The Shinjuku Manner Center... the mental hospital you worked in.
This place had some serious issues: Serial killers, suicidal girls with no body fat whatsoever, people who'd just stare at you all day, and a little bit of all three in combinations. And no one really helped them, at least... you didn't see any improvement. Especially not for one of your favorite patients... Beyond they said his name was. You liked that name, it was otherworldly, like him. His glossy brown eyes were wide yet slit, had a red shine to them when the light hit them, his long but not too long black hair, shone blue in the purest light. And red when in the sun. Though his skin was pale it had a tanned olive tone to it. He sat in an odd way and ate nothing but jam, they tried to starve him until he accepted other food, but you put your foot down at that, you told them that you'd pay for the damn jam if they needed you to. When they asked why, you told them that he wouldn't eat anything else anyway, why not just let him have it instead of starving him to death? Because he WOULD die.
You'd just watched him from the monitors before then, but you already knew a lot about him. You had a fairly high IQ even if you denied that you were smarter than anyone else, you sort of were, but only when it came to words, and people. You could read people so fast it hurt your own eyes, haha. Beyond was crazy, not pretending to be crazy or mildly crazy, no he was out-and-out Psycho! But you still liked to watch him when he was thinking or speaking. You gave the patients privacy of course, but you watched them while they were outside their rooms, and the suicidal ones when they were in their rooms and upset.
The Center as you liked to shorten it: had a nice looking exterior, the walls were painted green and blue, the insides were gold and crimson. You'd done this, you told them that if they couldn't upset the patients with certain colors, you'd find out which colors upset them. Red, gold, blue and green were the only ones that didn't upset anyone. So you'd had it painted, and they seemed to like it more than the whiteness. Or... well, so you imagined, since you... you know, couldn't read minds.
Today, you get to take lunch to Beyond. Apparently his newest nurse was terrified of him. You smile to yourself as you walk down the hall with his jam in your apron. What's to be scared of? Sure he could kill you, but why get upset about that? Why think about what if? If he didn't kill you Great! If he did, well then you suppose he had a reason for doing that. Honestly you were a tad bit crazy yourself, but it's barely noticeable so you hadn't been found out yet.
You stop at his padded cell, not so much for his protection as the people who went in, he couldn't break their skulls on the walls or floor this way. You open the first door, close it behind you, lock it, put the keys in the wall safe, open the next door, step in. He's sitting there, on his bed, staring off into space. You walk over and take a jar from your apron pocket, they'd gotten rubber or plastic jars now, seeing as Beyond liked to break them and go after someone with the glass. Like you couldn't have told them he'd do that.
"Beyond, I have your jam." You stay where you are, halfway across the room. The only thing Beyond would get up for was jam, and you wanted him to come get it. He looks over at you, and gets up from the bed, standing on the bed from his odd sitting position and then stepping down off the bed. It was so fluid, the way he moved. He walks toward you, you're still standing against the wall halfway across the room. He grabs the jar with one hand, though you notice his other hand is hidden, his fingers fisted. "I hope you like it," You smile and he tilts his head at you, giving you that blank stare, but when he smiles at you, you know something is coming, but funnily enough, your hearts' sudden pounding has more to do with his smile than what the smile means.
Suddenly you're up against the wall, a sliver of metal on your neck, he must've twisted it off something. His breath is fanning across your face, you think you can actually smell the strawberries. You look up into his eyes, like you've wanted to do for a while. His eyes darken in an odd way, and he presses the metal hard enough to draw a few drops of blood, someone checks on all the rooms once every ten minutes, they must have seen or are going to see soon. You don't change where you look or how you stand, you just gaze into those dangerous beautiful eyes. And then he's let you go, and stepped back, he steps forward again, dropping the metal, but the door bursts open.
You're hustled out the door with two nurses on either side of you, obviously protecting you. But Beyond just watches you, and when you look back at him, he smiles.
"Are you okay!?" You glance up from the floor, where you were looking when the nurse put the bandage on your neck.
"Yeah I'm cool Chikita." You knew her name was Mexican, but she was not. Her name flowed nicely off your tongue though, so you liked it.
"They said they sent you in to BEYOND!?" Everyone knew him here, he was the celebrity of the ward. You nod and she throws a hissy fit about you being their scapegoat or some other such nonsense. "Don't worry, if you don't want to, you can refuse to go back."
"Oh, I'm going back."
"WHAT!?"
"He didn't hurt me, well... not really anyway, and he stopped before they even came in the door. I like being around Beyond, even if it's only through a monitor, he just seems to make me feel... I don't know, but it's a nice feeling." She's gaping at you now.
"OH MY-"
"Girls?" your supervisor comes in and you do the same song and dance.
"But you don't have to go back"
"But I want to. I'm not going to abandon him like every other nurse." They try to persuade you otherwise, but you wave them off, and when it's time to go home, you walk by the monitors and spot Beyond, walking around his room, eating the jam, before leaving. Your dreams are filled with him as usual. His face, the metal against your skin, in some dreams he slices a line across your collar bone and laps up the blood, he did that with the nurses sometimes. He held them down, cut them somewhere and then drank their blood. It's funny how it never made him sick. When you wake in the morning you decide to take a shower and use the strawberry scented shampoo instead of the apple scent. You'd have to ask Beyond if strawberry was the only flavor he liked, if not, you could get cherry or grape or apple flavored jam.
When you get to work, you decide to start the day off with a bed check. You did this yourself, you'd volunteered for it, you always knew if someone was hiding something, you'd take it, and say nothing, tell them it was wrong with your eyes. They'd always look indifferent or guilty, depending on their mental state and what they'd hidden. The skinny girls hid slivers of something sharp, and laxatives, heaven only knows where they'd gotten them. The ones who'd stare would hoard feathers or rocks they'd picked up, you'd wash them and bring them back and hide them better, while they'd watch, an you could swear the little pebbles you found on your windowsill in your office were thank you's.
