My Nightmare Disorder

Chapter 1

I'm in a hospital. Clearly. The repulsive smell - that I know surprisingly all too well - flows through my nostrils and suffocates me. I hate this place. I realise after a minute or two I still haven't opened my eyes. Slowly, I dare open my eyes, which - seeing as how hard that is - appear to be glued. After a bit of unsticking (also known as blinking repeatedly), I manage to open them and simultaneously they are blinded by a harsh white light glaring right at them. Only when I realise that I'm on a stretcher do I thrust myself upward, over the bed rails and out of the cot. Instantly I am surrounded by four pure white walls. They completely invade my privacy and seemingly intrude my body. I look around and to my surprise, the room I'm in has absolutely nothing else inside. No electrocardiographic heart monitor, no couch, no window even, no phone or TV. This is a strange hospital.

I start to stand up and out of nowhere my brain just switches off but not my body. I continue exploring, but my brain doesn't take in everything. I see the number of my room: 306. I'm then wandering through god-knows-which-abandoned-hallway and the more I walk the more my brain daydreams. One minute I'm thinking of eating mango ice cream and the next I want to jump in a lake. My mind is fuzzy and messy right now. That happens often so I'm not too worried. I continue walking subconsciously. I'm sure of it, I can see my legs moving, though I don't feel them. I probably walk through several halls and poke my head through numerous rooms (which are ALL empty, from my poor memory) before I come to a halt.

Faster than you could snap your fingers, poof, my head re-focuses on my visit in this hospital. I "open" my already open eyes and take a deep look at my surroundings. I have no idea how to get back to my hospital room. I'm lost. I think rationally: "Oh well, it's not like there was anything there to begin with". My only goal now is trying to find an exit out of this hospital - which, by the way, is looking less and less like one. Suddenly, I feel a breeze (probably from a window, but which one? There are none.) and turn to the direction it's coming from. I run that way because suddenly now I'm worried about what's happening. Reality comes crashing down on me like a bomb - I know it's cliché to say that but there really isn't a better description.

I look for some kind of sign - to tell me where I'm going, where I am, and where I've been - but there are none. Zero. Can you believe that? In a hospital, NO SIGNS?! That's the moment where I really saw something was going on, but I didn't still didn't react. I turn to a corridor and suddenly I'm faced with a fork. Oof. (ALERT! cliché coming up:) Relief washes all over me. Now, I'm not in any kind of fear because whenever I cross a fork, I always go left, it's sort of my motto, you could say. I've always preferred odd numbers and things that were contradicting, and for me, the left side just screams "ODD" more than the right.

While turning left and going through yet another hall, I think of myself (because what better thing to do when you're alone) and wonder: who am I really? If truth be told, I have no idea who I am deep inside myself. I'll try to give you a quick summary of the shallow basics: I'm called Enrique, I'm from a big city, I like all the colours, and I'm gender fluid. When you think of my description, am I really that interesting to you? I don't think so. Which is why I often wonder if there is more to myself than I realise, which is why, back to the question, I often ponder: who am I really? I'm a stupid human who participates in global warming, likes cacooning themself in their room and finds pleasure in eating popcorn on rocks in front of the ocean. Am I that special? I honestly am not. And that's not sad, it's a reality I've long ago accepted, but what bothers me now, is why the hell do I even exist if I am of no use to anything or anyone (apart from destroying this planet)? I forgot to mention I like philosophy.

I genuinely use all my brain power to stop myself from spiralling down into these profound thoughts and try to concentrate on where I am. I'm now in a different building - I assume this (weird) hospital is composed of multiple structures. I've got no idea when I changed buildings, but I'm definitely not in the same one, since the walls here are now a disgusting, dirty, off-white colour. I just walk forward and whenever there are multiple options I always go left. After probably a dozen minutes (understand that I haven't lost count, I've just never been counting), this brings me to a dead end. I am now in a hallway that ends with one room. This is apparently the room destiny brought to me. I slowly but surely advance toward the room. What's the worst that could happen? Well actually, I could die, but that's not the scariest right now, I don't know why. Maybe because I'm still under the shock of this whole situation and my brain is still switched off. No, the scariest thing in this moment is going inside the room and seeing people I know. For some reason that's all my brain is concerned about. Not worried about a murderer, a dead person, an electrical chair, a shark tank, no, no, just seeing people I know. Did I mention I'm strange and introverted while being extroverted?

Anyway, I nevertheless walk to the room at a steady pace and soon enough I'm in front of the door. It still hadn't hit me that it could be locked. I try to open the door but it's locked! How did I not expect this?! I take a pin from my pocket (because yes, you never know when a time like this can pop into your life and relentlessly try forcing the little but now distorted piece of metal through the keyhole. It just didn't occur to me that I could've turned around and left this hallway. This patently doesn't work, it only does in movies (sorry to break it to you), so instead I use the little amount of force I have left to shove and thrust myself into the door. No surprise. It doesn't work. Now at this point, I'm pretty invested in getting into the room, because I've been trying for a while, I couldn't possibly just give up now. So I look around me for a bit, on a quest to find something to demolish this door. I find a piece of metal on the wall. It looked somewhat solid, and stronger in any case than me, so I rip it out. Straight up, rip it out. I do take a chunk of the awful off-white paint along with the metal piece, but that doesn't even matter at this point. With brisk moves, I plunk the metal through the gap in between the door and the wall, on the mortise plate. I sort of move it around and wriggle it. It works. The latch that was locking this damned door is now pushing itself inward, and consecutively unlocking the door. Fortunately, the deadbolt is not locked, and I quickly rush to the handle and open the door. I'm in! A brief look around tells me I'm alone, luckily. I only see a table, which raises my suspicion. Absolutely nothing but a table, which is quite small, might I add. Naturally, I adventure toward it and I see a single fortune cookie resting on it. Out of curiosity I crack it open, and my mouth drops open in shock while my eyes get so big they could explode. The paper I'm holding in my hands says: "Go to the tattoo parlour across this building. Now. Keep this message in your left pocket.". What. The. Heck. Is. Happening. I'm not an expert in the fortune cookie domain but I can assure you I've never seen a fortune cookie like this. They are not supposed to know anything about you and where you are because you pick them randomly. They are not supposed to tell you what to do. This isn't normal. Far from it. However, despite my rising fear, I do want to see if there actually is a tattoo parlour across this hospital. So I do just that. I quickly crumple the note into my back left pocket and leave this now apart-from-the-table empty room.

I slowly jog, now urgently trying to find an exit. This jog turns into a bit more of a run after five minutes of getting nowhere. I'm now running as fast as I can, which really isn't that fast, until I see a dot faraway which looks like the sun. Oof. That's a relief. I stop. I drop my head forward and rest my hands on my knees. I pant like a dog for a minute or two then I slowly stroll to the direction of the dot. It gets a bit bigger with each step I take, obviously, because I'm getting closer to it. Finally when I'm about to exit this hospital and go through the glass door, I realise something. This whole time, the weird empty and abandoned hospital hadn't been a "normal" hospital, it was a mental hospital! Also known as a psych ward!

This realisation makes me stop functioning: I grab the door handle just as I faint but my hand slips and I still fall onto hard, ugly white and cold ground. I should've left earlier.