Tortured Phantoms

A Rag Doll

I do not own Kingdom Hospital, Stephen King does and credit for the song 'Sweet Dreams Are Made of This' goes to the Eurythmics and Marilyn Manson respectively. But the version I've chosen for this fic is the Marilyn Manson one.

A seventeen year old Samantha found herself in a clouded world. She was at a lake that was oddly familiar and fog was clouding almost everything. Her hands flew to her stomach. No damage. There's a small scar near my ribs but that's it. It's like it never happened. She began to sob quietly, her breath coming out in light green bursts of smoke. "Samantha.." Her attention was pulled away to see a younger version of herself standing on rocks waves brushing her small feet. Gazing further down she saw that they were standing near a dock over the water. Is this heaven? Hell? Is that really me standing there? I have to be dead. I remember being in the hospital.. How did I get here if I'm dead?

"Samantha..." Jason's voice called to her from the edge of the dock that Samantha had been brought to when she was twelve. Four years to the day of her parents' death. Her parents had died in a tragic boating accident near the docks. They had been driving a speed boat around the wide lake, when they'd lost control of the steering and crashed into the docks, narrowly missing Samantha who was playing slightly further downstream with Jason. She had seen it happening before Jason did, he'd pulled her out of the way just in time before the boat exploded taking the lives of both of her parents with it. She'd tried immensely to forget that day. Nightmares had plagued her for years but this was different. For one her parents weren't there, every nightmare had been of the accident.

"Samaantha...." The voice called again. She felt her legs carry her closer. Both versions moved at once. Little Samantha reached Jason first, taking his outstretched hand coming to the very edge. She watched intently as the younger girl gazed into the water oblivious to anything around her. "Look. See. You will see it all." His voice took a deeper tone moments before she was pushed into the water with a scream escaping her lips, letting water fill her lungs.

The older and younger girls were suddenly one as her gaze landed on a black haired man wearing an old white shirt with grey pants and red suspenders. She tried to break for the surface but something was grabbing her head and holding her down under the water. She could see nothing but blackness. Let me go! No PLEASE! I don't want to be dead! Her lungs were constricting trying to grasp even the slightest bubble of air but failing miserably. The force holding her down suddenly pulled away as if in shock and the shadow cast over the water disappeared along with it. But it was too late, whatever saved her didn't come soon enough. Moments later she lost consciousness a new voice echoing in the abyss of her mind.

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"Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree? Travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody's looking for something. Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to be used by you. Some of them want to abuse you-" The voice was both soothing and eerie. But it ultimately was what called Samantha from her unconscious.

Samantha began to asphyxiate as she tried to breathe through the dirty liquid that was surrounding her, shooting out of the fetal ball she had curled herself into. I can't breathe! What the hell is happening? Where am I?! She began to struggle, her attempts to reach the surface futile as her flaying arms came in contact with a hard surface. "Stop that if you know what's good for you! This feeling of suffocation is all in your mind. You can breathe under here short-timer." The bubbles in the liquid disappeared and her unruly black hair ceased its movement to reveal the hard object to be a torso. A very naked torso.