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Description
From the desk of Constance Althea Rypka

Diary Entry #2

The morning of the operation was no different than any other at first. A nurse came barging into the room I shared with Elsie Breclaw (the one who'd sit in the corner and mumble about monsters) and woke me up. She took me to the dining hall after I had taken the medicine they made me take in the morning. She didn't speak to me. Simply sat down with a piping cup of coffee and watched, with those awful black eyes, as I prodded grey oatmeal with a spoon. Snapped at me when I pushed the bowl away. "Eat your breakfast. Now. You don't want to get shocked, do you?" No. She became quiet, going back to watching. I tried to eat that tasteless food. I did. I didn't know if the nurse got fed up with me (they aren't supposed to do that) or if we were late for something, but she stood up and ordered me to follow her. So I did. It looked as if we were headed back to my room when a voice came from down the hall.

"Nurse Hale? The doctor is ready to take her, now."

Take who?

The nurse smiled. "Yes, ma'am." To me: "Come on. Stop dragging your feet." We changed paths and headed for the shock room. Oh no, I remember thinking, Not this early in the morning, not today, not now. Please. Shocks are from the devil himself... What they do is shove you down on a gurney and cross leather restraints over your body. Around four people would be there to hold you down. Whoever was by the machine would put this rubber thing in your mouth to keep you from biting your tongue off. Then they'd wipe a cold jelly-like substance on your temples.

Conductor.

A headband with two large pads on either end would be put on you--the pads on your temples--and when everyone had a good grip on the patient, they'd turn the machine on.

You will never feel a sensation as purely terrible as being shocked. It feels like a thousand bolts of lightning going through your body, it feels like a wildfire inside your ribcage, it feels like hell broke loose in your veins. They'd take the headband off and hold your head, too. And you lie there, helpless, until the violent convulsions stop. It takes an eternity.

Afterward, you'd be too dizzy and tired and disoriented to even think straight. You wanted to sleep forever. The nurses would take out the mouthpiece and undo the restraints. They'd say nothing, but all the noise in your head...

The morning of the operation was different. I hadn't done anything "wrong" yet and, still, there I was--being tied down for punishment. I know now that it wasn't because I did something wrong. It was a kind of sedative. They turned the voltage up so high that everything went black almost instantly. Whenever I woke up, I was electrocuted right back into unconsciousness. This happened about two or three times, I believe. Not sure. When I really woke up, I was back in the room with Elsie Breclaw. A splitting migraine accompanied the sunlight streaming through the barred window. I'd never woken up in this much pain before. I turned to the wall and only then did I notice the patch. My pillow touched it instead of my skin. Something was horribly wrong.

"I-I don't like your face." It was Elsie. I didn't answer. She continued. "It's black, you know. And purple. And puffy. It is, it is." I looked over my shoulder at her, which caused her to shriek. "No, no, no! Don't do that! I don't like it! I don't!" I sat up and touched my fingertips to my face. It felt fine until they reached the right eye (the uncovered one). It was, in fact, "puffy"...and so sore. No doubt it was black and purple, as Elsie had said. I glanced over at the metal nightstand in our room to see if I could find my reflection. No such luck. It was at the moment that I heard, as clear as a bell, a voice. Inside my head. It said a simple "Hello" in a murderous tone. A lot of the truly mad people at Ridgecrest claimed to hear voices in their heads and I just knew it was the end. I had gone mad. I had become one of them.

Fortunately, I was only half right.

                                               * * *

I waited for two days. For two whole days, they kept bandages over her eyes and head and kept her drugged up. She woke up a few hours after the last dose of painkiller wore off. By then, they just left her with that left eye patched. Of course, she had to mess with it, which was what let me out. Elsie had complained of her face looking weird and mentioned the patch, best I remember. I was still drowsy from the drugs. No matter how it happened, 001 messed with that patch and it tore away from her skin. Not much, but enough. So I snatched up the opportunity.

