Thread: The Asylum (Dangerous Tendencies & darjeeling)

Claire Zaraski turned twenty-six today. Correction, eighteen minutes and thirty-two seconds ago, Claire turned twenty-six. It was 550pm and she was seated at her desk of peeling paint and chipped wood in a chair that looked half ready to snap into more than just two pieces. She had in front of her a flimsy sheet of white paper, given to her by the caretakers who came around to check on all their patients. She had asked for that and a blue pen, though she'd been given black instead. Her complaint left her with a red one instead, so she had asked for the black back. She never used black ballpoint though, and the feel of the thin shaft between her fingers was odd and unnerving. Claire held it tenderly beneath her index and thumb, much like how a child might, and sketched her own portrait messily on the front and a stenciled sentence of Happy Birth scrawled on the front. She flipped the paper around then and tapped the tip of the pen against the table, humming to herself. A birthday celebration always required balloons and a party. Birthdays also required cake, acquaintances to share the day with and candles to blow out. But cakes were expensive to buy and make, acquaintances were in short supply and candles were far too dangerous for the pyromaniacs and masochists. She'd just have to make do with the balloons, which she would ask for later. For now, she contented herself with merely drawing the helium filled spheres in abundance on the blank space. Then she drew flowers too, because who didn't love flowers, and herself again standing next to people she didn't know with faces she couldn't remember. Faces with two dots for eyes, beady and calculating, mouths dipped into frowns and smiles alike and a small button nose and stringy hair. Any minute now, these people would come by with a tray of her prescribed medication in their perfect labelled bottles and the tiny cups of water that came with. Claire always drank those, even though she was perfectly capable of swallowing whatever capsule or pill they offered her, dry. The water was merely for show, she had told them but they had refused to leave her alone until she'd done it nice and proper. Doing as they bade if only to get them to leave her alone, she found that drinking water with the stuff made the aftertaste more bearable. She faintly recalled a time where she would scowl and chastise patients of hers who would do that, reminding recovering addicts that they needed to break the habit of ingesting something so unhealthy. Oh how irony did like to play its little tricks in the fabrics of fate. Now she couldn't even remember the name of her pills. Her mind had devolved as such that she became far less worried about whether or not the papers were all in order or whether or not next month's salary had been paid out. Now she minded her own business in these four white-washed walls, whether her morning tea was properly heated it never was and if her bedding needed changing it always did. Sometimes she woke up with blood staining the pillow and Claire swore she'd gone through at least three pillow cases in the past week. She found scratch marks on her neck too, both fresh and old and scraped right across the sliver of a thorny branch tattooed on her back whch reached all the way up and around her shoulder to her collar bone and a little bit beyond. Her caretakers had put gloves on her at first, but they were legally required to monitor her during the night to be certain that she wasn't doing it on purpose. She wasn't but she might as well have. She itched for the anxiety soothing medicines, to push down the feelings of paranoia and to banish thoughts of walls with eyes and hills with ears. She would tick nervously, scratching at her arms and at her neck at the oddest intervals. During mealtimes, where sometimes she was required to dine with the other patients simply to keep her sanity and her sense of society. Oftimes she was left to her own devices. A glass of warm juice and two slices of white bread and a cup of jam. Of course, utensils were never provided for fear of a patient attempting to either stab themselves or scoop their own eyeballs out, so she never ate the jam. It also reminded her of the mush she'd seen back in her glory days . Memories Claire couldn't quite hold onto, but she was satisfied enough in knowing that they were there, unreachable as they were. A soft knock resounded, of which she did not hear and a voice thereafter. Ma'am... I mean, Claire, we have your medication. The busty caretaker bustled in, wheeling the small cart in with her medicine wobbling precariously on top. Claire turned, startled at the intrusion, her chair pushed back as she stood up. She remembered this girl too, or rather, woman. It had only been six months since she'd been admitted to this place, after her attempts at overdosing on pills and generally known for being neurotic and bitchy to her employees, nobody really missed her when she'd been pulled off her pedestal and thrown to the wolves. Still, it was a difficult habit to break when they were forced to talk to their patients like actual people rather than the cool, calculating and stuck-up businesswoman they knew her to be. It might have been jarring too, to see the platinum blonde dressed in a simple dress with an equally simple belt cinched around her waist rather than a prim, sharp suit. Always blue, never black. Thanks, Maribel. Claire glanced at the name-tag with its golden letters, envious at the color. She had been the one to suggest them after all, and that wasn't something she was to forget anytime soon. She said nothing more as she was handed her pills and that thrice-damned cup of water, scarfing the blue pill first then taking a sip, then the ivory brown ones, both at once and the green one after. Anxiety, depression, stress, anger tranquiler and much, much more. They acted out in a way that had her addicted to them and somehow, they came with side-effects that largely had her admitted here in the first place. Not that she cared. The stuff made her feel good and humans were, if nothing else, hedonists to their very cores. She took another blue one lastly and set her cup down, which was still half full despite its tiny quantity. The woman named Maribel merely pursed her lips but did not make a mention of it as everything was rearranged neatly back on her tray. As she was about to wheel the cart out, Claire stopped her. There's something else, she said testily, the powdery capsules not yet coming into effect. It was protocol to ask if their patients needed something and Maribel had clearly forgotten. I'd like to speak with Laz-- Mr. Rhodes, please. She remembered him above all, his image burned into her brain like a searing hot brand. With his slicked back blonde hair and eyes colored like a steely blue of which she'd never encountered before. Merely speaking of him reminded her of the wild butterflies fluttering in her chest, then the butterflies became warped humans with spindly limbs and screaming faces of Monica Rhodes. A shudder at that rippled through her. She licked her lips and continued. Please. She repeated. Maribel, who was otherwise oblivious to Claire's short-lived despair, because the pills took at least an hour to work, merely nodded. She asked if there was anything else - finally - to which Claire politely declined and thereafter, the click of the door lock signalled her departure. It was also protocol to keep the door ajar but she decided not to complain about that. Peace and quiet was what she needed to dispel that disturbing thought of butterfly-Monica and her husband. For the most part, the blonde didn't know what she would say to Mr. Lazarus Rhodes. Perhaps ask how the business was doing, or whether he'd celebrate her birthday with her. That was when she remembered and slapped the back of the chair with a high-pitched sigh of frustration. She'd forgotten the balloons.