The emerald sheen of his irises stared her up and down as she gently closed the door behind her, shivering slightly under his intensive stare. He seemed to be so…normal. So secure with where he was and what he was doing. There was no childish laughter, no vengeance filled rage. He just stood in the centre of the room, watching her intently as she tried not to move. But even if he remembered who she was, even if there was some part of him that wanted to lash right out at her and scream- he would not move a muscle.

His eye was still twitching, his gaze still ricocheting around the blank room as though he were deliberately trying to avoid her curious stare.
“Your door was unlocked” Jess murmured as she took a step towards the quiet man. His face remained blank and expressionless as he slowly turned to face her, his fingers quivering.
“The door was not unlocked. You are mistaken” he replied coldly, pronouncing each word with precision as it fell from lips. She had not had time to read the plaque on the front of his door, there was no way that she knew what was wrong with this man.

Perhaps the illness had remained the same. She remembered the monsters in their white coats, walking into his house and proclaiming his supposed deformity for the whole neighbourhood. Liar, they had called him. Reminded her of the names that she and her friends had called him in the playground, the chant they had screeched after him when he screamed at us to stop.

“Zacky Baker, sitting in the three, K-I-L-L-I-N-G, first comes the knife, then comes the pain, you’ll never see Mommy again!” they had yelled, playing pattycake with their hands will he sat on the cold concrete floor, his hands covering his ears.

But they never blocked out the sounds of the ruthless chanting, twisting and distorting in his mind until the paranoia began to sink in. Slowly, Jess retreated back to the door and tried the handle, watching as it swung open. Glancing back over at Zacky, she quirked one eyebrow in his direction. He did not move, not even to prove her wrong. It was almost as though he was afraid of her retaliation.

“Zacky, the door is unlocked. Don’t lie to me” she said firmly, attempting to place at least a little authority over this man. But her words had no effect, he made no sound whatsoever. She tried to read the expression in his eyes, trying to work out just what exactly was going on that strange brain of his. Swallowing the firm lump in her throat, Jess closed the door and took a nervous step towards the man, wondering if he would explode like James Sullivan across the hall did.
“I did not lie. The door was locked”

“Did you unlock the door Zacky?” Jess persisted in her questioning, knowing deep down that if she pushed hard enough, he would crack like ice beneath a snowy boot. He paused, shivering slightly as he stared at Jess. Suddenly, he let out a shrill scream and ran towards the wall, throwing himself up against it with a sickening crack. Jess gasped, clasping her hand across her mouth as he crashed against the wall, slipping down to the floor before he curled up into a foetal position. He leant forward and smashed his head against the lining, screeching when his head split open and blood began to pour over his forehead.

With her stomach filling with fear, she raced over and gripped his shoulders, pulling him away from the wall and using all her strength to stop him from harming himself once again.
“Zacky, no! Don’t you dare do that again!” she screamed, dragging him into the centre of the room. His face had paled considerably as his limbs flailed around, trying to reach the scratches that lined his torn arms. It took a moment of fearful shaking for Zacky to finally take a few deep breaths and calm down a little. He rocked slowly back and forth, trying to shake the fear that had suddenly risen from deep within him.

If she could have put two and two together, she would know about the compulsive lying, the paranoia that being picked on for so long had caused him to gain. His greatest fears were hearing laughter, hearing whispers. Each time it happened, a little voice inside his head would sneer that he was the one they were laughing about, he was the one that made them whisper so he wouldn’t hear their insults. His thin hands trembled violently at the thought of hearing their pubescent voices yet again and he closed his eyes, reaching out for the hand of the woman in front of him.

Much like his beloved mother, her skin was as soft as a cashmere sweater, her scent like the tropics he always dreamed of visiting. She was familiar and comforting, emotions he had spent so long being barricaded from, it was as though he’d never known such wonder before.
As Jess held Zacky’s shivering hand, she noticed just how tightly he was holding on. If he had any more strength left in his frail little body, her hand would be crushed into tiny pieces. What had happened to this man?

