Morningview Psychiatric Hospital
Chapter 2:
“So what is group therapy?” Darla asked.
“It’s where you sit around with a bunch of patients, and doctor what’s his face asks us to share whatever’s on our minds. Really it’s just something mandated by the powers that be that tell Dr Marr and Dr Black how to run their little nut house. The real therapy will be when they go into your mind and tinker with it.”
“Do these powers that be know they fuck with peoples minds?”
“Oh they know.”
“So they condone it?”
Chloe nodded. “You have no idea what they condone here, and you don’t wanna know.”
“Mr Anders, how are you feeling today?” the doctor asked.
Mr Anders, a large muscluar man, sat in his chair coldly looking at everybody in the circle. He had a collar on, and Darla soon found out why.
“I feel like I want to kill Dr. Black. I want to pull his organs out of his chest and carve his bones into jewelry, which I will bleach until they’re pearly white, and sell at an enormous profit.”
While the man calmly explained his psychotic tendencies which were made all the more disturbing by the calm tone in which he spoke, Chloe tapped Darla on the shoulder.
“Come on, lets go get drunk.”
Darla perked up instantly. “Drunk? How are we going to do that?”
“Follow my lead.”
Chloe took her by the hand and they walked over to the doctor.
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up you son of a bitch? We all know that what you do here is useless.”
“Uh, yeah, useless!” Darla said.
“Yeah, even the new girl knows you’re useless and wasting your time! No one benefits from your therapy! You’re a leftover from the days before mind reconstruction!”
“Yeah! A leftover!” Darla said in the loudest voice she could manage.
The orderlies came and carried them away. They were led down a corridor and placed in the padded cell together. After the orderlies footsteps faded, Darla looked over at Chloe.
“Aren’t we supposed to, like, be separated and put in straitjackets?”
“Nah. They don’t think that way. Troublemakers are usually housed together unless they’re going at it with each other. I don’t see the point, but it allows both of us to get nice and schnockered now.”
Chloe went over to one of the padded walls and lifted up the padding, taking out an unlabeled half empty bottle of whiskey. She opened the cap, took a swig and handed the bottle to Darla, who grabbed it and took a long draft.
“Oh god! I needed this! She took another drink.”
“Easy there girl, save some for me!” Chloe grabbed the bottle and took another drink. She licked her lips and handed the bottle back to Darla, who finished it off.”
“I used to get drunk like this when nobody was around... It, you know... it made things... bearable. Heh heh. M-my last three books. Nobody... nobody knows this Chloe, but I wrote them while I was drunk. I-I would get drunk, write a chapter or two, sober up, fix the typos, and lather, rinse, and fucking repeat.”
Chloe sat there listening to her, interest flashing in her eyes.
“And it was never enough Chloe... I’d write a new book and a couple days later I would get asked about the next...the next story in the series.”
She started crying. “It was never enough Chloe! It was never enough! And it wasn’t enough for Boris, so he...”
“He what?”
“N-no... I can’t... Nobody ever needs to know... It’s... not right, what he did.”
“Yeah I’ll bet it ain’t right. What’d he do, rape you?”
Darla started crying again.
“Yup.” Chloe said.
“He... he was sweet to me at first then he... He... Well he’s just one of millions who want me in some sexual way. I once... I once did a search for my name on the internet, and the fourth link was a website with pictures that had my face...photo manipulated onto the body of some girl having sex. So I did a search for ‘Darla Stevenson porn’ and... just... thousands of websites... Boris... I couldn’t fight him off! You’re right I’m too weak! He violated me, and it was all Danny, Rainer, and Dizzy’s fault! They made me popular! They made men... grown men insert my face into porn images! I mean... what the fuck is wrong with people?! I’m a children’s author for fucks sake! What is wrong with them?”
“You’re also 23, sexy as hell, and your books have your picture inside the back covers. That’s why men lust after you honey. They don’t care about what you’ve written. They just know that you exist.”
“I.. don’t wanna be sexy. Heh heh I tried gaining weight... to make myself fat and unattractive! Heh heh, but oh lucky me! I have a fast metabolism and can’t gain weight to save my life! Ha ha ha ha... So m-many girls... hate being fat... I would trade bodies with them in a heart beat Chloe!”
She crawled over to Chloe. “But I know that’s not an option... so I’ve decided that I don’t wanna live anymore... " A wide grin burst across her face.
“Remember when you said you could pull my... pull my lungs out and feed them to me? Can you do that? See... see... they won’t let me kill off Danny, Rainer, and Dizzy in a story... But if I die... they die with me.”
