Scary Stories And Tales (Can you handle it?)

The Asylum part 2

What is the nature of insanity? As of late, I've contemplated this question far too deeply. I find myself standing in the hall and thinking of the sun, which I have not seen in many days.

I've been spending all my time reading files and financial documents. I can't determine where the back-end mess of shell companies and legal fictions lead. The controlling interest in this place cannot be precisely located - but that might just be a sign of the times.If I were to step outside and enjoy the healing radiance of the sun, perhaps purposely walk in the chilly winter breezes without a jacket just to feel the air wash over me, how would I know that the experience was real once I returned inside?

The only proof any of us have that the rest our life exists are... memories.If you can't trust your memories, what can you trust? It seems curiously relevant to me that one's entire structure of reality comes down to a series of mutable mental factoids.Perhaps that is what happened to these people. They are not fundamentally broken on an organic level. They are all there, all functioning, all thinking... but, through a series of decisions, their reality became quite dark and painful.Except for one... one story doesn't fit.After finishing my other duties, I went straight to him.I used my practiced calm, but stern tone. "You left something out."He sighed and looked over at me, saying nothing. The despair in his eyes was heartbreaking."I read your account, in your file," I continued, making sure to impart compassion and urgency. "There's something missing from your story."

His brow lowered slightly. "How did you know?"I thought of the pattern the rest of the patients followed, and how his didn't fit. "It's not important. I'm here because I care, and I think something bigger than both of us is going on. I need to know the rest of your story."His face scrunched up; I thought he was smiling... but then he sobbed, and tears flowed down his cheeks. "You believe me? God, please tell me you believe me."I was well aware of my mentor's - and even the chief of medicine's - warnings about how I regarded the patient's ideas... but I needed to know. "Yes, I believe you."He sobbed more deeply, and curled over in profound relief. "I'll tell you, I'll tell you..."I lied about how it happened. I wasn't just walking on the street. What, some random bum spills blood on me, and then the bonewalker comes out of nowhere?

No, it was me.I sought it out.My life was already taking a dark turn. I was nobody. Ignored by everyone. I was just some guy, no college degree, nothing to his name, no family to speak of and no connections. I felt left behind by the whole world. People were constantly afraid of me, unwilling to give me a job, just because I had a record... don't think I didn't notice when other people held themselves closer at night as I walked by...Addicted to middling drugs, not the real killer stuff mind you, not yet, I often moved among the city's underbelly, the only place that would have me.

There's drugs, yeah... brutality, too, anything you want... orgies, even, but you don't want a part of that, believe me.Those people... they had a desperation about them. It was in the air, and everyone knew it, and it seemed like nothing mattered to many of them...The bonewalker was a whispered rumor among them. There were some users that didn't need to work, didn't need to put on the façade of a normal life. They had a backer. Lucky bastards, we called them.Every hopeless pariah eventually gets to this point where the initial money, the initial will, the initial life - that's all gone. I hit that point, and I turned to that thing. It wasn't for the drugs, either. In fact, I cleaned up quite a bit. It was the power.People answered to me. Screw with me, you die. All I have to do is get some of that special blood on your fingernails or teeth, and my backer cuts you up from the inside out.

It liked to do that, you know. It treated us like pets. The money was great, too. I hated being sliced up every time it came calling, yeah, but that was the cost of doing business.Then... things got more serious, and I realized I was more a slave than a pet. Some of the things it forced me to do were... God, I have nightmares... at first, I didn't understand the greater picture.We'd all gotten in over our heads because there was nobody else to turn to. Once you have a record, once you're on the street, it's over for you... and the bonewalker took advantage of that. It had more than enough willing recruits to create a network, an army. It took a lot of whispered conversations with other slaves to figure out that we were part of something far more disturbing than just our own private hells... and our master wasn't the worst thing out there. We were the good guys, fighting the good fight by any means necessary, can you imagine that? It just wasn't good for us personally, because both society and the bonewalker viewed us as expendable...You know why I'm in this bed? Why I'm so depressed? Think about it. If I was afraid of dying at any moment, I'd live it up. I wouldn't sit here, in this room, alone... no, just the opposite. The bonewalker's dead, man. It's not coming back.