The boy wakes, blinking his sleepy eyes until they are fully open. He slowly sits up, looking around him. He wasn’t in his room, and everything was so unfamiliar to him. He tries to rack his brain about what had happened…that one night…the night of the fire…the house…the creature…it all seemed like a dream…a nightmare too real to be merely in his head. Yet too horrifying to be real. He pressed the palm of his left hand to his temple, and slowly moved his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck. He continued to look around, his eyes wandering from one small corner of the room to the other. He was in a hospital, and the window on his right glowed a warm golden color from the sun’s rays, running through the thin curtains. He looked down and saw he was wearing a new hospital gown, this time it was a light blue instead of a soft teal. When did I put this on?, he thought, I don’t remember anything…at least, not after that night… He fumbles with the cord attached to his right wrist, but then he remembers the night before, when his cord got stuck as he tried to escape…it gave him a shiver.

The door to his room opened, and a woman with a nurse's uniform and cap came in, and softly closed the door behind her. She had light skin, brown hair tied in a neat bun and freckles covering her nose and cheeks. When she walked to the windows, and threw open the curtains, letting the light flood the room. The boy shielded his eyes, since the bright light hurt, and turned away. As the light grew soft again, the nurse went over to the boy and said, “Hello, I’m going to be your nurse, but please, call me Miss Fawn.” She walks closer to him and puts a hand on his forehead, then pulls back and says, “You don’t have a fever, which is good.” She stiffens and says, “Can you stand? If you need any help, I’ll be right here.” The boy looks down, slowly pulls back the covers and places both his feet on the ground. When he pushes himself on the bed, he shakes and wobbles, then sits back on the bed. “Okay,” says Miss Fawn, “Take it easy, I’ll just go and let the doctor know you’re awake.” She walks to the door, but stops and turns to the boy and says, “Oh, I almost forgot…can you tell me your name?” The boy goes wide eyed, and says, “I-I…I don’t remember…” The nurse pauses, then smiles and says, “I’ll be back in a little while, but get some rest and try to relax.”

After she left, the boy looked around again, only this time, he pulled open the drawer in his nightstand, by his bed. He pulled out a mirror, and gasped when he saw his reflection. His black eye was covered up with a white square eyepatch, and the bandage on his nose was replaced with a cleaner one. His eyes were still green, soft yet fading. His hair was still a fading navy blue, but in the bright light it turned gray. He was very pale, sickly even and he wondered if his appearance now looked the same as it did before…He sets the mirror back in the drawer and then closes it, just in time before the nurse walks in. “Your Doctor is waiting in his office; I was given permission to escort you there.” The boy gave her a confused look, before she helped him out of his bed. When his feet touched the cold floor, she helped him put on slip-on shoes and then, when he was able to walk a little bit forward, she helped pull his IV for him. They both reached the door, but the boy gripped hard on the sides of the open doorway, while the nurse walked forward a little with the IV. She suggests to him that he should grip on to the IV’s pole and use it like a cane, so he can gain his balance without falling. Once he gets a firm grip on it, the nurse leads him out of his room and into the hallways. He walks slowly, but continues to look around the hallways and many doors leading to offices, patient rooms, and bathrooms. He notices other nurses and doctors pass by, never glancing his way, and talking about things relating to tests and paperwork they have in their hands. His nurse suddenly stops to talk with another nurse, and that gives him a chance to look at the rooms where most of the patients are kept. He sees an open door to a patient’s room, and takes a look inside from where he was standing. There was a girl in her bed, who looked about his age. She had lightly tan skin, dark purple hair fading to light magenta at the tips. Her hair was neatly brushed and just barely reached her shoulders, long and straight at the beginning, and wavy at the ends. She also had dark sleepy eyes, which looked down at her legs that were covered by a light blue blanket. Her nurse was using a syringe and taking out some of her blood from her right arm. The girl didn’t seem to mind, as if she had been letting people poke her with needles many times before. Suddenly, the girl glances his way, and with a look of shock, stares at him with her dark eyes. He quickly looks away, and the nurse takes him further down the hall before he could look back.