It was an odd feeling, controlling her for the first time--the first real time. I had done it once or twice before, such as when she was admitted to Ridgecrest or before the first session of "shock therapy", but never like this. The operation had given me even more power. They called me "fear", "dark side", "Just a Part of Her". But this was something else. We were equals and I could control her like a marionette.

After taking over, I sat there for a long moment, clenching and unclenching her fists. My fists. I wondered if I looked like her when I took over. Those ugly hospital clothes still hung loose on my body, but I didn't notice any of her dark hair over my eyes (I had torn the patch off completely by then). Maybe Elsie would be of help. She was sitting on her bed, which was pushed against the wall, and had folded herself up into the corner, staring with those sunken grey eyes and trembling. I knew before I even asked.

"Elsie, what do I look like?"

"You're not Constance," she confirmed, shaking her head. "No, no, not Constance, no."

I reached up to run my hand through my hair, just to see what it felt like. Short. A bit choppy. Ruffled. "Good." I didn't want to look like 001 ("001" is what they'd come to call her, since her operation had been the first to succeed). As I sat there, trying to get used to this awkward physical body, I decided to introduce myself to her via letter. In the back of my mind, I could hear her breathing slowly--sleeping, unconscious. Our heart beat in the same comatose rhythm. I slid off the bed and rummaged under the mattress for the diary she would write in at night when the guards weren't watching. It was made of the blank pages in the backs of Ridgecrest's books. Occasionally, there were pages of the doctors' reports where she had crossed out their writing. It had been a risky process, making that diary, but I daresay it's the only thing that kept her from going mad. A lethal shard of metal--her makeshift pen--jabbed my hand before I found it. It occurred to me a moment too late that the stolen bottle of ink she hid under her pillow was near empty and impossible to get ink from anymore.

Elsie piped up again. "Is that yours? It is yours, isn't it? I bet it is. That's against the rule, you know. A-and you're not allowed to have weapons." She gestured to the "pen" in my left hand. "Are you going to try to hurt me with that? You shouldn't. That's bad," she said, obviously not about to shut up. "I-I bet you have secrets in that book. Bad secrets, evil secrets. Witchcraft." It was getting annoying.

"Shut up."

She gaped at me. "What?"

"You heard me." I set the diary on the bed and opened it to the last page, nearly ripping the spine, which was nothing but some torn pieces of a sheet tied through holes that she tore into the side of the paper. I was trying to figure out what to do about ink when Elsie opened her mouth again.

"I'm going to tell them about this."

"About the diary?" I struggled to keep my voice even. That brat...

"About the book. And you. You're not supposed to be here. This is the female ward."

"Am I not female?" I stupidly almost checked to make sure. "Thank God."

"Where is Constance?" I turned a page in the diary to a blank sheet. "Answer me," she said, voice low and quavering. I didn't. "Answer me!" It had risen to a shrill pitch.

Then a wonderful idea of how to get ink struck me.

                                              * * *

When I came to, I was curled up on my bed, clutching my diary to my chest. I hadn't brought out my diary (especially because it was daytime) and yet there it was in my arms. I say up and puzzled over this for a long time before noticing a red stain on my right sleeve that hadn't been there before. I turned to Elsie to see if she knew anything of it, only to find her broken, bloody form on the floor, half under the bed. She was not breathing.

I recoiled immediately and backed up into the corner until my shoulders were pressed against the wall. I stared at the fore in sheer horror, trying furiously to remember what had happened. Nothing. I had no recollection of anything from when I first felt my patch to when I woke up holding the diary.

The diary.

How had it gotten out? Into dangerously plain view, nonetheless. I stroked its spine with shaking hands and noticed a few seconds later that my pen was also on the bed. There was blood on the tip. This confused me greatly, as I hadn't used it to hurt anyone and I certainly had no idea of how it had gotten out, too. My gaze eventually fell upon the diary again and my thoughts returned to the voice I had heard earlier. Perhaps the two incidents were somehow connected. My stomach tied itself into a knot. Out of sick curiosity, I opened the book to the last entry I had written. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but, sure enough, there was something odd on the next page.