When the robots in white coats had dragged him from the house, he seemed to be like every other kid, just one who blurred the truth until it was as though he couldn’t see the difference. Perhaps, much like the occupants of the other two hospital rooms, he had not gotten better in this crumbling wreck of a building, he had in fact gotten worse. There were many stories about the therapies used here to try and keep patients well and sane- everything ranging from electric therapy to lie detector tests. Part of her wanted to comfort Zacky, to stroke the greasy tangles of his hair and promise that things would be alright.

Without letting him go, Jess reached into her pocket and pulled out a threadbare pack of tissues, brushing the dark locks away from the slice across his forehead. Judging by the faint scars of stitches, this was not the first time that Zacky Baker had thrown himself up against a wall in an attempt to make things hurt. He clutched her hand a little tighter, gulping softly as she pressed the tissue up against his cracked forehead, wiping away what she could of the dark red liquid.

“I remember you, you know” he murmured as she began to run through the pack of tissues, blood pouring out of his head faster than she could keep up. She knelt for a moment, frozen, before her breath finally caught up with her. Did he remember her from just a brief glance, perhaps a fleeting moment at seeing her walk past the kitchen window, the one that was adjacent to his? Or maybe he remembered the vicious taunts that had turned him into such a crumbling wreck of a man, afraid to open himself up for fear of being shot right back down again.

Children could be cruel, but it was because they had no state of mind, no conscious idea for what their actions could bring. Sometimes she found herself dreaming to become like that again- to have no consequences in life. Bringing the tissue away from Zacky’s bloody forehead, she caught the shimmering emerald of his eye and began to dab at the wound with a fresh one.
“You do?”

“Yeah. There was a girl, who used to live next door to me. Every night, I would watch her through the window in the attic, the one place where I couldn’t be seen. It was my own corner, my own little place. She would never see me. She would sit beside her chipped vanity mirror and brush her hair, one hundred times each night. I would count for her, silently and under my breath, like she would hear me if I spoke too loud”

Instinctively, Jess placed a worrying hand on the tight hairstyle that was perched ontop of her head, if only to check that it was still intact. How had she not realised that was being watched that whole time? In the back of her head, she could picture her innocent self sitting at the cracked mirror, with the broken drawers in the table and the broken leg from where the termites had gotten into it. Each stroke would be smoother than the last, until her hair was like a waterfall against her skin. But now, that cherished childhood memory was tainted.

Distorted.

For now she could see the creeping eyes and wild grin of Zacky Baker, watching her as though she was an actress upon the stage and he was waiting to see the story unfold before. Except, he was the only audience. No one else got to see what he saw.

“I told her once that if she fell asleep that night, rats would come and chew her hair in the dark, so when she woke up, it would be all gone. She screamed at me. She told me to stop. But somewhere deep down I felt alive. For the first time I didn’t feel as though I was meant to be dead, that I was meant to be sleeping. I felt like I could breathe” he whispered, running the pad of his calloused thumb over hers, his other hand clenched into an angry fist. But the strangest thing was, his face showed no emotion.

He was numb, completely blank. It was as though his body was fuelled with rage and fury, yet his face was unable to communicate that emotion he felt. Like a link had been cut in two.

“I told kids that if they didn’t kiss their mother goodnight, their father would brandish a butcher’s knife and slice her up to serve in casserole the next day. I warned them that if they kept their legs out of the covers, the night demons would drag them to the fiery pits of hell to live in eternal damnation. I promised that one day, they would find themselves cornered by their own shadow, a knife held to their throat as they begged for the mercy that I had craved. Mercy they would not be shown” he spat through gritted teeth, the memory alone bringing back enough of the adrenaline he felt from his lies.

