Dark Reveries

This marks my first entry in the notebook Doctor Windhelm gave me earlier today. He’s instructed me to write down everything about my life here at Wentworth Psychiatric hospital, and in as much detail as possible. That includes meals, sleep, and whatever else I might be doing in this nut house. I don’t remember having a diary before, but then again, I don’t remember anything beyond waking up this morning.

At least I’ll have something to do in this depressing cell. Unless, of course, I decide to stab my eyes out with this pen.

I’ll first describe my quarters.

The room they’ve placed me in is pure white. I mean it. No exaggeration. The room is white. A great big white cube. I’ll bet it’s whiter than my ass, which I assume is pretty white (I haven’t actually seen it.) The walls, all four of them, are guess what color—Go on, guess!

That’s right, they’re green!

No. the walls are white. They are pristine and shiny. When I put my face close enough I can see a muddled reflection of myself, though not lucid enough to discern any of, what I assume to be, very handsome features. Or, maybe not. I could be an ugly man. Something about these walls makes me want to bash my head against them, but I figure it would take at least a week before I could draw any blood. Not that they’re padded, because they’re not. No, the walls are a type of soft plastic, just like everything else in this room. Still, I could try. A little sprinkle of red would really liven up this drab, lifeless cage.

The floor is a kind of polished white linoleum. The ceiling is the same, but too high for me to reach. I tried. My bed is a hunk of plastic that extends from the wall. It looks like an upside-down bathtub, solid so I can’t crawl underneath it and hide. What would I do down there if I could? Jack myself off and howl like an ape? Unlikely.

There’s a single mattress on top of my luxurious bedframe. It’s hard, thin, and uncomfortable.

Luckily for me I have a sink and toilet in the corner of my humble white abode. They are hard plastic, too (no metal in here!) The tap gives me only cold water and the toilet has no seat or lid or tank. Basically, a funnel going into the ground. But hey, I’m not a lunatic, right? A hole is good enough for me. Cold water, too. Maybe if I’m feeling extraordinarily crazy, I can shit all over myself, then wash it off when I calm down. Who knows.

My favorite thing is the grate above my bed. It’s white. It also makes a constant droning sound that literally never ends. It buzzes on and on, and I’ve become convinced that someone is blasting invisible chemicals into my room. My money’s on to make me crazy. Then again, maybe they want to make me paranoid.

I almost forgot! Guess what else I have. Yup, a door! It’s mundane, but still a relevant feature of my starch palace. It has no window, no handle. It’s a thick white slab with a single pinhole that I can’t see out of, no matter how much I squint or scream or call it a whore. Others can see in, though. Of that I’m sure. I was unsettled, at first, knowing someone could be outside my door at any moment watching me. Then I noticed the plexiglass box tucked inside the upper corner of the room and its blinking red light. That calmed me down. Now I know they are watching me every second of every day. Is it perverse that that makes me feel better?

Anyway, that’s the grand tour of my home. It’s drab and it’s boring, but it’s mine. I think that when I leave this shithole, what I’ll remember most is all the fucking white. That and the persistent brightness that radiates from light bulbs I can’t seem to find. The place is lit up like an interview room. Even now, as I sit hunched on my lovely bed with a thin sheet draped over my head like a child trying to read a book in the dark (opposite, but the same,) I can feel it drilling into my brain, that fierce and unrelenting light.

I wonder how long before it drives me mad?

I first awoke in a confused daze, several hours ago. I lay flat on the bed, opening and closing my eyes, squinting and groaning until they adjusted to this ghastly brightness. My initial thought was to resume sleep, but the longer I struggled to stare up at the white ceiling, the more I realized something was wrong. Then came panic. I was suddenly acutely aware that I rested in a strange, unknown place. I searched the recesses of my memory but came back empty handed. Not a damn thing. It was like someone took a magic eraser to my memories. I could not even muster a single image in the eye of my mind. Nothing. Blank.

I sprang upwards, out of the white sheet some unseen hand had placed over me like I was a rigid corpse on a hospital bed.

Hospital, I thought. I’m in a hospital. I’ve been injured!

I prodded the two lumps still under the crumpled sheet, pinched one of my knees and squeezed the upper thigh of each leg; no damage. I felt my crotch; still intact. I then lifted my baggy white shirt and inspected my torso for any wounds, finding none—just a thin, weak frame and pale, sickly skin.

That, at least, was a relief. However, my nerves were still shot. My heart palpitated to an extent that I could feel the blood cavorting inside my toes. My head spun. My mouth was dessert dry. I then understood that I needed water, and that is when I spotted the sink.

Tossing the sheet onto the floor, I swung my legs out and placed my feet on its pallid, half-reflective surface. Pain was instant. A dozen wasp bites flared along the soles of my feet, every nerve on fire. I grimaced and launched upwards, yowling, but did not count on my legs giving out like a pair of useless noodles.

