Physically dominating and a looming form of a man, the last thing that Jess Berry had expected to see sitting in front of her was a man who giggled like a small child. Sat on the filthy wooden floor, he fidgeted in his spot like a child confined to the naughty step, energy coursing through him. His honey coloured eyes bore straight into hers, an innocent pool of bright colours filled to the brim with a slight sparkle from the hanging light on the ceiling. The man rocked slightly where he was sat, forwards and backwards in an uneven rhythm. But never once did he pause in his routine- like a puppet being pulled by strings, he moved like his whole day had been scripted.

Stood in the open doorway, her worried eyes raked over the man, with his shaggy crop of dark coloured hair and the white and blue patient uniform that draped over the muscles of his body. He had grown up like every other man that she would spend her life around- from the cops who affirmed their masculinity by flirting with female civilians to the college kids who offered free alcohol in return for getting laid. But this man was different. He was a child.

As slowly as she could, almost as though she were not to attract attention from him, Jess edged away from the doorframe and closed the heavy white door, slipping the key into her back pocket. If something happened and he decided to escape, she would at least be able to hold her ground for a while. She opened her mouth to speak, ready to ask him a question when his husky little voice filled the room, knees pushing their way closer to his chest.

“Rock a bye baby, on the tree top. When the wind blows the cradle will rock, when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, down will come baby, cradle and all…” he sang to himself, eyes squeezing shut to block out the sound of the world around him. He looked like he was in some sort of pain, his body tensing up as he wrapped his large arms around himself, searching for protection. Again, she stepped forward, unsure of whether he would suddenly turn violent and dangerous when another sentence left his lips, disjointed and uneasy.
“I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to hurt no one!” he cried, voice muffled by the thin fabric that he wore.

“Uh…Matthew?” she asked gingerly, wondering if he could speak properly. He looked up, his eyes as wide as dinner plates and as his face broke into yet another smile- he laughed. The previous emotion of pain and fear had disintegrated almost as quickly as it had come, and now he had returned to the light-hearted little boy she’d been drawn into the room by. High pitched giggles erupted from his lips, childish dimples popping out from the crevices of his cheeks. Unsure of what to do, she stood frozen in her position, watching the fully grown man collapse into hysterics. His body contorted, curling up into a ball as his limbs flailed around, his whole body laughing with his diaphragm. She didn’t know what to do- should she have called the scarred lady who had led her here to sedate Matthew into normality again?

“No one calls me Matthew- just Mattie!” he announced loudly, his voice the exact replica of a boy nearly four times his junior. As he moved around, his long and overgrown body rolling against the floor as though he’d heard the world’s best punch line- Jess looked around for clues. A detective was meant to be good at seeing between the lines, at identifying the obscure. What could possess a fully grown man to behave some immaturely? Beside her, something glinted in the weak sunlight that flowed through the dirty window.

A silver clipboard sat untouched on the only object in the room, a small wooden table that had several chips in the legs – almost as though someone had been biting at it. With one eye kept firmly on the overgrown child in front of her, she leant down and picked up the clipboard, her dark eyes scanning over the neatly typed text. His name decorated the top and beneath it, in a stamp that vaguely resembled something that could be inked onto your skin were the words;

DISORDER- ‘PETER PAN SYNDROME’

She had heard of that particular disorder before, something she had seen crop up in court a few times. Much like popular fictional characters, a few prisoners decided to believe they were children when their sadistic crimes were committed. Sometimes it worked on the judge and sometimes it didn’t- but none of them were as far gone as the man in front of her was. Even at the station, she had seen reports of convicts who pleaded insane because they were children inside. Murderers, abusers, rapists- all of them told the authorities that they didn’t know what they were doing.

Only one time out of ten did they really get someone like the man who curled up in front of her.

