He wore the name like a badge of honor, stamped across his forehead and inked all over his skin in indelible ink.
Victim.

She studied his features as though he were an oil painting hung in the most prestigious of galleries, every curve and movement of his frail body like the swirl of a paintbrush on a canvas. The deep chocolate colours of his eyes were stretched so wide that he looked permanently terrified, his mouth pressed together so tight, it looked like he was afraid of speaking for fear of his words being twisted. She hated to admit it to herself, but he didn’t even look human anymore. He was alien.

Compared to the statures and power of the other four men that she had been lead to on her journey through The Hospital, Brian seemed to be receding into his shell at every possible moment, scared of what the consequences to his actions could possibly be. And yet, he still held out his hand to her as a friendly gesture. If he was so scared of what other people would do to him, why was he so boldly putting himself into an uncomfortable position? Dazed, Jess rubbed the side of her head when Johnny had knocked her previously and groaned, lifting herself into an easier position to sit in.

She wouldn’t take his hand yet- if she had learned anything from the past four crazies that she’d been attacked by it was that touching them wouldn’t help her at all. If anything, it would make things worse. And even though she had pulled herself up, he held out his hand, staring at her like a deer caught in headlights. Suddenly, the emotion dropped over her like a crashing wave and she felt herself become a little teary at what she had gone through in just a few short hours.

It was indescribable- never before had she expected to meet such people and be trapped in such a strange and horrible place. Surely they hadn’t arrived here like that; there must have been something that made them…freaks. Before he came here, Zacky was like any other little boy his age; hopeful, happy, excited for the rest of his life. Now he was bitter, maniacal and miserable. Something about the bleached white walls and ever looming fear of death had changed them for the worse and already she could feel it seeping into her veins, disfiguring her insides.

Jess reached out for his hand this time, hoping to find herself in a slightly calmer and comforting man’s embrace. But the moment that she touched his fingers, he screeched like a banshee, high and piercing, before skittering off to another corner of the room. His whimpers could be heard echoing around the hospital room like they were a record stuck in the machine; it repeated every so often in jagged and croaked movements. The darkness made it difficult for her to pinpoint exactly where he could have been sitting, but as she fumbled around in her jacket for her flash light, she saw him skittering again.

He was almost like a mouse, quick with his movements and terrified of whatever could overpower him. As the small circle of light followed the man around the room, he shielded his eyes from her view, trying to run away from her. Eventually, she cornered him in the very far edge of the room, unable to take any more of his silly games. She stepped forward and shone the light down on him, thanking whatever deity was listening that he had decided to stay still for once.

His thin knees were pressed up against his chest, arms locked tightly around them as he rocked backwards and forwards. The movements were slow and precise, his eyes fixed firmly on the shadows that jumped about in front of him.
“Brian, I…”
“No! Stay away from me- GO AWAY!” he screamed viciously, his brown eyes turning black as he clutched himself even tighter. His palms were shaking violently as they curled into fists, attempting to keep them still as he continued to rock with the same rhythm as a rocking chair.

Not once did he fall out of time.

Gritting her teeth, Jess moved forward once again with her arms outstretched, ready to grab him by force and shake the damn jitters out of him. Each time that he panicked, she would feel her lungs constricting and her heart beat just that little bit faster inside of her ribs. She would become even more paranoid about being stuck in here with Brian whenever he screamed. It was almost as though she was stuck in his shoes, and he was screaming out his anxieties for her.

Jess took another step forward and he whimpered, a stark contrast to the way that he was acting previously. But she couldn’t help noticing how ragged his breathing had become. He was breathing in so much that his lungs were probably filled to the brim, and yet it looked as though he was being constricted by something. It was only then that she decided to step forward and place her hands on his torso, ready to push him down onto the floor and calm him down until he was sedated enough to talk properly about the fire.

She had almost forgotten that that was the real reason she was here, rather than just meeting the five patients that she had in her short time here. His body reacted almost instantly to her firm touch, bursting into a spasm of movement as she tried desperately to not get hit again. Limbs flailing in every direction, she attempted to drag him over to a corner where there was a little more light than in the darkness of his hiding place.

“No, please! Please, I’ll do anything just don’t let me go back- no, NO! It’s not my fault, I promise I didn’t do this on purpose!” he bawled, thrashing around as though he had been injected with something to make him so distrustful. Suddenly, his arm collided with her head, the very same place that Johnny had punched her before and she dropped him back onto the floor, stumbling over to the corner. As she placed her hand against her forehead, Jess felt the cool liquid of blood seeping out of her skin and onto her fingers.