I crashed. My knees hit the floor and I swear to the God of men that I thought they exploded into fragments. I cried out and fell prone, almost in tears.

I lay panting and in terrible agony. My eyes darted all about the room and I felt helpless. I felt like one of those seniors in an infomercial. (‘Help! Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’) I wormed there on the ground for a while longer, staring up at the walls that towered above me and I cowered below them, a pathetic worm.

I eventually pulled myself to the sink. My body was so weak, my hands numb and somehow imbued a fiery pain when I tried to use them. Still, I powered through the ache in my bones and the horrible sensations in my nerves and made it to the sink, reached for the bowl and hauled myself up, opened my mouth and stuck it below the spout. I turned the knob and water gushed into my mouth. Oh, blessed art thou aqua! I reveled at the coolness of the liquid and how magical it felt sliding down my throat. I let water splash over my face and soak my shirt, guzzling at least eighty liters of it before turning the knob off and collapsing once more, this time with my back against the wall and my legs spread before me.

I remained in that position a long time, breathing heavily and letting the sharp light burn my eyes, not a proper thought in my head. The god damn light seemed an element of the air itself, blinding and powerful and emitting radiance from every molecule of air. After a while, my head started to ache.

I was perplexed, uncomfortable, frightened, and in pain. I retreated to the bed on hands and knees, a wounded child wanting nothing more than to cry and suckle on a breast. I climbed up and hid below the sheet. At some point, I drifted off—lulled to dream town by the steady drone of the air duct above me.

I awoke once after my initial resurrection in need of water, then returned to bed. A second and third time followed, always thirsty, then a fourth to piss. After relieving myself, I could not fall asleep again.

Time meant nothing. It was non-existent. A perpetual state of sunny afternoon was maintained thanks to the blistering illumination inside my cell, and when finally I could sleep no longer, I found myself confounded by the very notion of time. I ambled to and from the sink, helping my legs to recover their strength. The minutes went by, maybe the hours. I grew bored and restless. I lay in bed and stared at the blank ceiling, trying to establish a concept for why I was where I was. None ever dawned on me. I paced. I ran my fingers along the edges of my glimmering white box. I played with the faucet. I waved my arms at the camera, and at one point showed them my ass for good measure. I tried to push the door open. I screamed. I yelled at it. I called it a whore.

At some point during the endless seconds outside of time, I quit. I flopped onto the chilly floor and pressed my cheek against it, twisted my neck awkwardly. I shut my eyes and endured the painful contortion, listened to the chemical hum of the air duct. I hoped that if I stayed like that long enough I would either die or sleep. I did not care which.

Alas, instead of death, people came.

I still don’t know their names. I call one of them Mr. Strong, and the other, Mr. Clean.

I opened my eyes and saw that my door had been opened and that a pair of emotionless bouncers loomed in its threshold. I could see the dim light of the hallway behind them. Yes, DIM light! I could also see that the walls were a dingy gray plaster.

Neither man stepped into my room, as though it was too filthy for them and they refused to taint their white slippers. As such, they stood shoulder to shoulder just outside the frame like a pair of bald, disgruntled eunuchs and stared down at me, the idiot on the floor, with obvious loathing. I stared up at them with the same contempt, unmoving.

Mr. Clean was tall. His partner, Mr. Strong, was wide. Both wore plain white dress shirts tucked neatly into white khakis, generic black belts holding them up. Their shirts were buttoned so tightly that their veiny necks bulged out of their collars like muscular turtles trying to escape their shells. Each odd, clone-esque man’s breast pocket contained a small square lump, and by the stank of smoke drifting off them, I knew the lumps were packages of cigarettes. Probably Camels.

Not a single hair could be claimed between them. Their heads were shaved smooth as peach glass. Their faces, too. The image of Mr. Clean holding his partner by the feet and dunking him into a vat of acid to scorch off his hair occurred to me, then Mr. Strong doing the same for his bizarre counterpart. I chuckled.

Mr. Strong held his cold, indifferent gaze upon me, and I could not help but know this man in every intimate regard.

Mr. Strong’s bulk was immense, yes, but not from exercise. He was a man born to eat two full chickens and a squealing boar for breakfast, then finish them off with twenty-four beers and a pack of cigarettes. It was a natural strength that he owned, his gorilla arms husky and fat. I witnessed him as a child, knocking down other children in the hallway and stealing their lunches, sitting in the boy’s room and stuffing his chubby jowls with donuts and chocolate snacks. I also saw him as a misunderstood, grumpy, and sadistic teenager, abusing his mother and stepping on cat’s tails, trapping dogs inside wells and ovens. Perhaps eating them.

