MidKnight: The Asylum [FINISHED]

Chapter 6: The Recording

After about 10, or so, minutes, he could hear Danielle's heels clacking down the cellblock. Luckily, he was able to recognize her heels' noises out of all the hundreds of noises going on outside his cell. All the yelling, cells door opening and slamming, all the psychopath's lashing out and cursing--which happened more often than one would expect. With all of that commotion going on, isolating the sound that indicates she's walking his way was remarkable.
His cell door opened, the buzzer sounding, and she entered the room with her usual clipboard and steel chair. "Good morning, Doc." he greeted her. "Good morning, Harold. How are you?" she replied, continuing the charade. Harold had no idea how long they'd have to keep this up, but he hoped it wouldn't be for too much longer.
"I'm okay." Harold said. From there, the 2 went back and forth with the fake appointment. It felt odd at times that they had to do this, but then Harold would notice the security guards outside and that there were too many too close to risk it. The fake arson backstory was proving difficult for generating fictional details to make the charade last longer. Fortunately for them both, each session only lasted 10-15 minutes due to her having so many other patients to meet with. Soon, she left and they both nodded at one another, each letting the other know they'd meet up later. When the buzzer went off, meaning the door was closed and locked after she left, Harold began to worry. He hoped she had some answers, he was desperate for them now. She had to have at least a fragment of information about either topic, the experimentation one or about the meeting with Whitney. He was tired of waiting, he'd been here only about 4 days and he was already losing it. Scared of what might happen if he thought about it too long, Harold decided to try to rest. No matter how hard he tried, he just could not doze off. It was irritating because he was trapped in his thoughts constantly. Sleeping would normally help that problem, but due to him sleeping so often, he couldn't get there. Unsure how much time had passed by, the electronic buzzer sounded and the patients exited their cells. Harold leaped off of his mattress, eager to get out of that cell, and met Brian outside their cages.
"Dude, calm it down a bit." Brian told him. Harold raised a brow. Maybe Brian recognized that eagerness from his own experiences. What helped him out of that insanity, if so?
"What?" Harold asked, pretending he hadn't the slightest idea what Brian meant.
"That's the fastest I've seen you get out of that box." Brian replied, suspicion lining his voice. Harold shrugged, the 2 started walking. "I don't know," Harold lied, "just wasn't asleep this time."
"You're getting sick of the cycle, aren't you?" Brian asked, he knew the whole time. "How do you rid yourself of the insanity?" Harold pleaded. He'd never heard so much desperateness in his own voice before. It was his fourth day!
"You just have to keep productive. Usually drawing helps me calm down, I asked and they agreed to give me paper and secretly some colored pencils. They'll give certain patients certain items, if requested, according to their sheet, which is why them granting me those utensils was such a surprise. They might give you paper, too, unless they think of some obscure way you could start a fire with it."
"Drawing most likely won't help me. I'd probably just draw my city and drive myself even crazier. How long did it take you to start losing it?"
"Everyone has the issue early on," Brian began, "you were a late bloomer compared to most. I lost it on my 2nd day, most do on their first or second. You've been here--what? Almost 4 days? You've been patient, dude. Having someone to bang probably helped a little, too, huh?"
"Me and Danielle did not--"
"I know," he laughed, "just joking."
They joined into the lunch line, the process seemed faster this time around. Their might've been a shorter line or something, maybe the process didn't seem so long because he was more familiar with it. Harold and Brian sat and in silence this time.
"Hey," Harold said, "you're uncharacteristically quiet." Brian shrugged and dug into his food, bite by bite, progressing faster and faster. "I'm trying hard." Brian said, purposely leaving the end off of the sentence so Harold would have to ask, "What?"
"Trying not to ask about the meeting, the laboratory, etc. I'm trying not to ask what you've found out."
"Oh, well. Since you didn't technically ask, I'll just offer the info." Harold said. Brian nodded. Then, there was a second or 2 of silence. "Hey, Bri, would you like me to--"
"Yes, just tell me!" Brian exclaimed.
