Different Stories (mostly horror)

Short Story: Post-Traumatic Stress

Post-traumatic stress disorder is common in soldiers who have been on the battlefield. It causes horrific flashbacks, shaking, and uncontrollable nightmares, which would haunt the patient for the rest of their lives. These things are mostly triggered by loud noises and situations where you would see/think about this thing. Some however, recover with intense therapy, but unfortunately this treatment isn't accessible for everyone. So they come here.

Crescent View Hospital was where these suffers were sent. Between a few of us employees, we knew that the really bad patients were sent here so they could be 'looked after' by us. It isn't just soldiers who come here, before it was merely another mental asylum.

Situated in the middle of a forest, miles from any proper civilization is a three story manor house that contains a various array of cock-tails. A few of the deranged menu are Schizophrenic Sambuca, Insomnia-colada and Depression Daiquiri. If you looked, the most ordered drink was a glass, or in some cases a pint, of red wine. People spill the drink, often staining their clothes a shade of crimson. This happens a lot. The amount of wine I've had the clear up over the years isn't fathomable.

That last statement is worrying, I know. We aren't a very nice place here. I think there are only three of us working here. See, you can never know how many there are because of the ones who disappear. The place is abandoned and we have all tried to escape at one point or another, but we have all failed. This is mostly because we don't team up and work together, I mean if I was to team up with someone who knew how to escape; then our little team would have a better chance of succeeding. Like they say, two mentally unstable minds are better than one.

Now I'm thinking of escaping. The only person who I think could do it- if she put the effort in- is Mercy Quinn. Although all of us here have a mental disorder, she seems to not be as crazy as the rest. I will find her.

Weaving through the corridors, I go past alcoholics. They try to speak to me, wailing forlornly as they drink their way into their own end. I seek for one room and I know she will be there. She always is.

Unlike the other rooms at the facility, this one was in almost perfect condition, if you ignored the scrawling on the walls. Over the course of the war, she locked herself up in here, writing poems with a pen she had acquired from a fellow patient. After the first one ran out, I supplied her with more, which was one of the reasons why I knew the pathway to her room so well. This was before the whole place had a meltdown and the war has moved closer to the hospital. As she demised into the dark, Mercy began to write things of a different tone, things that often linked with death and murder. I remember one of her poems quite well, it was about her demons. "We cannot hide from it any longer," was a line from it.

I approach her door cautiously.

"Mercy? Are you in there?" I said gently to the door.

"Yes?" came the soft reply.

"Can I come in?"

"Can you stop asking questions?"

A light laugh was audible through the wood. I needed to be careful around her because even if she wasn't as drunk as some of the people here, she still liked a bit of Sambuca every now and again. At any moment she could turn into a monster and I didn't want her to trigger me.

The door opened and Mercy was stood there, her brown hair hanging limply around her head. She kept it quite short; how she did this I do not know. She would've been pretty if she wasn't stuck here and I'm sure she would gain the attention of many gentlemen with her blue gaze.

"I'm stuck I need you to help me," she gestured to the wall behind her, "I was just about to find you myself."

That was a lie. She hasn't been out of her room for anything other than to 'visit the toilet' for years.