The nurse opens the door to a fairly small room, and it was lit with soft teal lighting. There were no windows, and not all of the room was lit up. In the corners, where stacks of paper and drawers spilled with files, shadows covered it up like a soft blanket. The Doctor was sitting by his desk, and looking at a few papers laid out on the top of the desk. As the boy seated himself on the examining table, the Doctor turns to him and says, “Oh, glad to see you're doing alright.” The doctor stands and says, “How’s that head feeling?” The boy touched the back of his head and said, “Um…it’s not throbbing as much as it did…before…” “Good,” says the doctor, and he walks over to the boy and says, “Now, before we can have our full serious discussion, I still need to examine you, you know, the testing procedures we used to do when you were young, remember?” The boy nodded, but it was clear that he hadn’t remembered anything about his past…before the accident. The doctor pulls out his tools, checks his eyes and ears, and throat. After checking his heartbeat, he lowered the stethoscope and said, “Alright, you seem quite healthy, so I suppose there isn’t any need to examine you any further.” He walks back to his desk and flips open a file, and says, “So…do you remember exactly what happened last night?” The boy lowers his head and grips his left arm. “Not really…it…it felt like a bad dream.” “Can you tell me exactly what you remember?” asks the doctor. The boy hesitates, then says, “I-I remember…I woke up and was in my room, or…so I’m told, my sister…my sisters were there…they were so strange…they were morphing and changing, and they cried for help…I saw my father…he was the scariest thing in the dream.” The boy stops, but the doctor says, “Go on, it’s alright.” After a minute, the boy continues, “…he wanted me to burn with him, and then you came, after I called you, and he found out, so he tried to stop me…you saved me, and he…I don’t know what happened to him…after that, you told me I was safe…but you changed too…” The doctor nods and closes the file in his hands and says, “Is that all you remember?” “I…I remember when you called me, you said something about the pill you gave me…that it was for me…it would open my eyes to what was really going on.” Says the boy, then he frowns and says, “But…that was a dream too…right?” The doctor sighs and says, “No…I’m sorry, but everything you just told me wasn’t a dream.” The boy’s eyes widen as the doctor continues. “After the incident, while you were unconscious, the police came to investigate the scene…it appears this man, your “father”, had planned to commit the homicide for years, ever since your mother passed away…and, sadly, he succeeded in poisoning the minds of your “siblings” by who knows what…you were the only one who survived…the rest of your “family” died in the fire that destroyed the entire house, and your father, he was found dead in one of the holes near the house…he landed on the sharp edge of the shovel…but, the real thing that stood out, and also helped the detectives know that…what happened that night was an act of homicide…was that your “father”, he was training you all-or I should say-raising you all in a cult-like manner and was preparing you all for that event-the holes in the front lawn…they were suggested to be for you and your “family”, since the number of holes there were the exact number of people living in the house…I’m sorry that this happened to you…but sadly, all of this is true.” The boy looks into the eyes of the doctor, even though his own eyes were full of tears. “S-So…” he says, “…my family is dead?” “Either way,” says the doctor, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Were they ever your family at all?” “B-But,” says the boy, wiping his tears with his left hand, “They must have loved me…and my sisters…it wasn’t their fault…it…it was my father.” “He isn’t your father,” says the doctor irritated, “He was never your father, don’t you see-” Noticing the boy was getting tense, he pulls away and smiles as he says, “Anyway, that night, when you took the pill, it gave you a chance to escape before it was too late, so because of me, your alive…isn’t that interesting?” The boy blinks a few times, then looks down and says, “Yeah…I guess…” The doctor turns away and looks at his watch. “Well, what’d ya know, it’s time for you to go back.” He says, “I’ll see you later, but until then, I suggest you get plenty of rest, and try not to think about that night, okay?” The boy nods and as he is taken away again by his nurse, he notices that the folder the doctor was looking at, suddenly fell and landed near his feet. He picked it up to give back to the Doctor, until he saw something on it and stopped. His eyes went wide again as he saw the words on one of the tabs. '`Test Subject 8.24?” he says. The Doctor snatches it away and says, “Don’t look at that!” It was so sudden, and the Doctor said it so crudely, it frightened the boy. The Doctor’s angry face quickly was replaced with his normal expression. Pushing up his glasses, he says, “Ahem, excuse me for being a little…um…Miss Fawn will take you back now.” The nurse gently takes the boy’s shoulders and ushers him out of the room.