"Wowzers. Chill out, pal." Harold joked. "So, basically what I know is: nothing." Brian groaned. "You ass." he said. Harold laughed, more than he had in awhile.
Danielle appeared in the doorway, time to go. "Wait," Harold said, "I'm about to get my information right now. Tell you at dinner." He rose from his chair and walked to the doorway, making eye contact with the beautiful doctor the whole time.
"Hello, Dr. Jeanette."
"Hey, let's go. I have that information."
"Well, right to it." Harold laughed. She didn't laugh, she just turned to start walking, eyebrows raised, and said, "yeah, you'll understand why, soon. Come on." And the 2 left the Hall and headed for her quarters.
This was seriously the weirdest place in Harold's mind. It wasn't the kind of asylum in scary movies, it wasn't a prison, it wasn't a college dormitory, but it had aspects of all 3 and mixed them together to make this place. It was so incredibly confusing. A front desk, cellblocks, a Mess Hall, an elevator that leads to a science lab? What was this place?
He was highly anxious for the news, but he was also just as nervous. He didn't know how to feel if he really had been experimented on. What would he do? How soon until it'd happen again, if it was going to? He didn't want Danielle getting in trouble for snooping around for him, he didn't like putting her in those positions, but he had to get answers.
They reached her quarters and entered the room, she wasted no time, rushing the entire walk, hurrying to get inside and sit down. "So?" Harold asked, leading her to tell him what she'd discovered. She shook her head and looked down, fiddling with her fingers. "I found a recording..." she began, stopping like somebody had stolen the rest of her words and she was choking, "and I found out. You were experimented on. That syringe--the green liquid--that was a serum meant to enhance the average human's strength. They injected you with the serum and..." she shuddered, "I heard your screams. It was horrifying. You yelled so loud, the agony was so intense your entire voice changed, it didn't even sound like you. I'm so sorry." Harold shook his head. Part of that sounded right, the majority didn't. He concentrated hard, harder than any of his previous attempts. He tried his absolute hardest to remember what had happened before. This time, he acquired different results, though. Instead of fragments, he remembered everything, and all of the pieces fell into the right place this time. He woke up tied to the table, he and the scientist with the lab coat and rubber gloves had a short conversation and then the scientist injected the serum into his veins. That was it, though. He blacked out, the serum had put him to sleep. "Um, n-no. No, I lost consciousness after the serum flooded my veins. I didn't scream." Harold told her. She raised a brow. "But, in the recording, there was, indeed, screaming. They hadn't experimented on anyone else during this time, it would've had to be you."
"I was uncon--" he stopped himself. He realized what this could've meant.
"Hello?" she asked, trying to pry the information out of his head.
"As Jeremiah Carson, or MidKnight, I had Multiple Personality Disorder. Ever since I've been here, though, they haven't ever popped up, especially when I expected at least one of them to--during my encounter with Travis Alexander."
"Wait, do you think--"
"That's exactly what I think. They flooded my system with something that wasn't supposed to be there, an emotional reaction such as that is definitely possible." Harold told her. Danielle nodded, but remained silent. "What?" he asked. Something was clearly on her mind. She shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know. That's just weird that being injected with something could trigger your personalities popping out." She wasn't wrong, but, then again, everything about this place and his situation was weird. "Yeah, it is. Do you have any idea why they haven't been taking hold of the driver's seat like they usually would?" Harold proposed. She thought hard about the question. She shrugged, "my boss, Nicole, said they had you on some sort of medication that would last a month or 2. It was to "keep you calm", as she put it."
Neither of them were sure if that meant anything, if that was related. What had her boss meant? How was he being kept calm? What was that medicine? Harold, then, felt a sense of hopelessness. Every single time he got an answer, 5 more questions took its place. When would he truly figure out everything? How long could that take?
"Let's move that to the side, just for a moment." Danielle offered to distract the both of them. "I also found out that the meeting can be arranged. Not allowed, that'd be against the rules here, but arranged." she told him. What the hell did that mean? Could she lose her job in order for this to happen? Because, if so, it wasn't happening.
