Seven Year Itch

Spooky Season

Photo by Andy Li on Unsplash

---

When you haven’t written fiction for a while, it helps to get a nudge, an unexpected invitation to take part in a Guest Author series. Perhaps because the genre (the ‘spooky season’) isn’t my usual territory, words flowed pretty easily as a dark tale emerged.

---

Moonlit trees swayed outside. Misshapen fingers created grotesque imitations of hands. They waved to residents who cowered, terrified of shadows, afraid of their own. The misunderstood deaf-mute in Room 392 was the nervous kind. Those intricate cityscapes flowing in black ink onto his whitewashed cell walls reflected hidden corners of a mind that had compartmentalised the traumas of his youth.

The man in the white coat stared in, wondering how someone could sit so still, crosslegged precisely in the centre of a concrete cell, yet produce such vivid animations. While the man watched, the shadowy arboreal fingers wiped left and right, trying but failing to erase the dystopian conurbations the artist had imagined into being.

Stormy nights were the worst.

Unfamiliar sounds heightened tensions. Inky black darkness and the stage lighting conjured by lightning or moonbeams lent a macabre edge to the unfolding story of the William Penright Asylum (for the criminally incurable). Like a Frank Miller comic book, images flashed then disappeared, a showreel for an institution brought to life as a horror-filled cartoon Sin City.

Stormy nights were the best.

For curious observers of oddballs, neurotics, perverts and killers, wild moonlit nights provided unlimited streaming, endless episodes starring those locked up for the protection of a society they had once terrorised.

Even those appointed seven long years ago to serve the aims of the Institute felt it. Nervousness, perhaps. A quiet unspoken fear. When he had first set foot in the place, there had been flutters, contradictory shivers of both fear and excitement, threat and opportunity.

The Gothic edifice set the stage, all creaks and groans, long echoing corridors that magnified the softest moans and loudest screams. It took hold of a man, such was its all-pervading malevolence. What was that lyric, way back in a life before this one. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”. He pulled the white coat tighter knowing he’d be stuck with that tune all night, whatever unfolded, his head filled with easy listening and twelve string guitar, accompaniment for the chorus of voices.

Those damn voices.

Soundlessly, he moved through the central corridor into the recreation area. While he considered the games people played, he took in his surroundings, as if with fresh eyes. Who had let that noticeboard get into such a state? Out of date announcements for coffee morning readings about the latest research. Stupid titles by trendy unqualified writers. ‘Bi-Polar Expeditions’ by Scott and Amundsen. Ha, good one, he’d still got it. Seven years and they’d not taken everything. The wit was still there, the words still sharp. But that cork board pissed him off. Scrappy thoughts on cheap paper, homilies for no one in particular next to long-winded Health & Safety notices that no one read. Ass-covering tokenism. God, it was tiresome. Someone should torch the place. Don’t think he hadn’t thought of it. He’d thought a whole bunch of stuff. But he wasn’t paid to think so he kept it inside, buried deep.

You didn’t need posters on staff notice boards to know the responses. Observe it often enough and it got drilled into you. Not drilling like the new guy in Room 347. He’d made his victims watch while he practiced bone-crunching DIY skills on their fragile bodies, his bright crimson ear defenders shutting out their pitiful reactions while he created blood-soaked tableaus.

No, actual drills. The order of things. Procedures to be followed ‘in the event of’. If you spent enough time at the Penright you’d know how much time you had. How long it took to make the call. You’d factor in the 20-minute drive and add seven for kitting up. You would ignore tannoyed warnings by a corpulent donut-muncher in Control, his voice cracking as the mayhem unfolded through a reinforced glass observation window.

Get your timings right, and don’t get caught up in it.

You had to know your stuff if a situation unfolded.

Remember you’re gonna be locked in with all the crazies. Watch your back for the clever ones. Patients here could pass for physicians. Knowledge picked up, obsessive brains archiving the details. Put a white coat on them and it would be impossible to distinguish the madman from the Masters student, the doctor from the deviant.

The clock was ticking.

He’d started his personal countdown eighteen minutes ago. He could hear the mayhem and surprisingly the sounds thrilled him. The rage and the fear, the executioners and the victims, the strong, the weak. By the time they’d kitted up and accounted for everyone, dead or alive, he would be found in a cell, shaken, disturbed, a sane man locked down in the madhouse. He would appear as victim, not perpetrator. Dressed in a bloodied white coat, he would be a medical man to be rescued, not the nightmare patient he had been for the past seven years. It would be the performance of his life.

Four minutes, three … he started to scream. Curtain up.

---

With thanks to Caro Henry for the nudge to create something outside my comfort zone. Caro has invited a number of writers to contribute to this ‘Spooky Season’ Guest Author series. You can access them all at the bottom of the latest addition to the collection.

Dead Undead

---

Have you written something recently that was out of your comfort zone, different to your usual genre? Perhaps you’ll share it in the comments.