I was left alone, laying in complete darkness for what seemed like hours, I tried looking around to see where I was but couldn’t make out anything, I co the sounds of hundreds of horrifying screams and sadistic laughs surrounding me but I couldn’t move. I soon began to feel that familiar pain as if somebody had stabbed a knife into my brain and began twisting it, dozens of memories flooded my mind all at once, I had been locked in a room before,
“Is this that same room?” I thought to myself, “How long have I been here?”
Suddenly, I was hit with the most painful memory of all, my own mother kept me locked in that room for days, maybe even weeks, I lost all concept of time being in there, that was no way for a human to live! She deprived me of my humanity, I had nothing, just a bed and a pot to piss in, she had even put bars over my windows and had moved my light switch to outside my door, so she could switch it on and off from outside my room without ever entering.
“How could my own mother do this to me?” I muttered, “After everything I have done to try to have a life with my mother, and all I had been through, I ended up here, tied to a bed with memories of being locked in a f*****g room, and none of it makes any sense!”
I suddenly heard a loud banging on what seemed to be a metal door, as it echoed through the room I was in, I laid there in silence as my heart began beating rapidly, feeling as though it was going to burst through my ribcage, that was when I was met by a bright light as the whole room lit up. I was tied down to a hospital bed, in a white, tiled room, a familiar face began walking towards me,
“Help! Help!” I began to scream, “Please God, help! Don’t let him drown me!”
I was overcome by the most intense feeling of fear I have ever experience as the old man from the canal began walking towards the bed,
“Please calm down,” He said softly, “You have a visitor, you don’t want to get all worked up now, do you?”
“A visitor?” I thought to myself,
The old man stabbed a needle into my leg, within seconds my vision slightly blurred and I began to feel a little light-headed and a sense of calmness came over me. The old man unstrapped me from the bed and placed me in a wheelchair,
“Come on now Mr Clark, your visitor awaits,” He said, pushing the wheelchair out of the room,
We exited into a long corridor lined with doors on each side and signs hanging from the ceiling, though I couldn’t make out what any of them said. I was left table in what I assumed was the visiting room, when I heard a voice calling from behind me,
“Alex!” The woman’s voice called, “How are you feeling today?”
“Uh… Who’s that?” I asked,
“It’s me, it’s mum…” She replied,
There I was, face to face with the woman I had tried so hard to meet, the woman who kept me locked up for who knows how long, the woman I no longer wanted in my life, not here at least, I knew there and then that I didn’t want to stay in this dimension, but I didn’t ever know where I was, let alone how I was going to get out of whatever f****d up situation I had gotten myself into this time.
“Oh, what do YOU want?” I hissed,
“They… They finally said I could visit…”
“They? Who’s they?” I questioned, “What do you mean, visit?”
“You don’t know where you are…”
“Of course I don’t f*****g know where I am, I woke up tied to a f*****g bed and the next thing I know, I’m being drugged up and wheeled out here to see you!” I exclaimed, “And what makes you think I want to see you after what you have done to me?”
“What have I done, Alex?” My mother asked calmly,
“You know what you’ve done! Don’t play dumb!”
“Alex, I don’t know what you think I’ve done but…” My mum started saying,
“No! Don’t lie to me mum, You kept me locked in my room!” I screamed, “You treat me like an animal! Everything I’ve done up to this point has been for you mum, and you locked me in my room and then put me in this place!”
“No, Alex, you’re wrong,” My mum replied, “We didn’t do anything to you, you were never locked in your room, you were in prison, and now you’re in Broadmoor Hospital,”
“Prison?… Broadmoor?… I… I spent one night in a holding cell, I was in for drunken disorderly, and Broadmoor’s a mental hospital, ”
“You run over a little girl, you beat Mrs Darcey to death and you set fire to Amber Jackson’s house killing her whole family, you’re not well, Alex!”
“No, I… I didn’t do any of those things, they all happened to you, mum” I tried to explain, “They all happened in different dimensions,”
“That’s not true, Alex, you created this illusion that you were, what do you call it? Jumping?… To get to me, but I was always right here,”
“No mum! You’re wrong! Ask Ian, he knows!”
