take the pill that's fucking with your mind Who: Elise Where: St. Jude's Psychiatric Hospital When: Night
This was the… countless (?) psychiatric facility Elise had been to while she was in the United States and, really, she was shocked she had not arrived sooner. But then they didn’t ask her and it was rude to walk in without an invitation or a patient. The building was new -- the old one having burnt down (funny how that just kept happening to asylums) -- and a shiny, pretty thing. All wood-panelled with solar-powered-things on the roof and a lot of glass windows that she was sure meant something special if you were an architect but since she wasn’t she didn’t care. Moonlight always flooded the main hall. The courtyard (oh yes, there was a courtyard, where she had resolved to eat all of her lunches regardless of the weather) was so pretty… It really very successfully drew your eye away from the raving lunatics, it truly did.
That was a little harder to achieve on the inside, though, she would grant them.
The place was one of those brightly coloured affairs, like a children’s ward. A rainbow veneer disguising the neutral whites, greys and blues of a medical facility. Apparently it kept the inmates in a cheerful mood, which hardly explained those on suicide watch. Patients drew pictures, watched television (the same set of pre-recorded channels, it seemed, always on something ‘acceptable), and they played music. Except for this week, because someone managed to get their ice in the keyboard of the grand piano and the ivories didn’t sound as the Head Nurse thought they should. Elise made a mental note to get rid of the Head Nurse as soon as possible-- Oh, and she really needed to change the television regime. If she was going to be subjected to it all day then the viewing material needed to fit.
“St. Jude’s Psychiatric Hospital is now closed to visitors. Please notify the front desk upon your departure. Thank you.” Last calls. After that would be Checks: when the nurses went through the wards and made double-damn sure that none of the friends, relatives or what-have-yous had the gall to try and stay behind. A lot of the younger patients -- in their twenties or maybe younger still -- had parents or aunts and uncles who would try and pretend they hadn’t heard the last calls. They would push the envelope as far as they could make it go until a nurse threatened to have their visiting rights suspended. It was such a peculiar thing to do, to try and have yourself locked inside an asylum when there wasn’t anything wrong with you. Just for the sake of comforting a mentally disturbed patient who really wasn’t going to get any better with them there. Around the clock sedation, that would calm them down. For a time, anyway.
Elise didn’t like the times all the patients were successfully put to bed. The meds they gave them knocked them out, but for a few, and it made her head begin to spin.
But that… that was not what was happening in this ward. They were trying, though. For the past few nights -- one, two, three since she had arrived, and always in a different ward -- the nurses had put up such an admirable fight against the stubbornness their patients had apparently never showed before. Something to do with a grieving process: Doctor Reynolds had been much-loved. This being the same Doctor Reynolds who Elise had killed a few days short of two weeks ago. Mm, because the man wanted her to work at St. Jude’s among the staff. Supporting him. Insanity did not do support very well. She really felt she was far better suited to be King of the Castle. He had been a silly thing; a stupid man who looked at her the same way most people did before they realised she was in their heads -- like she was a sweet little girl playing at doctor when she really wanted to be a princess. He forgot how terribly little girls could throw tantrums. She didn’t just push him over the banister rail, she had driven him into the floor head-first, flying at a high speed.
Nobody seemed to question the fact that now she had his job.
This was the kind of place Elise had wanted since she left Bedlam Hospital. The staff saw nothing wrong with her, the patients quite naturally saw everything wrong with everybody, the visitors were a minor inconvenience… but she was at the top of it all. And one really had to appreciate the name, you know? Trailing up and down the corridors with her arms stretched right out and fingers only just tracing the walls at each side, the demon closed her eyes and listened to painted brickwork that could scream louder than half of their patients. Which was an interesting detail, since the facility really hadn’t been there that long. Images flickered across the back of her eyelids and through her mind as she kept walking, stopping only when she realised she was being watched. It was a patient, left out of their box.
“You hear them, don’t you?” Something about the way he said that was annoyingly familiar. “The screaming… in the walls? Coming out of the walls…” He was a touch-know. Elise just shook her head in denial and walked past him with the pleasant, but ultimately pitying, smile that the patients seemed to live for. The strangest thing was that she was willing to give it to them -- most of them -- because they were the truly-certifiables, the never-get-betters, the ones who would be in here for life... Those that soothed her head and made her blissfully, ecstatically happy in what she knew were only manic highs that she generated herself but nobody could take them away. Nobody else had this gift, this home, these patients. They were all hers, and the staff were clueless dolts. Already she knew she would be recreating Bedlam Hospital, London, to the best of her ability. Only cleaner… and letting the patients keep their hair because the visitors might notice otherwise. Just on cue Bedlam’s old inmates started their semi-regular screams from inside Insanity’s mind, echos from the past that she wanted to bring as much of into the here and now as possible.
Giggling, Elise danced like a child down the corridors to her office where she paused outside, the tips of her fingers gently pressing each of the letters of Dr. J. A. Reynolds’ door sign before slowly sneaking in as though she ought not be there. It was her office. It was also ‘late’ according to a lot of the nurses. Soon there would be the next round of Checks. Hopefully nobody would have offed themselves in the meantime. She curled up in the over-sized man-chair that was big enough for her to fall asleep in and stared across her office. She needed a change in decor. But the chair could stay. Gripping the arms gently, she closed her eyes and listened to what the chair had to tell her… vaguely aware she would be found sleeping in it in the morning.
Tomorrow, she was going to find herself an empty cell in the secure wing where nobody would dare bother her.