Falling Away From Me

      My own mind and body are like a prison, impossible to escape from, and forever bound to.  Even long after this building decayed, somehow I still remained.  I've always been here, and I've never been allowed to escape.  Living off of remaining wildlife and roots around the facility was never my choice, but was my body's decision.  Viewing outside is merely a glimpse into a forever dying world.

      I am Mavis, well, I was.  I've been long forgotten by the world around me.  Ever since this facility closed in the early 80s, no one has come out to help.  I watched everything unfold the evening that changed everything.  One night during the regular rounds in the mental facility, there was a new doctor who had arrived with an untested drug that he wanted to use on human test subjects.  I had just been admitted to the facility a week before.  As much as I dreaded this day, I knew that the doctor had come for me.

     I waited inside of my room, dreading for that forsaken sham of a physician to arrive inside of my cold, sterile room.  I knew that he had come for me specifically, but I did my best to hide under my bed and stay out of sight.  I was sent here by an abusive stepfather who tried to rape me and ended up having a bottle broken over his head when I retaliated against his actions.    My mother always sided with him like the fool she was and both of them sent me off to this mental ward to be "corrected" and to "change me for the better".  I would have been better left off dead, but my stepfather didn't want to see me dead.  My stepfather wanted me to suffer for not letting him indulge himself inside of me.  He wanted to watch me slowly rot away from inside the walls of a mental asylum.

     The doctor was making his rounds with two nurses, both male and large in stature.  He had every intent to inject me with that serum and wanted me to go first.  He arrived quickly in my room and wasted no time in having the nurses establish the mood of the situation I was in.  He wore a plain white coat, a plaid button-up shirt, and sterile khakis.  He made what appeared to be an attempt at a smile at me, but his face remained very plain.  He made an attempt to show enthusiasm for what he was about to do, but I knew that all he wanted was to watch me suffer from the effects.  "Good afternoon, Miss Knoll!  I have been assigned to administer a new psychoactive medication into your bloodstream as a new administration designated requirement for your treatment.  These lovely nurses are here to ensure a safe administration."  The two nurses moved towards me and stood at both ends of the bed, leaving me little room between me and the doctor.  I wanted to hide under the bed more than anything in that moment, to find some form of escape.  The window seemed like a good option of escape an hour earlier, but when I opened it up, I was met with a four-story drop, one that had no ledge that would have ensured my safety outside of my room.  There was no escaping this, as much as I wished there was some way for me to avoid that doctor.  I will never forget the look he gave me as he administered the drug.  "Now.  It's time for you to take your medicine.  The two guards held both of my arms down and restricted my movements while the doctor grabbed a cleaning wipe and cleared out a vein to inject his medicine.

     I closed my eyes as I caught a glimpse of him cleaning a sharp metal needle to inject a white liquid into my bloodstream.  I waited for what felt like minutes before I felt a gloved hand grip my left forearm and felt a piercing sensation as the needle broke the skin and sent its contents flowing into my body.  The solution felt cold as ice and caused my entire body to slowly turn cold as it made its way throughout my arteries and veins.  My vision began to blur.  All I could hear before I passed out on my bed was the doctor whispering "subject one is complete, we will observe her closer when she awakens."  I collapsed on the bed and my mind went black.  When I awoke, several alarms in the facility were going off and people were running and screaming in the halls.  I was about to open the door to see what was going on when a streak of blood streaked across the doors to the rooms across from mine.  I heard the cries of someone who was being attacked and hid under my bed.  I hid my head and stayed silent as the massacre occurred in the hallway.  It felt like ten minutes had passed before I heard something.  It sounded like a whisper, but I then began to hear it clearer.  I had been crying in fear of being attacked when this voice came to speak to me.  It was Hedon, and he spoke words to me that I have never forgotten to this day.  He convinced me to face up to my fears and to kill the people who were attacking the medical professionals and other patients.

     I made my way out into the hallway and paid no mind to mercy.  I reached for a nearby scalpel and needle and began to lay waste to the crazed patients.  One of the patients lunged to attack me and I countered with a slice across his throat.  I moved on to the next patient who looked ready to attack and jabbed the needle deep into their throat, grinning as I watched a final gasp erupt from their mouth and their lips becoming covered in blood.  I moved on to the final patient who was attacking and ripping the flesh off of a woman with his teeth.  I marched up to him, raised the scalpel up high, and plunged it directly in his ravenous eyes.  With the deranged man blinded and disabled, I gave a quick smirk as I slit his throat open and watched his blood pour out over the carcass he had been biting into.  I was about to move on to my next target when I saw them, police lights and police officers had congregated outside of the facility.  I couldn't stay and continue the work of Hedon.  He instructed me to place the scalpel in the hand of the man who had been biting into the neck of the now deceased woman.