"Wait, I don't want you to get in trouble, that sounds like it would." Harold told her. "No, no," she stopped him, "remember the friend I told you about? The one that works in that wing? The one who I said I'd ask a favor of?"
Harold nodded.
"Turns out he despises this job," she laughed, "he told me he'd be more than willing because he wants to get out of this place." For some reason, that didn't make Harold any less worried. Danielle placed a hand on his. "Trust me," she said, her voice as gentle as the wind on a summer day, "we don't have anything to worry about."
They gazed in each others eyes again, this time for under a minute. Harold nodded. "Alright. When's the soonest?"
"Tomorrow, after lunch." she declared, "they just have to brief him."
That surprised Harold. First, because how soon it would be and he didn't even know what he was going to ask. Second, because of the wording she'd used. 'Brief', what were they telling him?
"Alrighty." Harold agreed, still no knowledge in his brain as to what he would or should ask the man in solitary. "I'll talk to Brian, ask him if there are any specific things he wants to know about."
"Sounds good." she said. She stared off for a moment, "you know," she began, "I am still your therapist..." she said, suspicion lining her voice. She was going somewhere with this. Harold squinted at her, "Okay..." his voice trailed off, basically a way of saying, "just get to the point".
"So, how have you been feeling recently?" she asked, shifting into her therapy persona. Her tone transformed to the way it is in his cell so quickly it was almost laughable.
"What, seriously?" Harold chuckled. She wasn't. "Did you not just hear me?" she asked. "Come on, how are you, with all this going on?"
Harold rolled his eyes. "Well, how can I feel? I'm in a hopeless situation. Trying to escape an asylum I know nothing about. It'll probably be years until I figure it all out. Every day I feel worse, the cycle is terrible, it's already extremely irritating. If I can't escape soon, I'll actually go insane."
"Hey, that's not going to happen. I won't let it." she said, reaching out for his hand. Harold placed his hand in her's and they intertwined. He laughed quietly to himself for a second. "How is it that I met you--what?--3 nights ago?--and I feel like I've known you my whole life?" He stared into the vast, grey land of her eyes. He couldn't escape that place. Every time he looked in her eyes, he got stuck there and couldn't escape, like a trance. She had the most beautiful eyes, as cheesy as it sounded.
"I'm not sure," she said quietly, "but, I've been feeling the same feeling." She was staring into his eyes, too. The two were imprisoning the other, both falling deep into the dark worlds of their eyes. Those 2 pairs of eyes, the things they've both seen, the things that have been in those eyes, it was all dark. And in that moment, they'd each seen what the other person had seen in their past. In that moment, they knew what the other had been through. They both leaned in for another kiss, and they did.
Harold had been to her world, her past of darkness and he couldn't respect her more. She had a childhood similar to his own, and yet, here she was, a professional therapist. Not to mention, the prettiest woman on the planet. His darkness from the past led him to a life of PTSD, MPD and crime-fighting, as well as occasional murder. Her past was even darker and she was successful. She was incredible.
When the kiss ended, they both looked in the other's eyes again and just sat in silence. They did nothing, just stared at each other.
"What just happened?" she finally asked. Harold was hoping she'd break the silence because he had no idea how.
"I'm not sure. I know people say you can truly see a person when you look into their eyes, but I'm 89% that this isn't at all what the meant." Harold admitted. He shook his head. "The things you've seen, the things you've experienced, how are you here? How are you the way you are today with that kind of backstory?"
"I just hung on." she said. It sounded so easy, the way she said it. It sounded like she hadn't been through anything from the way she said that, but they both knew she had. "But, how? I just saw your whole life pass by, and I don't ever think I've been so scared. That stuff is horrible."
"I'm aware." she sighed, sounding defensive like a cat hissing. "I-I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be--"
"No, it's okay." she stopped him. They both said nothing afterwards until Danielle decided to share. "After I was raped, after I'd escaped my father's abuse, after everything, I just realized, the world is too horrible to save. Everybody is in it for themselves, no matter what. Everyone wants to save their own skin, I figured I might as well say "screw the world" and try and save myself, beat the world."
"Still, I don't understand how you kept going."
