Asylum

He crawled out from under the bed, fingers sliding across the cold, gray-tiled floor. His lips touched the cracks between each tile, his eyes: wide, vigilant, staring straight ahead at the peeling white wall across the room. The taste of dirt and dust were strong against his open, frozen mouth as he breathed the floor. When he reached the edge of the cavern, or the space between the ground and her bed, he stopped, holding his breath. Footsteps were heard down the hall, out his locked door. The pendulum of the old clock hanging next to the window clicked melodiously to and fro in a mesmerizing beat. Outside the window, the sky was gray and the sea surrounding the side of the institution was vengeful, knocking itself in gargantuan waves against the rocks below. It was a beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, ravishing sight to his darkened eyes.

"Mister Yuy!" There was a jingle of keys. He could tell, from the sound, that there were at least six or seven on the one key-loop. Four of those keys were three inches long. They were large keys, and were some copper, some a metal he couldn't define. The door lock cracked. The boy under the bed tensed, his body immobile, his mind in static. Two feet stepped in the room. They were white sneakers, very clean and almost shining. They were size ten and half; and judging by the socks, the shoes were too small for the feet.

"Mister Yuy." The boy under the bed made no sound. "Come out from under there or a nice big shot is waiting for you." The hate in the man's voice was thick, dripping. But the boy under the bed smiled a wide Cheshire cat of a grin despite his dire situation.

Suddenly, two hands reached down to grab the boy's shoulders. Jagged nails pierced into his skin as he was yanked out from under the bed, dragged across the floor. But he did not seem perturbed by the sudden and harsh movement.

"That's it, Mister Yuy, my boy. I've had enough of this, you stubborn little bastard." The man's face was wrinkled, and in yellowish color. An ugly man with black hair that was slicked back like grease, making the contours of his face look as sharp as knives. The drooping bags under his eyes, the thin lips, the unshaved chin, and piggish nose were his most prominent facial features. His figure seemed muscular and manly, but really it was all fat—but that was a requirement for his kind of courier: rotundity. "You worthless child, what are you doing under there? You're older than this. Insanity is no excuse for being babied around."

The boy was jolted up, and finally, able to be viewed at his proper physique. He was much taller than the short, pudgy man. He would have been considered handsome once in the trite views of society. But he was pale, far too thin, and his dark brown-black hair was chaotic and disheveled. His eyes were constantly wide, and a frightening shade of the deepest cobalt blue. Around his eyes were enchanting dark circles. His lips: plump and lovely, but colorless, nonetheless. The gray and dingy patient's uniform he was forced to wear did nothing in compliance. A simple long sleeved shirt, but his sleeves, torn off halfway, and an apron-like garment over that, dropping down to above his knees. Due to the cold environment of the institution, all patients were required to wear the long socks. His, though, were torn at the feet, with holes gaping widely.

The torn sleeves, though, were not done on his part. This same nurse-pig had torn off his sleeves earlier on that month, only to reveal beautiful crisscrossing paths of scars, old and new. When this was exposed, he only grinned wider. But the nurse had said, "Yuy, my boy," with that false sense of security, "you're in for another year."

But now, at this moment, this boy stared at the nurse with a maddening gaze. His voice, dark and almost mocking did he recite these words in a defying tone: "Whip-lash girl-child in the dark. Comes in bells, your servant, don't forsake him. Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart." He emphasized the last word with his lips, so close to the man, and then a grin. These were the only words he had ever spoken when he had been drafted into the institution. These words were soon figured to be the lyrics of a song—which all the boy would say to anyone, if ever he spoke. But all the while he recited those words, the man began dragging him out of the room in the midst of ‘girl-child,' and the boy's voice became louder, menacing. It was as if he was pleading his own redemption. But it was hopeless.

Down the fluorescent-lit hallway he was dragged, like a kicking and screaming child throwing a tantrum. And every inch he was pulled, his grin began to dim into an expression of desperate horror. His knees gave way, but the orderly-nurse kept dragging him onwards, deeper into the corridor. His voice was deafening as she screamed, "Severin!" over again and again and again. He tried to stop his moving; tried to keep his feet planted on the ground, to no avail. The orderly-nurse kept pulling him onwards—onwards to that darkened room at the end of the hallway. He began to choke on his sobs, shrieking "Severin!" wildly. But only one thought invaded his mind throughout this while.

The thought of what was to come afterwards.

"We think you'll be very fine here, Mr. Bloom," said a man with a crooked eye. He stared at the tall boy with his left, but seemed to stare at the young woman beside the boy with his right.

The young woman seemed on the verge of crying, but held herself strong, a hand on her brother's stiff shoulder. "Now, Trowa," she said as if in private, "I'll visit you—I'll visit you as much as the manager allows me, you know that."

The boy's eye that was not covered by his overgrown hair flicked over towards where his sister loomed at his side. He did not say anything, and it seemed as if he had no notion as to anyway. But the miss gave her stoic brother a limp embrace and a kiss on the cheek until she was led away by the man with the crooked eye. And so it was that Trowa himself was led away to his quarters by an obese nurse-orderly.

The farther down the corridor, the darker it seemed. The farther down, the dirtier it seemed. The farther down, the farther the world seemed to be sucked away from behind him. The doors from back there had windows—but the doors farther down, the complete opposite from where the man with the crooked eye led his sister, were barred, locked. And there was a man under one of the doors, seemingly sucking through the crack from under it—breathing the air as if the one inside his room was contaminated.

