INSANE

【11】

I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart dropping into my stomach. No, I thought. No. No. Not again.

My legs tingled from under my weight as I ran silently over to a door on the left side of the hallway and tried to yank it open. Sure enough, it wouldn't open. Using the key in my hand, I stabbed it into the hole, but it took too long to unlock. I could now hear the nurses' footsteps.

"Shoot!" I whispered under my breath, running to a random dark room with a door that had been left open. This door wasn't like the ones on the patients rooms. It was a metal door that swung opened and closed regularly like a door you'd see in a house.

I shut the door slowly. As the door closed into place, it made a small clicking sound. Despite how quiet the sound was, the deafening quiet made it seem like somebody threw something on the floor.

As I walked over to a small table in the middle of the room and crouched beside it, I could hear the nurses' footsteps now closer than before. Please don't let them come in here, I begged to nobody in particular. Please, please.

My breath was quivering and my lungs felt tight. As much as I desired to breathe normally again, I knew it would make too much noise and it would most definitely give me away.

Those nurses are probably trying to check on me right now because of how Elizabeth and Harold never came back, I thought.

I tried to imagine what would happen if they caught me, but I knew it was too much to think about. If just thinking about the tortures that would occur to me mentally scarred me, I knew that if it actually was happening to me I wouldn't be able to survive. I'd eventually become the definition of insane. I'd join the house of insanity. This is nothing but pure insanity.

But maybe...

Maybe I'm already insane.

My thoughts were suddenly cut short as I heard myself starting to breathe heavier than before. It was a heaviness that could be heard from several feet away.

I stopped myself immediately and started to take long, silent breaths to stop my racing heart. But the heavy breathing didn't stop at all. It was the same slow, paced heavy breathing as before.

What... I felt nothing but the ever so familiar feeling of confusion as I held my breath. As hard as I tried to pay attention to the nurses outside the room, the breathing caught all my attention at once and wouldn't let it go.

As I held my breath, a sickening feeling hit me in the pit of the stomach.

The steady, deep, slow breathing continued.

My heart rate picked up speed again as pressure sailed up to my head from holding my breath. I let my breath go in a whoosh, my heart still banging inside my chest. I bit down on my tongue roughly as reality hit me straight in the head.

The breathing is coming from behind me, I informed myself. There's somebody else in the room with me.