Everything seemed to be going fuzzy again, perhaps she just needed to take a nap and get all of this out of her system.
“Son of a bitch…” she drawled as she lowered her head down onto the tiled flooring and closed her eyes, hoping the pain inside of her head would fade soon.

******

Her eyes flickered open once again, pain shooting through her forehead like bullets from her brain. The room had changed again, but instead it was dimly lit, enough for her to see her own hand at least. She squinted, groaning softly in pain when she realised that she couldn’t hear herself speak. Something was preventing her from making any noise. Was this a dream, or was something even weirder happening now that she was away from the psycho she’d been trapped with just moments before?

Suddenly, she heard the sound of someone screaming in pain and instinctively, her head snapped towards the sound of danger. Brian, the patient who had kicked and screamed her into this comatose state was knelt on his hands and knees on the wooden floor, lips bleeding from biting them so hard. Above him stood a woman in a flowered dress. She seemed to be like the housewives in the old black and white movies; perfect hair, perfect outfit, always ready to take care of the kids rather than go out and earn the greens.

But this particular housewife was distorted and terrifying. Around her throat was a solid silver cross, dangling right across the front of her prudish dress and swaying softly as her body moved. In the crook of her left arm sat a leather bound bible, a little gold bookmark marking a particular place inbetween the thick yellow pages. And in the other hand was a whip, clenched between thin, bony fingers and short, discoloured nails. She was screaming something at him, each time the whip hit his bare back her smile would grow wider as though she was taking pleasure from seeing him hurt like this.

Jess wanted to run towards him and yank Brian away, arrest the woman for being so sadistic. But her feet wouldn’t move, she was almost frozen to the floor.
“Leviticus 18:22! Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an abomination!” she shrieked at him, her mouth letting the verse pour out of her mouth as though she knew the whole damn book off by heart. Tears were running down Brian’s pale cheeks as he tried to stop his shaky limbs from collapsing as he bowed his head in shame.

“Please, mother, have mercy! This isn’t my fault, I didn’t chose to be like this!” he pleaded, but the whipping just became harder, her mouth twitching into a thin line as she watched the skin on his back burst open and release the red liquid buried beneath it.
“The devil’s children always chose their wicked way of life! Everything is your fault, EVERYTHING!” she cackled, and from the corner, Jess could spot a number of empty alcohol bottles stashed behind the large wooden closet.

What on earth sort of mother did something like that to her son? If she had children of her own, she would have given her son a hug and sent him on his way, rather than beating the homosexuality out of him. But then again, it wasn’t as though you could trust the literalists- they were all crazy enough to believe what someone had told them. As she watched through the gaps in her fingers, Jess let out an involuntary sigh of relief as the whipping stopped and Brian’s mother pushed him onto the floor, watching as he collapsed with exhaustion.

She fumbled around in her pocket for a moment, muttering under her breath before she threw the leather bound book at him. It bounced cleanly off of his head and he yelled out in pain, sobbing softly to himself. From her pocket, she withdrew a handful of white powder and threw it onto his bloodied back. The scream that echoed from his mouth was not even human- it was white with pain and anguish. Salt, Jess concluded. She had thrown salt into his wounds.

“One day you will see the error of your ways. One day, you will be saved from the fiery depths of Hell!” she shouted, storming out of the room and slamming the door behind her. He stayed still for just a moment, breathing heavily as the pain in his back began to subdue to nothing more than a dull ache. The wounds had been there for months, perhaps years and all that happened when his mother tried to save him was they re-opened.

Downtrodden and miserable, Jess watched as Brian crawled over towards a chipped glass bowl, filled with dirty dishwater. A few sparse crusts of bread lay beside it, the only nourishment he would get from her. Downstairs, there was a full pantry and an overflowing refrigerator- but not for him. Any child that lay with another man, was not a child of hers. As Brian leant down to drink up as much of the water as he could without falling headfirst into it, he heard the sounds of the stairs creaking. His body tensed up, slowly glancing over his shoulder as the creaking got louder and suddenly, the door slammed open once again.

A tall, broad shouldered and middle aged man stood in the doorway, swaying from the lull of intoxication. Brian tried to gasp, the breath leaving him at the sight of the man and made ready to run, not wanting to get anything more than what his mother had given him. But despite his drunkenness, the man was quick. That man in particular, was his Uncle.
“You can run but you can’t hide, faggot” he growled, yanking Brian up off of the floor as though he were a child’s plaything and throwing him onto the dirty mattress that accounted for his bed. Jess’s eyes widened as she watched the older man rip off Brian’s raggedy sweatpants and wrench his legs apart, chuckling as he did so.

