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It’s a bleak, unwelcoming mountain region that travellers wisely avoid. Too many stories have been told by those who did cross it. Stories of stumbling across a house in a hollow, of high fences that surround it to keep everyone out. Or in. They speak of an oppressive atmosphere muffling every sound between the mountain tops, nothing moving in there except for the occasional gusts of air coming out of nowhere, carrying with them anguished moans and terrified screams.
On the outside, the building looks close to falling apart, the beige paint of the façade bleached by years of weathering away, most of it having crumbled a long time ago. The walls it reveals are worn down, cracks and fissures barely fixed, the most stable parts being the steel rods that bar every window and the heavy security doors of the entrance.
The long hallways of the interior were white once, a long time ago. Now the formerly clinical white walls are covered in stains, some of them running down from rusty pipelines, others in the middle of the wall, blotches of varying colours from sources that can only be guessed at. If one has the stomach to imagine which miserable beings were unfortunate enough to sully themselves while pressed against them, which piteous creatures were unable to keep the cocktail of chemicals inside of their bodies or which wretched souls had injured themselves to the point of leaving marks on their path. Or had they caused those injuries themselves?
Compared to the rooms though, the hallways are in an impeccable state. Every bedroom carries traces of each one of its inhabitants, all the lost souls that were stuck in them. Long gouges in the wooden doors from nails scratching over the surface. Some of them have flecks of blood in them where they tore their skin in desperation. There weren’t only those who scratched though. There were those who have chipped away at the paint of the bedframe too, those who have destroyed what little furniture could be found in the room or those who started scribbling unintelligible signs across the walls. The floor is rancid, the corners of the rooms having seen too much to be kept clean and there, curled up right next to the bed post lies the lanky frame of a man.
He isn’t scratching or destroying anything. His arms, dressed in white are wrapped around his chest, no straps and buckles keeping them there. It’s the mere memory of a straitjacket holding them in place. His naked feet never leave the vicinity of his bedpost, the red scrape marks around his ankle still tying them to it even with the cuffs gone. His back is pressed against the stone wall, the thin material of his shirt barely any protection against the coldness seeping in through his back. The cold feeling just like that of the hard padding again his back, in a room made of glinting metal.
His eyes are glassy, his mind never has left the doctor’s room. It is still strapped to the leather-padded doctor’s couch. Still blinded by the white lights overhead. It is still at the mercy of the doctor with the white lab coat on and the stethoscope around his neck. Who dissects him inside of that cold room. Who takes his blood out and puts fire in his veins instead, all with the same syringe. Who makes his lungs feel like he can’t breathe, feel like there is something else in their place, each shot of chemicals making them feel more foreign to his body. Until he wants to scream, scream for someone, scream for something. But he can’t, because his tongue feels heavy in his mouth, like it’s been cut through cleanly, severed from his muscles. And all that beneath the doctor’s nonchalant expression.
His mind hasn’t left the doctor’s room with his body. His body is curled up almost lifelessly in the dirty corner of his bedroom. His body is unmoving, until suddenly a waft of something hits his nose.
The rancid stench of the place doesn’t faze him anymore, living in it for so long has numbed him to it. But beneath it, there is something else, something that he finds hard to place. His head lifts slowly, his nose turning up to sniff the air tentatively, to find that unfamiliar smell. And there, beneath the smell of excrements and chemicals, he gets a whiff of it.
The smell of a storm coming up.
For the duration of another long inhale, he remains still, unmoving. Then his head turns to take in his surroundings. The door that is still wide open, heavy bolts not locking him in yet. He straightens his long legs, his body swaying against the wall, unable to keep him balanced so suddenly. Pins and needles prickle in them, from hours of keeping them curled up. His eyes are back, gaze sharpening as he looks at the open doorway in front of him.
The nurse hasn’t come yet, the nurse in his dark blue scrubs. With his dark blue cap hiding his hair and his dark blue mask covering most of his face. The one who comes in with a metal tray of flasks. Who has more of the chemicals in store for him. Who pours colourful pills into cups to fill him up with them until his vision goes blurry and his eyes are forced to fall shut. Who seems almost inhuman. Except for the dark eyes that look at him with pity.
He steps on the wooden threshold. It feels foreign to step through it on his own. Without a shadow calling him out. The flickering lights of a hallway are not a sight he is used to. He pauses once he stepped through the door. The others are bustling around, blue scrubs busy calming the groaning and whimpering patients. Darker blue uniforms suppressing those that are kicking around. All of them too busy to pay attention to his stumbling steps.
The tiles beneath his bare feet are cold. Colder than inside of his room. The phantom of a hand on his shoulder pushing him. Shoving him further towards the place of his nightmares. The merciless steps of the guard that keeps the baton ready at hand, just waiting to use it on him. Who just waits for a chance to suppress him by force. Who ties him up there and always stays to watch. Whose eyes he has never seen beneath the cap of his uniform but whose gaze haunts him whenever he is strapped down. Who sees him as a monster. Whose lips are twisted with pure contempt.
The room his feet take him to is bustling with life. His eyes scan over them without registering them. The insane held at bay by the nurses and the guards as they are every day. The chairs that are thrown to the ground, the barred windows. The door to the balcony.
Safety glass strengthened with steel bars to keep them in. But for once, the balcony door is not locked, it’s not shut. It’s open just by a slit and it’s where the smell is coming from.
Nobody sees him as he walks past. Nobody notices the phantom that pushes open the glass door and sets his feet outside again.
Overhead, dark clouds are gathering, drawing shut over the last bits of sky he can see. Gusts of wind are pulling on his hospital gown and biting into his skin. His lungs are filling with air, fresh air again for the first time, bringing with them the taste of rain. Of thunderstorms. Of freedom.
Through the bars of the windows, he is looking inside now. All the bustling and shouting happening cut off from him. And slowly, it fades as well. It’s the patients that notice first, ceasing their struggles. Then the nurses and guards, realisation sinking in. Their faces falling as his own is beginning to split into a grin.
Pictures of his days inside flash in his mind again. Pictures of uniforms and scrubs and lab coats. Of contempt twisting his own plush lips. Of pity filling his own dark eyes. Cold nonchalance smoothing out the features of his own face. His own face always staring back at him from all sides.
It starts somewhere inside of him. It starts bubbling up from somewhere within, shaking him inside out. Rising through his chest until it reaches his throat, the first sound spilling from his lips. It starts as a soft giggle. It starts just like that, but then it grows, morphing into a bout of laughter, until his whole body is being rattled with the near monstrous joy that fills him.
They’re coming closer now, rushing towards him, the scrubs and the uniforms and the pitying eyes and the contemptuous lips and his hands, they are free.
His hands are free and he unwraps his arms from his chest.
The wind catches on his sleeves and pulls on them. His bare feet meet a different kind of stone and the bar of the railing hits his legs. The light that falls on him comes from far away and he is free to spread out his arms.
He is free.
And he lets himself fall.
In the middle of an unwelcoming region, far from any routes that the travellers take, there is a house in the middle of the mountains. That night, there is a storm raging around it, the wind whipping around its walls. But what the wind carries tonight is only silence.