Chapter 1 - ASYLUM
Content Warning:
Excessive Violence / Gore
The twins darted from alley to alley, the cold rain pouring down on them and the stench of filth filling their nostrils. They cut across Warwick Street, narrowly avoiding a horse drawn carriage as they did. They could see the frowning face of a noble born man staring back at them from inside the carriage. But they didn’t stop.
They pressed on, winding their way through more alleys until they finally found their way to Belford Station. The impressive steel structure towered over them like some monolith of modern engineering.
A line of people had gathered by the stairway leading up to the station where men in official looking uniforms were taking down names and personal information.
“We made it.” said Luna, clutching her sister’s hand even tighter. “Let’s go.”
But her sister didn’t move.
When Luna looked back she was surprised to find fear in Alba’s eyes.
They were both identical in almost every way. Same slender build, same jet black hair, same small eyebrows that were frequently the subject of ridicule from their peers. Only their eyes were different. For while Alba’s eyes were a pale blue, her twin sister Luna had dark brown eyes that often resembled black marbles.
“What’s the matter?” asked Luna, inching closer to her sister.
Her grip was tight and hard, much like she herself was.
“What if they don’t let us in?” Alba asked with worry in her eyes, her voice faltering as she spoke. “What if they find out that we’re not of age and refuse to let us in?”
“We’ll just tell them we’re 18 and that’s that.” said Luna. “There’s no way for them to prove us wrong.”
“But…but what if…” Alba began in her soft, quivering tone. She was always the softer and kinder of the two. “What if this hospital isn’t as good as they make it out to be?”
The hardness in Luna’s eyes faded away as she looked at the dirty street around them, the scurrying rats, the stench of filth on their ragged clothes and still fresh blood gently trickling from her sister’s nose.
Their parents had died when the twins were very young and there had been no system to take care of them. And so they had been thrown out on the street and forced to fend for themselves ever since. Their bodies were bruised and scraped, bloodied and tired. They were malnourished, gaunt and desperate.
Luna cupped Alba’s face between her hands.
“It can’t be any worse than this, Alba. We’re gonna die on these streets if we don’t.”
Alba forced herself to bury her fears and her worries and followed her sister out into the rain and to the back of the line. Every single person in the cue looked haggard and starved, much like them. Each and everyone one of them willing to answer the call sent out by the Fellhaven Royal Hospital for test subjects. To those desperate and destitute, the promise of food and shelter is worth almost anything.
Soon they made their way through the line until they reached the hospital’s representatives. They gave their age but the leader didn’t seem convinced. But there was a glint in his eye as he looked at the two slender girls.
“Twins?” he asked.
Alba avoided his gaze but Luna met it fiercely.
“Obviously.” she replied.
The man smiled and then wrote them into the program.
An hour later the girls were sitting on a train, with all the other accepted candidates, on their way to Fellhaven Royal Hospital. The train tracks ran at times above the rooftops, giving them a view of the city they had never seen before. From this perspective it looked quite marvelous. An ocean of gothic and Victorian architecture that rested at the bottom of a wide bay. This was Fellhaven. But no matter how spectacular the city looked from up here, they knew what it was truly like. A monstrosity of steel and bricks, willing to eat you up if you weren’t careful.
Alba sighed with relief. “We did it. We made it.”
Luna allowed her stoney faced expression to slip away for a moment and graced her sister with an uncharacteristically kind smile.
“We did. Everything is going to be fine. We’re going to be okay now.”
Alba slowly came to consciousness in a dark room. Her mind was groggy and she had a hard time tying thoughts together but slowly she began to take in her surroundings.
The room had linoleum tiles lined on the floor and halfway up the walls. Above her hung one electrical light that flickered occasionally, revealing the dirt and grime that stained the floor beneath her.
She herself was sitting in a rickety wheelchair, dressed in a patient’s gown. It was familiar to her but she had a hard time recalling why. How long had she been here? Why was it so hard to remember?
Her body was limp at first, incapable of even moving a finger. But soon her limited strength came back to her and following the fading numbness that had engulfed her she now felt pain. Her whole body ached, her muscles burned and it was as if the very blood in her veins was made of glass shards.
“Hello?” she whimpered out but there was no answer.
She tried to stand up but finding the strength to do so was a struggle. After a few minutes she managed to push herself up onto her feet and took a few uneasy steps towards the wall. Her breathing was ragged and she already felt tired.
What had happened to her? She remembered being admitted to the Fellhaven Royal Hospital with Luna. She remembered vaguely how they had put up with some abuse because at least they had food and shelter. But then…beyond that it was all hazy. All she remembered was…pain. And whistling. Who was it that had whistled all the time? Was it a doctor…or a nurse?
