Visits To The Mad Bleaker's Wing
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:00 am
An azure fiend with a tousled mane of curly white hair tentatively stands with one hand pressed against the door to the Mad Bleaker's Ward. The shimmering red glyphs that orbit her body flicker and twitch, beating out the tempo of her inner anxieties as she recalls her last experience with the ward.
She is stronger now, her mind more secure. She wills herself to believe this, and the glyphs slowly regain more of their usual serenity.
She hesitates a moment longer, then pushes the doors open, her jaw set.
The dimly lit hallway that crawls away into the distance is both shabby and sterile. Silent, save for the occasional fit of laughter, sobbing, screams of rage, or hysterical song. Not so silent. She stands in the doorway, her mind sifting through the sounds for...she isn't sure what she's looking for really, until she hears it:
Her own voice, babbling senselessly from an empty cell to her left. She trots over to the cell and peers through the barred window in its locked door.
Empty.
Then suddenly it isn't. She sees herself, flickering in and out of reality, crouched in a straight jacket and staring back at herself with wide-eyed madness. Slowly the room begins to fill. All of the possible outcomes of millions of decisions, thoughts, and words...past, future, present all merging into one room filled with projections of an inevitable outcome.
She is outside looking in, then she is inside looking out. A body beside her, a part of her, rages and weeps as she does at the figure standing in the doorway. She tries to look, to see and hear what torments them so, but the harder she looks, the more indistinct the figure towering over them becomes.
"You are not ready for this...not yet." A serene, but stern voice whispers in her ear.
She stands alone now, outside the empty cell. She knows it waits for her, and will have her in time, but that it will be a comforting refuge when that time comes. No more, no less.
She gives the cell a wan smile and turns to leave, content that this is enough progress for one day.
She is stronger now, her mind more secure. She wills herself to believe this, and the glyphs slowly regain more of their usual serenity.
She hesitates a moment longer, then pushes the doors open, her jaw set.
The dimly lit hallway that crawls away into the distance is both shabby and sterile. Silent, save for the occasional fit of laughter, sobbing, screams of rage, or hysterical song. Not so silent. She stands in the doorway, her mind sifting through the sounds for...she isn't sure what she's looking for really, until she hears it:
Her own voice, babbling senselessly from an empty cell to her left. She trots over to the cell and peers through the barred window in its locked door.
Empty.
Then suddenly it isn't. She sees herself, flickering in and out of reality, crouched in a straight jacket and staring back at herself with wide-eyed madness. Slowly the room begins to fill. All of the possible outcomes of millions of decisions, thoughts, and words...past, future, present all merging into one room filled with projections of an inevitable outcome.
She is outside looking in, then she is inside looking out. A body beside her, a part of her, rages and weeps as she does at the figure standing in the doorway. She tries to look, to see and hear what torments them so, but the harder she looks, the more indistinct the figure towering over them becomes.
"You are not ready for this...not yet." A serene, but stern voice whispers in her ear.
She stands alone now, outside the empty cell. She knows it waits for her, and will have her in time, but that it will be a comforting refuge when that time comes. No more, no less.
She gives the cell a wan smile and turns to leave, content that this is enough progress for one day.