Ink Me Insane (Book One)

Nineteen

Dreams, portals to the subconscious. They warp and blend, cut up and rearrange thoughts, feelings, and occurrences. Everyone dreams even if they don't remember them. The brain never stops, but is there a significance in this besides passing time in the night? Debatable. The most vivid, fantastical, and recallable dreams are those that form during REM sleep. This stage of sleep is also known as Rapid Eye Movement because during this time the eyes flicker quickly side to side. The body does rather...interesting things in REM. Breathing becomes irregular often fast and shallow, think semi-hyperventilating. Heart rate and blood pressure are shown to increase. Almost all the muscles tense up and are temporarily immobile. A person is basically paralyzed while their body does a system check in a sense. Sounds like fun right? While a person is sleeping, at the point where you are off in dreamland riding unicorns, the body is basically reacting how one would when they are scared. How terrifying. Yet dreams are what we call the goals, the imaginary limits we strive for. Perhaps that's why they are called dreams because they are paralysis inducing. Then again it could be the other way around, a person dreams because they are frozen. In time, in space, their crumby job, a terrible situation, a horrible relationship, within their own mind...

Rene flipped carefully through the notebook. Etched in moderate detail, swirls of gray graphite danced across the pages. The drawings depicted each of Rene's tattoos. Cassie had slowly, painstakingly recorded them for what she said was her own amusement. Rene knew better though, it was for her sake really. It was proof on paper of their existence. She dragged her finger across a page following the lines smudging the already worn out image. It was not the first time she had done this.

The soft sounds of whispering reached her ears and the feeling of being watched brought an itch to her neck. Again, that feeling of shifting beneath her hair. It was like when someone else had lice and it made everyone around them think they did too. It had to be that, just a ghost feeling. Ink didn't move, maybe if she told herself that enough she'd believe it too. Being watched wasn't exactly an unusual sensation at the asylum. After all there were cameras everywhere and guards just as present, still this was different. Rene kept her head down while raising her eyes from the notebook, scanning. What passed for a library at the asylum was a medium sized room, maybe a classroom and a half, containing many dusty shelves sparsely filled with a smattering of books. The books themselves were in horrific shape. Any true lover of reading would be crying at their sorry states. Pages were torn or completely missing. The colors had faded from harsh overhead lighting to dull shadows of their former brilliance. Even the insides seemed sickly with their yellowish tinge and lack luster black words that faded right into the background. Most books had no covers to judge the book by and bindings frayed like the minds that read them. A haunted place of what should be a gate way to the world. It was still one of Rene's favorite places. She had read every still readable book in the library in her desperation to escape if only for a moment. Hence why when she had borrowed Cassie's notebook, okay technically stole with plans to return since Cassie is still refusing to talk to her, she had brought it here. It was decently quiet most days with still a hum of background to keep Rene from drowning in her own thoughts. Rene had developed an intense dislike of people, but voices made good white noise.

Something was different though today. This was not the typical white noise gibberish that was spouted by her fellow residents. It was focused mainly on a particular topic. Their eyes showed their subject. Fugitive glances were shot her way while others stared outright. What did they know? Sure the little scene with Cassie the other day had arisen some curiosity, but this seemed to be more than that. She couldn't hear anyone well enough to know the details of what had captured their interest. She clenched her fist angrily. Honestly there was any number of things it could be. Rene was a walking disaster and that made for good entertainment. Still her recent, to put it kindly, less than savory activities needed to stay as rumors. Anything pinned to her would prove to complicate things in a very bad way. She turned sharply to growl at a group after she heard her name dropped. A couple cowered while the others gave her blank stares.