Alba blinked until her blurred vision came into focus and now she took in the rest of the room.
At the center rested the wheelchair she had been sitting in but at the far end there was an old dirty bed which had been flipped onto its side. A large dark stain splattered the wall and floor next to it. As the lights flickered on and off she soon realized the stain was red. It was someone’s blood. But who’s blood?
She quickly checked her hands and feet, wherever she could find bare skin but found no open wounds. What she did find was plenty of surgical scars that ran the length of her extremities. And her skin was paler.
Perhaps she had hit her head? Maybe that was why her memory was so faulty.
She stumbled towards a broken sink on the other side of the room and looked into the mirror that hung above it.
At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. At first she thought maybe this wasn’t a mirror but a window and that she happened to look through it at the same time as someone else. But then it dawned on her. That WAS her.
Her skin was pale and her hair had turned pearly white. But what alarmed her most of all was the fact that her eyes had turned crimson red. Gone were the whites of her eyes and her pale blue irises, replaced by a carmine nightmare with slitted pupils. Luckily she didn’t appear to have sustained any kind of head wound, as the blood would be very easily visible on her now.
Alba stumbled back, her heart racing and mind spiraling into pure and utter terror. What had happened to her? Was this the result of some disease she didn’t know she had? Or had the staff of the hospital done something to her?
It was at that point that she had but one thought in her head. One singular anchor of sanity to cling onto.
Luna!
She approached the singular door to the windowless room and gently pushed down the handle. The door quietly opened as she pulled it inward.
Outside she found a long corridor with familiar linoleum tiles on the floor and lower half of the walls. Each side was lined with evenly spaced doors which surely led to similar rooms as the one she had found herself in. However, the floor was littered with papers, an empty wheelchair and an upturned gurney. And blood. There was blood splattered on the walls, ceiling and floor along with a few larger pools of it as well. Something horrible had happened here.
She turned her head to look to the left where the corridor turned a corner and saw a few things. One, she saw barred windows that seemed to look out onto a courtyard. It was night time outside and raining but Alba could see the flickering light of fire emanating from somewhere below. Second, and more importantly, she saw a humanoid shape standing by the corner of the corridor.
It looked like a man with peach colored skin, shaved head and wearing the light teal outfit of an orderly. He stood by an upturned gurney, mostly motionless and looking down at something behind the gurney. He had his back turned to her and didn’t notice as she slowly emerged.
Far off in the distance Alba could hear someone scream and the sound of metal clattering. It only fueled her fear even further. Surely this man, this staff member of the hospital, could help her.
She stepped gingerly out of the room and tip-toed towards him.
“Excuse me, sir.” she whispered, trying to not startle him as she approached. “I need your help. I just woke up and I don’t understand what’s…”
But her voice faltered when she got close enough to see what the man was looking at.
In front of him, slumped to the ground, was the body of a young man. His skin was dark, his wiry black hair was caked in blood and he wore a patient’s gown identical to Alba’s. But his stomach had been carved open and some of his entrails hung out. Blood slowly trickled from the man’s mouth and nose and his fingers occasionally twitched.
“Oh god…” Alba instinctively muttered as she took a step back.
The orderly slowly turned to look at her.
His eyes were a mossy green but almost entirely bloodshot. His nose was bloodied and he was missing some of his teeth. The front of his orderly outfit was covered in dark crimson and in his right hand he held tightly onto a bloody knife. Pinned over his heart was a name tag that read Mr. A. Anders.
“Please…” Alba whispered. “I don’t want any trouble…”
Mr Anders appeared confused as he looked at her. His eyes quickly took in her strange features but soon a look of recognition dawned.
“I know you.” he said softly. “You were Dr Brimwall’s favorite patient.”
“I-I-I don’t know what you’re…talking about.” Alba said, still backing up towards her room. “I don’t remember.”
Mr Anders’ brow furrowed.
“You don’t remember? That’s pretty strange.” he said as he stepped forward, closing the distance between them.
“P-p-probably. I don’t know…what’s going on here.”
He peered his bloodshot eyes at her and a grimace overtook his expressions.
“You’re like them, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Like who?” Alba asked back.
She was almost at the open doorway to her room.
“Like them! They’re all monsters. They drive people mad. Turn them into monsters too.”
“I don’t understand.”
A distant shout came from somewhere behind the man, somewhere past the corridor’s corner.
Alba bumped into the doorway and was about to turn on her heel, run inside and close the door behind her. But before she could she felt the man’s strong hand grip her wrist tightly.
“Tell me why you did it! Tell me why you did it!” Mr Anders began shouting as he held up his knife.
