Skip to main content

 

The Eclectic Pen - St. Mary's Home for the Mentally Disturbed -Part 3- [Edit]

By: Sky S. (Misa-Misa)   + 20 more  
Date Submitted: 9/10/2009
Last Updated: 10/10/2009
Genre: Horror » General
Words: 602
Rating:

He had gotten pretty used to the Home now. He had his own regular patients, though room 12B’s Jake still frightened him. After having to once again pick up the shattered plate that 12A had broken, Alex stepped out into the hall, and away from the inescapable accusatory glare. Orderlies in white still walked by, they did every day and a few of them nodded at him, but no one smiled or said anything. Alex knew Jane, Sarah and Mark by name, but had long learned to talk to his co-workers after work only. Even then, only bringing up topics unrelated to the Home. Maggie’s bold eyes constantly appeared in his head, long after he had left her side. The 23 year old couldn’t stand anything that could cast a shadow, save for his presence. She was afraid that the Shadows would emerge from them. Every day when he went in there to feed her, her meals, she asked him the same question over and over again, do the shadows really exist? Every day, Alex evaded that question, attempting to brush it off with a look and quick comment. He couldn’t tell her what he had seen when he was younger, had said nothing about it since the age of seven, so he promptly changed the subject. It had been almost two years since he had joined the staff of St. Mary’s. In that time he had watched from a small edge of his mind, everything that went on in his patients’ rooms and the rest of the Home. People rarely realised how little their words truly said next to their actions. Alex was great at people watching, though he never shared his discoveries with anyone. As introverted as he was, Alex had very few friends outside of work and had little social interaction. Again Maggie’s innocent, but knowing face appeared in his minds’ eye, questioning him again. Shaking his head, Alex felt for her. More than he should for a patient. Maggie had gone through a bout of anorexia when he had first arrived, and would eat nothing. For months nothing but water entered her body, weight sloughing off of her body as if she was a waterfall. Her growth, already stunted from the same thing before, began to regress, her body losing not only weight but height too. It took Alex a lot of thinking and problem solving to figure out how to get her eating again, for in that time she also stopped talking to him. Knowing that she didn’t like shadows, he told her that she would be safe eating, for they wanted the most pathetic creatures they could get, and as long as she was eating they wouldn’t attack her until they got desperate. Slowly Maggie began to eat again, gaining back the weight that she had lost, until she didn’t look like a skeleton anymore. Though her height remained the same, and her body structure made her appear as if she was in her mid-teens, Maggie had been re-animated, and began to have half-conversations with Alex. In his mind, he began to form an attachment to her. Jake, the self-mutilator frightened him and always would. Ethan couldn’t tell him anything that made sense, but Maggie was alive and aside from her irrational fear of shadows, and lack of sleep, was normal. As far as he knew, she was the most normal person in the Home, more so even than him. Alex knew he had to get her to believe that the shadows would never hurt her or come for her, and so he headed home, shift over, dreading what he had to do.

The Eclectic Pen » All Stories by Sky S. (Misa-Misa)

Member Comments

---

Comments 1 to 5 of 5

Comments 1 to 5 of 5