It was a letter written in dark read ink. Hadn't my ink supply been used up? And I had used black ink. I reached under my pillow to pull out the glass bottle. It was full of a red liquid which was unmistakable. It was absolutely not ink. Disbelieving, I snatched up the book and read the note left behind. it was simple.

Dearest Constance,
                      I do hope you'll pardon the mess I left, but I needed something to write with and Ms. Breclaw was trying my patience. The operation went well, so I expect we will be in touch more often. You will get to know me quite well--not that you don't know some things about me already. As of right now, I'm terribly exhausted. We'll have to speak later tonight. I'm already with you, so don't ask any stupid questions to the staff about this. Just listen. You'll know my voice when you hear it. I hope you like your new room, by the way.

I looked over at Elsie one last time and knew what the person who wrote the letter meant. By tonight, they'd have me locked in a room with a straitjacket. All alone because they thought I was a "threat". It wasn't my fault. It wasn't. I scanned the crimson words again, trying to figure it out as if it were a code or riddle. Already with you. My heart skipped a beat at the realization that I wouldn't be alone.

I know better now what that person meant. I've come to call him Crimson because of the blood he wrote with. He lives inside me and can turn me into whatever I hate the most in the blink of an eye.

True to his word, he did talk to me that night, when I was locked down in that empty room. He explained how the operation focused on the concentrating a person's "dark side" and having it all in one accessible place in the brain for research. He told me about how he was in the part of my brain that controls sight, which is why messing with the eyepatch started the whole disaster. I didn't want to listen. I focused on that stupid full moon outside the window with immature tears streaming down my face. That was a long night. He kept me up with  nightmares whenever I tried to sleep so I'd listen to him. However, I did start listening to him when he mentioned escaping from Ridgecrest.

I knew it would be risky. I knew it would involve murder. "You do crazy things to get out of crazy places. That's how it is," he told me. I was willing to do those crazy things. I was a girl on the brink of insanity being lead by a demon and it didn't bother me a bit. Surely, I thought, hell cannot be worse than this. So naive.

May God forgive me of the sins I committed on the way out of that madhouse. May God forgive me...

Description
From the desk of Constance Althea Rypka

Diary Entry #2

The morning of the operation was no different than any other at first. A nurse came barging into the room I shared with Elsie Breclaw (the one who'd sit in the corner and mumble about monsters) and woke me up. She took me to the dining hall after I had taken the medicine they made me take in the morning. She didn't speak to me. Simply sat down with a piping cup of coffee and watched, with those awful black eyes, as I prodded grey oatmeal with a spoon. Snapped at me when I pushed the bowl away. "Eat your breakfast. Now. You don't want to get shocked, do you?" No. She became quiet, going back to watching. I tried to eat that tasteless food. I did. I didn't know if the nurse got fed up with me (they aren't supposed to do that) or if we were late for something, but she stood up and ordered me to follow her. So I did. It looked as if we were headed back to my room when a voice came from down the hall.

"Nurse Hale? The doctor is ready to take her, now."

Take who?

The nurse smiled. "Yes, ma'am." To me: "Come on. Stop dragging your feet." We changed paths and headed for the shock room. Oh no, I remember thinking, Not this early in the morning, not today, not now. Please. Shocks are from the devil himself... What they do is shove you down on a gurney and cross leather restraints over your body. Around four people would be there to hold you down. Whoever was by the machine would put this rubber thing in your mouth to keep you from biting your tongue off. Then they'd wipe a cold jelly-like substance on your temples.

Conductor.

A headband with two large pads on either end would be put on you--the pads on your temples--and when everyone had a good grip on the patient, they'd turn the machine on.

You will never feel a sensation as purely terrible as being shocked. It feels like a thousand bolts of lightning going through your body, it feels like a wildfire inside your ribcage, it feels like hell broke loose in your veins. They'd take the headband off and hold your head, too. And you lie there, helpless, until the violent convulsions stop. It takes an eternity.

Afterward, you'd be too dizzy and tired and disoriented to even think straight. You wanted to sleep forever. The nurses would take out the mouthpiece and undo the restraints. They'd say nothing, but all the noise in your head...