When they walk through the hallways, she stops and says, “I’m taking you to the cafeteria, I have to go and do something really quick.” She guides him to two doors and opens one of them, and lets him walk in. As he walks into the big room, he sees the hospital's cafeteria for the first time. Ms. Fawn ushers him to a table, and as he sat down she says, “I’ll be right back, just stay right here~.” When she leaves, he looks around the room. Many of the other patients there were either his age or younger. But all had a nurse by their side. He suddenly realized that most-if not all- the nurses didn’t wear caps like his nurse. Strange, he thought. He saw a young boy with his near on the right of the room. The patient was bald, probably was suffering from a horrible ailment and his nurse was holding onto his wheelchair that he was sitting in. They seemed to be talking about something, until the patient turned his head away. When he does, he looks directly at the boy. Then, suddenly, there was a flash, and the room turned dark and blood red around the boy. The patient that looked at the boy wasn’t the same as he was before. Instead, his skin was almost gone, leaving veins showing and muscle uncovered. His eyes didn’t change though, they stayed the same color, and stared straight at him. Just as soon as the vision appeared, in a blink, the room was back to normal, and the patient was the same as before. The boy panicked a little, questioning if what he saw was real or not. What was that?!, he thought, was it just my imagination? He turns away from the patient, but suddenly sees another. It was the girl he saw earlier, the one with the dark purple and magenta hair. She was sitting at a table, near the right side of the room, where the window light from above on the right wall was shining down on her, like a spotlight in the very well-lit room. She was reading a book, and tracing her fingers on each sentence she read. She looked frustrated and confused, but she never took her eyes off the book. After turning to the next page, the boy’s nurse comes back and says, “Alright, time for you to go back to your room.” As they get up from the table, he stops and asks the nurse, “Who’s that girl reading the book?” The nurse looks confused at him for a moment, but when her eyes follow his gaze to the girl, her kind expression turns ice cold. “That girl is nothing but a stain to this hospital…if I were her nurse, I’d…” She quickly looks away and puts a small smile on her face as she says, “Anyway, that’s not important…let’s get you to bed.” She pushes him away, but before exiting the cafeteria, he looks back at the girl. I wonder why the nurse said that about her…what could she have possibly done wrong? He leaves, and the nurse looks back as well, but glares at the girl, and then around the room. Then, for a moment, a smirk came across her face, as she slowly leaves and lets the door close behind her.

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When they reached his room, she made sure he was comfortable in his bed, and then fetched his food for him. He ate his bowl of chicken noodle soup, as the nurse walked around, tidying as much of the room as possible. She suddenly turns and says, “Are you done with your soup?” He eats the last salty cracker, and nods. She takes the tray away, but then turns back to him and asks, “When I return, would you like me to bring you back something to read or perhaps you want me to find a board game in the closet?” The boy gives her a small smile and says, “N-No thank you, I think I just want to rest.” She smiles and says, “Okay.” Miss fawn walks away, and closes the door behind her gently. The boy looks around the room again, and sees that something has changed about it. The original sheets and curtains were replaced, and that seemed somewhat normal to him. But as he continued to look around, something shiny caught his eye, and he looked down at the drawer near his bed. The drawer had a chain and padlock installed, making it impossible for him to open it. Why would they padlock a drawer…do they think I might hurt myself with something in there? He looks back at the window, and slowly gets out of bed, and walks to the window. When he pulls back the curtains, he sees a bright sun, shining down a dark forest, and green hills beyond that. He looks down, and sees he was far up, probably on the fourth floor. The street was empty and the parking lot was so far back that he couldn’t see how many cars there were. But then he sees something out of the ordinary. He sees these nurses coming out of the building.

