Wakey wakey. The time to act is now.
The first thing to come back was… an eerie sense of familiarity.
The room around me was a bleak patient’s dormitory in St. Dymphna’s hospital. It was pouring rain outside, with an occasional outburst of thunderous crackling to shake the whole room.
Did I really hit my head that badly? I thought to myself as I looked around.
Yet before I could thoroughly inspect my surroundings, a caretaker came through the door, a clear glass of medicine in his hand.
The next, although seemingly new to me, was the actions of the exact same cycle that I had been ensnared in for weeks.
I forced myself to vomit the concoction. I ate breakfast. I met Bradley. I attempted to escape. I made the same decisions, again and again.
Yet one small change would release me from my prison. A single difference that broke the infinity loop. It started as I began running from Hughes’ room, him moaning and crying behind me.
I had just barely escaped the black eternity that consumed my surroundings, and then I stood in the cold dark hallway, candlelight just ahead of me. There was nowhere to hide, and there was no reality in which I returned to the black depths behind me. I was about to be caught, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Resigning myself to my fate, I waited for the guard to see me. That he did, but something seemed wrong…
The guard was an ugly, snarling, and large man. Something about him was simply off.
Whilst everything in the hospital felt eerily familiar to me, this man was foreign. Out of place.
In a moment, he had run down the corridor and grabbed me by my collar. The entire situation was new and shocking. I almost felt safe in the strangely nostalgic actions I took, but this was completely different. With little resistance given, I was drug back to my room and thrown on the old wooden floor.
Pushing myself up, I spoke. “No need to be rough… I won’t do it again.”
At that moment, there was a singular sentence that would break the spell. One string of words to fracture the sequence. The large and gruff man scoffed, saying. “Right. Tell that to the bloke you got fired.”
I stopped as I got on my knees, taken aback by his response. After a brief pause, I questioned. “Wait… Was this not the first time?”
The guard glared at me as if I were an imbecile. Only stating. “No… but it better be the last, or else.”
Without another word, the guard slammed the door shut, leaving me to contemplate the enormity of what I had just learned.
If that was not the first time I had been caught in the hallway, then why could I not remember it? What wiped all recollection of these endeavors?
It was at that moment I realized that more medicine had to be on its way, and by whatever means, I would be forced to keep it ingested.
With quick thinking, I decided I had to leave a message for myself. First I searched the shoddy desk at the far side of the room and found nothing but a bent ink pen. Taking it, I thought the best option was to leave tally marks for myself to find later.
Raising my mattress up, I saw the cruel fate of my previous selves. The dozens of notches already inscribed in the wood…
Then, I heard the creaky door begin to open. Frantically throwing my mattress back into place, I awaited the caretaker. As expected, he came in with a frustrated expression and a new glass of medication.
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I tried to act as natural as possible and waited for him to hand me the cup. He did, and I drank as there was no other option. I felt sick, and my frame continually pushed against itself, wishing that I could vomit the vile mixture.
The caretaker took that option out of the running as he locked the window. After that, he snatched the cup from my hand and strode out the door, locking it as well.
I was trapped, and I could already feel the medicine taking hold. Whatever had happened before, I knew that the tally marks did not work. I had to devise a new strategy, and quickly.
It was troublesome standing, as my balance had already been completely stripped by the effects of the drug. Nevertheless, I successfully endeavored to the window. Looking at it, I saw that there was no way I could open it without breaking it, and if the caretaker saw that I had broken the window, I would be in an even more dire situation.
There was nothing I could do to rid myself of the mind-altering prescription. The only option left was to leave myself a message… One I knew I could not ignore…
Moving from the window itself to my blurry reflection in the glass pane, I grasped tightly to the ink pen in my hand.
There was but a final hope…
Wakey wakey. The time to act is now.
What first came back was… a searing pain in my abdomen.
I weakly rose from the bed. It was softly raining out, and the sun had yet to rise.
The room around me was familiar. A patient’s dormitory in St. Dymphna’s hospital.
Did I really hit my head that badly? I thought to myself. Yet, as that sentiment passed through my mind, I dismissed it. My head did not hurt, yet my stomach did.
Raising my shirt, I saw an array of brutish lacerations; ones which I did not recall receiving on the boat.
My head spun as the thoughts inside danced with the woozy aftertaste of whatever drugs I had been put on for my recovery. With how hazy my vision was, I could not very easily inspect the cuts, especially not in the dark. What I could tell was that the gashes weren’t deep, leading me to believe that they were not made to inflict pain. There was no other logical explanation for it, though, as it was simply a nonsensical jumble of marks.
Unsteadily getting to my feet, I surveyed the room. Since the sun had yet to rise, the dormitory was overcome with shadow, which made the most important task finding a candle.
I hobbled to the desk at the far side of the room. Groping the top, I found nothing. In each of the drawers, there was yet again nothing. I was not yet satisfied with my search, though, as I eased onto my knees and checked underneath.
What I found was a bent ink pen. It had rolled to the wall, and upon picking it up I had noticed a strange crust on the tip. Upon further inspection, I finally realized it was dried blood.
I looked back down to my abdomen. Those cuts were not made by just anyone. I made them.
Why could I not recall hurting myself? Why did I inflict those wounds in the first place?
I stood, continually trying to make meaning from the nonsensical marks. My eyes frantically searched the room, finding no further clues… that was, until I witnessed my own reflection in the dark windowpane. The cuts made no sense when viewing them myself, but in the mirrored image of the glass, it spelled a single, simple, word.
B E D
That was enough to send me straight to the sunken mattress I had awoken in just minutes earlier.
I looked beneath the bed, to no avail. Behind the headboard, to find nothing. I stripped every sheet and cover from the mattress, only to find pristine white. Finally, I raised the mattress and checked the frame below, and at last I saw what I was meant to. Dozens of tally marks, all helping me piece together a singular puzzle.
I had been in that hospital for longer than expected, and I was certainly not friends with the personnel.
The only person I could hope to shed a light on what had happened would be my mother, although I knew that I had most likely come to that conclusion before. If I did the first thing that came to mind with no alterations, I would surely wind up exactly where I had started… I had to think of something I knew I would not have tried before…
I was never a fan of the dark, especially not after my entrapment under the murky river floor. With that amount of self-awareness, I guessed I had not tried to navigate the floors under the cover of nightfall. Whatever had erased my memory most likely came from the caretakers that roamed the halls, and there were far fewer of them making the rounds at night. The dark may have worsened the watchful eyes in the shadows, but at the very least it staved away the roaming guards.
Taking a deep breath, I moved my attention to the door of my room. As expected, it was locked from the outside.
I was lucky, though. Although I did not remember what had happened since I was imprisoned in the hospital, I did remember the events that took place before it.
Emilia and I broke into the one patient’s room when we were searching for stolen narcotics, and with that, she had showed me how to break the lock.
Same as before, I twisted the handle the opposite direction and pushed as forcefully as I could. It took a great deal of effort, but same as before, the wooden mechanisms inside the door began to splinter and crack. After a loud pop, the door came free.
Only me, an endless black abyss, and answers.