The morning of the operation was different. I hadn't done anything "wrong" yet and, still, there I was--being tied down for punishment. I know now that it wasn't because I did something wrong. It was a kind of sedative. They turned the voltage up so high that everything went black almost instantly. Whenever I woke up, I was electrocuted right back into unconsciousness. This happened about two or three times, I believe. Not sure. When I really woke up, I was back in the room with Elsie Breclaw. A splitting migraine accompanied the sunlight streaming through the barred window. I'd never woken up in this much pain before. I turned to the wall and only then did I notice the patch. My pillow touched it instead of my skin. Something was horribly wrong.

"I-I don't like your face." It was Elsie. I didn't answer. She continued. "It's black, you know. And purple. And puffy. It is, it is." I looked over my shoulder at her, which caused her to shriek. "No, no, no! Don't do that! I don't like it! I don't!" I sat up and touched my fingertips to my face. It felt fine until they reached the right eye (the uncovered one). It was, in fact, "puffy"...and so sore. No doubt it was black and purple, as Elsie had said. I glanced over at the metal nightstand in our room to see if I could find my reflection. No such luck. It was at the moment that I heard, as clear as a bell, a voice. Inside my head. It said a simple "Hello" in a murderous tone. A lot of the truly mad people at Ridgecrest claimed to hear voices in their heads and I just knew it was the end. I had gone mad. I had become one of them.

Fortunately, I was only half right.

                                               * * *

I waited for two days. For two whole days, they kept bandages over her eyes and head and kept her drugged up. She woke up a few hours after the last dose of painkiller wore off. By then, they just left her with that left eye patched. Of course, she had to mess with it, which was what let me out. Elsie had complained of her face looking weird and mentioned the patch, best I remember. I was still drowsy from the drugs. No matter how it happened, 001 messed with that patch and it tore away from her skin. Not much, but enough. So I snatched up the opportunity.

It was an odd feeling, controlling her for the first time--the first real time. I had done it once or twice before, such as when she was admitted to Ridgecrest or before the first session of "shock therapy", but never like this. The operation had given me even more power. They called me "fear", "dark side", "Just a Part of Her". But this was something else. We were equals and I could control her like a marionette.

After taking over, I sat there for a long moment, clenching and unclenching her fists. My fists. I wondered if I looked like her when I took over. Those ugly hospital clothes still hung loose on my body, but I didn't notice any of her dark hair over my eyes (I had torn the patch off completely by then). Maybe Elsie would be of help. She was sitting on her bed, which was pushed against the wall, and had folded herself up into the corner, staring with those sunken grey eyes and trembling. I knew before I even asked.

"Elsie, what do I look like?"

"You're not Constance," she confirmed, shaking her head. "No, no, not Constance, no."

I reached up to run my hand through my hair, just to see what it felt like. Short. A bit choppy. Ruffled. "Good." I didn't want to look like 001 ("001" is what they'd come to call her, since her operation had been the first to succeed). As I sat there, trying to get used to this awkward physical body, I decided to introduce myself to her via letter. In the back of my mind, I could hear her breathing slowly--sleeping, unconscious. Our heart beat in the same comatose rhythm. I slid off the bed and rummaged under the mattress for the diary she would write in at night when the guards weren't watching. It was made of the blank pages in the backs of Ridgecrest's books. Occasionally, there were pages of the doctors' reports where she had crossed out their writing. It had been a risky process, making that diary, but I daresay it's the only thing that kept her from going mad. A lethal shard of metal--her makeshift pen--jabbed my hand before I found it. It occurred to me a moment too late that the stolen bottle of ink she hid under her pillow was near empty and impossible to get ink from anymore.

Elsie piped up again. "Is that yours? It is yours, isn't it? I bet it is. That's against the rule, you know. A-and you're not allowed to have weapons." She gestured to the "pen" in my left hand. "Are you going to try to hurt me with that? You shouldn't. That's bad," she said, obviously not about to shut up. "I-I bet you have secrets in that book. Bad secrets, evil secrets. Witchcraft." It was getting annoying.