Peter Pan syndrome was where fully grown adults turned into children at almost the press of a button; there was no controlling how they really were. The only thing that Jess now had to deduce was how had he become like this? What had caused Matthew Sanders to turn into such an enigma of ordinary society?
Heart pounding, Jess stepped forward again, waiting for the man to explode. But he didn’t. Instead, he paused in his movement and caught her lingering gaze, orbs of desolate colour burning into hers. Perhaps she was to treat him like an animal- the less she moved and the more she let him know she wasn’t dangerous, the more he would accept her.

Their gaze never breaking, she slipped down from her stronger position until she was sat cross legged in front of him, a patch of polished floor separating the two of them. Part of her wanted to reach out and brush her hand against his face, if only to make sure that he was real. To press her fingers against his pasty skin, running her palm over the soft tufts of hair that stuck up in every single direction. He wasn’t much of a talker, this Matthew person, but whenever she stared at him, he seemed to want to say something. But each time- something held him back.

Jess’s gaze returned to the clipboard in her hand and to the remnants of a personal statement pinned to the flimsy metal. It looked as though someone had tried to burn it but failed, leaving the ends charcoaled and papery. Short, sharp statements had been written on the page, much like a child would have written them- each very intricately crafted in cursive writing.
“Patient is incapable of being in ordinary society. Patient cannot behave to acceptable social standards. Patient has history of sexual, mental and physical abuse from father. Patient will not get out of his room unless he is sorry for what he has done”

The final phrase of the statement threw her slightly. Scribbled out in harsh italics, it was almost as though he had been passing notes with someone and a third party had interfered. In fact, it was so much like a parent that Jess had to wonder whether this overgrown child saw the scarred nurse as much more of a mother figure than she had expected. Jess glanced curiously over at Matt, who had pulled his knees back up to his chest and was watching her through the tiny gap between his arms and legs.

He seemed to be just as interested in her as she is in him- yet something is holding him back. Perhaps it was the gun trapped in the holster of her belt, perhaps it’s the fact that she’s a stranger.
Or maybe it’s because she’s not wearing a sterilized white uniform like the rest of the robotic doctors in the building.

“I’m not going to hurt you Matthew. You can come closer” she murmured, holding out her hand so he could move. Head lifting up slightly, he stared down at her outstretched palm for a moment before he shook his head, returning to his normal position. His eyes were wide and slightly worried as he looked at her, but before she could say anything in response to her first question, his lips opened.
“Mommy’s in heaven now” he murmured to himself, picking at the flaky skin that coated the underside of his fingers. There were pieces of information that she could get, bits that she could pick up and place together like a puzzle.

It was her job to stand back and see the whole picture before making decisions- who knew what kind of mental state this poor man was in.

“Tell me about your father, Matthew. What was he like?” she murmured, touching around a delicate subject with as much precision as she could manage. There had been moments when questioning criminals that they’d exploded at the very mention of their personal lives- it was much too tense to let Matthew disappear now. She was too close to him to escape if he grabbed her. He swallowed, something caught between the bright white of his vocal chords before he looked up and began to speak in the same short, sharp phrases that the statement had been written in.

“Daddy smiles. Daddy locks the door. Daddy drinks from his bottle. Daddy hurts me. Daddy punishes me for being bad. Daddy touches me. Matthew is locked away until he can…until he can learn…learn to be a good boy!” his voice rose from barely a whisper to a roar of a wild animal that could not be contained in a cage.

But still he didn’t move. His limbs did not shake with fear, his head didn’t turn away from its rigid position- his fingers and toes did not even quiver with general movement. But his eyes. They darted like dots of black moving across a screen, wherever they moved to, he seemed to be seeing something new and more terrifying than the last. Jess knew that sooner or later, the pent up emotion inside of him was going to come barrelling out, something she would be on the receiving end of if she wasn’t careful with her movement.

His father was obviously an alcoholic, keeping up appearances with the outside world until the bedroom door was closed and he could corner his son and take out his aggression on the little boy. Something, perhaps the death of his wife, spurred him to beat and to rape his own child until tears spilled out of his eyes, throat hoarse from screaming for help. Why had no one heard him? Why had no one called the police- why hadn’t she stepped in to save him? Could she have stopped Matthew Sanders from losing his sanity before it was too late?

