THE MONSTER INSIDE ME (#ONC2024)

CHAPTER TEN: IN THE ASYLUM

This is how my present life began.

The asylum smelled of disinfectant and silence. White walls, white floors, white sheets—so clean it felt aggressive, as if the colour itself were trying to erase me. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, never turning off, never allowing shadows to settle. Prison had been brutal, but honest. This place pretended to be kind.

Still, it was better than a cell.

For the first days, they watched me constantly. They wanted to see if I would attack another patient, if I would scream, if I would bleed into the routine like a stain that refused to fade. I behaved. I followed rules. I spoke when spoken to. Inside, the demon whispered louder than ever, mocking my obedience, promising release if I gave in.

I didn't.

I fixed my gaze on the lights, on the tiled floor, on the rhythm of meals and medication. Structure weakened him. I could feel it. As long as I stayed here, as long as I endured, I survived.

They sent me to art therapy one morning.

When the therapist asked what I wanted to do, I said, "Paint," without knowing why. Perhaps the word escaped before the demon could stop it.

They gave me a canvas, brushes, paint.

I looked around the room. Some patients worked calmly, lost in colour. Others stared at their blank canvases as if waiting for permission to exist.

I began to paint.

I didn't think. I didn't plan. My hand moved as if it already knew what to do. Colour spilled across the canvas—violent, chaotic, alive. For the first time in years, my chest loosened. The demon fell quiet. Not gone. Just... listening.

When I finished, my hands trembled, but I felt something unfamiliar.

Relief.

Hope, maybe.

That's where I met Selby.

She stood out immediately—long hair, sharp brown eyes, a presence that didn't belong to the institution's dull geometry. There was sadness in her, yes, but also humor, curiosity, warmth. She felt real in a place designed to flatten people into diagnoses.

She approached me and said, "Hello. I'm Selby. Are you a spy for the asylum management?"

I glanced at her, wary.

"If I were," I said, "I wouldn't tell you."

She laughed—loud, unrestrained. Nurses stiffened, but she waved them off with an exaggerated grin.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm just meeting my new companion."

I returned to my painting.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Arabella."

"If we become friends," she whispered conspiratorially, "I'll tell you all the asylum's secrets."

I didn't believe her.

I accepted anyway.

Time passed. Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months.

They diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. Borderline personality disorder. Possible schizophrenia. Possible schizotypal personality disorder.

Possible. Always possible.

Selby warned me how to survive. "If you want them to leave you alone," she said, "tell them you're fine. Always fine."

Sometimes I succeeded.

Sometimes the demon appeared, and everything fell apart.

Once, during a painting session, I painted him.

That was a mistake.

He wrapped his hands around my throat. I remember pressure. Darkness. Nothing else.

When I woke, I was in my room. No one believed me. I screamed. I threw objects. I begged them to listen.

They sedated me.

When I woke again, hollow and slow, I understood something with terrifying clarity: no one was going to save me.

I would have to understand myself first.

They had changed my medication. I could feel it—wrong, invasive, flattening. I needed to know why. So I asked Selby for help.

She didn't hesitate.

The therapist left her tablet in the staff room.

Selby approached her, clutching her stomach. "Help," she cried. "Someone is coming to take me away."

The therapist rushed to her side.

I took the tablet.

My name glared back at me.

Arabella Dagon.

Diagnoses: PTSD. Borderline Personality Disorder.

Possible diagnoses: Schizophrenia. Schizotypal Personality Disorder.

Possible.

I returned the tablet before anyone noticed and went back to my room, shaking with rage.

They didn't believe me. They never would.

Visiting day came.

My grandmother arrived, as she always did—weekly, consistent, distant. We were almost strangers, bound by blood and silence. Still, I was grateful she came.

That day, she smiled.

"Arabella," she said, "I have good news."

I felt nothing.

"Someone is helping us," she continued. "We're leaving."

"Leaving where?"

"Ablington Island. Where I'm from."

"And my sentence?"

"You'll serve it," she said carefully. "But in a special mental institution. Better care. Better treatment."

"Who's doing this?" I asked.

She hesitated, then said, "Your uncle."

I stared at her.

"Ryan Dagon."

And just like that, the walls of the asylum stopped feeling like the end of the world.

They felt like a doorway.