PYROMANIAC - (Umbrella Academy) X Five Hargreeves

2:2

A group of dysfunctional looking people all in monotonous, white clothes sat around in a circle in the middle of the room.

The windows lining the far wall were barred and painted over white to match the walls, the floor, the clothes of both the patients and the doctors. It was as though they were trying to convey a pristine slate of cleanliness and purity to cover up the atrocities going on within the old stone walls.

The left side of the large room had a rare sprig of colour dotted around, pencils and colouring equipment made for children all over the table tops. There were drawers under the windows with locks on them; inside, small musical instruments, paint pots, brushes, colouring pencils, stacks of cheap paper, beads and pretty strings and craft supplies. On the shelves in the corner, an array of dust covered, rarely touched, barely interesting books. One lay torn apart and creased on the floor in front of it that no one had picked up in four days.

There was a radio by the nurses window that only the nurse behind it could unlock, usually to hand out medications or bark orders or insults depending on their mood. Usually the little black box released quiet, sometimes crackly music to create an atmosphere of calm - a joke, really - but now it sat switched off.

On the right half of the room, a circle of chairs had been made for about eight residents to sit around, one further away and blocking the entranceway where a man in a white coat and wire glasses sat, clipboard in hand. He wore a plain, unamused expression as though it was a part of his drab uniform. Only occasionally as some of the more 'aware' residents spoke, he would nod and give a sickeningly false sympathetic smile as though trying to convey a sense of understanding.

Another joke.

In the middle of the group of misfits sat a lounged back man with folded arms, scraggly dark facial hair and nearly shoulder length wavy locks. Next to him, a woman with black, choppy hair, short bangs cutting across her forehead and slightly darker skin, a cigarette twisting between her fingers as she looked around in boredom.

The others around them were unimportant. Some muttering to themselves, others not even mentally present in the room, one older lady humming a tune to herself while doing and undoing the same row of knitting in her lap like always.

Occasionally the man and woman in the centre would glance off to the far corner while the doctor spoke.

In that corner, a solitary chair had been dragged over where a russet skinned younger girl sat with her knees drawn up onto the seat and her head resting against the wall beside her, an absent look in her eyes as she stared at the same cracked bit of varnish on the floor she always did. Her black hair was long and wavy down her back and shoulders, her tattooed skin showing beneath her white sleeves and around her ankles.

Everytime the group had therapy, that was where the girl would sit doing the same thing every couple of days. She would draw her legs in close, lean against the wall like she was too tired to sit up straight and it was the only thing keeping her up, and dig a finger nail into the third finger on her left hand repeatedly.

And as always, the tall man standing next to her would loom, arms crossed, eyes darting boredly around the room. He always stayed in that corner, even when she was actually permitted to leave the chair and his eyes would follow her like a hawk.

She was only allowed to leave the chair when therapy or other sessions were over, and with this one dragging on like all the others, she grew to have no concept of time after a while. When they had meals, she was allowed to sit with the others permitting her good behaviour.

Quite a lot of things depended on how she behaved, actually, as though she was a toddler.

But it didn't matter how well she behaved, she always had one member of staff watching her when she was allowed out of her room.