As he watches, he sees them carrying stretchers and on those stretches…bodies, covered head to toe with a white sheet. They carry them past the street and past the dark forest, where there was an empty patch in the middle of the woods. He sees them lay the bodies down, and then bend down and tie rope around the bodies, making sure that the sheet over them doesn't slip off. Then, as the boy watched in fear, they carried the bodies and threw them in a big pile. What are they doing?!, he practically screamed in his head, as the nurses threw the last of them into the pile. They crowd back, and one of them lights a match. She lights her cigarette that she had with her, then throws the match into the pile. Instantly, the bodies go up in flames, as if they had soaked them in kerosine long before they carried them into the woods. As they walked back, he felt terrified, and couldn’t shake the feeling that what he saw was wrong. “A nice view, isn’t it?” asks a deformed voice, and the boy turns around sharply. He sees the nurse was right behind him, yet he didn’t hear her opening the door and walking in. She smiles, and slowly puts a hand on his shoulder. “So, did you see the forest, and those beautiful hills…this room was picked for you so you could see them.” Says Ms. Fawn, but her voice was not the deformed voice he had heard before. The boy smiles a little, but says, “Oh…um…yeah, it’s very relaxing…” He looks back at the window, noticing that the nurses were still there by the bodies. Hesitantly, he says, “M-Miss Fawn…why are those nurses burning dead bodies in the woods…I thought they just cremate them in the basement or something…” Ms. Fawn looks confused for a moment, then looks out the window. Her expression changes, but instead of showing fear, she smiles. “Oh…there’s nothing to worry about…”, she says, “Those were the ‘Special Patients’, and we take care of those in a different way than other patients.” “What do you mean?” asks the boy, turning back to the nurse. The nurse looks down at him, then leans close and says softly, “You see, there are many kinds of patients we have in this hospital…some who have family and problems doctors can fix-with those kind of patients, we send them back home…but some patients don’t have homes or families…nor do they have problems to fix very quickly or efficiently…so we take those patients and…well, keep them here to observe what’s really wrong with them.” It was now the boy’s turn to look confused, but the nurse ignored it and said, “Anyway, those patients are treated very well, like they were at home, and all they need to do is take a few pills or injections, no harm at all…” “But why did the nurses-” says the boy, but she interrupts and says, “Well, that’s just it…sometimes, medicine has it’s reactions, and since they’re tested with many types of medication, we can’t say whether it helps or not…and when it doesn’t…well, we just do what we have to do and…” The boy’s eyes went wide and she says, with a grin, “But, those patients weren’t the best…the ones we favor are the ones with the best results, reactions and-” She stops herself, and turns sharply to the bed. “I think you should be in bed by now, the Doctor says you need plenty of rest for tomorrow’s checkup.” She says, she turns back to him with a different smile, a smile less pressured and more relaxed. “Now, come on.” She says sweetly, taking his arm with a soft, yet firm grip.

He walks to his bed, gets in it, and just before he goes to sleep, the nurse suddenly says, “Oh, wait, I almost forgot something.” She walks over to the nightstand, and pulls out a key from her pocket. As she unlocks the drawer, he notices that she had placed a glass of water on top of the nightstand. When did she bring that glass…was it when she somehow came into the room without making a sound. She finally unlocks the drawer and pulls it out. She holds up a small plastic bag, and pulls out a small white pill. The boy’s eyes go wide when he sees the pill, and suddenly he starts getting flashbacks of the night before. Nurse Fawn looks at him with a little concern and says, “Is there something wrong, dear?” The boy closes his eyes and puts a hand gently to his head as he says, “Yeah…yeah I’m fine…” The nurse holds out the tiny pill to him, and then takes the glass in her other hand. The boy opens his eyes and looks down at the pill and water glass. He hesitates…then takes the pill, and plops it in his mouth, while taking the water as well. As he set’s the glass down, he starts to get very dizzy. The nurse walks over to the end of the bed, and grasps the bars with her strangely long fingers. “So…” she says, then the room lights start to flicker red. And when the lights finally went completely red, the nurse didn’t look the same. Her head was replaced with a deer head, and it was staring right at him. “How’s your head feeling? Are you alright?” she says, but her voice kept morphing and growing deeper. Just then, her neck started to stretch out, until her deer head was so close, the boy’s nose nearly touched the deer’s. “Um…I’m alright…” says the boy, knowing full well that it was a lie, and can’t tell if he’s tripping from that pill or going mentally insane. After a moment, the deer’s neck retracks and in a blink, everything, the room and nurse goes back to normal. Nurse Fawn smiles and says, “Well, just get some rest…it’s been a long day.” She walks out the door and softly closes it behind her.

