GLASS CHILDREN [Completed]

GEORGIE

    If you swipe to the right, there's a photo of what the asylum should look like from the outside.

Unfolding the dried blood-covered and tiny piece of shriveled paper, Nikolas's breath seemed to quicken with each inch of the paper he touched ever so delicately. He wasn't even sure if he could hear William running down the old hallways.

    Read it, a small voice in his head told him.

    And he did; he read the words on the paper. Of course, there was only one word and then a number that was masked by dried blood and bits of dirt, but he could still read it: Room 61.

    Room 61, he thought. What could that mean?

    It was only a room, but what does a room have to do what a game? Hell, for all he knew it could be some sick and torturous place where people get their heads cut off and thrown around on the floor like a soccer ball—no, that was a bit too morbid, but so was digging into your skin and picking away at the dead flesh beside your eyeless skull.

    Room 61, he thought once again as he shoved the paper into the pocket of his hoodie and sighed. There were only two hallways that he knew of: one to the right of him, and then one to the left. Of course, there were signs that indicated where to go, but they both were missing certain letters and were decrepit-looking.

    "Great," Nikolas said aloud as he moved closer to the one on the right with only the letters 'C,' 'I,' 'L,' and 'D' still glued to it. It a sense, it sounded as if the letters were spelling out 'killed' to the best of a small child's ability, but that theory only added to the nervousness of looking down that hallway where every door was open and a few toys lay in the way.

    "William?" he called out before clearing his throat. "Lily?"

    No answer.

    "You guys want to play a game...we'll play a game." Nikolas said in a louder voice than before. He was nervous and freaked out to say the least, but couldn't express it enough otherwise he'd have some type of panic attack if he could. Shivers of cold air ran up his spine when a shadow was cascaded through one of the rooms that he'd stopped in front of to peek through the doorway. The little room wasn't anything more than a crib against the wall with an old blanket bunched up in the middle of it and a few toys on a shelf.

    It wasn't until he was about to leave the dreadful room that he sniffed the dusty air and found a horrible smell lingering around. The smell of death to be exact and it seemed to be coming from the crib.

    I hate this place, he thought to himself as he tried not to breathe too much while walking back into the room in a stealth-like manor to uncover the source of the stomach-churning smell that made his guts flip inside out.

    "Don't touch Georgie," he heard a tiny voice say as he reached the crib. "He's special."

    Whirling around with his heart pounding inside of his chest, Nikolas looked in the small closet on the other side of the room only to see a young boy—around the age of five or six—with a grayish tint to his skin and cracked lips that formed in a straight line until he spoke: "Don't touch Georgie," he said again.

    "Who's Georgie?" Nikolas asked in a whisper tone as he shoved his hands back inside of his hoodie pockets to keep them from freezing.

    Looking to the boy for an answer, he scanned his eyes over everything in the room to keep his focus on other things besides how horrible the child's face looked when he eyed him.

    Suddenly, the boy looked like he was about to speak, but he never emerged from the closet as he outstretched his arm and pointed a thin, scrawny finger towards the crib in the far corner of the room. "He's special," the boy mouthed his response but Nikolas could still tell what he said. After that, the child seemed to rock back into the closet and fold his arms around his legs with an uneasy feeling as his breathing became erratic.

    The crib bars—metal and cold to the touch as if they'd been sitting there in the corner of that room for more than fifty years or so—were worn and cracking as he griped the front one with both of his hands and leaning over to peek in. As soon as he saw movements from under the blanket, he let out a shaky breath. That horrible smell was back again.

    He backed away slightly, but the movements from under the baby blue-tinted blanket increased until a tiny hand was revealed underneath that poked out the side and grasped at nothing particular until it got ahold of the blanket and began tugging it away and off to the side.

    "Don't touch Georgie," the little boy's voice was faint but someone more angered this time. Nikolas didn't listen to him as he leaned back over the crib and finished pulling the blanket away from the infant.

    Of course, expecting to see an innocent baby, Nikolas let a small grin cover his lips but it soon faded as the horrifying sight of the infant's face was nothing more than a pair of eyes that were stitched shut and a set of dark red-tinted lips that lay slightly parted upon his face. He was moving, of course. All babies move.

    "I said don't touch Georgie," it was the boy again. "Now you've made Miss Andrews mad."

    Miss Andrews? Who was that?

    Nikolas backed away from the infant's crib once again, scared out of his wits. He watched closely as the baby with skin tinted so dark that he could have been dead turned into a pile of maggots and worms that came with an ear-splitting shriek in the air which made his ears ring.

    "I guess you don't learn, do you?" the little boy asked as he began to giggle while crawling out of the closet. "That's why I'm dead..." he whispered. "I didn't listen."

    Listen? Listen to what? Or who?

    When Nikolas reached the hall, he proceeded to keep one hand covering his left ear while shutting the door and locking the rusty hatch as fast as he could. Banging against the door and screams of children erupted from the other side as he cupped his other hand on his right ear and started back down the hall.

    But he was only at Room 6...