Watch Your Back

Chapter 3

Aaron found himself moved to the living room, seated between his nervous parents. His dad turned to him and cleared his throat.

"Aaron... We need to talk about what happened in the asylum."

Aaron nodded and braced himself for the horrors coming out of his father's mouth.

"People who were taken into the asylum were... Well, they were 'troubled'." Aaron's mom smacked his arm. Obviously she didn't want Patrick to sugarcoat anything. So he continued.

"Okay, they were insane. Crazy. Mentally unstable. People didn't know how to deal with them, so the townsfolk petitioned to build a local asylum on the hill. The people who were thought to be insane were taken from their homes and locked up." His dad looked at him with nervous eyes.

"That's it?" Aaron knew there was more, and his morbid side was getting the best of him. Since that morning, he wanted answers more than ever, and he didn't want to be kept in the dark anymore. It seemed that his mom thought the same.

"Aaron, the people in the..." She didn't want to say the word "asylum". "...mental hospital were treated without any remorse." Dawn glanced at her husband, a motion for him to continue the gruesome tale.

"What they did to the residents was...unforgivable. They hired the worst surgeons and nurses to work in the building and try to decipher what made them so...so..."

"Different?" Aaron suggested. His mom gave him a disapproving look.

"...unique." His dad finished. "There were all kinds of tools used to directly inflict torture on the poor patients. Have you ever heard of the tale of Mary Cutner? She was a young woman who was a proclaimed serial killer. As to her demise, she went insane and was swept away without another word. All kind of things were done to her. She was scalped, dissected, tortured, and was given a food and water supply far from adequate. Though her diet was horrendous and the pain was excruciating, she survived for three years, being forced to live every day in that hell, with the monsters that tortured her. Some still say that the people that disappeared were taken to the asylum and tortured." His dad looked at him with hesitant eyes, awaiting a response. Aaron was taken aback. This was not what he expected. Instead of extinguishing the flames of his morbid curiosity, this terrifying tale fanned at the fire even more. This legend had become a modern-day mystery, and Aaron had more questions than answers.

Aaron continued the day shrouded in mystery and confusion, and he was all too happy when it was time for him to go to bed. But Aaron did not want to sleep. When he no longer heard his parents messing with the sheets or blanket, Aaron quietly positioned his laptop on his lap and pulled the covers over his head. He clicked on the internet browser, and Googled the town's historic asylum. Aaron clicked on a link to a website about the building in question. His tired eyes quickly darted across the page as the screen cast an eerie glow on his face and his blue blanket. The website was apparently recent, so there was new information every week. He read of about five different women missing from the town, only to be found dead and hanging in town the week after. Before he knew it, the clock on his laptop read 11:32 pm. Aaron was surprised that he had been online for over two hours. He quickly shut his laptop and turned his alarm clock on for the next morning.

Aaron quickly awoke and found himself strapped to a cold, dirty metal gurney. There was a rusty lamp shining in his face, but he couldn't see anything else. He heard the twinkling of a music box playing... Was that "Ring Around the Rosie"?! What the hell was happening?! Aaron struggled against the yellowed straps when he heard a deep voice.

"Don't struggle, my doll. You will never escape." Aaron wildly looked around until his eyes settled on a shadow in the corner of the room. Who the hell was that guy?! What did he want?! Aaron was frightened and confused, and wanted to leave where ever he was.

"Who the hell are you?!" Aaron's voice sounded high and scared, like it wasn't his own. The man seemed calm and content.

"Don't worry Skyler. I will take care of you." The mysterious man responded.

Skyler?! Who was Skyler?! Aaron looked down at his hands and gasped. His hands were now slender, and the nails were green and chipped. His legs were long, and his waist curved in to form hips. He had on a blue shirt with black short shorts. Aaron felt nauseated, like he was going to throw up.

"Who the fuck are you, and what the actual shit is going on?!" Aaron now sounded like a teenage girl, and he looked to his right to see long brown hair spilling off the gurney. He turned his attention back to the man in the corner.

"Please be calm, Skyler. Or may I call you Skye? I hear you have been having hallucinations lately. I can fix that." The man stepped forward to reveal himself. Aaron gasped at what he saw. The man in question had on a long white lab coat that was stained in blood. He had cracked, skinny glasses, and had stubble. But the most confusing part: His hair. His hair grew like tufts of grass from a terrible lawn mowing accident. It sprouted wildly from his head and was amazingly purple. As purple as an iris, and it looked like he had just dyed it. Had he? The man looked insane, but as far as Aaron knew, this man could be another prisoner in wherever he was. Aaron was thinking about bargaining to escape when the man pulled a rusty scalpel from his coat pocket. Aaron froze up completely. What is he going to do to me?! Aaron thought as the man approached the right side of the gurney.

"Now, let's fix you up so those nasty visions will go away...' The "surgeon" looked at Aaron and frowned. "...it looks like your eyes are disproportionate. But don't fear, my doll! I will fix these problems!" The man stepped forward and placed two fingers on Aarons forehead and with one slow motion he expertly cut into Aaron's forehead. Aaron felt a sharp pain where the man had cut and a stream of warm blood trickled down his nose and onto his chin. Aaron squeezed his eyes shut and winced at the feeling of the razor sliding down his face until it reached the bridge of his nose. The mysterious assailant then gently closed Aaron's eyelid and began to cut along the soft skin of the top of his eyelid. The vision of Aaron's right eye blurred as his attacker bore a leering grin on his face. The man soon finished cutting his eyelid and...