Before Your Eyes

Mystery Of The Saint

I'm dead. I'm just still breathing, still beating. Any moment after the next will be my last. It is out there, I hear the floorboards groan in their despair as the mass pulls itself around. It's outside my door, outside my window. I locked the doors and shoved whatever I could summon the strength to push in its path. The creature out there, it hungers. Hungers for the skin on my bones and the blood hidden away inside. It smells of my fear which lingers over me in this dark abyss. I felt around, but all I grasped was my fallen tears which silently swept from my eyes. I hear it again, this time at the window. It screams through the wind, forcing its way inside. I await for the light. Not the light of the dawning day or hope in headlights. I wait for the light of The End, To take me to its embrace. Yet I still lay here, brave as a corpse and colourful as a crow.

It's inside, I hear it now and I see the whites of the eyes pierce my heart. Holding my breath, I close my eyes and wish for it all to stop, here and now. "Make it quick" I thought to myself, pleading to my unholy executioner. The very floor seemed to bend under the weight of shadows being pushed in by the towering walls. Only an inch or two away from my face now, It's found me, I'm sure of it. I brace my body to withhold my panic, but it's surging through my body, swirling in an uncontrollable mass. I scream, and the light surrounds me next, holding me in its arms. There are voices, five or seven of them, speaking in concord with one another. The light fades back and I long to follow, however I find myself chained to a bed. The two men at my bedside mumble and mutter sounds of satan, the nurses are no different. One of them shares a glance with me, quickly shifting moods to be 'light hearted'. She doesn't want to be here and when I realise where 'here' is, neither do I. The beeps come to my memory next, the unforgettable chimes of death plucking the chords of your life. The doctor leans over me, placing his hand adjacent to my head. " It's okay, Just another hallucination Ms.Dyer." That's when I remember what horrendous trick reality is. I'm just crazy. My name is Lilia Beth Dyer, a mental ward patient, diagnosed with schizophrenia. What seems real, probably isn't. I've laid waste here for more years than my fingers can clutch. But this year will be my last. This year I will break through to my life. 

Time slipped away like sand in the wind and all too soon the beeps blurred their screeches into the back of my mind. I felt futile staring at the ceiling's desolate shades of white as they all slowly merged together to make one vacant tone. I waited for something to happen, anything. I waited for my eyes to spawn their monstrosities, amalgamations of my imagination. Nothing changed, walls didn't turn to flesh and my bed posts did not grab at my hair. There was little for my mind to cause havoc in a barren pale room. The only deviancy of colour was the mould sprouting in the corner of the room, barely covered by the falling wallpaper.

Every five minutes or so, the whispers echoed through the vent by the door and no matter which voice was heard, every conversation seemed unnatural. I shuttered my eyes to focus on the sounds around me, eagerly waiting for recreation. Amongst the sounds of ageing wall fans, crippled radiators and wings of an ill-fated fly, two voices stood out to me. I could tell from their docile tones that they were both men entering their late forties. One fumbled their words , possibly through a thick beard and the other had almost perfect pronunciation. From what I could make out, this is how the conversation went. "She had another episode! What do I pay you for? Your job is to prevent and cure her!" The mumbles turn into rage, filling his associate with trembling agitation. Stuttering and slurring most of his words, "But sir, we can't completely get rid of her visions! We've only been able to ease a few insignificant ones." My ears pricked and I listened closer. "We have been assigned one duty, to subdue and contain, without raising suspicion. If I had it my way, she would have disappeared! The chairman already cleared up our sister facility due to their mistakes, it'll be us next if we are to fail." Both voices stopped in that instant but their footsteps approached my door. With each thud that drew nearer, my heart beated in disjunct rhythm, accelerating with each pace. The door slowly swung open, the creeks of the hinges daunting my mind. The two men towered as juggernauts over my damned bones. I blinked and that's when I froze. My hands clenched my bed sheets, my legs squirmed trying to escape. My breath ceased and my eyes shook. My spine shivered despite its warmth and my stomach churned. I felt empty for a brief second staring at my tormentation. The skin on the doctor's face seemed to have almost melted away like hot iron creating cradles under his jaw and eyes. His head jocked to the side, gazing through me like a ghastly wendigo. His eyes were a green-yellow bloodshot with lifeless pupils of pure darkness where no life resided. I turned my head away, only to find the other man melted too. They shared this monstrosity but for the other, his eyes had departed from him, leaving a forgotten fountain of trickling blood. My breath returned to me, entering and leaving at random, leaving my control. The larger of the two, trying to remain calm in front of my view, snatched his hand on the side of my head. His hands were cold as the brittle winter as he turned my head hooking his fingers on my jaw. My body was tense, my face was that of fear. The doctor from out of his coat hauled a syringe with a grotesque medicine and pierced my neck. As the medicine drained from the instrument and into my body. My mind, body and soul feel weak, my eyes struggled to stay open with my strength dwindling until darkness shrouded me. Upon reawakening to my familiar dystopia, the faces that hung above me returned to normal. They looked at one another and left without saying a word.

It's time now, time for a brief taste of freedom. I'm released from my restraints and escorted through the dingy halls of my prison. Each time my feet land on the floor feels different. A thin mist covers every crevice, shading the light and turning whites into mixtures greys. It's blank, not the decoration, the people or lack of people. The walls occasionally had a burst of colour with the odd painting here and there, but the people were gone. No doctors roamed and nurses were none. Even the main lobby was desolated without a single visitor,therapist or trainee. This was peculiar of course, from what was to be heard in my room, there were plenty of staff and visitors alike which roamed the halls. The guard escorting me fastened his pace, shoving me alongside him. Through the door we went, but nothing changed. In place of the welcoming blues which enlightened the world above, the grim skies took their toll. Fog embedded the plain, the trees lost their green, their oranges and reds. Looming over me like an elongated figure, they stood barren, but something loomed over them and I both. 'Saint Pierce's Institute For The Mentally Ill'. Named after a man who slayed the devil, but left him to heal here in the cloaks of night. "Welcome to your retribution, rest and recuperation to your new life!" There was nothing welcoming at all about this place. From entering you can pick apart the deceit. The gates are reinforced steel, seasoned with barbed wire to keep us in or keep them out.The building itself stood at three storeys high with a grand bell tower. In photographs from days gone by, this building was well kept but I arrived at ruins. Vines crawled across the crumbling brickwork and not even the hail's great force could ring the bell. Windows were blacked out too.

Everyone warned us about the monsters you meet outside. Everyone was wrong. The monsters exist inside, inside our heads and inside our homes. Outcast, demon, monster, it's all the same in the public eye. Call someone a monster and the world turns on them like a savage cat. Who's the monster then? I was. I saw things so they sent me away to be 'cured'. I was to be the next miracle of medicine. They can't cure what's in my head, my memories, my living nightmares. They've run tests on me for the past twelve years. Since I was seventeen, I've been abandoned here to live and to rot. I've been here so long, I have no memory of what it was like outside, what it was like to live and not just be a breathing body. When I thought about it more, the more I was missing. No childhood, No sweet sixteen, No school or college, No job, No family, Nothing. Nothing is what I had abundant. Something didn't fit, I've been trying to build a puzzle using the wrong pieces. Something doesn't add up. A piece is missing from both puzzles, mine and Pierce's. Lucky thing I don't mind a bit of detective work.