damned_institute | Nightshift 35: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1 [M-U for Eileen]

Entry tags:

eileen,
m-u

Nightshift 35: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1 [M-U for Eileen]

What a poor woman this one was. She spent her whole life being as normal as could be, plagued by a love life that refused to reciprocate, just living day-to-day with a dead-end job and an unstoppable curiosity about her neighbors. And then, one day, everything was flipped over, dumped out, and crushed; she was dragged into a hellish nightmare without compare.

Well. Until she got here, anyway.

The doctor hummed quietly to himself as he waited for his patient to wake up. She was strapped to the usual table, and nearby was another table with a few syringes on it. He idly read her dossier, going over a few more topics to make sure he knew exactly what to say to her as the night went on. Oh, yes, if he was going to make her remember, then he had to get the right things down.

This Walter fellow would certainly be in the top five.

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Eileen came to slowly, confused and disoriented. Which wasn't entirely something new, for this place. But this was different. She wasn't in her bed. She was on what felt like an operating table, and there were...restraints.

She was strapped to a table in a nightmarish hospital.

Eileen's eyes flew open, fear gripping her immediately. she knew about what happened sometime. That people were taken, and things were done to them....

She jerked against her bonds, eyes darting around the room.

"What...what's happening?"

"Oh, you're awake? That was quick."

The doctor didn't move away from where he was leaning against the countertop, still looking over the dossier. A little more to remember, a little more to study ... oh, nevermind. He could pick it up later if he needed it. Casually, he set the folder down on the counter and moved over to where Eileen was strapped down, hidden in shadows from the mid-chest up.

"It's your lucky night, Miss Galvin. Tonight you're one of the special patients who gets to be privy to our delightful scientific experiments. Don't you feel grateful?" He laughed a little as he swept up the syringe and a nearby beaker with a strange, swirling red liquid in it. "And my oh my, do I have something planned for you."

Eileen's breathing was starting to come a little faster now. She wet her lips, lying very still. She knew she couldn't break out or anything like that. She wasn't strong enough. She could hardly even move her arms or legs!

"What...what are you going to do?" Why her? What could they possibly want with her?

And he'd called her by her real name, not the name they tried to say was hers. What did that mean? None of this made any sense!

"If I told you, it'd ruin the surprise." He slowly filled up the syringe with the swirling liquid, then got rid of the air bubbles as he set the beaker down. "Poor Miss Galvin, so alone in the world, so traumatized by herself. Not a hero around to save her, nobody to share any wisdom with her ... "

He'd considered trying a placebo effect. If he could get her to induce the former symptoms of her possessed insanity on her own, then all the better - she really would be insane. But after some consideration, he decided that wouldn't be the best choice. What if he was wrong? Doctors weren't right 100% of the time.

"No, you're on your own. A pity you don't even have a mother to help you anymore." Key words and phrases interspersed in the dialogue, gaining greater frequency. He leaned down, putting one hand on her forehead to hold her still, and pressed the tip of the needle into Eileen's neck, emptying the syringe almost too slowly.

What was in that syringe? What were they going to do to her? The question just kept repeating itself in her mind, over and over.

Until she caught on to what the doctor was saying.

She was all alone. Who would know she'd been taken? Who would come for her? Henry wasn't here. She prayed he was safe back in Ashfield, but... it was true. There was no one to save her.

And that meant...What did these people know about her? They couldn't know about...about what had happened. No one knew. It was impossible! But... what else could she assume?

"Please..." she managed, tensing and shaking under the hand. But it was to no avail. She cried out a little as she felt the prick of the needle, the strange medicine entering her bloodstream.

"Pleas aren't going to do you any good, I'm afraid." He was still as the last of the liquid vanished out of the syringe and into Eileen. When it was done, he dropped the used syringe back on the table and went to fetch the dossier again. It would take a little while for that stuff to take effect, get through her bloodstream all the way up to her brain. Until then, he could think, could study, could try and figure out what would be the best phrase or five to set her off.

"Mm ... it seems," he started dryly, turning back to her after a few moments, "that you had a few encounters with a certain man in the past, and that he might have been one of the reasons for your very admittance here. His name was ... ah, Walter, am I right?" He smiled in the dark and watched her carefully over the top of the folder. "Why don't you tell me about him."

