Chapter Text
It's only my forth day here and half an hour after lunch when he first comes in. He is following Phil, one of the orderlies and looks very uncomfortable. His shoulders are hunched and his eyes keep darting around the room, but what registers first is how skinny he is. I mean, he is wearing a giant shirt and baggy pants so it's really not possible to see it that way. Usually clothes like that point to an eating disorder or scars that have to be hidden … Or both, now that I come to think about it.
Anyway … he is skinny that way. You know – the way that it shows on the face. These sunken in, big eyes and sharp edges around the chin and cheekbones. He is skinny enough for an eating disorder. Which is something I haven't really thought about much before. There are a lot of skinny kids here though. Most of them are anorexic, some bulimic - apparently.
But there are others too. Peter Parker for example. He is as skinny as the next anorexic kid and I guess you could say that he has an eating disorder, but that's really not the problem here. He is paranoid and delusional, I guess. Not that anyone has told me his diagnosis and I'm not really well informed or anything.
But I mean, anorexic people don't usually think their food is poisoned. Right? So Peter is convinced, that the government has colluded with aliens and that they have send spies in form of spiders into this mental facility just to poison his food.
I'm not too clear on why they would do that, but I'm not entirely sure that he is clear on that either. So that is the reason why he can't eat his food and why he is so thin.
In the end I guess it's the same outcome. Only that anorexic people don't have to worry about getting kidnapped by a thousand spy-spiders one night. Which is really a very frightening thought – I get were Peter is coming from here.
Actually, the only reason I know all of this, is because Peter won't shut up about it. His yelling started right after Natashas deafening scream following the silent entrance of a little black spider in the corner of the room. I guess it was quite the innocent animal really and it didn't bother me so much – mainly because I'm sitting in the corner on the other side of the room.
Anyway, the poor little thing has probably never heard of aliens or the government before today, but I'm sure it was very well informed by the time Bruce – he's got some kind of anger problem I think - squished it with his sneaker.
He was probably hoping for Peter to stop accusing it and Natasha to stop screaming.
I'm actually not really sure where Natasha is right now, because Amanda – another orderly – guided the hysteric girl out of the room just a few seconds ago. Nobody is doing anything about Peter who is still talking – but at least now he's whispering. Probably because the spider isn't here anymore, so he doesn't have to tell it that he knows what 'they' are up to – about aliens and the government and poison. You know.
But I'm kind of getting off track here.
Back to the new guy. So, he enters the room hesitantly and I notice how awfully skinny he is – we have established that. And it's not as scary as it would be in the outside world, because it's something I have noticed about approximately half the kids in here.
Not including me. I mean, in the outside world people would complain about how skinny I am and that I should eat more, but compared to the people here I might as well be fat. (Which I'm not and it's not true either because there is that one guy for example, who really is fat. I mean enough so, that that's the reason he's here. That – and the black mask he insists on wearing. Also, he calls himself Mr. Incredible and I have yet to find out his real name.)
Anyway. As I said: The first thing I noticed about the new guy was how thin he was. But that's not what captured my attention. What really got me was the fact that his aura was bright red and – the half rotten corpse, that followed him into the room.
The corpse floated through the open door and then proceeded to hang in the air, half a meter behind the new guys shoulder.
It's not new for me to see things like that. But red auras aren't very common. And most people are not literally followed by death. Now, that corpse isn't really death personified or anything. I have seen enough others like him to at least know that. They still tend to freak me out. By appearing as a half rotten corpse for example.
I don't like it. I have only seen a red aura of that shade once before and that was when I happened to witness someone being run over by a car. It was a girl on a bike and she somehow managed to cross paths with a big black car. Right before it hit her, her aura turned bright red. She didn't make it. So that color kind of stands for death for me and the corpse following him isn't exactly helping.
You know – I can see things. I mean, it's okay most of the time, it doesn't mean I'm crazy. The things I see are real enough, I'm just the only one who can see them. I guess I just have some sixth sense or something. I've had it since birth too. I stopped telling people years ago though, because they thought I was crazy.
Now that I'm here I'm probably actually expected to be crazy. The thought makes me chuckle but I sober up right after because of the corpse that just entered. I'm not too fond of corpses. I mean – who is?
I also quite enjoyed the peace of almost-corpse-free-zone that they seem to have going on here.
Here. I guess I haven't really explained that one yet.
This is a mental hospital. I have never been in one before so I don't really know if it is anything like other mental hospitals. They don't seem to have any kind of plan about who is on which floor with whom.
There are three floors. Ours is the top floor. There are eight of us. Aside from me there are Natasha, Peter, Bruce, Barry, Logan, Charles and Tony. Now there is the new guy, so I guess there are nine of us. Ten, if you count Mr. Floating-Corpse.