"Sometimes I don't either. I'm just glad I did." she said, staring down at her fingers she was fiddling with.
"Me too, or I wouldn't have met you."
"Probably not, no." she smiled. She looked at the red clock on her wall and then swiped her clipboard off of the nearby coffee table. "You should head back to your cell, it'll be 4 by the time you get there." Neither of them had realized so much time had passed, it didn't seem even remotely possible. "What? How?" he asked. Lunch started at 1, they'd gotten to her headquarters at around 2, it seemed like they'd been talking for about half an hour tops, none of it made sense. She shrugged and shook her head, pacing around her room picking up items she needed to record patients' data and placed them all in her lab coat's pockets. "I have absolutely no idea, it should be about 2:50 right now. You should go now, though. It's understandable why you wouldn't be in your cell for a while after lunch, some sit around in the bathrooms to waste time so they don't have to be in their cells so long, but usually the staff can find them. It's 3:45, you'll get in loads of trouble if anyone checks your cell and you're still not there." He nodded and arose from his chair, walking over to her, instead of the door. She turned around and looked him in the eyes, he looked into hers. He grabbed her hand, and they pulled each other in for another kiss before they had to depart. Eventually, they said goodbye's and he left to return to his cell.
His cell, luckily, was still unlocked from the time he left for lunch. He entered the cell and locked himself in, closing the cage door as quietly as he possibly could. He walked over and collapsed on his mattress. That doctor was saving his life. Harold began to believe he loved her. He just laid there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Danielle. Soon, he drifted off into an irresistible deep sleep. He needed it. He dreamt, once again. But this time, he had one of those dreams that don't really make sense. Those dreams that are entirely random and maintain absolutely no logic whatsoever.
In the dream, he and the mayor were running, side-by-side, through that field. Harold had no idea what he was running from, though. While running, he turned and looked behind them to see a huge piece of apple pie chasing them. As soon as he looked at it, the pie stopped in its tracks and shrunk to a regular size piece. Harold stopped running, he didn't have to keep running, he was no longer in danger. But then the mayor slapped him on the back of the head exactly 4 times. "Go! Go! Go!" he cried. "No-no-no-noo-no! There aren't any evil zebras remaining! Why are you sneezing?" The mayor shook his head, looked down and screamed. He pointed at the sky, the opposite of where he was looking. Harold looked to where he was pointing, the sky was yellow. A turtle was flying around above them. "It's just a turtle!" Harold told him. "Wake up!" the mayor screamed at Harold. "Hurry! Wake up!" Harold raised a brow at him. "What? Wake up? What do you mean?" He felt anxiety overcoming him. This was scary. Wake up? Who did the mayor want him to wake up? The pie? "MidKnight! The writer needs you to wake up! The story has to continue! Hurry!" he screamed finally. Harold's head shot up off of his pillow and stared at everything outside of the cell. He was actually sweating, what was with that dream? It was like that one time he tried ecstasy as a teenager. And why was he with the mayor? "The writer"? "The story"? Dream-mayor was even more delusional than the real one. His subconscious was on something serious, like K2 without the death factor. It was actually very nerve-wracking to Harold.
As he sat on the edge of the mattress, he wiped his face with his hands and tried his hardest to wake up. His head ached, seemed full, the way it gets when you have a certain type of sickness. The electronic buzz sounded and the cells unlocked, time for dinner.
Harold didn't even feel like eating. In fact, he felt nauseous and he was burning up. He decided to get up and meet with Brian, he needed to tell him the news regarding Whitney Jansen.
He heaved up off of the edge of the bed and exited his cell, shutting his cell door behind him slowly. Still, though, the door managed to slam and make a loud bang. He walked down the cellblock, hovering his hand above the railing as he approached Brian's cell, usually he'd been out before him.
He looked across the hall and saw Danielle with another patient, in his cell. The patient jumped up off of his bed and screamed in her face, towering over her. She stared at him, remaining seated in her chair, taking notes. Clearly, she'd be fine. He felt the need to not worry.
He departed from the line that was moving at about negative-2 miles per hour as they headed down to the Mess Hall. He peered through the bars on Brian's cell door, expecting to wake him up. But for some extremely odd reason, he wasn't even in there. Where would he be at this time instead of his cell?