He played the role of the therapist poorly, but he was here to hurt, not help.

Eileen froze.

He did know.

"How...how do you know about that...?" That was impossible! It hadn't even happened in the real world. Not really. God, she didn't want to think about that. About what had happened, what Walter had done, the fear of fighting for her life....

Maybe this was all a nightmare, too. Maybe she'd wake up in her bed back in her room, and she wouldn't know if this had been real or just a bad dream. Maybe....

"It's all right here," he said innocently. "Right in your file. It doesn't go into much detail, but it does mention names ... places ... other little tidbits."

Now, to start the serious mental corrosion.

"Tell me about Mr. Sullivan. What did he do to you? It says here you're scared of him. It must have been something pretty bad for you to get so upset at his memory. Did he attack you?"

Eileen shuddered, thinking of the numbers carved into her back. Of the way her own home had been invaded. How nowhere had been safe.

She only nodded, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing this was over. Why her? She couldn't get the question out of her mind. And what did Walter have to do with any of this? Why were they so concerned with what had happened to her?

"He attacked you? Okay, give me some details." He noted a slight tinge in her cheeks, but that might have just been her getting angry or scared. The doctor started pacing around the room, his footsteps ringing in the hollow room (much like footsteps would in an empty corridor, coming closer, ever closer). "Did he chase you down? Follow you? Make you wish you could run, but you were actually trapped?"

The questioning forced her to remember. The way he'd broken into her apartment as she was getting ready for that party. The way he'd backed her into the corner, with nowhere to run and no way to fight. The way he'd smiled....

She was shaking visibly.

"My...apartment," she managed. "In my apartment."

"And so you were cornered." He was still pacing, coming ever closer to her with every footstep. "And he caught you. And hurt you." The demented tone of glee in his voice was barely repressed at this point. "And what happened after that, Miss Galvin? After you got caught in that horrible world of endless pain and blood? Hmmm?"

"No." Eileen shook her head, her eyes opening to try and find where the doctor was. "I don't want to talk about that! I don't want to remember that!" The only good thing there had been Henry, and he'd had to leave her alone so many times....

"But you have to, Miss Galvin. You may not want to remember it, but I want you to remember it." He stopped pacing and leaned over her, still mostly invisible in the darkness. "Tell me. Tell me what happened when you were there!"

Yes, she was definitely getting panicked. Just a little longer now, and she might start ... !

"No!" Eileen repeated. "It...it was horrible!" A nightmare made real. something beyond human comprehension. Something that she wished she could bury away and never think about again. Spiraling deeper and deeper and deeper into the madness until....

The last thing she remembered. The pool of blood. That machine. Not even being able to control her own body....

There were veins starting to show up dark and vicious against her skin. He grinned wide and wild in the darkness, folder all but forgotten in his hand as he watched her intently.

"You can't recover unless you can confront your fears, Miss Galvin!" he snapped. "So tell me! What happened?"

What was happening to her? Eileen was breathing very heavily now, frightened and confused and trying to fight the flood of memories. Recover from what? These people weren't here to help her!

"Stop it...just stop it! I don't want to! I don't want this! It was awful! Those...things, those places!"

"I don't care if you don't want to. Answer me! What did you see? Where did you go?" It was less curiosity and more sadism than ever before. His fingers dug into the edge of the table she was strapped to as he leaned in even closer, still mostly hidden in the light, but there was a brief flash as light caught and flickered off a pair of glasses.

He had to know. He had to see her reach that breaking point, bleeding and throbbing and speaking in a language nobody could decipher.

"Tell me," he hissed. "Or it'll only get worse."

Eileen was panting, shaking her head, eyes closed again. "Places..." she managed. "real places. Places I knew, I'd been. But they were all wrong. Twisted. Terrifying...." She couldn't stop remembering.

"He was there. He...chased us. He wouldn't leave us alone. He was...shooting at us..." The cold, damp of the subway. The dark terror of the woods. Running, tripping, always being followed....

"And who is 'us'? Someone who protected you? You're alone, Miss Galvin. All alone. Nobody's here to protect you now. All the fights, all the injuries, all the hurt - they're all going to come to you, and you won't be able to fend them off by yourself."

