Behind the Bars

"I'm not there yet!"
 This page contains ***major spoilers*** for the series. If you're not caught up, stay back! Av's not gonna be too thrilled if you react to spoilers prematurely...

## Behind the Bars

### Director

Potato Flakin

***Behind the Bars*** is the fifth chapter of *Two-Sided*.

## Synopsis

Daniela settles into her prison life, soon becoming rattled by hyperactivity, anger, paranoia, and madness. She cracks, piece by piece - now learning the extent of what she's done - and a truth she never expects to hear.

## Warnings

### Content Warning

*This chapter contains violence and severe depictions of manic behavior, self-harm, nightmares/hallucinations, panic attacks, in addition to mentions of suicide, and contains content viewed as distressing or disturbing. Viewer discretion is very heavily advised.*

### Disclaimer

*Daniela's behavior in this chapter is not intended to glorify bipolar disorder or mental illness, and is meant to represent a person of bipolar disorder and its symptoms while staying true to her character development. Keep in mind Daniela's character inspirations when reading this chapter and consider other factors that make her act manic, including her age and personality. If this sort of depiction makes you uncomfortable, please navigate away from this page immediately.*

## Transcript

I walked into my jail cell, now dressed in black pants and a plain white shirt, the blue sweater I had worn before tossed away forever. The cell had a cold floor with a dull floor mat, a single bed, and a small bathroom hidden by a wooden door.

This is when I started to feel wrong.

My first full prison day was just awful. The food tasted like trash, there was nothing to do outside, and no one ever bothered to approach me. I felt very lonely with the lack of socilization, and furthermore, I was the youngest person here. This place did take thirteen-year olds, but I was the only one right now. That feeling was so uncomfortable. I tried to cope with these thoughts by thinking about my hatred of Winter, and by inflicting that euphoric pain on myself. However, that didn't hold the vicious shadows inside.

Every day I spent here, I felt myself going crazy with the lack of stimulation or someone to confide in. Insomnia weakened me greatly. I remembered one time where I got yelled at for dozing off at lunch.

"Miss Daniela! Sit up and eat. You're being a distraction!"

"I can't help being tired!"

"*Eat your food*."

I didn't care because no one cared for me. Rex hated me, Winter and her friends hated me, Amira hated me, no one liked me.

It hit me then.

*No one would ever love me here.*

My prison neighbors didn't ever acknowledge the fact that I existed. They just did their own thing. My face was bruised from me hitting the gray walls. I was losing my mind, shred by shred.

I was feeling oppressed, trapped.

Weeks after I arrived in this correctional center, something in me changed. The pain that returned to me after Winter roasted me to pieces was gone. I felt a gaping, empty hole in my heart. Instead of feeling bored, I just felt... Sad.

In fact, I was depressed here. I would never fall asleep. Instead, I would just move around in my cell all night, slowly losing my sanity.

I didn't feel like killing, I didn't crave murder. I wasn't like my old self, and instead, I just wanted to give up.

Then, as I was lamenting, I suddenly bunched up onto the floor. For the first time in a while, I was having an anxiety attack.

"*Help*!" I screamed to the nearby guards. "Please! It's too much!"

They were startled, but didn't know how to respond. "Is she okay?"

"**I'M NOT OKAY**!" I screamed back for a response. "Just help me end this! It hurts!"

"Ma'am, you're waking up the inmates near you..."

"**DO YOU INCONSIDERATE BARHOPPERS EVER CARE FOR PEOPLE WITH PANIC ATTACKS**?"

Too late, I realized I scared them away with my white-hot rage. Sinking to the ground, I cried, wailed, feeling the tears drip down my face and onto the stone floor. I couldn't stand it all anymore, the mental pressure, the reality, the pain. Oh, the pain.

As I laid there, I realized something. Before I ended up here, I prided myself on making everyone suffer, especially Winter. It was because of the breakup that pushed me over the edge, and I thought Winter was to blame for it the entire time.

But there was really only one person to blame.

Me.

*I caused myself to fall from grace. I'm suffering because of me.*

I didn't want to live anymore. I undid my whole life because of my stupidity. I lost my mother, my friends, and my girlfriend. I'd lost my entire life. Now I was going to be stuck here, a place that made me lose it. I paced around, crazed, muttering to myself. The walls found themselves bombarded by my piercing, intense voice, scraped at with my nails. I became an animal, crawling around and growling, no, howling at night. Paranoia descended on me, and took hold easily. My once striking amber eyes had a burning fire, not of hate and desire, but the fire of a person who felt like they were living a life in hell.

Each night, I'd beg the guards to get help. Of course, being the fools they were, they didn't listen to me. I tried to hold my emotions and secrets inside my battered body, but one day, they just came tumbling out.