Harold hopped back into the line and headed with the rest of the patients down to the Hall, hoping he'd see his companion there at their table, already eating. But if that were the case, why?
The line Harold had been stuck in finally reached the inside of the hall, their table was too far away to see it from the doorway. He left the enormous line once again to journey to their usual eating spot. Once he arrived, he saw, Brian wasn't here, either. Harold backed away from his table, running a fairly sweaty hand through his thick head of greasy, black hair. This couldn't be a positive thing, not in the slightest. Harold gazed around the cafeteria, searching location to location from the spot he was frozen in. Usually he wouldn't freak out so much about something like this, but he'd been around long enough to know there was no good reason Brian would've gone missing all of a sudden.
He decided on another place to look, fast-walking out of the Hall, shoving the door wide open and rushing to the bathroom halfway down the hallway. One of the nurses (a male) swung the door open from the inside and exited and Harold rushed in, his shoulder bumping into the nurse's.
"Watch it, asshole!" the nurse shouted.
"My bad." he called back to him.
"Brian," Harold shouted to a closed stall, "is that you?" But there was no response, just silence. "Dammit." he sighed. "Um, whoever's in there, did you happen to see another patient in here, messy, brown hair, wrinkled scrubs?" he asked the person inside the stall. Still no response. He grunted and obnoxiously threw his arms up, then they swung back down, smacking his sides. "Alright, awesome. Thanks for the help!" he complained sarcastically. Still, nothing. He checked to see if the door was really shut and locked. He approached the door cautiously and placed his hand on the stall door handle. He pushed on it with minimal force and it flew open, dragging him into the stall. What he found then was the worst thing to happen yet. Worse than all the mysteries, the experimentation, being stuck in a cell all day, etc. This was beyond horrifying, beyond traumatizing. This was too much. Harold stumbled upon his best friend's bloody corpse, he throat cut, his eye carved out of its socket, hairs pulled out, petechial hemorrhaging around either side of his neck. The bruising was extreme, popping out like crazy, basically the direct opposite of Where's Waldo.
Harold rushed to his friend's dying side, blood smearing all over his own shirt and hands. "Brian! Brian, no!" he cried. He turned to face the door, and he started remembering. That nurse seemed off, and these bruises were still fresh...
"Help! Somebody help him!" he cried out, hoping somebody would walk by and hear him. Nobody did, no help was coming to save his friend. He figured he had to go get help to save his friend.
Harold pushed on his knees, transitioning from the crouching position to a standing one. He ran towards the door when it opened. The nurse from earlier entered the bathroom and stopped in his tracks.
"Woah, on your knees! What'd you do?!" he ordered. Harold could not believe this was happening, he looked back to Brian. He shook his head rapidly. "No, no, no! This wasn't me, you have to help--" he stopped and then he collected his thoughts. He glared up at the nurse. "You know I didn't do this, correct? You did this and you think I haven't figured it out. You're framing me, aren't you?" Harold demanded angrily.
"I don't know what you're talking about! On your knees, now, young man!" he ordered, pulling a taser off of his belt. Harold could tell he was the killer, the nurse was an awful liar. He refused to go through with this, despite how dumb of a decision it might seem, either way, he was screwed.
"I'm not going to ask again!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. Then, 2 more nurses entered after hearing the shouting.
"Guys," the nurse told them, "we got another delusional patient on our hands."
"No, no! This was him, I swear to God!" Harold told them. He'd never believed in God, they didn't know that, they didn't need to, either. "Please! This wasn't me!"
"On your knees, now!" the nurse screamed yet again. Harold stood silent, he was not going down. Especially not for this. The nurse swung at him with the taser and missed. Harold evaded the attack by backing up to a sink. The nurse swung at him again with the taser, missing again. Before it could get close, Harold turned the water on and somersaulted to the right. The nurse charged, the taser moving into the sink electricity combining with the water, killing the nurse instantly.
The other nurses equipped their tasers and struck Harold at once, knocking him out instantly.