"Shut up."

She gaped at me. "What?"

"You heard me." I set the diary on the bed and opened it to the last page, nearly ripping the spine, which was nothing but some torn pieces of a sheet tied through holes that she tore into the side of the paper. I was trying to figure out what to do about ink when Elsie opened her mouth again.

"I'm going to tell them about this."

"About the diary?" I struggled to keep my voice even. That brat...

"About the book. And you. You're not supposed to be here. This is the female ward."

"Am I not female?" I stupidly almost checked to make sure. "Thank God."

"Where is Constance?" I turned a page in the diary to a blank sheet. "Answer me," she said, voice low and quavering. I didn't. "Answer me!" It had risen to a shrill pitch.

Then a wonderful idea of how to get ink struck me.

                                              * * *

When I came to, I was curled up on my bed, clutching my diary to my chest. I hadn't brought out my diary (especially because it was daytime) and yet there it was in my arms. I say up and puzzled over this for a long time before noticing a red stain on my right sleeve that hadn't been there before. I turned to Elsie to see if she knew anything of it, only to find her broken, bloody form on the floor, half under the bed. She was not breathing.

I recoiled immediately and backed up into the corner until my shoulders were pressed against the wall. I stared at the fore in sheer horror, trying furiously to remember what had happened. Nothing. I had no recollection of anything from when I first felt my patch to when I woke up holding the diary.

The diary.

How had it gotten out? Into dangerously plain view, nonetheless. I stroked its spine with shaking hands and noticed a few seconds later that my pen was also on the bed. There was blood on the tip. This confused me greatly, as I hadn't used it to hurt anyone and I certainly had no idea of how it had gotten out, too. My gaze eventually fell upon the diary again and my thoughts returned to the voice I had heard earlier. Perhaps the two incidents were somehow connected. My stomach tied itself into a knot. Out of sick curiosity, I opened the book to the last entry I had written. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but, sure enough, there was something odd on the next page.

It was a letter written in dark read ink. Hadn't my ink supply been used up? And I had used black ink. I reached under my pillow to pull out the glass bottle. It was full of a red liquid which was unmistakable. It was absolutely not ink. Disbelieving, I snatched up the book and read the note left behind. it was simple.

Dearest Constance,
                      I do hope you'll pardon the mess I left, but I needed something to write with and Ms. Breclaw was trying my patience. The operation went well, so I expect we will be in touch more often. You will get to know me quite well--not that you don't know some things about me already. As of right now, I'm terribly exhausted. We'll have to speak later tonight. I'm already with you, so don't ask any stupid questions to the staff about this. Just listen. You'll know my voice when you hear it. I hope you like your new room, by the way.

I looked over at Elsie one last time and knew what the person who wrote the letter meant. By tonight, they'd have me locked in a room with a straitjacket. All alone because they thought I was a "threat". It wasn't my fault. It wasn't. I scanned the crimson words again, trying to figure it out as if it were a code or riddle. Already with you. My heart skipped a beat at the realization that I wouldn't be alone.

I know better now what that person meant. I've come to call him Crimson because of the blood he wrote with. He lives inside me and can turn me into whatever I hate the most in the blink of an eye.

True to his word, he did talk to me that night, when I was locked down in that empty room. He explained how the operation focused on the concentrating a person's "dark side" and having it all in one accessible place in the brain for research. He told me about how he was in the part of my brain that controls sight, which is why messing with the eyepatch started the whole disaster. I didn't want to listen. I focused on that stupid full moon outside the window with immature tears streaming down my face. That was a long night. He kept me up with  nightmares whenever I tried to sleep so I'd listen to him. However, I did start listening to him when he mentioned escaping from Ridgecrest.

I knew it would be risky. I knew it would involve murder. "You do crazy things to get out of crazy places. That's how it is," he told me. I was willing to do those crazy things. I was a girl on the brink of insanity being lead by a demon and it didn't bother me a bit. Surely, I thought, hell cannot be worse than this. So naive.

May God forgive me of the sins I committed on the way out of that madhouse. May God forgive me...