle with one of the nurses, nurse Abigail, sitting at the far left of the circle. It was another group session. Something that Drusilla disliked very much, she liked being aloe in her own cell away from everyone else. One of the patients was rowing back and forth and staring into nothingness as the people around him took no notice, he was mumbling incoherently. So far Drusilla was the only one who even looked at him.
The day went slower than she liked but she finally got through to night and went to the line for her daily pills, when she gets to the counter she points to the receptionist's pens. He knew what that meant and gets some A3 paper from underneath the counter and hands them to her. She gives a short smile as she walks off back to her room. She had pencils and pens in her room, which they all knew about but weren't too scared by it as she wasn't the suicidal type, so she didn't have to borrow any from anyone.
As she was getting to her room Brian, one of the night-shift staff members, stopped her.She always hated him and wanted to get into her room and away from him A.S.A.P. He had an unnerving smile on his face which made her quiver and step back a little, he laughs as he sees this "so are you gonna talk today or you keeping up the silent routine?" he says, he had always tried to get her to speak even when the other stopped, he thought he could prevail and make her talk but so far he hasn't and he has been getting more and more ruthless in his attempts. He keeps telling her to speak but she says nothing as she looks away hoping that someone will come along and stop this before it gets out of hand, but it was too late and he smacks her across the face and walks off.
She gets into her room felling safer but angry, mostly angry. Angry with Brain and what he just did, she goes her bed and gets out her pencils and starts drawing on one of the A3 papers. She already had in mind what the drawing was going to be. She drew Brian; in the drawing he was sitting at his regular seat in the cafeteria holding a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. His head was on the plate in front of him with his intestines surrounding it and blood was covering both of them like sauce. Drusilla smiles as she finishes the drawing and hides it under the mattress. She drew something else and this time it was something nice, a couple of flowers. She didn't want them to know about her drawing of Brian.
The next day when Drusilla woke up and got out of her room she went to the cafeteria and saw a crowd just outside the doors. There were people going in and out of the cafeteria all with a look of shock and complete horror. Drusilla walks toward the doors to see what they were horrified about and stopped immediately as she saw it. It was Brian sitting on his usual chair dead. It wasn't the fact that Brian was dead that horrified Drusilla, it was the fact that he was dead in the exact same way as her drawing.
There was sad mumbling and moans of despair being made by everyone around her, Drusilla just stood there looking at the body trying to find at least a little difference between the body she sees before her and her drawing that she made of him. There was no difference; everything was the same down to the amount of blood and where it all was. Even the positions of the cold dead eyes were the same. She backs away out of the cafeteria and runs off back to her room, no one notices which is what she wanted. When she rushes into her room she slams it, closed and immediately regrets it as she knew it would draw attention to her.
She paces back and forth in her room trying to come up with some reasonable explanation as to why Brian was sitting dead in the cafeteria in the exact way she drew him the night before, no explanation was found so she just sat down.
She takes her drawing out from the mattress and looks at it as if it would give her the answers she so desperately wanted. She gets an idea and closes her eyes hoping for the best and rips the drawing in half. Nothing seemed different and after a few seconds she reopens her eyes and goes out the door back to the cafeteria, she couldn't see anyone down the hall so she rushes there thinking that it was all fixed, but her hope was crushed when she sees there was still some there an all parts of the body was now being moved.
The next few days were silent and relentlessly unsettling for everyone, but mostly Drusilla of course. She had still not come up with any answers and just filled a hole in her mind with more and more questions, the hole was getting close to bursting point and she couldn't stand it anymore. She thought she would scream out and tell everyone about the drawing, but she was able to hold it in and keep quiet.
The funeral was three days after his death, everyone that could go did go, some of the staff members cried the whole way through it but none of the patients did, as they knew what an asshole he was to all of them. Drusilla stood within the crowd looking aimlessly ahead; she was still trying to get a rational explanation to what just happened. Part of her regretted ever making that drawing, but some small part of her deep inside was happy and smiling thankfully that Brian is six feet under. She couldn't help feeling this way; she hated him, as did all the patients in the hospital.
After the funeral all the patients were sent to their room including Drusilla, the sky was dark and the moon was full and Drusilla watched the glittery stars for answers she knew she would not get.
Drusilla did not know what time she finally got to sleep but she awoke the next day later than usual, she would have slept longer if there wasn't a knock on her door as Dr. Crawford came in. He seemed relieved and she guessed the he though that she may have been injured or worse. She smiles at his concern and gets out of bed.
"You got some sleep I see,” he says to her "that's good because not many people have"
She was very much aware of this but was glad (but also amazed) she wasn't one of them, staying wide-awake during the night, having endless nightmares of that horrific sight over and over again without mercy all night and probably every night.
She was brought back to the present by a knock on her shoulder and she looked to see April, another patient, purposely knock past her. And smile wickedly as she does so. April had tried many times to get Drusilla to the ground and beat her badly, several times she had succeeded. Some other times she had done as Brian asked and tried to get her to talk, but she'd always fail and put Drusilla in a day (sometimes week) long coma.
Drusilla began feeling familiar feelings, the same that she felt after her last run-in with Brian. She tried to make them go away but they kept growing, she couldn't help it. They just kept building and building, soon getting close to bursting point. She was able to hide those feeling from everyone else, but not from herself, and she was beginning to enjoy them. She tries to fight them off but that just made them stronger and grow faster. Within hours she was sent back to her room and she started drawing before she got onto the bed, like Brian she was drawing April dead. This time it was simpler and less bloody, it was a hanging from April's cell window.
The next day was the same as the day Brian died, the crowd that gathered at April's room, the shocked and saddened looks on their faces. The funeral was the same as before too, except that not as many people came to it since April was a real bitch to everyone being Brian's 'inside man' (well woman) as it were. The police came again and stayed longer than before, she stayed as far away from them as she could until they left.
She knew how to end all this but was afraid to, afraid of what is on the other side, or even if there was another side. But is she didn't end this many more may die because of her drawings. She already knew how she would do this, but she would never feel ok about this. She began drawing herself, dead. Not as bloody as Brian but possibly more painful than April's death.
The following morning Dr. Crawford knocked on her cell door several times with no answer and was getting worried, he unlocked the door and found her lying on her bed with her throat and both her wrists cut deeply. When the police and ambulance came they found her other drawings of April and Brian and came to the conclusion that she somehow did the killings but were stumped as to how she did them.
The investigation on Drusilla and her drawings went on for six months at maximum with no results so they stopped with the conclusion that she drew them first then when she had the good time she would kill them the same way as her drawings. No one knew the real truth and no one ever found out how she did it.