"Won't you please get help for me?" I would ask. "I know something's wrong. Just let me speak to someone."

"Little Miss, prisoners are always delusional like you are. You don't need any help."

"Yes I do! Look at what I've done at night. That isn't normal, and you know it. Please just send *someone*!"

"Burton Vunquist, knock off that racket. You're waking your inmates."

Furious at their remarks, and right eye twitching, this finally caused me to snap. I couldnt't take all of it anymore.

"**DO YOU KNOW THAT WHAT I'M DOING ISN'T NORMAL FOR A THIRTEEN-YEAR OLD WHO IS AN OUTCAST HERE**?" I screamed at them, my eyes wide open, and voice clear and precise. They jumped back at my outburst.

Looking at each other in stunned silence, they ran off. I looked away, disappointed in myself. Scaring people away because your mood changed in a split second wasn't going to get you the clarity you needed.

*It's hard to live the life you feel as if you need when you can't control the demon that you are to others.*

Following that day, I'd claw at the walls and roll around on the floor. I'd shake at the bars, twitching violently, my mind locked away in paralyzing darkness. The only thing, no, person that I was thinking about, was Winter. How she had influenced my life since the day I met her when I was eleven. She was such a pretty girl, with her beautiful sandy-brown hair, striking hair tips, and a soft yet spikey bun. She was brave, confident, and had more willpower than I ever would again. I didn't love her or had feelings for her - I still felt as if being bisexual was one of the worst things to ever happen to me - but I began to see how my ex-girlfriend influenced my life.

Regret was stabbing me. Lots of regret for what I'd tried accomplishing, the bullying, the domination, and the murder. It had pierced the dark shell I had created around my heart, and it cracked, day by day. I had no state of mind anymore, and I lacked the ability to think. At night, I'd wail nonsense, continue to scrape at the gray walls, and run around. I was hyperactive and couldn't sleep, so I needed to burn off my energy. It didn't work. I looked like some idiot who chugged coffee for an hour. The guards chastised me and told me to shut up. I tried to reason with them, but once again, they chastised me and walked off.

The two men only made my unraveling conditions worse. I'd chew at myself, hit myself, and roll on the ground, freezing despite everything else being warm, everything feeling so cold around me. I was ripping my sheets apart. My nails were cracking and uneven. There was no way I could fix myself.

Besides screaming to myself, screaming that something was killing me from the inside out, I'd now run at the walls and fall to the ground in a daze. This wasn't masochism anymore. I just wanted the pain to remind me, in its scalding-hot form, that I was the most unwanted young girl in the world. That I should never had a friend or anyone in my life because I was too dangerous. That I deserved everything coming, the regression in me mentally and physically.

Everything the wall gave me, the bruises and the scars, felt *deserved*. Suffering was my new way of life. I was a monster that wanted to kill herself and die.

I was a monster who'd driven away everyone I was close with, a very, very somber monster. I sat away from everyone, refusing to eat or sometimes even drink. I buried my face in the dirt outside, tears dripping down my face, only regret gracing my soul.

Depression was squeezing my soul out of my body. I questioned myself at night while going through bouts of hyperactivity and paranoia.

"What have I done? Who am I? Why the heck am I such a freak to people?"

And I went on.

"Why? Just why? Just what is wrong with me?"

"Burton Vunquist, if we have to tell you for the one-hundreth time-"

"**GET YOUR PATHETIC SELVES OUT OF HERE**!" I yelled at them, hurting so bad inside. Nothing could remotely make me feel happy. Those stupid guards only made me feel even pathetic and demented.

Daniela Burton Vunquist wasn't my name. I was defined by who I was.

A sadist. A masochist. A freak.

*A monster.*

I really wished for someone to kill me so I wouldn't have to live in pain anymore. I just wanted to die like I did in my nightmares.

"You're really weak if you're here now," a voice in my head told me.

"Shut up!" I pleaded.

"Your mind is diseased. You're an infection that only sickens the people around you. You are a disgraced, weak, and burdened freak who can't even control her-"

"***BE QUIET***!" I broke down, and charging forward, I smashed into the metal bars with my head. I collapsed back onto the ground in pain, placing an arm around my foreheard and rubbing it. One bar was now dented from the force, and I gasped.

"Burton Vunquist-" Big mistake.

"***GET OUT OF HERE***!" I screeched so loud that my voice echoed. Wheover was there left. Shaking, and twitching, I buried my head in my arms.

Despite my behavior, no one bothered to get help. I was so ready to kill myself and be done with the world.

