BONETAKER

2.

Janet received an urgent phone call from Dr McGuire, despite his office being right next to the reception desk where she sat day after day,doing whatever he told her to. His voice was unusually excited and he commanded her to go to the storage rooms and retrieve Dahlia Ashwell's things. Those 'things' included many, many books, piles of drawings and DVD's that she wasn't even allowed to watch, but insisted on having with her. She was the only patient who was allowed that much in her cell, which was due to her having an extremely good lawyer just a few calls away.

The storage room was in the basement, and it was where anything belonging to pastor present patients was held after it had been confiscated. Janet had always found it a little unsettling- Dr McGuire had insisted on hanging up all the drawings and paintings done by inmates in either their cells with crayons and chalk or in heavily supervised 'art classes' that were designed to let the patients 'show their inner thoughts and feelings.' Mostly, the pictures were of sexual acts of violent fantasies.

Dahlia Ashwell's drawings are different, and as Janet entered the room after exiting the lift, she could spot them hanging from the wall. Little A5 pieces of paper framed by Dr McGuire himself, because he thought that one day they might make him a fortune on. They weren't master pieces, but Janet could see the passion behind them. There was one that always caught her off guard and she stood staring right into the eyes of a crying little girl stood in the middle of a busy room.It was beautiful, but Janet could never quite work out why. Perhaps that was why she was a receptionist and personal assistant in a psychiatric hospital rather than an art critic.

She retrieved the box of belongings, piling the paintings on top of it before quickly getting out of the room. It always gave her a weird feeling. All those boxes of things that used to belong to murderers and psychopaths, and even the one cannibal who ate his girlfriend's heart for lunch. Dr McGuire was proud of having treated that man,despite him committing suicide by drowning himself in the cell toilet before the doctor could write a book about him.

The hospital corridors were as white and clean as the cells and Janet struggled with Dahlia Ashwell's box of books. She wasn't a particularly strong woman but hated to ask any of them men here for help because they were so patronising to her. 'You shouldn't work here, it's too dangerous and upsetting for a woman' was a phrase she heard almost daily. Sometimes it was extremely upsetting, having to file paperwork that detailed gruesome murders that these people had committed, or having to sit and watch as new patients were brought in, straight jackets and masks used as a precaution to restrain them from the possibility of harming someone else.

Janet remembered the day they brought Dahlia Ashwell in, almost 8 months ago now. She was still relatively new to the job at the time and no one had told her what was going on. They brought the girl in through the front doors, right in front of Janet's desk. She remembered watching as huge guards pulled this no taller than 5"2 girl through the doors, and as the news reporters outside yelled and flashed their camera's. The girl had on the usual straight jacket but the mask forced her mouth completely shut rather than just preventing her from biting anyone. As the guards passed the desk, the girl winked at Janet behind thick rimmed round glasses. She never would have guessed that she was the BONETAKER from her appearance and she almost didn't believe Dr McGuire when he boasted about finally having caught her.Though, of course, he hadn't been the one to catch her himself.

The memory of that single wink made Janet shudder as she approached the doors that lead to Dahlia Ashwell's cell. She always stayed as far away from there as she could because there was just something about a young girl that had murdered people that disturbed her more than any of the men behind bars that she passed each day.

Dr McGuire was already in the room that held Dahlia Ashwell's cell, separating her from the other patients in the hospital. He turned to face Janet as the guards let her, and smiled gratefully.