Distorted (an Alex Kralie story)

Part 26

  I ended up passing out from the sight of blood. I thought I could've handled it at this point... But obviously, I cannot.
  I woke up in a hospital room. It was silent. No chirping birds, no rustling of leaves outside. No voices were heard. It was hard trying to find something to occupy myself, since the room was so empty.

  "Great..." I said as I tried to lift my hands, which were chained to the bed. This wasn't a normal hospital. At a normal hospital they wouldn't do that. I tried to sit up but I ended up laying back down. There was no point in trying to do anything at the moment.

  I hate it when it's quiet. It just makes me want to break the silence. But at the moment, there was nothing to even talk to. I don't know how Ramon is doing. I don't know how Lennon is doing, hopefully he isn't doing too well. They're all honestly better without me.

  "Good morning, Alex."
"Hello..."
  "I see you're awake!"
"Yep. And I feel worse than ever."
  "I'm sorry to hear that."
"You aren't sorry. If you were sorry, you'd take these stupid chain things off of me."
  "That was not my decision, Mr Kralie. There were certain rules for how we were going to contain you. You needed to have your choices restricted."
  "I'm not supposed to be here."
  "That's right. You're supposed to be in prison being watched by guards. And—" She paused to check the clock, "It's time to take your medication."
  "Fun..." I groaned.
  "I'll be back soon."

  She walked off and then came back in about ten minutes. I had to take a few different kinds of pills. Each one had a different dosage. Some I had to take one every two ours, I had to take two of this one kind every four hours. I knew that it wasn't going to be fun here.
  The nurse soon left after she gave me my medication. She said that it would make me tired, so she turned the light off. There was no window in my room. This room was meant for the insane, as so I've heard. The staff don't want me near any escaping points. I was also given an ankle brace so they could track me.

  I wasn't wearing normal hospital attire either though. Later on when I was given a chance to roam around the building, of course being escorted with handcuffs on, I saw everyone else wearing the same outfit. A plain white shirt and white pants. No one looked that young here. The youngest seemed to be about fifteen while the eldest was a man in his eighties. I didn't make eye contact with anyone.

  "In this room you'll be able to play cards with people... You'll be able to talk and enjoy yourself as much as you can. Your handcuffs go off but your ankle cuff will stay on. Surrounding this room there are many guards, so don't try escaping, because you can't."

  They took off the handcuffs and I sat down at a table. They had books too. Most of them were pretty old. The classics, really. Where the Red Fern Grows and stuff like that. Some of the books had around one thousand pages, so I could assume that the people in this place stay here for a very long time.

  A woman that looked around my age sat across from me. She had bags under her eyes and her arms were covered in cuts. This woman looked up at me.

  "I see that you're the new guy." She said, rubbing her eyes.
"Yep."
  "Why're you here?"
"Well. I thought this was a normal hospital... but I was transported here from prison. The usual. I can expect that you've done something pretty bad in the past, just like everyone here."
  "I didn't do nothin'. All I did was I tried to commit suicide and my boyfriend left me here. I hate him. Where're you from?"
  "I'm from mid-west Alabama. Tuscaloosa, to be exact."
  "I'm from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Everything's a party down there in L.A. Mardi Gras, Festivals left and right. Everyone's happy there... It pissed me off how happy everyone else was."
  "Huh. Well... That's nice, I guess."
  "We're still in the middle of Alabama, so don't worry about where we are..."
  "I took a guess that we were still here. Do you know what town?"
  "Northport."
"That's good... We're right next to Tuscaloosa."

  She smiled, crossed her arms, and leaned back in her chair.

  "What's your name?"
"Alex."
  "Well, nice talkin' to you Alex. I'm Charleen. My nickname's Charlie."
  "Awesome. If you ever need me, I'm easy to spot out of the bunch. I'm the one guy wearing handcuffs."
  "Aw," Charleen laughed and sat back up, leaning her elbows on the table. "Quite a few people are wearin' handcuffs. Y'all might get along. See that guy over there?" She pointed me to a man across the room who was sitting alone. "That's Mike. He killed his brother. I can only imagine that his brother's name was Ike."

  I laughed and then glanced at the book shelf. I noticed some kids books, but it was weird that they had those since there weren't any kids here. I doubt they let kids in here. They were most likely there for if someone had a very bad case of dementia and they somehow needed to be taught how to read again, if that was possible.

  "I might as well point out everyone..."
"That'll help."
  "Okay. That's Grace," She said, pointing to the young teenage girl I saw earlier, "Grace still thinks she's a child. She kicks and screams sometimes. Grace says she wants her parents, but they left her because she was too hard to take care of."
  "And... how do you know this?"
  "In here we learn things that we don't wanna know. Everyone tells their backstory at one point or another."
  "Mm. Continue."
  "That's Shelby." Charleen pointed to an elderly woman sitting on a couch, she was knitting. "No one knows why she's here. She's deaf, so of course she never talks. No one knows sign language here besides one or two of the workers. Those workers are assigned to helping Shelby and only Shelby. Some people say that her kids brought her here thinkin' that this place was a retirement home. In that case, they were very wrong." She laughed.

  Charleen continued to point at various people. She'd state their names and their backstories. Some people she told me to stay away from. Like the people who are fidgety and talk to themselves. Those are the people that are, "just plain weird" as Charleen states.

  Grace started to throw a fit, in which a few of the staff here had to take her back to her room. She dragged her feet on the floor and tried to scratch at the walls. Her screams were heard all the way until all of a sudden they were silenced. Charleen said that this hospital has disgusting ways of getting people to shut up, such as injecting some kind of fluid into their neck or arms, making them fall asleep. It's legal here, but illegal basically anywhere else. Not many people know that this place exists. Somehow, many people are in the building though.
  Apparently whenever people leave this place, they don't talk about their stay. No one does. That's why the word about how bad this place is is never spread around. Everyone sees the outside and then they believe that everything going on inside is fine.

  Some people at this place seemed to be completely normal. But those were the people who didn't talk much, and they didn't really have a story on why they came here. I can't tell if what Charleen says about this place and the people here is true, but it's safe to assume now, because I doubt I'll ever learn more about them. Because I know that soon I'd be back where I was not too long ago. In my home, somewhere far away, or back in prison.