He paused, holding back for a moment. He could still understand her, even if her skin was mottled and wrong.

"And in the end, he'll catch up with you. You couldn't have run forever."

"Henry!" Eileen cried out, though if she was answering the question or calling for the man to help her, it was unclear. Henry was the only reason she'd survived as long as she had. Without him....

"No! It...Henry was going to save me...."

"Was? But he didn't?" The decidedly sadistic gleeful tone was back. "He didn't, did he. He left you behind, left you to die! That's what happened, didn't it?"

Pain. Injuries and terror, those two together, that's what brought out the worst in her. The doctor dropped the dossier on the floor and snatched up a scalpel lying on the movable table nearby. Carefully (and he had to be careful, to not do more damage than necessary), he pressed the razor edge to her arm and sliced some unaltered skin. Not too deep, not even deep enough to leave a scar - just a thin cut, enough to sting with pain and bleed.

"NO!" Eileen wrenched her head from side to side. "He didn't! He came for me!" He had! he'd been fighting Walter. He'd called out for her! And then...

She'd woken up here. And now she felt pain in her arm and it reminded her of the claws of those things that had looked like dogs and sounded like wildcats, and the way they'd slashed and pounced and tried to tear her apart....

"STOP IT!"

He laughed then, light glinting off the blood and the blade and his glasses.

"I'm not planning on it! You'll remember, and you'll hate it, and you'll do that every time you wind up trapped in some dark, despicable corner in this personalized little hell, bleeding and terrified and wishing someone would come and save you - and knowing that no one ever will!"

His laughter died down quickly, though, and he dropped the scalpel back on the table. He'd been warned about this before - getting too involved, giving away too much. Still with a smirk on his face, he stood back in silence for a little while, watching her struggle within herself.

"THAT ISN'T TRUE!"

But it was. Eileen knew it was true. There was no one who would come and stop this now. No one who would make it all better, no one who would take her some place safe. Henry wasn't here, and the one person she called friend in this place probably didn't even know what had happened to her.

And she was terrified. And she was trapped and feeling like she was losing her mind and it felt just like it had in that nightmare hospital but there was no Henry to come find her, to hold her and tell her it would be alright and lead her to safety.

She didn't even realize she'd started to cry.

"It's true," the doctor murmured, his voice low but far from comforting. "People aren't going to save you here. Maybe if you were back in your little personal hellhole, you'd have someone. But not here. Never here." He watched her cry without realizing it and slumped back against the nearest counter, pleased with his work.

He was silent for a little while longer, letting it all sink in.

"Do you want to leave?" he asked, his voice somewhat mocking. "I'll let you out into the halls if you like. Let you try to find someone to help you. But since you're bleeding and such a mess, I bet a monster will find you first."

Of course she wanted to leave! Eileen was shivering, fear making her sick and worse. She didn't have anything to fight off the monsters with, not even that silly little flashlight she'd been using. And how could she fight like this? She didn't even know if she could stand up without her legs giving out on her....

"No..." she muttered, shaking her head. She didn't want to die.

"Yes, well ... unfortunately for you, I only have so long to do the necessary work." The doctor grumbled a bit, prodding at Eileen's arm with one regained scalpel. "And as much as I'd like to cut you up more and leave you a bleeding, skin-deep-wounded mess, that would take too long. So."

He leaned over her and started to unlock her restraints, one at a time.

Eileen jerked away as the doctor's hands came close to her. Even though he was undoing her restraints, letting her go, she shied away from the touch.

She didn't even know where she was. How could she get back to her room, to any room, to someplace safe like this....?

Once he'd finished unlocking her, the doctor casually grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up, so she was sitting on the table.

"Come on," he said, voice surprisingly friendly after all the bloodshed he'd inflicted. "Let's go. Out the door with you. I'm sure there's plenty of people waiting for you downstairs, hm?"

As he pushed her toward the door, which loomed open and threatening into the halls, he smirked.

"Or maybe you don't."

The doctor shoved her out - unbandaged and bleeding, lost in a dark and personal torment - into the hall and slammed the door shut behind her.

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Nightshift 35: Disciplinary Therapy Room 1 [M-U for Eileen]

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