Butterfly

18 - Patient #160512

"Life goes on... with or without you." - Faraaz Kazi

Chou was thinking about TheTell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. The psychiatric prison seemed both an appropriate and an odd place to be thinking about such a story. After all, the narrator/unnamed main character of the story is undeniably crazy to everyone else but the narrator. He - or she, it is entirely possible that the narrator is a woman - kills an old man that he or she claims to love. The narrator simply does it because the man had a false eye that bothered him or her. So the narrator kills the old man, cuts his body into pieces, and hides the pieces under the floorboards of the man's house.

The next morning, when two police officers show up due to the neighbors being suspicious, the killer is so confident in the clean-up job that he or she lets the police officers in for some tea and friendly conversation, and places the chairs directly over the severed limbs of the old man. But as the conversation goes on, the narrator starts to hear something that sounds like a heartbeat. He or she realizes that the sound is coming from underneath the floorboards, and when the heartbeats get louder and louder, the narrator is sure that the police can hear it as well, and are just toying with the killer.

Eventually, the narrator bursts into full confession, surprising the police officers, who were just having an enjoyable morning and probably did not expect their host to be a recent murderer.

All the while the narrator assures that audience that he or she is entirely sane.

Why was Chou thinking about the story? Because instead of a heartbeat, the ticking of a watch was getting on her nerves. She wasn't imagining the watch ticking, either. The priest had come back, bearing a gift for Namjoon. Something about teaching him to tell time by using the ticking of a clock. Daniel had brought his own pocket watch.

Namjoon couldn't keep it, of course. Too many metal pieces. Chou found herself glad for that. With the only technology in the cell block being a television set and the fluorescent lights with their annoying insect-like hum, every technological sound seemed... loud. The ticking of the watch clattered off the walls, wormed its way through the cracks in the cement, and rumbled like gunshots.

Chou wondered if that was what it was like to be blind and having to learn how to navigate by hearing.

She wished Suga wasn't in Yoongi's body at the time. She could really use some excellent piano music.

Sighing, she sat up straight on her rickety cot and got up. She walked out and walked past the cell where Daniel and Namjoon handled the watch through the bars of the yet-to-be-opened cell. The priest had a hopeful but worried expression on his face, one that he probably wouldn't be showing if Namjoon could see it. But maybe the boy with a metal watch in his hands as his eyes dazedly focused on the wall in front of him already knew that the man was feeling based on his heartbeat. Or maybe he was too distracted. He did, after all, have an unsteady smile on his face. Self-pride perhaps, but Chou was quickly learning that not everything was as it seemed in the hospital. Daniel smiled at her as she walked by, and she smiled back with a quick head bow.

She walked to the lower level and did indeed see Yoongi - though she knew it was Suga, not Yoongi. Chou could tell just by the way he was holding himself. Swaying, his eyes glancing around the room, shifting every few seconds at the table. It looked very strange - a young boy in a fully grown man's body. From her peripheral vision, Chou noticed Hope and Jimin sitting on a bed in one of the cells, watching them curiously through the bars. Spectators, then.

"Hello," she said, and Suga turned to her with wide eyes.

"Hi," he was definitely nervous. Perhaps he was scared of rejection? It didn't seem like he had enjoyed being rejected by Namjoon.