Mr. Clean was even more sinister than his stocky friend. I could tell everything about this tall, lanky lunatic just by looking at his skeletal face, at his pointed nose and sharp eyes. He was menacing in every sense of the word. He struck me as the kind of fellow who got caught masturbating in the girl’s locker room in the tenth grade and never gave up the habit—the kind of guy you would see enter a dirty massage parlor wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, then request special treatment of the anal variety. One might see him outside one’s window during a thunder storm as a flash of lightning illuminates his Frankenstein form in the rain and the darkness, then never see again.

He was the one to speak.

“Get up,” Mr. Clean said in a voice I had expected: lifeless and mean. The toxic smell of cigarette smoke wafted out of his mouth and down into my nose.

“Okay,” I moaned.

I struggled out of my self-made contortion and stood before the ugly duo as a beaten dog before hungry wolves. Mr. Strong said nothing, and stepped sideways in a gesture for me to exit the room. As much as I wished to leave that bright torment, I was curious. “Where am I?” I asked.

“Cell number 744,” Mr. Clean said. “Let’s go. The boss is waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” I demanded of this bald rapist. “I have been waiting in cell number 744 all damn day. What the hell is going on here?”

“Longer than that,” Mr. Strong said in a hog’s snorty tone.

I glanced past them and into the dimness of the hallway, suspiciously. I thought a light flickered on and off, then on again, but was unsure. Options as limited as they appeared, I turned back and gave the thin mattress a rather distasteful look, then exited the room with the glabrous eggheads.

The Journal of Dr. W. Windhelm. Dated 23rd of October, the year 2010.

He woke today. Boris came and told me.

I’ve been waiting for the perfect subject for an eternity and finally he fell into my lap, only to be comatose.

Now, thank the creator, he is awake. I can finally begin the tests of my precious Z23.

The others were all pitiful examples. Z22 ended in suicide, and Z17 all the way through Z21 were terminated in psychotic break downs and complete forfeiture of self. I remember how they raved in the halls, the horrible screams echoing out of their cages and into my office like the wails of tortured apes, as if I was zookeeper in a twisted circus.

A shame that none survived.

Well, none remained alive in any sense of the word. I don’t care to recount the disaster of the rest, Z01 to Z16. By the lords of the abyss were those ever a nightmare, and indeed in every sense of the word.

Z23 promises to be everything the others were not. With his help, I believe myself and Doctor Mandalay will create something truly magnificent. It will be our magnum opus, an acute advancement in the field of science and a real stroke of genius for those dullards to try and wrap their small minds around.

I will see him any minute now, my oblivious subject. I will have a quick chat to put him at ease before I allow him an evening of rest. It would be proper to let his brain snap back from its stasis.

Tomorrow we will begin the procedure.

October 23rd, continued after food break.

I don’t know how many doors were in that hallway. They looked to be infinite, like standing between two mirrors. As I left the brightness of my cell and came into the dimly lit corridor, I glanced right and observed an endless number of sealed white doors, and a runway of dirty tiles that led to nothing. Light bulbs dangled from thin wires sprouting out of the cracked plaster ceiling. Some were on but some were not; some flickered a dingy yellow aura. I could hear chatter coming from down the way, the sound of many muffled voices that may or may not have been arguing with someone or with no one.

I stared down that dreary passage of locked chambers to where it faded and grew fuzzy and ultimately black as a cave’s mouth. A sense that I was forlorn weighed heavy in my heart. I wondered if I was in league with those muffled voices. Was I a resident in this hall of the despondent?

Mr. Strong’s hefty paw nudged me away from the dread tunnel and his boorish voice ushered me in the opposite direction. “Let’s go,” He said.

The path forward was blocked by a metal fence, an old fashion prison gate with a human sized mesh door and a padlock. Mr. Clean removed a chaotic keyring from his pocket, cycled through them, and inserted an archaic skeleton key into the lock.

The gate clicked open and the three of us exited the depression of the hallway.

We passed a deserted cafeteria, occupied solely by empty chairs and old tables. I glimpsed a few glass windows trapped behind metal cages, and saw that rain water wept down their exteriors and made vague the world outside, if indeed there was one. I heard the faint pitter-patter of rain on tin, but as I went beyond the doorway it vanished.

Another gate and another key. An intersection without signage, four identical halls without end. We pursued the straight path and happened upon office doors with brass placards, names I cannot recall printed on them in black letters. No one spoke as we walked. In fact, there was no sound at all but the hoarse respiration of the mouth-breather, Mr. Strong, behind me. The way was devoid of life and I wondered who inhabited the offices, if anyone.

Mr. Clean stopped in front of a brown door with the name, DR. WINDHELM, etched in black letters on the placard. He knocked once and a voice from within invited us to enter.