Scary Stories And Tales (Can you handle it?)

The Aylum ( part 3)

 There's a certain allure in the chase; an enjoyment of the game itself. Win or lose, you're still playing, still making move and countermove, full of energy and action. Throughout, there's a sense of importance that no other activity can really match. The game is the game... but now it's over, and, I'll admit, I'll miss the feeling.Although... having the horrible truth - possessing it and holding it close like a prized treasure - the truth can almost replace that feeling.

I won.I felt that I was on the path to victory once I calmed down from my delusion about the patients escaping. I realized that I had quite a few cards in my hand to be played. My unknown opponent had made a mistake somewhere, and allowed me far too many leads.The first: the girl I helped escape during my delusion was nowhere to be found. Her room was empty, and her file was deleted. None of the other staff could remember her, and... I believed some of them. An old nurse like Mabel would not possibly be part of a conspiracy so dark and vast. Her primary concern was the next episode of her soaps...But I wrote about the girl. I have the words on my computer, and on the internet. I told no one here that I've been writing about patients - I would immediately be fired, for obvious reasons.I have the words, and I remember.Memories are tricky, as I know personally, but the words are still there.

Furthermore, I went through the patients one by one, looking for discrepancies. I could have just helped the girl escape while having an episode; that proved nothing... but while so deluded, I saw one patient carve up another, even had his lung slide up against my shoe.The murdered patient was missing, too.At that point, I had a few logical choices to consider about my opponent.A strong - but imperfect - case could have been made that, somewhere in the maze of owners and financial backers and stockholders behind this place, some nefarious corporation had an agenda involving the patients and their various insanities. The likeliest intent was to incubate and refine memetic hazards; ideas carefully constructed to infect anyone who heard them, carefully constructed to spread and destroy. This would be a new kind of weapon, perhaps changing warfare forever.Their primary agent would have been the chief of medicine, and much of my paranoia, delusions, and inconsistencies could have been explained by drugs in my pain killers, meant to imbalance me and discredit me should I uncover their agenda.

The foremost problem with that theory is the lack of recall on the part of the staff. Perhaps some were lying, perhaps Mabel just rarely interacted with the girl, perhaps some didn't care enough to remember individual patients... but all of them? It felt wrong.While an uncharacteristic downpour on the roof filled the building with the constant rhythm of heavy rain, I stalked the halls, eyeing everything. I asked the responsive patients if they remembered the girl - and they did. The only people that could remember her were patients, and me. That struck me as extremely important...No, the corporation angle didn't add up.The booming thunder outside added to my tension. There were other explanations.I could have been a patient myself.

The signs were not lost on me. Claire had been employed here, and I suspected the chief of medicine had some idea she was off balance - but her particular brand of insanity was harmless... for most people. My bandaged hand had begun itching painfully some time that morning, and it added an undercurrent of increasing anger to my strategizing.I'd dwelled often on the nature of memory and insanity. I had nothing to prove that I was not, myself, some sort of employed patient with a carefully crafted delusion of a normal life beyond the walls of the establishment. The sun did feel ages distant, but the rising storm outside made even that luxury impossible.All the specific memories I could recall had no basis other than whatever sanctity I granted them. I asked myself if it mattered... I asked myself where that logic would lead...It would lead backwards, to the conditions that created this situation. Someone like Claire, someone like me - potentially - employed to watch over the other patients... that meant critical underfunding, so much so that moral and ethical lines had long since been redrawn - or erased.