The Alternative

October 9, 1972
Grockdain Institution
9:52 AM

June was regaining some sort of consciousness.  Her body still thrashed, but she had stopped foaming  at the mouth, and her eyes had begun fluttering.

She was calming- she couldn't be put to sleep, not yet. So as the doctor finally arrived- Dick's cynicism gave a considerable roll of the eyes -he had to suddenly protest.

"Doctor, I need to profile her in this state. She's vulnerable at the moment an-"

The doctor didn't think that meant anything. He professed his never believing a manipulative bitch like her.

"Sir," Doctor Marks frowned, "I need to get a recording of her after this episode. I'm the psychiatrist hired for Miss Cunnie, she-"

The young tenant who had been praying interjected. She was quiet and urgent, glancing warily at the figure of Juniper as she rhythmically weighed against the straps that pressed against her. "She isn't sick."

"Ma'am." Richard Marks was not religious. And he, despite allowing others to believe it, did not want such wild notions imposed upon himself. Especially not about his patients. They were sick, his job in life was to help the sick- not the possessed.

"Doctor." She continued, "That is not illness, Doctor. She is... She..." the woman began slowly fidgeting with- what Marks assumed -was a rosary in her pocket.

"Ma'am," he persisted, "She is sick. Doctor, I need her awake so I may help her to not be sick." The doctor ran his tongue over his teeth with a loud click, and shrugged.

And the woman did not. She, in fact, was towed away by the doctor and another nurse.

And with this, the rest of the room simply cleared, allowing the girl to stir  awake on her own. Richard Marks could add, as of that moment, two things to his notes on June Cunnie: Epileptic episodes, and shitty hospital staff.

However, he suspected that wasn't all he would write today. As Juniper began rousing, struggling against her straps and turning her head, he restocked his tape and punched it in.

Suddenly, she chuckled. A very low, bitter sound. "We didn't rid you of the tape yet, Marks?"

Immediately, his pen skittered across his pad. Absently, without looking, he began a slight catalogue of observations.

After episode. Altered voice. Referenced to herself as "we." Staff hasn't yet changed gown after episode. It is soiled- blood and feces. She doesn't seem to notice.

All the while he pleasantly replied, "What do you mean, Miss June?"

She laughed again, however it was much louder, "'That's real FUCKING FUNNY.'"

His pen stopped. And her tone became mocking, yet it grated into her throat. As if she wasn't supposed to make a noise like that- he imagined a little creature tearing its way out from her windpipe. "Yes...  We may play with your tapes. We may play with your tapes if we feel it."

Marks wouldn't be shocked. This wasn't the first time a patient had flipped the switch on him. "June wouldn't do that. Who are you?"

She looked at him then. A quick little flick of her head that made her shoulder pop. "There's no place to hide when The Dead Are Alive."

"Have you seen that film, June?"

"Cunnie isn't talking, Marks. Pay attention." She snapped. The low scrape dragging further in her throat.

He continued writing. Her face was what he most needed to remember. It was different somehow... An older look on it. Where June Cunnie had looked tired, she was now down right famished.

When Richard has been a boy, him and his sister had collected a bushel of flowers. But he, being a child, didn't think to lift them off the ground on the way home. So they had, through the course of dirt and mud and gravel, become withered.

And June Cunnie looked withered.

He stared at her, thinking of how to reply, assess this persona she was in. "Then who is speaking?"

"I told you."

Marks clucked his tongue, "You have time the title of a movie."

"Yes, Mr Marks, how smart you are," she mocked snidely. It caused her voice to crack- vastly shooting it upward into a messy squeal. Like a crying, screaming pig she sounded as she continued, "Now, have you ever seen Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I have the Key?"

Marks had. It was an interesting film. Frightening to be sure, but an odd shift from The Dead Are Alive. Interesting. He lied, "I'm afraid I haven't. Why?"

"Do you want to know who I am, Marks? Well that bitch has nothing on me and that's all you need to know. Don't worry if you're discontented with my answer, Marks, my associates will have much more to say."

"The 'bitch' from the film?"

She turned her gaze back to him again. However it was much slower this time. She eased her eyes onto him whilst her neck stretched and popped, her shoulders shuddering and sounding off as well. She was like a little moving hailstorm as she growled, "I fucking said that that's all you need to know."