Dark & Darker

Agony. The agony of having little to no hold on reality. You could hear it, wails drifting down the drenched white halls. It was in the air, you could smell it. It was like a flood of bleach had drowned a funeral home. But the overwhelming sounds and smells were not as appalling as the simple normality of such a sensorial onslaught. Nurses walked around seemingly desensitized, as did various men in white coats.

 Otto stood still in the recreation room of the mental institution shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot in his muddy and torn tennis shoes. He waited a little less than patiently for a nurse to return so that she could enlighten Otto on the day-to-day work that went on at the institution. In his cold hands he held a steel tray of unsightly food: mashed potatoes, green beans, and a chicken breast, which had been cut into bite-size pieces. The longer he peered into the potatoes, the more they seemed to be crawling across the tray.

His attention was stolen by an exasperated groan coming from behind him. His eyes were caught on a middle aged man who seemed to struggle to drag himself across the lobby to where several others sat in front of a small black and white television playing children’s cartoons. Though he had been there for no longer than an hour, he was already eager to leave so he searched for a clock. He found one on a far wall that read 11: 27 A.M. Next to it was a calendar with a smiley sticker on the current day, which told him it was January 15th 1964. With the New Year came a new job at his father’s mental hospital that was forced upon him. Last week, when Otto turned sixteen, his father saw him as old enough to begin learning about the family business, which Otto would head when he retired.

“Otto!” He heard someone call his name from behind him so he turned towards the sound and found the nurse he had been waiting for.

“I found them!” the young blonde chirped with a smile as she held up a key ring with several keys hanging from it, they jingled with the movement and Otto winced at the shrill clatter. She left him with no time to rebound as she had already started her decent down a hallway leading towards the back of the building.

Her heels clacked on the tiled floors leaving echoes behind them as they delved deeper into the hospital. They turned a few times until a sign hung above a double door entrance that read Isolation Rooms. As they passed various rooms, Otto noticed the number of patients near the back dwindle until nearly every room they passed was empty. The reasons the patients were held in isolation varied but, as the nurse had explained to him earlier, the particular patient Otto would spend time with today was a Schizophrenic woman thus she was fearful of people and noises.

They had walked halfway down the long corridor when the nurse stopped to unlock a door to the left. As she worked with the lock, Otto looked to his right and saw a single door at the end of the hallway with a window in it. Through it he could see the forest that surrounded the hospital. As someone who loved the outdoors, it pained him to know that a part of the forest had been leveled to accommodate the hospital. Otto then noticed how oddly enough for a building so heavily secured, the only lock on the door was a simple padlock, which he figured could easily be broken.

Once the nurse had opened the door, Otto followed her into the dark room and found it to be unsurprisingly empty apart from a bed, a small plastic table, and an armchair. In the armchair was the woman who’s lunch he was holding. She seemed to ignore their entrance as her attention was focused on a piece of artwork she was working on; this canvas was the one source of warmth in the room with its earthy oranges, which reminded him of autumn.

The nurse approached the patient and spoke to her in a gentle voice, “Heather? This young man’s name is Otto and he’s going to sit with you for lunch today. Is that alright with you?”

Heather didn’t look away from her artwork once but simply grunted her approval. It was at this time that Otto noticed a man sitting in a plastic chair in the corner; Otto assumed this meant that Heather was not permitted to be left alone.