“I could, but I won’t. I don’t wanna be collared.” Chloe replied.
Darla’s smile faded. “Then what use are you anyway? What use are you huh? What use are you?!” She collapsed to the floor and started crying again.
She passed out, she didn’t know for how long. She was woken by the sound of the door opening.
“W-whats going on?”
“Time for our evening shower. Chloe replied.”
Darla had seen shower scenes in prison movies, but never thought she’d end up showering next to several naked women. A few of the larger women eyed her like a piece of meat, until they saw that Chloe was with her. Chloe showered next to Darla. Her body was in great physical shape. Oddly, while most of the women had hairy legs and other bits, Chloe was clean shaven from toes to armpits.
“You’re so... smooth... How do you shave? Surely they don’t give you razors here.”
“Oh I have friends here who provide me with a few things I want to make my time here bearable. Grooming supplies, alcohol, secret basement room with loud stereo, you know, the comforts of home.”
“Secret basement room? I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“I’ll have to show you some time.” Chloe replied.
She stopped scrubbing and looked closely at the shower tiles.
“Darla... do you see what I see?”
“Um, I see tiles.”
“Tiles...? Yes, but in the tiles, I see the protocol designs...”
Chloe was now staring at the tiles with an intense fascination. She sat down on the floor and started rocking back and forth while talking in a sing songy voice.
“I seeee the protocol designs! I seeee the protocol designs!”
Everyone except Darla was now giving Chloe a wide berth. Two female orderlies entered the shower room.
“Take it easy now Chloe.” one of them said.
She looked at the orderlies. “You wrote the designs on the shower tiles! YOU JUST HAD TO SET ME UP!!”
“Chloe, there’s nothing written on the shower tiles.”
“Darla sees them too! Don’t you Darla?! The computer code! It’s right in front of you!!”
Darla, trembling at this point, shook her head. “I just see the tiles Chloe... n-no code.”
Chloe stared at her like she had just told her a loved one had died or something.
“YOU LYING BITCH!!” She lunged at Darla but the orderlies grabbed her and dragged her out of the room.
Darla’s curiousity overcame hear fear and she followed them. Nobody made any attempt to stop her. She watched as they carried Chloe, who was now ranting incoherently into a room. Darla watched through the window as they strapped her nude body into a chair. A helmet went over her head, a syringe went in her arm. Some kind of metallic probe went into her vagina. Another was inserted into her butt.
Darla couldn’t watch. She ran away just as Chloe started screaming. As bad luck would have it, she ran into one of the female orderlies.
“W-what are they doing to Chloe in there?!”
The orderly, a big burly women in her forties just smiled at Darla. “That’s nothing you need to worry yourself about. Come on. Lets take you to your room.
“I don’t wanna go to my room, I wanna know what they’re doing to Chloe.”
“Come on honey, lets go.”
There was nothing Darla could do. The orderly had taken out some kind of remote control, and collar now prevented her from even running away. Sighing in defeat, she followed the orderly.
She sat in her cell crying softly. Horrors of electroshock therapy flashed through her mind. Was that what they did to control patients here? No, that’s what the collars were for. Would Chloe come back wearing a collar? What had she said about them messing with peoples minds here? Would Chloe come back as Chloe? Time passed. Darla drifted off into a fitful sleep. Before she nodded off, she wondered how long it would be until they messed with her mind. It was all her characters fault. They brought this mess upon her...
She was roused by someone knocking on her cell door. Chloe looked at her through the window. Darla got up and went over to the door.
“Chloe... are you... still you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. May I come in?”
“Can you get in?”
Chloe tapped in a combination on the keypad and the door opened. She sauntered into Darla’s cell, wearing a labcoat with nothing underneath.
“You can open cell doors?”
“Yep, I know every master combination here, thanks to my friends.”
“What did they do to you in that room?”
“Gave me some Sex Therapy. That’s what Dr Marr calls it. They induce a series of powerful orgasms by stimulating the brain and genitals, then they try and condition you to behave like how they want you to... But I’m a strong woman. They haven’t broken me yet. Come on, let’s go!”
“Uh, where are we going?”
“You said you’d believe me when you saw my secret basement apartment, so I’m gonna make a believer out of you!”
She followed Chloe down the corridor, which led to another corridor. There wasn’t a single orderly in sight.
“Whoa, I see a camera there! Oh god I think it spotted us!”
“My friends run the security here. They turn a blind eye to what I do late at night as long as I don’t go too overboard. In return for that, and making my time here more pleasant, I make their time here pleasant...”
