The Alternative

October 9, 1972
Grockdain Institution
9:32 AM

Lydia Barnes hated attending this room. It was like walking into a cold, cramped basement and feeling eyes behind you. With every step in that padded cellar, one could feel a sort of hateful mania creeping over their spine.

And today, it was smothering. Lydia believed herself to have a firm constitution. You didn't work in a mental institution without some guts to you. But today... In Miss Cunnie's room it was awful.

As far as Lydia Barnes could tell, Juniper's... Illness came in waves. It might, fortunately, be a lasting span of months for her in a state of wellness. Where she was docile, cheerful. During her spans of wellness, Juniper Cunnie was lovely.

But gradually, the expanse of such loveliness grew shorter and shorter.

And whatever sort of sanity the girl had had yesterday was gone and Lydia was, frankly, frightened.

She paused before the cell door- it wasn't like other rooms. It wasn't a normal wood pane locked from the outside- no. This was a vault.

Nearly two feet thick. And still... The inhuman, ungodly wails from within could be heard. Stumbling back a bit, Lydia- with shaking hands -made to pull her rosary out for but a moment.

Pressing it to her lips, she murmured silently against it, "Our Father, who art in Heaven,"

The wails paused for an instant.

"Howell be Thy name,"

Screaming. Vulgar obscenities thrown at inhuman volumes.

"Thy kingdom come," Lydia stood as a statue before the door her lips shook violently as she continued, "Thy will be done,"

Threats in Lydia's native tongue. Her daughter would die, her brother shall be sodomized before his death. Her dead mother would be unearthed and violated as a corpse.

"On Earth as it art in Heaven."

It was silent.

Lydia gasped quietly. And slowly, riding weak knees she nodded for the door to be opened and entered.

The girl was in a grotesque arch. Strained over her leather cuffs and straps. And her legs... Her limbs had slowly grown into frightening little poles. Without actual muscle or flesh around them. Just bone and skin.

And the wrappings on her legs had tightened until she had lost circulation- thick and heavy purple stained her ankles and toes. And about her shins were growing sores and welts. Blood- however thin -spilled and smeared across her bindings and sheets.

She was pressed so roughly against the straps that her cotton shirt tore and jagged ribs protruded vulgarly through her skin.

It seemed so delicate, like tissue paper stretched over sticks. Her body wasn't supposed to move that way. It shouldn't have been able to bend like that- her spine shouldn't be able to take that. It was nearly inverted- backwards and bent in half all while the bands across her abdomen strained against her.

Lydia couldn't help it. She stepped back, holding the palm that carried her rosary to her mouth. And with a tiny, shuddering breath she prayed again, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howell be Thy name,"

June's body released. She dropped back to the cot in a loud crack. And she was still.

"MEDIC!" Cried Lydia. Forgetting her terror for a moment her training kicked in. Rushing forward she pulled the girl's body into a correct position.

Doctor Richard Marks was, at that point, entering the hospital. And being escorted to his patient. When the sound of shouting alerted him, and the tenant beside him.

They began a deft jog in the direction of June's room, the tenant already shouting down various halls for a doctor.

As Richard arrived, he was utterly confounded. The girl's body appeared lifeless. Almost. As there was a small huddle of nurses and tenants pressing hands to her twitching, thrashing figure in an attempt to still her.

The most frantic of the team was a slight Latina woman. She shook and shuddered while her hands slipped over Juniper's shoulders. And her lips buzzed indistinctly over words that Richard suspected was prayer.

"Where are your Goddamn doctors?!" Richard shouted, dropping his brief case and rushing up to Juniper Cunnie's face. "June? June, listen to me..." he mumbled, holding her jaw and pressing up her eyelids. There was only dark, reddened whites.

"She isn't having a seizure, Dr Marks." The Latina woman beside him whispered, "She isn't sick, sir." She began rambling. That same sentence being chopped up and choked out in various ways.

Richard Marks wished he could send a panic attack away, but there weren't enough hands at the moment.

Not while the woman below him began crying.