The Awakening - Chapter One

Here we meet our main antagonist.

Awaken.
KL Cooke ©2013

 

 

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
Bless me Lord my soul to take
    Children’s nightime prayer.

 

 

‘When you don’t sleep, your mind is constantly active, your body never rests, and so you hallucinate’ this quip of wisdom came from Elizabeth’s woud be counsellor, would be beacuase for a counsellor to work a patient has to talk. Elizabeth never talked. Sheila Heron looked at the mouse like woman before her, it was hard to believe that she was only 30 years old, she looked at least 10 years older, possibly more, in the year that Elizabeth had been at Fairview, she had lost a striking 5 stones, going from 12 stones to a paltry 7. She was like a sheet of paper, white, thin, non descript, wearing a shapeless blue dress and smoking cigarette after cigarette, raising them with her shaking hands to her thin blue lips between fingers tipped with ragged and chewed finger nails. Long, lank hair fell over her face like greasy curtains, surrounding her gaunt face. Elizabeth’s eyes were dark and set deep into the circles of the shadows of her face. Sheila watched as her patient shuddred every now and again as her mouth worked, a low mumble came from Elizabeth, but she was not addressing anyone, and the sounds she was making appeared to be nonsensicle ramblings, with no real rhyme or reason, every now and again she tutted, shook her head, stopped her mumblings, appeared deep in thought as her dark, disturbed eyes darted around the room like moths at a flame, never alighting, never settleing and then she would drop her head forward, her hair obscuring the lost, grey haunted face and would start mumbling again.

Sheila thought it looked like Elizabeth was trying to learn how to say a word, but the word had no business being spoken and so the true sound and formation of the world eluded its human host. Sheila wrote her reports dutifully every week, but the reports stayed always the same, the counsellor did more talking than the patient. Sheila continued none the less, he did after all have a job to do, even if the patient was unresponsive and showing no signs of improvement.

‘And when your body doesn’t switch off allowing you to rest, then your mind starts to play tricks on you, it starts to make you imagine things’ she continued. Sheila had been speculating for some time as to what was causing Elizabeth such great distress, she knew about the husband and the baby, and she knew that Elizabeth rarely slept, when she did, she was informed by the orderlies that she woke screaming and it often took a sedative to calm her.

‘These hallucinations, for want of a better word, can take many guises, perhaps you see your baby?’ She tried this tentatively trying to see if a reaction came, but there was nothing, ‘perhaps your husband?’ again Elizabeth ignored.
‘Elizabeth’ this was Roger Dune, the Governor of Fairview, he was known as the governor because Fairview was not only an institution that housed mentally disturbed people, it was also a prison.
‘Elizabeth, an hour ago as you were showring and walking outside, I ordered a search of your room’ Elizabeth made a long keening sound and started to rock in her seat, she turned her tired and ravaged face to the counsellor, Sheila’s blood ran cold, it was the first time that Elizabeth had ever looked directly at her.
‘Yes Elizabeth, you know what we found don’t you?’ Asked Roger ‘You know what was tapped to the base of your bed, between the mattress and the slats’ Elizabeth was staring intently at Sheila as she raised a shaking hand to her mouth, she took a long drag of the cigarette, she’d smoked it to the butt, Elizabeth let it drop from her hands, she didn’t even attempt to put it in the ashtray.
‘Elizabeth, please look at me’ said Roger and slowly she turned her head and stared at him, long and hard and cold. Over the years Roger had been in the presence of some of the most distrubed human beings in England, he had dealt with some of the darkest, most warped souls, the most diseased and black mental conditions which had led to the most heinous of crimes, yet this woman filled him with dark, lost, cold dread, his bowels felt filled with ice. He was holding up the diary for her to see, her eyes were suddenly alive, like burning coals in her white, ashen face, colour rose to her cheesk and it looked like fever.

‘f**k you’ Elizabeth almost spat the word, both Roger and Sheila looked shocked, taken aback. But then anyone would have been, this was the first words that Elizabeth had spoken in twelve months.
‘f**k you, give me my diary BACK!’ with a roar Elizabeth was on her feet and flying at the counsellor, she clawed at her face and hair, spitting, snarling like an angry mountain lion, screaming at her screaming at Roger. At all times, inmates are accompanied by an orderly and as quickly as she struck, John had her by the shoulders before she could do any real damage to the counsellor. John lifted her like she was paper she kicked out making full contact witth Sheila’s chest and taking with her handfuls of hair both Elizabeth and John slammed to the ground, she on top of him, Sheila had also fallen to the gound, her hand went up to a bald patch on her head, and she saw that Elizabeth was holding a huge handful of her bright blonde hair, she started to crab away from the wild woman, met with Roger who had also scrambled backwards. Elizabeth still spitting and snarling and even though she was so tiny, John was having a hard time restraining her. John wondered how she was so strong, she was nothing but a bird of a woman, yet she was giving him a hard time of pinning her down, then again, he likened the situation to bathing a cat, if you tried to bathe a cat, you got scratched.
.
‘Elizabeth, calm down’ John had finally got the upper hand and was on top of her pinning her down but she snarled and spat and screamed at him, wriggling like a rabid dog, snapping the air.
‘GIVE IT BACK, GIVE IT BACK.’ Two more people entered the room, one orderly and one nurse who instrcuted the orderlies to hold her down, she made a great show of filling the hypodermic needle with a sedative, flicked the syringe and then knelt down on the floor. Elizabeth had once weighed a healthy 12 stones, but her time in the centre had seen this dwindle to a measly 7 stones, even so she had given Sheila a black eye and had raked skin in furrows from her cheeks, Sheila’s left hip also smarted from being knocked off of the chair and the sides of her head where hair had been torn by the roots was stinging.
‘That woman is no longer my patient’ she stated to Roger.
‘Okay’ was all he could muster.
‘NO’ Elizabeth shrieked at the nurse with the needle then her anger gave way to abject fear and she started to beg, ‘please, no, he’s there, when I sleep he’s there, I see him, he’s going to hur………’ but the needle was in her arm, the nurse smiled at her.
‘You need sleep Elizabeth, you need to sleep without the help of these drugs, natural sleep Elizabeth, but you won’t will you? So we have to help you’ the nurse, Elizabeth could not remember her name, stroked Elizabeth’s hair.
‘Sleep tight’ the world swam out of focus like being under water, the people in the room were a blur then she was asleep. Slumped on her side, the mountain lion was tamed, she looked pathetic. Roger felt sorry for her, he knew her, he knew her crimes, yet laying on the floor she looked like a lost child and his heart broke for her and he wondered what had turned her into such a dark and sorry soul.