“Here you go, sweetie,” the nurse told him, placing the tray of pills on the table next to the bed, where he sat. The nurse left the room soon afterwards without a thought against it. She never heard him speak, the last time a word was uttered to the nurse was 20 years ago, when he was first brought into the building. Sometimes she heard him say thank you very softly as she left the room, but the nurse just thought it was all in her head.
After 20 years, he gave up hope of ever being cured of whatever was wrong with him. He took four pills in the morning, three pills at lunch, and five pills at night before he went to bed. However, if we woke up in the middle of the night he would take a sleeping pill.
He stood up facing the mirror, his reflection staring back at him. The mirror showed him shirtless, because that was how he slept. The six-pack abs were exposed and he saw the scars on his skin. However, he forgot how they were inflicted. Then it was the cross tattoo, which gave him hope that he wasn’t crazy.
The doctors couldn’t really give him an explanation of how the tattoo got on his chest, one day it showed up out of the blue. It was because of that, that it allowed him to believe that his dreams were real. Everyday was a painful reminder of how his dream was a nightmare. As a kid the man watched his mother and sister die in a house fire, and he and his father were the only survivors. However, death came, not long after, to take his father away, leaving the man to be stuck in this building.
Everyday he heard in the back of his mind the screams of his family as the fire burned them alive, and he was forced to listen the painful memories of his mother and sister. That’s why he took the pills so that the screeching would halt. While the day flooded his mind with screams by night dreams invaded the mind. He dreamt that his family were still alive, that one day he would escape from the building and be saved. The man kept trying to sell the false hope to himself.
The man took his morning pills, slipped on a clean white shirt, and walked outside the room into the hallway. In the hall nurses covered the area and to him he felt as if they were guards, trying to keep in from leaving; however, after 20 years he learned not to escape. He did try once to abandon this building but it didn’t end well, and later after being restrained inside his room Dr. Hillary visited him. Dr. Hillary was the head doctor inside the building, and while most of the time he stayed inside his office that one day he came out and talked to the man.
It was made clear to the man that there was nowhere out of the building. Not to mention the fact that if by some miracle he could escape, then he would have to get off the island that the building stood on. He gave up long ago, so now he just walked through the hallway, moving closer to the kitchen where he would have breakfast and talk to his doctor, Dr. Phil.
He turned the corner and went straight, the kitchen in his sights until Dr. Phil stood in his way. “Why don’t we talk inside my office today, Anthony?” Dr. Phil asked him, but there was no choice in the matter. The doctors inside the building spoke like there was free will, but there wasn’t. It was something they learned before entering the building, they had to make it seem he was the one in control, but Dr. Hillary made it very clear that he wasn’t.
The man just nodded his head and followed behind Dr. Phil, his eyes staring down at the ground as he walked forward. It was in the matter of seconds that they came up to the door, which led to his office. Dr. Phil opened the door, turned the lights on, and went inside. The man, once again, following after. Behind the large desk Dr. Phil sat, and as for the man he just took a seat on one of the chairs.
“Anthony, I just want to say that this is a safe place, like always, you are free to speak,” Dr. Phil explained, but the man knew it wasn’t. He wouldn’t talk to him, or anyone, his silence was the only thing that he had control over in this building. No one would take that away from him, not Dr. Phil, the nurses, or Dr. Hillary . . . no one.
When Dr. Phil realized that he wasn’t going to talk to him, like always, he moved on to a different topic. “I heard your pills are working, but you keep hearing voices sometimes? Is this right?” The man nodded and Dr. Phil flipped through some of his papers, writing a few words down on them. “Well, to make sure you don’t hear the voices anymore we will be adding two more of pills onto your lunch meds. Is that okay with you, Anthony?” And again the man nodded. “Alright then, that’s all, thank you.”
He stood up and walked out of the door, and in that moment he didn’t seem like eating, so he headed back to his room. Passing nurses and the kitchen he found himself in front of his door to the room. His fingers touched the cold metal as he turned the knob, pushing the door opened, staring at the emptiness around him.
The man made his way to the bed and sat down on it, but then he saw something on top of the blanket . . . a phone. For a moment, he forgot what it was, he hadn’t seen a phone in ages. He studied the black metal device that flipped in half to show a keyboard, and saw inside the contact list a single number. His thumb hit the number and the phone began to dial and beep as the number shown on the screen.
He pulled the phone to his face, close to his ear to hear the person on the other line. When the dialing and beeping stopped a female voice spoke, “. . . Hello? Anthony?! Is that you?” He didn’t respond. “You don’t have to talk, but please, just listen to me. This is very important . . . stop taking the drugs. We are coming for you, Anthony, please don’t listen to anything that they say. Mom and dad are safe and so am I . . . Anthony . . . you have to listen to me, you’ve been missing for a month. I love you, bro. I got to go, but I’ll see you soon, very soon . . . Bye.”
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