There were strange noises farther down. They chilled him, as if his limbs suddenly grew cold and he were unable to walk. He stopped suddenly, looking back. But the orderly grabbed hold of his arm and yanked him forward.

The touch sent a panic through him, and Trowa found himself on the verge of fainting before he coiled his arm back towards him, as if the touch burned his skin. The orderly did not question it.

His room contained only a bed and a single table with no chair. Upon the table lay a journal from the last patient that had stayed there. When Trowa looked behind him, he found the orderly gone and a stack of old clothes folded on the corner of bed. The tall boy sat down beside them and stared at the floor with slumped shoulders. One would have though he completely dejected—but what really was happening was nothing. Trowa Barton felt nothing.

Duo Maxwell's hair had been cut off. He had screamed all night in the cell, strapped down to the table, trying to thrash his body this way and that but to no avail. His life had finally been severed from him in that braid—which now was a mop of chestnut brown hair sloppily cut. There were bloodstains on his chest from where he had taken the scissors from the barber and cut the man's throat with it. Unfortunately, the man had not died, just spurted out blood from his neck and then Duo was sent to the room at the end of the corridor.

Now, the medicine had worn off. Throughout the night, he had vomited all the wretched substances in his stomach until he was positive there was nothing more in his body besides blood. He wanted to go back to his room. But he failed to realize that his screaming would get him no where.

Finally, letting his body fall limp against the cold metal of the table, wrists writhing just once more in their straps, he fell silent.

He remembered why they had cut his hair.

It was nothing but a night ago when he attempted to strangle the orderly with his braid when he was forced medicine down his throat to calm him down. Frankly, Duo hated it when an orderly would shove him against the wall and grab his throat, pouring the liquid into his mouth and forcing him to swallow because he had asphyxiated him. He also hated it when the man with the crooked eye would spontaneously change his dose in their needle-shots and he would hardly wake up from the daze weeks later feeling like an over-cooked vegetable.

He decided it had to end.

"That's right, the screw needs to move more laterally and intensify the temperature another thirty degrees." The man with the crooked eye pointed towards the oil-stained machine as the two other doctors adjusted the pressure, tightening the straps from where patient was strapped to the table.

The patient on the table was completely aware of them looming over him—more lucid and sane than he had ever been. When the screw came towards him, he saw straight into the crooked eye of the man, the screw seemingly to blend into the other man's face as it pressed down into his eye. There he was pinned down and he could feel more thoroughly than ever that another instrument bound his head to the strange chair he was strapped to. But not quite could he feel it the thing around his head… for it seemed to disappear…

With that realization of what was happening to him, and the hissing of the strange machine that took up the whole wall, the yellowish light shining down upon him, the Chinese boy bit his tongue so he would not scream.

But the screw above his left eye jammed straight up through his skin and into his brain from where the man with the crooked eye began to tap against the end of it, forcing it up and up and up until he could hardly feel anything at all. His right arm went numb and he realized that as the numbness spread throughout his whole body, wracked with pain from his skull from where the screw was lodged, that the numbness was his muscles contracting, coiling. Still, he was strapped to the chair.

If he were not, he would have convulsed to death.

A second later, he could have sworn he had been dead.

Until he screamed with his spasms and the yellow lamplight above him broke as if it was his voice that raised a tremendous vibration to shatter glass. The man with the crooked eye was thrown back—but of course Wufei Chang was not conscious of his surroundings since his mind was too preoccupied with other matters. The machine groaned and made a last hiss as the boy's voice died away and the huge oil-stained contraption crushed in on itself as if another element had taken force inside the room.

The empathetic blonde cried so hard he found his eyes dry and red and swollen just an hour later. In panting breaths, he tried to control himself, but knew it was futile. He could not control his mind, or his reactions. He could not predict them, nor could he remember how he, himself, acted. For his personality seemed to flick on and off and sometimes he'd find himself in blackness for hours until he would wake up with a prick of a needle.

Sometimes there was a boy named Quatre Raberba who was emotional and affected all-too-easily. Sometimes there was a boy named Quatre Raberba who was ruthless—like a soldier. Sometimes there was a boy named Quatre Raberba who was manic, and so intelligent that the doctors could not figure out how Quatre Raberba could forget about his intelligence just moments after his blackouts.

But there was always a Quatre Raberba that could feel others. He could not read their thoughts, but their emotions were as tangible as the ground below him. And he knew it. And he expressed that all should know it about him as well.

Little did Quatre Raberba know, as he clutched his head, pulled his hair, and cried and cried in his corner of the room like no one could hear, that they had altered it.

They had cut away the blonde hair that draped across the middle of his forehead. There was a bandage on there from where they had operated on him.

And all Quatre could do was cry out in pain from the throbbing in his head.

And the turmoil of the strongest of emotions he had ever felt in his life.

It was palpably tangible now.

The pain, which was not his own—but which leaked from the walls of the asylum, from room to room, patient to patient, their cries of sadness, grief, and madness was as real as it could have ever been. And Quatre not only felt it, he was now living it himself.

His head throbbed and pulsed with every ounce of pain.

They had operated on his brain. And he felt everything around him now. The asylum was like it was locked in madness. This insanity was not like a spurt of adrenaline or sugar. This asylum was of madness like a brutal drill as it burned away pieces of his brain.

Or opened other parts of his mind—or strengthening them to an unbearable degree.