I have caught glimpses of some of the people on other floors – one of which is full with girls as skinny as Spider-Peter. But the only patient from another floor I have had close contact with is Mr. Incredible. And that is because he came up here yesterday yelling something about intruders before they brought him back to his own floor. It did freak out Peter. And Natasha a little.
I am not happy when the corpse starts to move by the time dinner rolls around. I'm not real surprised. But not happy either. The movements are sluggish, barely noticeable at first. I have been looking for it ever since the duo showed up.
I have seen it before over the course of the last few weeks. Disgusting, smelling corpses lying on the ground, turning into floating, less tangible and no longer smelling corpses, turning into slightly moving corpses and then into full fledged ghosts. Scared, angry, lost, screaming ghosts. They are everywhere now. I woke up one morning and the streets were littered with corpses. Three days in and the air was filled with ghosts.
No one could see them.
They did feel the effects though. I saw it on the news. There were strange power outages, reports of things floating through the air and an increase in virtually any kind of accident that involves electronics. There have been speculations about mass delusions and drugs and what not. I don't really know about the latest theories. By the fifth day I was barely able to uncurl from my bed.
My foster mother thought I was sick. I knew it was the ghosts.
They gave me a damn headache. They didn't let me sleep. Because they don't sleep and they don't stop complaining, asking, crying, shouting, demanding, screaming. They are lost, disoriented, scared, confused, angry. And I was right there with them.
They are so loud.
It was almost bearable when I curled up in my bed and pressed my hands over my ears. It got a lot less bearable as time progressed.
It got increasingly difficult to differentiate between what was part of what everybody could see, hear, feel, and what wasn't. Difficult to not react to shouting ghosts in front of others who couldn't hear them. Difficult to simply keep eating when a grandma with only half a face suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Because they kept coming. And going through their transformation.
I'm guessing that's still happening.
The foster home I was in was located in the dead center of the city. That just so happens to be where most ghosts seem to gather. I think they instinctively come to highly populated places. I guess that is what you do when you are disoriented and looking for answers. Or angry and in need of people to scream at. Or looking for lost family members – though most ghosts don't seem do remember their life as a … non-ghost. Pre-ghost?
I lived with it for a bit less than four weeks. Four weeks of days without sleep. Four weeks of headaches and increasing nausea. And that feeling that something was terribly wrong.
In the end it got too much. I didn't exactly try to kill myself. I mean, that wasn't the objective. I really felt no desire to join the corpses and ghosts and I still don't.
It was just … by the time the forth week came around, I could barely remember what quiet felt like. I hadn't been sleeping much for weeks, I was constantly trying not to react to the grossest of things. Hell, in public I couldn't even cover my ears from all the deafening noise. And I don't even want to think about the smell. In short, I was down to my last nerve.
Still. I didn't take the pills to kill myself. I simply took them to sleep. Which is what they are there for. But I didn't think. Over three weeks of sleep deprivation and the constant buzzing of freaking ghosts and I was no longer able to think clearly. All I saw was a possible escape to some peace. I don't remember stopping even for a second before downing the whole bottle.
It was coincidence too that I happened to grab the strong stuff, that could actually do harm. Not that it did. I mean, it did. But I didn't die. Obviously.
Taking them was the right decision too. Because it did bring me what I needed. After weeks of being constantly stressed out, I finally found some semblance of peace. It's not really reassuring that it entailed being committed to a mental health facility, but it is peace nonetheless.
During my short stay here I have only caught glimpses of about five ghosts. And they were only passing through. Didn't even enter this floor either. And since the facility is located at the outskirts of town there aren't too many ghost outside.
So I'm good. At least I have been.
I find myself staring at the moving corpse while those thoughts flow through my head. Once I realize that, I force myself to look away. No point in getting caught while staring at seemingly thin air.
Instead I let my eyes survey the room. Note all the other patients as well as Amanda and Phil who are on duty tonight.
Finally my gaze settles on another patient. Looking at him is fascinating.
He is sitting on a chair in the corner by the window. His name is Barry Allen. I have never seen him move away from that chair. Or move much at all on his own, really.
He sits there as unmovingly as it is possible for a breathing, living being. Sometimes he shifts the tiniest bit. He also blinks.
Bruce told me he was hit by lightning. Peter thinks he was poisoned by the food here. No one else seems to have an opinion on the matter.
I opt for Bruce being right though. Not just because Peters suggestion is utterly ridiculous. But because it is still there. It's inside of him. The current is still in his body, running through him under his skin. Mostly I can see it crackling blue. But sometimes it enters his eyes and makes them sparkle red.
That is something I'm almost positive everybody can see. At least I have caught Natasha staring at him after a red-eye-incident. And I'm pretty sure at one point Bobby – the third orderly who works on our floor – stopped and looked at him for a while before clearly deciding that he must have been mistaken.
Maybe that is why Barry never moves.
Maybe moving hurts.