Mr. Skull

Installment 6: Mental Asylum

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Pearl remember the pasty yellow concrete of the cell floor being littered with scraps of paper and residual plaster.  The pungent smell of urine from an unflushed toilet in the cell, and how it stung her chest when she breathed. However, none of that was prevalent in her new environment, where the flaking yellowish plaster was replaced with white walls adorned with ambient picture. The metal bench that she once sat on was replaced with a white bed with endless sheets that pleated on top of her body. She felt sweaty. Her head rested on a stack of two pillows and when she looked to the left, she noticed a clear divide between her and identical rooms  beside her. The rooms were well illuminated, so Pearl could see- clearly, a young man no older than twenty who laid still  on his bed with his mid-length chocolate hair pooled in blotches on the pillow, the LED lights accentuating the greasiness on his locks. His body was so motionless that he looked like a corpse in karma ready for jurisdiction.

Pearl hummed softly to prompt a reaction, but the thick glass panes muffled her soft melodies.  The boy rouse from his sleep and without a second glance towards pearl, he strutted towards a cabinet on a wall beside him while emitting an air of assurance. His entire body was exposed which made Pearl extremely uncomfortable, but curiosity was potent and she kept her eyes glued to the mysterious figure. As if second nature, he bent down towards the bottom drawer and retrieved a circular shaped item. Its semi-smooth texture caught Pearl's attention and on closer inspection, she realised that it closely resembled a skull. She stared for a while, watching the boy converse with the skull. 

Although she could not hear his voice, she could tell that he was enjoying the conversation by the gentle smile that was plastered on his face while he spoke. His pearly white teeth so perfectly aligned under what could have only been the masterful hand of a dentist. He would occasionally contort his face in confusion and frustration throwing the skull on the ground and watching it smash into several uncountable pieces before it magically pieced itself together again.  Other times, he would throw his head back unable to conceal his mirth. For a second, Pearl would swear that he heard the faintness of his hearty laugh but she wasn't sure if it was her mind playing tricks.

Pearl heard rattling within the cabinet across from her bed and crawled towards it, pulling out an entire skeleton with only its skull missing. Its arms swung aimlessly and legs, vibrating carelessly on Pearls lap its bones emitting a clacking sound each time it hit it the wood of the cabin. At first, Pearl threw the skeleton onto floor and stood up carelessly; stumbling on the legs of the bed the jutted out from beneath and tumbled back onto the mattress. She fell onto the bed with a faint "oof" before scrambling up to see the skeleton again. She wasn't sure why she was so scared, since she was already used to seeing a skeleton- her skeleton, near her. She was beginning to wonder if it was the same one she had met on the grass field, but it was quickly falsified by its sophistication. In comparison to her skull, its movements were more deliberate. Rather than rattling on the floor, this skull would stand up gracefully with a prominent awareness of its centre of balance. It sauntered gracefully towards towards Pearl, extending its hand towards her. 

"Who are you? Where am I?" 

Without the ability to answer, the skull only gestured vaguely to its missing skull and shrugged.
"Can you hear me?" Pearl asked, raising her voice in hopes of getting through to its skull. Its body did not flinch let alone move, which spoke thousands to Pearl.
It couldn't hear her.
Instead, it gestured more persistently; beckoning her eyes to follow his hand. It pointed towards the adjoining rooms split by a thick piece of glass and to its skull that was no longer faced the boy but Pearl through the window. Her eyes followed the length of the boys arm to lock eyes with him, his eyes wide in confusion.  The skull pulled Pearl onto her feet and led her to the divider, and the boy seemed to be doing the same thing. Pearl could see his privates as he stood up and felt her face heat up as she realised that she was nude as well. Trying her best not to make eye contact, she placed her hand on the coolness of the glass as instructed by the skull; feeling the heat from her hand being sucked away by the window between her and the boy. He did the same on the other side, reflecting Pearl. 

Pearl didn't feel anything and wondered if it was a setup or maybe a test. Maybe she wasn't supposed to follow the skull and was to stay put until a timer went out? Is she in trouble now that she had listened to the skull? What are they going to do if she failed? Was she going to die?

A rush of heat coursed through her hand, it felt like molten lava was coursing through her veins and into the glass pane that separated the two. The orange-ish colour swirling with the blues and pale greens of the glass, creating a mosaic of colours and designs. She noticed that the glass was beginning to thin, and looked up to see the boy who continued to wear the same confused expression on his face. Then suddenly, without premeditated warning, the glass broke into a million shards and disintegrated into the air almost immediately- removing the barrier between the two. Without a wall separating the two any longer, Pearl plummeted forwards; colliding with the boy- however, without enough force to push him down, she fell in front of his feet.

She heard him chuckle, his voice deep and buttery, yet coarse at the same time.
"What an entrance."

"It can be difficult sometimes. It always seems like I need you. 
but there are still people who love you, who care about you.
Sometimes its hard to stay alive for yourself,
but you could start by doing it for others."
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      A/N: I'm sorry for the late update (although, I already know that no one really reads this) but I have been really busy with life. I have a lot of work with school, which has been both stressing me out and taking my mind off of this. But I decided to come back with a different perspective and try to write this as a book.

I have also been trying to recover, and it's going so well. I still have my highs and lows when my hormones go haywire, but I feel a lot more motivated that I once was. So, I'm looking forwards to this 'self-treatment' I'm doing :)