Welcome to The Mad House

We're all mad here.

I watched as the newest patient walked through those dreaded wooden doors, the eerie creak of the panelling scraping against the cold, tiled floor sending shivers down my back. It always did. Everything in this place did.

I watched as he lugged his heavy suitcase towards the desk, how the stone faced receptionist talked to him with such a fake façade. How they didn't treat me like him. Like them. Like anyone else.

We're all mad here.

Covering my face with my overgrown mop of straw-like hair, I turned away as he came my way. Luckily for me he didn't notice me. They never do.

Dragging my bruised feet up the staircase, I found my room, my only place of rest where I could truly be myself. No one could watch me here. No one could look at my plans. No one could be scared of me.

As I looked around at those walls which trapped me in sweet confinement, I found something written on the walls. Something red. Blood.

But no one was allowed in my room. No one dared to come in. Maybe the voices in my head were real, how they always told me those three words.

Don't kill me.

Don't kill me.

Don't kill me.

It was written on my walls, again and again and again.

The words haunted me. They were stuck in my head. But the voices weren't frightening or scary; they sounded scared. Vulnerable. As though they were telling me not to.

But I wouldn't kill anyone. I'm just mad.

We're all mad here.

The voices kept getting louder. And louder. And louder. I tried to get them out. So I chanted them, loud and clear.

But they stayed in my head. When I was awake. When I was asleep. They haunted my dreams, and all I could see was a figure in the distance, pleading me to stop. Over and over again.

Don't kill me.

Don't kill me.

Don't kill me.

Suddenly awaking, I heard footsteps outside my room. It was too late; the Matron had already said lights out.

Trying to get back to sleep, I couldn't shake the voices. The footsteps. The small sound of something dripping, like raindrops. Heavy raindrops. Red raindrops.

And then I heard a knock on the door. Loud and clear. Three times. It was sudden, quick, as if they needed help.

Unlocking the door, I found it was the new boy. He looked frightened, extremely frightened, trying to catch his breath.

'Don't kill me!' He shouted at me suddenly. 'Don't kill me!'

His voice sounded like the scared voices in my head.

'I won't kill you,' I said, puzzled. 'Why would I kill you?'

'You were the one who was going to kill me!' He pointed, taking a knife from his pocket.

I hid behind my mattress, trying to stay alive. This is what this place does to you.

We're all mad here.

'I was here,' I protested.

'You were out there!' He shouted still, raising the knife.

Throwing it at my shoulder, I was pinned to the wall, my thin dress holding me up there. I could feel blood trickling from where the knife was, dying the wall red.

Dying.

He advanced towards me and took another knife from his overalls.

'I will kill you before you get the chance to kill me,' he growled, pressing the knife into my arm.

I tried not to scream. I tried to run and hide. But it was like I couldn't move, like something was holding me back.

'Don't kill me!' I screamed in pain. 'Don't kill me!'

And then it became all so clear. The voices in my head. There were only two, crying for help. They were us, screaming at each other.

We're all mad here.

The harsh metal dug further and further into my skin, and the boy dragged it to its next location, as if he was speaking out an incantation; a phrase forbidden by the sane. More blood dripped onto my dress, staining it as red as the wall behind me. I tried to escape, or at least fight back, but I couldn't. I was stuck.

Withdrawing his tool from my arm, the boy looked at my arm in triumph, as if the very words he, and I, were out in the open. I peered downwards and read his sick creation.

We're all mad here.

It was now on my lips, in my head, and on my body. Exposed to the earth in one big scramble.

I glanced back at my carver, ready for his next horrifying task. But in confusion. Great confusion. I was the only one who knew those words, who said them in my head. Yet this... Boy knew them. He just stood still, as if he was awaiting orders. His eyes looked crazed, as if he was completely insane, as if he was possessed.

We're all mad here.

As if in a trance, he kept reading my arm again and again, mouthing the very words. Now I felt unstuck; I could move of my own accord. But the boy couldn't. Was he trying to tell me something? What was he implying? Was his former self crying out for help, telling me that he wasn't who he appeared to be?

I repeated those words again and again in my head, trying to understand why he had thought this utterance, seemingly reading my mind. It was as if it wasn't real, well, that was what I told myself. That it was all some big nightmare I would awake from.

And then I did.

Jolting upright, I found myself on the floor of the corridor outside my room, just beside my door. I was beside the boy, his chest stabbed messily and his face slashed with the very phrase he had cut into my arm in my nightmare.

But compared to what I had just woken up to, that was a blissful experience.

As I placed my hands on the floor to help myself stand, I found red mark from where I had placed them. Turning my palms to my eyeline, I realised they were red. Blood red.

How had I ended up here? And why was the boy's blood on my hands? No. I couldn't have. I couldn't have done... I wasn't a killer.

In all of a sudden, I felt a strange sensation throughout my body, as if I was being suspended and controlled by another. It was then when everything came back to me; all the things I had done. My mind had tried to hide away my monstrosity by using a figment of my imagination to make me feel alright. Yet now, I could see it all.

I had been the one to carve those words in his face, the one to rip up his insides. But my brain had made me think the boy was the one trying to kill me.

We're all mad here.

The images taunted me, again and again, until I couldn't take it any longer. I couldn't live with myself like this. I couldn't face what I had done. Taking the knife, I pierced the familiar blade into my chest, where I had pierced the boy.

I just wanted to forget.

Now I was free, now I was-

I watched as the newest patient walked through those dreaded wooden doors, the eerie creak of the panelling scraping against the cold, tiled floor sending shivers down my back. It always did. Everything in this place did.

I watched as he lugged his heavy suitcase towards the desk, how the stone faced receptionist talked to him with such a fake façade. How they didn't treat me like him. Like them. Like anyone else.

We're all mad here.