Two months passed. Finally, a therapist arrived in my cell. Her name was Ms. Clark, and she came to visit me every three days for a month. She sat down by my bed, asking me many questions relating to how I acted. I answered them all unhappily, but a part of me was satisfied that *someone* saw I had issues. My eyes were dull, no longer the fiery amber they were. My black hair wasn't sleek, and my "buntail" was a mess. My hair hadn't been throughoughly brushed for a while.

My fingers hurt - in fact, a lot of my body hurt - from everything. It was hard to move if you didn't have any willpower.

I wished for a friend, someone like Winter, Amira, or even Mya to understand me, hug me, and actually care for me. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so unwanted and unloved.

My dark thought process ripped into me. Every night, I would think of myself as lower than any bad person on earth. I felt large with guilt, not feeling like I fit in any place anymore, not even in my body.

Everyone who I considered my enemies, back when I was the old me, had every right to be scared of me. I saw that now.

My eyes were beginning to get raw from all the sleep deprivation. Weeks passed after I talked with Ms. Clark, and finally, a doctor walked into my cell.

"Hello, Dani," the doctor greeted politely. "Ms. Clark sent me the information on you and called me up. After examining it, I think I know something that you would like to hear."

Perking up slightly, I looked at him, though not directly in his eyes. "What?"

"Take this." The doctor put a small cylinder in my hand. A medicine container.

Gasping in utter shock, I noticed the label had my name on it, and something else.

I then learned why I had lost my mind, why I constantly had mood swings, and why I felt so depressed and unmotivated.

*The doctor diagnosed me with bipolar disorder.*

Me, a insane freak who was more erratic than any freaky person alive, was bipolar. I was so shocked by this that I looked directly into the doctor's eyes.

"I'm... I'm bipolar?"

"Yes you are, Dani. Don't feel burdened by it though. If you take your medication every day, you'll be in more control over your emotions. You won't be as volatile as you are."

After patting me on my head, he walked out of my cell. His words gave me clarity, somewhat. But then the new thought that I was a bipolar person swam around in my mind.

Falling to the ground, I weeped softly to myself. I only just felt more burdened by the fact that I was mentally ill. What if I told someone, mentioned my condition to one of my enemies, and they didn't believe me? What if people would be scared of me? What if I drove everyone away again?

That, combined with the bisexuality I felt as if flipped me upside down, flipped me upside down again. Life didn't feel worth it. God knows I wanted to freaking die so I didn't have to live in pain anymore.

But I just didn't have the ability to commit suicide, not when I was so low energy or too hyperactive to think properly. The thought seemed like a distant concept at times. I wanted to die, but my own sanity was holding me back.

Some days, I doted on choosing to not take my medication, feeling so burdened. I almost didn't. But I wanted to be better. Thoughts of change were in my head. Maybe I could improve. So I took my medication every day. While it did make me feel better, a shadow still hung over me, its invisible shadowy arms wrapped around my throat. Depression was like a fever in my body. I didn't feel much happier, lacking the clarity I needed.

## Cast

* **Eden Riegel** as Daniela
* **Eric Bauza** as the guards
* **Kari Wahlgren** as Ms. Clark
* **Paul Eiding** as the doctor

## Trivia

* This chapter marks the only appearances of the guards, Ms. Clark, and the doctor.
* It is revealed that:
	+ Daniela became very depressed in her prison life, and felt neglected, unwanted, and bored. This caused her to regress mentally, physically, and emotionally.
	+ Daniela can be very manic when at her absolute worst.
	+ Daniela has bipolar disorder and is now on medication to combat her issues.
* Av says that this was the darkest *Two-Sided* chapter to write, and according to her, the most challenging.
	+ Her primary inspirations for this chapter were songs: *Control* and *Gasoline* by Halsey, and *Disturbia* by Rihanna.
	+ Av has also affirmed that Daniela's behavior in this chapter was never intended to glorify those with mental illness - she wanted to represent a bipolar person with frequent manic episodes while also staying true to Daniela's dark and violent character. This is part of the reason why numerous warning tags were placed on the chapter. A disclaimer was later added on October 18th, 2021.
* Daniela mentions that she struggles to keep her emotions and secrets together twice, referencing the Halsey song *Control*.
	+ *Control* is also referenced by the inner demon that taunts her by saying her mind is diseased ("My mind's like a deadly disease").
* Some of Daniela's actions in this chapter, such as her twitching during her manic episodes, is based off Rihanna's movements and behavior from the *Disturbia* music video.
	+ *Disturbia* is also directly referenced in the chapter itself, as Daniela indirectly references the main chorus when she says her mind is locked away in darkness.
* When Daniela says that suffering is her new way of life, this is a reference to the Malinda Kathleen Reese video *Google Translate Sings: Bad Guy*.