Chapter One
I jerked awake, quickly sitting up. Sweating, shaking, nauseated.
Where the hell am I? I tried to turn my head to look around but each movement I took stung and burned; my throat was itchy and parched. I put my hand on my throat and felt something odd; something like a piece of a gauze.
God; where am I? My eyes began to focus on my surroundings; a completely white room and I mean completely white; there wasn’t a speck of colour in the entire room.
What the fuck? I tried to get up; however, I was stopped by a hoard of wires apparently attached to the entirety of my body. Everything hurt, absolutely everything. The room spun and I stumbled, hitting against the bed I was lying on before.
Okay. Maybe that was a bad idea getting up. I told myself and shuffled slowly back to the bed, lying down cautiously, still unaware of where the hell I was. A sudden knock at the door startled me and I bolted up again, the wires cluttering around me.
“Yes?” I hoarsely said. The door opened to reveal a doctor, obviously aged, and a nurse much younger, probably mid-20’s. It was the doctor, who spoke first,
“You must be wondering where you are, hm?”
“Kind of,” I snapped at him. I was upset and anyone who talked to me would more than likely feel the barbed wire that was my tongue.
He chuckled, like shit like this happened all day every day. “Well Violet, you happen to be at Cedar Wood Juvenile Psychiatric Hospital”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…” I muttered to myself. This couldn’t be happening.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” I tried to shout.
“Get out! Get out!” My throat was burning fire red; my head was being pummeled by the voices in my head. Screaming, screaming, never ending. My mind was being assaulted by a hail of bullets, each shot exploding into a million little thorns, which ripped and teared and bled. I clambered off the bed, tearing at wires as I blazed a path for the doctor and nurse, whose figures had become blurred behind my streaming tears.
“Get the fuck out!” I tried to shout again and pushed at the two, surprisingly forcing them out of the door. As it slammed shut, I fumbled to shove anything, something, against the door. The best I could do was a chair, the table at the end of my bed and the chart carrying IV bags and shit, before I fell to the ground.
And blacked out.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Suddenly, I was back in my dark bedroom. I shook my head and closed my eyes, sighing deeply. My hands began to slowly stop shaking, I was slowly returning back into my (hellish) head.
Thank God. I thought to myself and flicked my bedside lamp on. I could feel the light course through my body, cleansing me of the nightmare that I just had. Well, I wouldn’t even call that a nightmare; that was more like a fucking psychotic episode.
I haven’t had one that vivid before.
See, the thing is I can deal with the urges and voices when there’s light around. The minute I turn off that bedside lamp of mine it’s like someone released the floodgates of Hell. I begin to shake, my skin begins to itch and burn and I can’t go a minute without wanting to drag a blade across my flesh. To be quite honest, it’s more a production than anything as most nights I don’t even get as far as pulling them out. Tonight, however, was a totally different story. Clearly, I had every intention of cutting before I had had that episode. The glint of my blades caught my wandering eye and I snatched them up off the floor, closing my hand around my salvation.