There could be no medical condition to define, no definition of how he managed to get such kicks from terrifying small children. Perhaps the reason he was inside of here was because there was no medical cure. He was just as twisted as the others had been, but in his own little way. It wasn’t his fault- it was none of their faults. There was always going to be an external force that she would have to break through to find the real root of the problem.

Matthew’s was his father’s abuse. James’s was the unfulfilled bloodlust he had rushing through his angered veins. And Zacky’s stemmed from the punishment he received from everyone around him- from his parents to the kids who pushed him in the mud during recess.

Would he ever remember that she had been a part of his abuse- that she was one of the many reasons he was stuck here? Jess removed the tissue from Zacky’s forehead, the blood flow now ceasing to exist and placed the bloody tissues in her back pocket. There was something about Zacky that captured her interest, something that she had not seen in the other men. Perhaps a feign of destroyed innocence or maybe a destroyed childhood that had lead to him being brought here.

“I dream about her. That little girl. Each night, I get closer to her” he murmured, his hand suddenly drooping softly. It moved like a snake, running over her clothed shoulders until it traced across the outline of her breasts, the smooth curves of her waist. Her breathing hitched in the back of her throat, her body growing rigid at the feeling of having this man touch her in such an intimate way.

“I stroke her hair as she sleeps. One hundred times, just like the hairbrush strokes her hair. I sit and watch her sleep soundly; unaware of the dangers that she could be exposed to if I ever lost the sense of calm I felt around. And tonight, I will kill her. Slit her throat across the middle with a knife, her screams muffled by my hand. There she will bleed, her body carved out with whatever I desire, however I want. And then, I will make love to her body, the way I have always dreamed of doing” he cries, his hands suddenly grabbing her by the neck and squeezing. She started to panic, unsure of what to do next.

Was he lying, or was he really such a necrophiliac? Gasping for air, she gently placed her hands on his and moved them away, with surprising ease. As soon as the red flush had run away from his face she sighed, and held his hand again, hoping that he wouldn’t descend into such a mad state all over again.

“Have you seen your parents recently, Zacky?” she asked softly. From what she remembered, the Baker’s had moved out of their home shortly after his induction to The Hospital, unable to remain for the memories of their little son. When her family had gone in to say goodbye, the place seemed to be haunted. The only thing that had remained of Zacky Baker was a baseball that had been ripped apart at the seams. Much like the life that they had once lead- tied so tightly only to be torn up until it was hanging by a thread.

“Parents? Jessica…they’re dead. That’s why I’m here. I brandished a butchers knife and sliced them up in their sleep, just like I always promised. I suppose I should have kissed my mother goodnight when I had the chance”
She didn’t want to scream. Not now, not ever. Officer Jess Berry did not scream on the job, nor did she let herself be terrified by these freaks of nature, locked behind closed doors and away from the others. She wanted to leave, there was no other way of putting things, but there were still two patients left to leave.

And suddenly, Zacky began to laugh.

The maniacal sound of his shrieking caused her to jump to her feet, running to the other side of the room as fast as her feet could carry her. Though part of her had always hated the white coat men, she was glad they had taken Zacky away before he could slit her throat. With a sweat breaking out over her body, she slammed the door closed behind her old friend and locked it, trying not to burst into tears at what she had heard.

And it was only when she braced herself against the cool wall did she notice the open door on the other side of the corridor. Jess froze. Each door had been locked when she first walked in, she had seen it with her own eyes. Someone must have escaped, someone must have found a way out. Whoever it was could potentially be dangerous- which meant Jess’s life was under threat. She ran over to the door as silently as she could, glancing around the room for any sign that it’s occupant could still be confined to its white wash walls.

No one.

An hand suddenly grabbed her neck, a sharp blade was pressed up against the skin of her throat and a breath of hot air ran over the curve of her ear, the air being knocked out of her. And as an evil chuckle sounded through her body, her heart stopped at the sound of the voice of her captor.

“Here’s Johnny, bitch”