The Asylum

Dreaming

Chapter 4

Carmilla and Stormie sit in a corner of the park, under some birch trees that are just starting to lose their leaves. The orange leaves blanket the ground, creating a patch of autumn to provide a break in the cold white winter landscape. Before long, Stormie gets bored of just sitting, so she wanders around to explore. Carmilla watches the few birds brave enough to chance the cold and the snow.  Warbling its song, a Magpie takes flight, causing a spectacular shower of snow. Laying back onto the pile of small leaves, she closes her eyes. The leaves are so soft; she thinks she might… just…

Carmilla finds herself in a dim room, with a single shaft of light coming from the ceiling. Looking around the room, she sees a broken crib made of sticks and wire. Slowly, like a clock turning backwards, the room refreshes itself. The light dims then grows again and again, showing numberless days and nights. When it slows to a stop, she looks around again to see the crib unbroken and the walls bright again. A woman who looks familiar to Carmila comes in, leading a toddler and carrying a baby. Recognition dawns upon her and she realises she’s seeing her mother, Jeremy and herself.

The baby squirms when she is placed in her crib.

“Shh now, Carmilla…” It’s the first time she’s heard her mother’s voice – however strained it may have been that day – in years.

“Milli miss Daddy!” young Jeremy insists.

“But daddy isn’t coming back, little jem.”

“But he’s Daddy dough, he’s meant to be hewe!”

“He won’t come back… he left us…” she whispers.

Before Jeremy replies, loud bangs call their mother away, out into the living room. Carmilla leaves her past self to follow her mother.

“You left me!” she is screaming at a vaguely familiar man, “You told me if you saw me again you’d kill me! Why, then, are you here in front of me?!”

“I came here to finally fulfil my promise,” he sinisterly states.

“What promise?”

“’till death do us part…” he says, then raises a gun…

Carmilla’s eyes burst open, blazing red underneath the blue contacts.

“Jaffa, you’re hurting me!” Stormie whimpers.

“Why did he have to kill her? Why?!” Carmilla asks savagely, her voice sounding like more than one person speaking at once. It takes her a short while to realise that her claws are cutting into the neck of the mask, having poked through her gloves, and her thumbs are pressing uncomfortably on Stormie’s windpipe.

The rage burning inside dies down and Carmilla releases her best friend, instead gripping her in a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry, Little Storm, I just… I didn’t mean…” she stumbles.

“It’s okay Jaffa, it was just a dream… anyway, what did you dream?” Stormie asks, pulling away. Carmilla swallows, he gunshot still ringing in her ears. But before she can answer Stormie, both of their tattoos sting painfully. They look at each other.

“I think we’re needed back at The Asylum…”

*             *            *

“As some of you know, barely half an hour ago, a young man walked out. He was followed by a group sharing his foolishness. This will not be repeated, and to ensure this, there is a new set of rules you need to commit to.” The guards hand a list and a pen to the closest werewolf who reads it, signs it then passes it on. The entire Asylum is gathered in the only room big enough to hold then in their entirety; the dining room.