The eye sweeps across a sterile, blue room. In the center, there is a lonely bed, linens twisted from sleepless nights, pillow etched with the furious marks of its raging inhabitant. The pillow is warm, recent lines of tears trailing down its faded white exterior before drying at the ends. Above, the light flickers, casting the space in a momentary darkness, where now the steady, cancerous flatline is fully visible against the gloom, a sharp, neon line of green—it emits a long, whining noise, unrelenting. There is a sharp smell of metal in the heavy air, and when the light blinks on, it illuminates a trail of footprints. Close to the foot of the bed, the prints are a deep, copper brown, but as they lead to the door, they become desperate, a pungent, scarlet red. The prints are wild, sporadic, until they aren’t. Until they become two heavy lines of crimson, smeared across the threshold.
Signs of a struggle.
Scattered around the gruesome trail are shards of crystal glass, the edges of which glimmer like rubies. Tucked beneath the bed is a note. It flutters slightly as a current of wind runs through the open window, a welcome salvation from the stale hospital air. Upon closer inspection, it looks to be a list of some sort. The words are rushed, letters slipping sloppily from the margin, the ends of the fragmented sentences frayed with crisscrossing scribbles and dots of dark ink.
open the window
right latch
pull left, lift
jump.
Deeper in the shadows, past the note, there is a cluster of glass. It piles around a tiny blue frame, in which two shaded figures smile sleepily into the silence. Two young women, faded with age and dusted with time, but beaming nonetheless, forever captured in a moment of bliss. The image was ripped down the center but seems to be mended back together, held by a thinning strip of tape that curls on the sides, dried. There is a metal stand adjacent to the bed. On it lays a tray of sickly blue, which holds a spread of sinister items. Silver probes and scalpels, tainted needles, a plastic orange bottle filled with pills, white and round as writhing maggots—all are meticulously placed, all expect a syringe, askew at a strange angle, balancing on the side of the tray. It is half-empty, clear liquid dripping from the tip and pooling in a puddle on the tiled floor. A strip of paper lays next the pool of liquid, the topmost corner of its surface skimming the surface of the puddle just barely. But it is enough. The paper is soaked through. But though the water makes the letters bleed, the words are there. Two words, bitter and horrible, slowly eaten away by the solution:
Pacify her.
Photo Credits: Hayley Murray (unsplash)