“Please…please don’t do this now…” he begged desperately, voice wavering as his throat began to dry up.
“I’ll do whatever I fucking please and you aren’t going to do a thing to stop me because you’re fucking worthless” the man hissed at him as he pulled out his engorged member from his pants and pushed it straight inside of Brian. He screamed again, hands fisting in his hair as he tried to ignore the pain that ran through him. He still wasn’t used to the feeling of such intrusion whenever his Uncle decided to get drunk off his ass and sexually abuse him this way, even though it had happened for years.

His hips began to snap forward and backwards as he held Brian in place, muttering to him about how worthless he was, calling him names, breathing the whiskey stench onto his nephews tainted chest.
“It’s your fault I touch you like this faggot. It’s your fault your precious father left- he couldn’t stand the idea of having a dandy like you for a son. No man wants their son to like fucking other men, do they? I bet you’re a fucking slut for them, always opening up your legs, taking it right up the ass” his Uncle roared, his hands slapping Brian’s pale cheeks at every chance he got.

He begged and pleaded to be set free, to try and wrestle his Uncle away from him but it was no use. For years now he had been weakened to this state and even before then, there had been no deterring him from his mission to gain his pleasure from Brian’s pain. Suddenly, Jess couldn’t take it any longer. She sprang into life, running over towards the man and braced her hands on his shoulders, trying to drag him away from Brian.
“Stop it- you’re hurting him! Please, don’t do this!” she cried, hoping to catch onto the bulging muscle of his upper body and yank him away from the poor patient she had been knocked out by. But she couldn’t.

He couldn’t see her, she couldn’t move him – it was almost as though she were a ghost. As she heard another girlish scream rip from Brian’s mouth, she moved away and looked down at him. His face was beginning to blur, the chiselled features now becoming distorted. In fact, his whole body seemed to look like it was part of a black and white movie, the pixels of his skin darting in and out of focus. She rubbed her eyes, unsure of what was happening to her. And when she opened them again, Brian was gone.

In his place, stretched naked beneath the man’s large form with his hands marking every inch of the bare flesh- was herself.

*****
The room was bright. Too bright. A steady movement echoed around the thin walls of wherever she had been placed and if she strained her ears just enough, she could hear the faint sounds of conversation, low voices. Perhaps someone had found her in the middle of the patients room, had Jack finally broken his way in and dragged her out of there before something strange happened?

As her eyes flickered open, she spotted five doctors standing around her, each of them wearing the white uniforms that she had seen dragging children away from their homes, breaking apart perfect families. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come out. Her voice had been taken away from her. Gulping, she began to struggle against the bed, her arms and legs restrained by leather cuffs, if only to keep her in place. It was only then that the five doctors stared down at her and her heart leapt into her throat.

The patients. The patients were in the white uniforms, they were the doctors. Had they escaped again, was the whole place now under their control?
“She’s hallucinating again. Calling out for us. Dr Baker, could you find the Diazepam, please?” the smooth, croaky voice of Matthew asked the green eyed doctor. Her neighbour, Zacky. She wanted to tell them that she wasn’t hallucinating, her name was Jess and she was strapped to this gurney for no reason whatsoever.

She glanced around again, terrified and saw the comforting brown eyes of the man she had watched getting beaten by his own mother. Her mother. Anyone’s mother.
“A sedative is what she needs, Dr Sanders. Seems as though Jessica has been getting herself a little worked up lately. No wonder she’s been having these strange dreams” Brian murmured, glancing down at the frail girl who lay in front of them, her big green eyes wide and full of panic.

“Perhaps it is better to let her go than to leave her hanging, Dr Haner. It’s only right after all” the blue eyed man who had seemed so vicious when she’d stepped into his hospital room, murmured calmly, his eyes crinkling at the sight of the woman beneath them. Jimmy.
“Dr Sullivan is right. We have no use for Jessica here. She is better off somewhere else” Johnny’s melodic voice sounded in her ear.

Above her, Zacky held a long needle in between his fingers, the head of which was pressing neatly against the side of her skin. Perhaps, she hadn’t really been visiting a hospital after all. She was at The Hospital all along, as a patient.
As Dr Baker slowly slid the needle into her arm, surging past the barrier of skin and muscle until he reached the vein, she felt her body begin to relax against it. She had no need to struggle now; she did not feel as though there was any panic.

One by one, the doctors in their white masks and white uniforms began to disperse until only Dr Haner remained, staring almost lovingly down at her.
“Goodnight Jessica” he murmured softly, before he leaned over and closed her eyes for good.