It was usual that they would drug me, a few pills forced down my throat to ensure a quiet few hours, both for them and for me, but not tonight. In the haze that still beat through my mind I was dimly aware of my session in the dank room that lay at the deepest part of the corridor. The faintest echoes of memory were my only company real company ...at least for a while before the past terrors of the asylum began to invade my mind. I had tried to close my eyes against the swirling contortions of shadows and darkness that plagued my waking eyes, but nothing I could do could bring about a cessation of their tightening spiral against my body as their screaming cries relentlessly invaded my thoughts.
My screams only bought curses from the other side of the door as one of the orderlies would walk by, his fist hammering against the metal and shouting vile curses at what he would do to me if I didn't 'shut the fuck up'. For a moment I would lay silent, shaking in the darkness until the cold ice would crawl across my skin and the screaming would start once more.
They had told me that it was just the manifestation of my condition, that I was sick and that my mind had become disjointed and separated from reality. It made no difference in my moments of lucidity when I told them that I had never had such visions before I arrived here, that they were more than just imaginings but rather they were the lost souls that had fallen foul of this dire building. They would just sneer and up my medication.
The hours of darkness drifted by, their timeless hold against me seemingly never faltering once until it was broken by the squeal of metal as the lock turned over and the door swung open, I blinked against the harsh backlight that illuminated the figure in the doorway for a moment and served to block out any discernable features, but I knew who it was, I didn't need to see her to know the form of Nurse Dixon. I yelp and tried to push myself tighter against the wall, a futile gesture as there was no where I could go and the shadows that had embraced me with their hateful whispers during the night not sought only to shun me and leave me as prey for this bitch.
A deeply malicious smile took to Nurse Dixon's face as her eyes met mine. "C'mon, you need to get cleaned up." with a nod of her head two orderlies eagerly slipped past her and made a grab for me, I tried to push back but the constraints of the jacket limited my movements and from the fatigue born of a restless night I had little strength to fight back and was soon forced to my knees with their hands restraining me from moving too far.
"Good girl." sneered Dixon as she walked into the room, it was then I caught sight of a second nurse, a slighter figure and one I had not seen before. "Your learning you place. About time too." she dipped to my ear and hissed the last three words. Dixon turned to the orderlies and spoke abruptly, the smile never leaving her expression. "Get her in the wheel chair and follow me to the shower room." Any fight I put up was wasted effort and I had little choice but to allow myself to be manhandled like meat into the wheel chair as they wheeled me down the poorly lit confines of the corridor towards the shower block.
It was a brief run along the corridor to the cold tiled room that served as the shower room. Along the one side of the room ran a line of metal shower heads and the floor sloped gently towards a central drain, it was a grim place. The tiles, once white where now dulled grey with age and layers of soap scum whilst the once pristine grout between them lay blackened with mould. It was the small details I noticed, countless days locked within my cell had given me the time to notice things that I would not have normally. I was still staring absent minded at the wall when the door slammed shut and was locked by one of the orderlies as Dixon and the other nurse moved towards me and released the binds from the chair before slowly beginning to unshackle the jacket, I felt the constraining binds slip from my flesh and give me room to breath once more. They didn't take their eyes of me for a minute and the orderly in front held a device I had met several times before in my incarceration here ...a version of a cattle prod, able to deliver enough of a shock to drop you to the ground without causing any serious harm, I knew as I had tasted its sting on a few occasions and had little eagerness to try it again.
What little I wore was stripped of me, though it mattered not, I had long ago had something far more precious stripped from me than mere clothes and so being naked with four people didn't bring any false need for modesty and so I just stood their, my pale skin tattooed with grime and my matted hair drifting across my face as these four people looked across me, each of them told a different story in their eyes. The two orderlies were the easiest to read, their eyes spoke of bestial lust of my waifish form, whilst Nurse Dixons eyes were a little harder to read and as I looked towards her I caught her glance towards the corner of the room in which sat a cctv camera. Knowing that I had caught sight of this, she simply smiled in a devious manner. The fourth woman, a slightly built nurse who I didn't know looked as though she was more unnerved to be here than I was, as though she bore some secret that was crushing her, a secret that I felt I would soon find out about.
My eyes flicked around the room, I felt a twitch run through my body, I wasn't alone ...I was never alone but it was as though the very demons of the room infested the staff that slowly circled me, like sharks that had scented a bead of blood in the water. They were around me ...watching me ...almost with baited breath as though they knew what the future held for me.
The sharp sound of Nurse Dixons voice bought me out of my reverie "Michael ....Carl." She glanced respectively at the two male orderlies as they closed in on me, smiles broadening on their faces as they did so, "Time we gave this bitch her treatment, as per Doctor's orders" she sneered. Suddenly they lunged for me, I had not expected them to move so quick and was unable to step away as both men drove me back against the tiled wall of the shower with such force that several tiles cracked as the back of my head rang off it and left behind a thin smattering of blood that stained the purity of the white sheen.
They gripped my wrists tightly and pressed me hard against the tiles and I could feel the cold creep of porcelain as my breasts were crushed against the wall. The sound of water suddenly spraying against the ground caught my ear and the next moment I was heaved from the wall and forced under the stinging spray of ice cold water as the two male orderlies stood either side of me and held me fast under the torrent of water. I coughed and spluttered as the it hammered against me and tricked into my eyes, one of the orderlies pulled back on my hair and bought my face up to meet the spurt of water directly were it left me coughing and gasping as my mouth filled with water for a moment. Dixon directed the other nurse to start to wash away some of the grim from my body and the very moment her slender fingers hesitantly touched against my flesh my head shot forward, my eyes burning with hatred that she would touch me ...even if a slender part of my thoughts actually embraced this human contact, as, for the first time in more time that I could remember, it was a touch that was delicate and almost unsure.