That night, the boy couldn’t sleep. His eyes couldn’t be wider than they were right now. He thought about what the nurse said, the sudden vision of the deer and the other patients…the girl…the Doctor, everything seemed to swirl around in his head. He sits up, and looks back at the window. The moonlight was soft, but not as comforting as he expected it to be. He looked at the clock on the wall near the door. It ticks, but so softly, that you have to look at it to know it still works. It was almost eleven, and he hadn’t planned on going back to sleep. He starts to lie back down, but hears a strange noise near his door. The noise was like scratching, but instead of it scratching the door, it was scratching the tile floors near the door. A dark shadow walks past his door, and continues to scratch the floor as it walks further down the hall. The boy slowly gets out of bed, and puts on his slip-on shoes. He walks to the door, thinking that if he opens it, it would just be his nurse. He grabs the handle, and slowly turns it. The door opens, and he steps out. Everything seemed normal, and there weren’t any scratch marks on the walls or floors. It’s just my imagination…there are no monsters, no deer, no red lights…just my head playing tricks, he thought. He hears the scratching again and sees a dark figure slip away into another hallway. Half of his mind tells him to go back to bed, but his curiosity got the best of him. He walks down the hallway after the strange figure. Although fear was rising in him, he wasn’t going to let it get in the way of finding out who the figure was. As he walks to the end of the hallway and turns, he sees the figure close the door to the stairs. He runs over, opens the door, and walks up the stairs. He could hear the strange shadow figure continue to walk up the many stairs, but he couldn’t see who it was. When he followed the figure up the last few steps and through the door to another hallway, the figure suddenly vanished out of sight and the boy couldn’t hear it anymore. He felt lost now, without the figure to follow. How do I find my way back? He walks around, making sure he doesn’t wake any of the patients in their dark rooms. He sees a short hallway and walks in it, and sees that it leads to four closets. Two of the closets were on his right, one on his left, and one at the end of the small hallway. At first, he wonders why they would make a small hallway for only four closets. Suddenly, he heard the scratching noise again…but it was coming to the hallway he was in. Just as suddenly as the noise came, a hand grabs his arm and pulls him inside the closet on his left, and closes the door softly. There was a hand on his eyes and another on his mouth, but after a moment, the hand moved from his eyes.

The boy sees the person…it was the girl with the purple and magenta hair. The light from the blinds of the closet door shows most of her features, but mostly her hair color. She puts one finger to her mouth, signaling him to be quiet. Then she takes her hand away from his mouth. They both turn to the blinds, just in time to see the figure that came into the hallway. It was a nurse, with black hair in a tight bun and a cap on her head, like nurse Fawn. They couldn’t see her face, since she was facing another way. The nurse looks around at the closets, and opens one of them. She looks in, but closes the door softly. What is she looking for? She looks in the next closet, but closes it, and looks in the next. After closing that one, she finally turns to their closet. They see her face…but the lights go red again, like before. Her head was replaced with a mannequin head, and her hair was undone and her body seemed to be covered in dark slim. She walks closer to the door, holding an outstretched hand to it, the hand was covered in the dark slime that runs all over her body and drips from the tips of her fingers. The girl and the boy hold their breaths, waiting for the nurse to open the door. Just as the door handle turned, all of them heard a crash of glass far off from where they were. The nurse jolts up, looking away from the door. She runs out, and the red lights go away. They both sigh, but the girl continues to look through the blinds. “Hey,” whispers the boy, but the girl interrupts. “Shush,” she whispers harshly. She opens the door slowly, and peers outside. She turns back to the boy and whispers, “Okay, follow me and don’t get us caught.” Then, she takes his arm and pulls him out of the closet and through the hallway. She leads him through hallway after hallway, and only stops when she hears a strange noise. They find an empty room and hide behind the door. “Who-”, whispers the boy, but the girl covers his mouth again. “Shush,” she whispers, “I’ll explain everything later, when we’re not being hunted.” She takes her hand away from his mouth and then looks through the small opening. Through the crack between the edge of the door and doorway, she doesn’t see any figures pass by. She opens the door slowly and then turns to the boy. “Alright,” whispers the girl, “When we go out there, you have to follow my footsteps, they can pop out at any time, so don’t hesitate to hide.” “Why are you helping me?” asks the boy. “I can explain later.” whispers the girl, and she takes his wrist and pulls him with her out the door.