“911 what is your emergency?”

“I can hear screaming. They’re always screaming. That little boy, he roars at the top of his lungs, he never stops. I wonder sometimes whether he has a gun, a knife- a weapon. What on earth has happened to the man who would kiss his son on the forehead when he tucked him into bed? Where did the loving father disappear to?”

“Ma’am, you have to tell me what’s going on. Give me an address, a name, a number- anything! This kid could be in serious danger!”

“You won’t be able to stop it. No one can. All he wants is to give that little boy everything. Instead…he takes it all away. Innocence destroyed, officer. He’ll never be like the rest of us”
“Who? Who won’t be like the rest of us- who is this?”

“You’ll never know. He’ll be gone before you can find his corpse”

Jess froze in her position, head spinning as she remembered the ‘staged’ 911 call that had come under part of her training. She and every other punter in that room knew that those calls were real- but now they were even realer to her.
Suddenly, he moved. Matthew leaned forward and grabbed her outstretched hand, wrapping his thick fingers around her slender ones. His hazel eyes gazed into hers and for the first time since she’d entered the room, he smiled. A warm, child like smile that made her heart begin to flutter slightly at just the sight. Perhaps he wasn’t going to be as dangerous as she had originally thought.

Footsteps.
Footsteps were walking around the room. Jess looked up, her free hand going towards the leather holster of the gun for protection. But the room was empty- the only two people in here were herself and Matthew. Leaping up from the floor, she planted her feet firmly on the floor, ready to move. But instead, she found herself stuck to the ground. Matthew was still gripping onto her hand, unable to let go as he stared at the whitewash wall with his eyes like dinner plates. It was as though his father had appeared right in front of him.

“Daddy no…don’t hit me please, Mommy said it’s not nice to hit people!” he screeched, tensing up suddenly as he clung onto her hand in a death like grip, curling himself up into a foetal position. She began to panic, trying to move away. Why was he keeping her here, what was she supposed to do? If this was a manic episode, she had no idea how to keep him calm.
The footsteps got louder and louder, coming ever closer to where she had been planted on the floor with Matthew, who was screeching and rocking. His body twitched every time the footsteps moved, almost as though an invisible force was ricocheting punches into his body. He clung on tighter, refusing to let her go.

“DADDY NO PLEASE DON’T! DON’T…HURT…ME!” he stammered through his screams, just as piercing and terrified as his laughter had been to draw her to the room. And without thinking, she grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger, sending a single bullet flying up towards the ceiling. The bang of the release was enough to send Matthew scurrying away, curled up as he rocked himself to a state of calm. She ran, thinking of nothing better to do, quickly throwing herself out of the room and locking the door behind her, sweat covering her face. What was this fucked up place- why on earth had they kept people like this here?

But the strangest thing was, now that the door was locked-she couldn’t hear Matthew’s screams anymore. Not even a little bit.

Jess stood against the wall with her hands braced on the plaster, breathing deeply and telling herself that not all of these patients were like Matthew. Not all of them would have been so messed up in life.
Suddenly, an animalistic roar came from the other end of the corridor, and against the white door came a loud smash, splinters of glass shattering against the wood. Grabbing the weapon in her pocket and wishing her heart didn’t have to race like it did, she stepped forward to examine the next plaque. These were the times that she wished Jack could have followed her in here and added the muscle to the group.

James Owen Sullivan. WARNING: Extremely Violent

Another banshee like shriek filled the corridor and as she crossed herself for luck, Jess mustered her dented courage and kicked the door in as hard as she could. It swung open with a creak, finding a very different room to the one she had searched across the hall.
A tall, thin man stood in the middle of a pile of debris, his hands full of blood and broken glass.

And when he looked up and stared at her, he placed the glass down, wiped his bloody hands on his t-shirt and picked up the next glass object- aiming it straight at the terrified officer.