     After framing the evidence on the deceased patient, Hedon instructed me to find a place to hide in one of the upper floors.  I made my way up the fire escape stairs to the top floor and found a ladder that I used to move the roof tiles.  I moved one out of the way just enough so I could squeeze through.  I could hear the police making their way into the facility now.  I kicked the ladder over and moved the tile back into place, completely concealing me from view.  I remained there for what felt like hours until the police left for the night.  Hedon continued to instruct me on my survival.  I continued to listen more and more to him, stealing food from the facility and eating food that was left here.  That was until the day the facility was closed.  I wanted to remain in seclusion and that day had finally come, but with it came something else.

      Up until this point, Hedon had been growing more and more attentive of what I did and I slowly felt like I was losing more and more of the control over my own life.  It was a slow process, but I had been losing control over my own decisions, and then came the loss of my own senses, and finally came the loss of my own body.  Hedon had taken over my entire body, its senses, and our intertwined life.  I was forever trapped within the walls of my own mind with him, and I have remained incapable of escape.  I was considered to be the timidest and the kindest hearted girl that you would every meet in the eyes of my mother and some of the teachers I had growing up.  The view that the few people that came to investigate the abandoned facility were one of horror.  Hedon kept to his promise of ensuring my happiness and privacy from all those years ago by murdering all who entered.  Each time he confronted his victims, I could hear his words echoing back at me, almost as if he was mocking me.  Hedon had trapped me in his words and now controlled everything I could be and everything I was.

     As much as I wanted to resist his grip, there was no use.  I had become a shell of my former self and was now only an added weight for him.  Everything for me changed one night when five explorers arrived and Hedon began to pick them off.  The horrors of watching him dispose of the innocent people who came in were too much to bear.  One of the men who arrived had held a gun up to my face, our face and Hedon just murdered an innocent man who was doing everything he could to survive.  Hedon murdered him and discarded his body.  Witnessing his face having been opened up by Hedon's blunt beatings drove me to my limits.  I had finally had enough.  I looked over as he picked up the gun the man brought with him and threw it out into the bushes.  "What are you doing?"

     "Huh?"

     "Why do you keep dragging me on?"

     "Why, whatever do you mean?  You're the 'extra weight' here."

     "No...I mean...why do you keep giving me hope?  Why do you keep telling me that everything will get better?"

     "Oh, I know it won't get better, but the hope humans have is what keeps them alive."

     "So, you're not human then?"

     "I was never human, much as how you were never safe without hope."

     "You sick fuck!  No one believes that."

     "But you did.  You believed there was some way to beat me and take your old life back.  Look around you, do you see anything better than this?  Do you see another way to survive?"

     I hesitated in answering, but he was quick to respond back.

     "No!  Of course not.  I give you hope because seeing the alternative is much more painful."

     "Why not show it to me then?  You've already taken everything from me anyways!  Why do you shut me out?"

     "Because true fear exists in what is gone."

     This thought caused my heart to sink. "What do you mean by that?"

     "Look at him, do you see the empty stare, the blankness in his eyes?  There is nothing beyond his death, and there is nothing further for him.  He is gone and is gone forever.  Do you see this?"

     I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "Yes"

     "This is who he really is.  In death, when he is gone forever, you see the true emptiness that lies beyond death, you see how they will be forgotten and remembered nevermore."

      As poetic as this seemed to me, it only filled my heart with further despair.  "So why do you try to hide these horrors from me?"

     "Because we would both lose meaning in our life and die."

     This thought filled me with anger and frustration.  "Then why do you do this?!?"

      Hedon took in a deep breath and let out his weighted reply.  "Because seeing these horrors will convince you that survival is not worth the horrors that it brings."

     I remained silent for another moment as another one of the teens ran by, hoping to stay out of the way and calling for someone named Connor.  "Then why do you kill people?"

     "I kill to protect us, to protect us from discovery.  The world will not accept us if we are found.  We will be tested on, like how we were the day of 'The Happening'."

     I felt a chill make its course through my spine.  He spoke again in a deeper tone.

     “Do you understand why we must stay hidden?”

     I reluctantly replied.  “Yes.  I understand now.”

     As much as I hated admitting defeat to Hedon now, I knew that our only chance at survival was to remain hidden at all costs, to fade away like the corpses of those he disposed of.  I was never meant to have some great purpose or grand destiny.  I was born into this world by accident and forced to survive.  I had been forgotten, and nothing would be redeemable from me.  I can provide nothing to the world.  Just by witnessing the attire and items that the explorers arrived in with, I have concluded that the world has changed too much for me to be a part of it anymore.  I will fade away and be forgotten soon enough, just like the bodies of Hedon's victims.  Even as I watch the light at the end of the tunnel, it will be a slow and agonizing path on which I must follow before I am able to die.  I will survive until I can survive no longer.  I will exist within the shadows of existence, forever forgotten, already dead to the world but still breathing.  I will wait till the end and watch the world fall away from me until I and Hedon breathe our last breath.