Alba tried to run but slipped on a pool of blood and fell to the floor, however, she was still partially held up by the orderly.
“Please! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she exclaimed.
There was madness in the man’s eyes now. A lust for violence and horror that sent Alba’s heart racing. Mr Anders raised his knife just as a shadowed figure approached him from behind.
Alba suddenly felt his grip tighten before she was released. Falling to the floor she looked up and saw a hand plunging a blood red dagger into Mr Anders’ temple repeatedly. Blood sputtered from his head with each strike and his eyes rolled back in their sockets before he ultimately collapsed to the ground, revealing the figure that had killed him.
It was Luna although her features seemed both familiar and alien to Alba. Much like her twin sister, Luna’s skin had turned very pale and her hair was now also a shock of white. She wore a patient’s gown as well but hers was somewhat torn and splattered in blood. But the biggest difference was her eyes.
The whites of her eyes had turned jet black, her irises had become crimson red and her pupils had become slitted much like Alba’s.
Luna’s gaze turned from the murdered orderly to her twin and her expression chilled Alba’s blood. For in her eyes was the same feral madness she had seen in Mr Anders’ eyes.
“Luna?” Alba asked.
And then in a flash Luna was upon her, hand at Alba’s throat and the crimson dagger raised, ready for a downward stabbing motion.
“Wait! It’s me!” Alba shouted as she reached out and grabbed Luna’s hand.
In so doing she came into direct contact with Luna’s blood which had oozed from a recent wound. And she felt a jolt. It was like an electrical surge that pulsed from her own mind, down her arm, through Luna’s blood and into her mind. And suddenly the look of maddened bloodlust left Luna’s eyes.
Confusion and fear took over as Luna looked all around her, like she had no idea how she had gotten there.
“Alba? What’s happening? Where am I?”
Alba was hyperventilating at this point.
“Please don’t hurt me?”
Luna didn’t understand at first but soon she realized where her hands were. One clutching Alba’s throat and the other holding a strange crimson dagger.
“I-I-I don’t know…” she said, releasing Alba and dropping the dagger. “I don’t know what happened.”
Tears began welling up in Luna’s eyes at the thought of having almost killed her sister.
“I didn’t mean to! I don’t know what’s going on!”
Alba’s instincts kicked in and she quickly reached for her sister and pulled her in for a hug.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Luna whimpered.
“It’s okay. I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.” Alba whispered back, holding her sister tightly.
Luna held her close but soon pulled away to get a better look at her twin.
“What happened to you? What did they do to you?” she asked.
“Look who’s talking.”
An expression of confusion graced Luna’s dark eyes but before she could process anything…
Whistling.
The twins turned towards the corner where the sound was coming from. It was still pretty far away but slowly approaching.
“We have to get out of here.” said Luna.
“Why?” Alba asked before a wave of hazy memories engulfed her.
She had heard this whistling before. It was something that the head nurse did. What was her name? Nurse Brutus? No, that’s what her title should’ve been but nobody called her that. Mama Brutus is what she forced everyone to call her.
An uptight woman of noble birth, light skin, brown hair and blue eyes. Alba remembered how she loved to enforce the rules here at the hospital. She also remembered how cruel the woman could be.
“We need to leave.” said Luna as she got up.
Luna turned her head to where she had dropped the crimson dagger but found nothing but a small puddle of blood, much to her confusion.
“Do you think Mama Brutus has also gone insane?” asked Alba as she got up with her sister’s help.
“That’s not Mama Brutus, not anymore.”
The statement confused Alba, but as they were about to turn heel and run, she saw something that forced an understanding.
From around the corner a figure stepped forth. Its shape was humanoid but unnaturally elongated. It wore a torn pencil skirt and a bloodied short sleeved top with a red sweater draped over the shoulders. A typical outfit for a head nurse. However this figure’s limbs were long and gangly with hair and small poney protrusions pushing out from the skin here and there. It no longer walked on the high heeled shoes of Mama Brutus, instead it walked on misshapen feet with twisted toes. It stood almost eight feet tall and its head was covered in so much wild hair that its facial features were almost entirely obscured. But what they could see was a row of jagged, sharp teeth and a singular blood shot eye staring back at them from its twisted facial features. Behind it, it dragged the corpse of a young woman, another patient, its hands clutching her head, fingers digging deep into her bloodied eye sockets.
The monstrosity that now wore Mama Brutus’ clothes looked at them and parted its split lips.
“Patients…not allowed…to roam the halls…must put you…in your place…”
The two girls stood like deers in headlights, staring at the deformity in frozen fear.
The creature swayed and twitched for but a moment. And then it lurched towards them.