“How?”
Chloe turned to face her and opened her labcoat. “How do you think, honey?”
“That’s... just...”
“Well point is, you’re with me so you don’t need to worry about the cameras.”
They came to a locked door. Chloe punched in a pass code, and the door unlocked. A stairway led down into the basement. They came to another locked door, this one with no window. Chloe punched in another pass code. the door opened to reveal what looked like an apartment, a messy apartment. It was complete with kitchen and bathroom, and just as Chloe had said, a stereo with big speakers stood prominently against a wall.
Darla looked at all this with amazement. “You got all this by fucking the security guards?”
“Well, and a few other people. See they give me hormones, both to increase my responsiveness to sex therapy, and to prevent pregnancy and menstruation.”
She showed Darla her elbow, which had several needle marks in it, one of them very recent.
“One of the side effects is, um, well ever seen a cat in heat?”
“Yeah...”
“Yeah. So, instead of masturbating in my cell, I decided to use the side effects to my advantage.”
She closed the door and went over to the stereo. She turned it on and Shinedown’s “Sound of Madness” started playing. Chloe started banging her head like she was at a concert. Darla just stood there looking befuddled.
“What’s the matter honey? Come on! Lets rock!” Her eyes darted to the collar. “Ohhh yeah, you can’t. Well...”
She turned off the stereo. “Lets see if we can fix that.”
“Fix that?”
“Yeah, I can shut off that collar, then we can both rock out!”
“Oh yes, please shut this thing off Chloe!”
“All right, come over here.”
Darla followed her into the kitchen. Chloe motioned for her to sit down on one of the chairs.
“See, these collars, they work on encrypted Wi-Fi signals. They’re really just computers that tap into your mind and prevent you from flipping out. And like all computers they have a shut down command. I jury rigged this old wireless router to output a signal with the shut down code in it, so when I plug this router in, your collar should deactivate.
Chloe plugged in the router. Darla felt an odd tingle, then suddenly she felt back to normal.
“YES! OH YES I CAN YELL! OH GOD DAMN YOU DR MARR AND GOD DAMN YOU MOTHER FOR FINDING ME BEFORE I COULD FINISH! I HAVE TO KILL THEM OFF!!”
She stared at Chloe with wild eyes. “Do you have writing facilities?!”
“Uh, I got an old Pentium 4 that I surf the web on. It’s in the bedroom.”
Darla ran in there, pulled up Wordpad, and began to furiously type. At first what she was typing had some sembelence of a story, albeit riddled with typos and run on sentences. Chloe watched this with mild fascination. Gradually Darla’s typing changed from words to gibberish.
“Uh, Darla, sweetie, you’re typing gibberish.”
“SHUT UP! I have to finish! Nevermind what it looks like now! My copy editor will make it look perfect! PERFECT!!”
Darla sat there, her face inches away from the screen, furiously typing gibberish into the text editor.
“So, uh, what scene are you writing now?”
“It’s all right here Chloe! Unlike your protocol symbols! See... here comes Danny, the happy go lucky one of the trio, oh but Danny, Danny, Danny... Your luck has run out.
“She typed ”yOUR LUCK HAS RUN OUT1111111“ into the text editor, then resumed furiously typing gibberish.
There she sat for hours just typing away. In the meantime Chloe went into the other room and blasted her stereo. Darla didn’t even seem to notice. She stared into the black letters against the white background. Those 26 letters of the English alphabet. She had used them to create characters that the world’s children loved... Now she would use all 26 letters to destroy them.
“Hey Darla, how’s about you save what you got there and wrap it up for the night eh? I have a lot of leeway but if they find you missing during the morning cell count, I’m in deep shit.”
Darla’s frenzied typing slowed to a stop. She turned and faced Chloe.
“You’re telling me to stop...”
Before Chloe could answer, Darla lept out of the chair and attacked. In a few moments she found herself pinned to the floor. Chloe put her weight on Darla’s back and held her arms and legs in place. Darla screamed and shouted. Chloe just calmly held her there, waiting for Darla to tire out. Eventually Darla’s screaming and struggling subsided.
“Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to turn your collar off. Chloe got up and went over to the router. Darla got up and ran towards Chloe, but suddenly slowed down and stopped.
“No... No, why did you turn it back on?”
“Because I gotta get you back to your cell now and I’d rather not have to knock you out and carry you.”
Tears started streaming down Darla’s face. “But I wanna finish my story!”
“I know honey. We’ll work on that later. Come on. let’s go.”