“Oh, Alex… Ian… doesn’t exist,” My mum tried to explain, “Ian was an imaginary friend you had when you were five, you hadn’t spoken about him in years, I just assumed you grew out of that phase,”
“Ian’s been my best friend my whole life!”
“Ian Sinndem? I’ve spoken with the doctor, Alex, your mind created him to tell you something was not right, Ian Sinndem is an acronym for Insane Mind! Haven’t they explained this to you already?”
I suddenly felt detached from my body, like a spectator watching some twisted horror movie, nothing my mum was saying made sense, but at the same time, it did… I no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t. At that moment, the old man returned and said that visiting time was over as I had to go for treatment.
“No, you’ve got this all wrong!” I tried to explain, “I’m not crazy!”
“No Mr Clark, you’re not…” The old man replied, “Sorry Mrs Clark, we must be leaving,”
The old man wheeled me back into the corridor we had previously walked down and into a big room with a curtain on a rail in the corner.
“Get me 5 mg of Haldol nurse and then we’ll begin Hydrotherapy,”
I sat in the wheelchair still slightly dazed and thinking about what my mother had said, but still, nothing made sense,
“I’m not crazy,” I thought to myself, “It all happened, it was all so… real,”
The old man walked over to me, telling me to hold still he injected me with what I now know is Haldol, before wheeling me behind the curtain and lifting me into a hoist along with the nurse. No longer than a minute later and I was being submerged into ice-cold water with the old man looking over me, I tried to kick and escape the water but my body was too weak, I could do nothing but lay there motionless as he proceeded to lift me from the water, only to submerge me again.
My mind began racing and everything turned black, I started getting visions of the old man pulling me down in the canal as his voice echoed through my mind,
“God can’t save you now,”
I wanted to scream for help, I wanted to yell at them, telling them to stop but I couldn’t. I began seeing more images flashing into my mind and as quick as the came, they left again. Fire, my mum laying in a pool of her own blood, Mrs Darcey laying in that same spot, a little girl being crushed under the weight of my car, and then another voice echoed through my mind, it was… Detective Jenkins…
“Mr Clark… MR CLARK!”
I began to let out a scream as my vision returned to normal, I was laying back in the bed I was previously tied to, with Detective Jenkins sat at the side of my bed,
“Glad you’re finally with us Mr Clark, do you know the trouble I had to go to, just to track you down?” He said,
“Listen, Detective, you’ve got it all wrong, I shouldn’t be here!” I shouted,
“Oh? And why’s that then?”
“I’m not crazy, I haven’t killed anyone,” I started to explain before the Detective interrupted,
“Not even… You poor mother? Of course, she doesn’t know anything, not here anyway,”
I laid there, staring at the Detective, not knowing what to say to him,
“How does he know?” I thought to myself,
“You see, Mr Clark, I know everything, I know you killed your own mother in a hit and run, I also know you were the cause of your little sister burning down her home, I also know how to jump dimensions,”
“What?! How?! This isn’t possible!”
“Think back to the interview room, Mr Clark, what did you tell me to do? Focus? Little did you know that performing your little trick and asking me to focus too, would bring me with you! From there, it wasn’t hard to view your browsing history, once I had access to your computer, and find out exactly what had happened, how you had done it, and how I could follow you,”
“But Detective…” I tried to say, before being interrupted again,
“No Alex, no buts, you’ll listen to me and focus on what I am saying this time, I’ve been chasing you for too long, it was only a matter of time before I figured out I could just jump to a dimension where I had already caught you, and sooner or later, you’d jump right into this version of you, after all, two versions of one person can’t occupy the same dimension,”
I began to laugh slightly at the Detective’s remark,
“Oh but they can, you see, I was in the same dimension as myself, a younger version of myself,”
“No, it’s not possible, you had a son in that dimension,”
“You’re wrong, Detective, I had his memories,”
“YES!” The Detective exclaimed, “You had HIS memories, remember you told me about realities colliding together? That’s what was going on there, but in the process, things were getting a little… mixed up, should we say? And the blackouts? The static? The old man? You didn’t research jumping properly did you?”
“How do you know all this?”
“You tried explaining everything to the doctors who evaluated you, being in a hospital for the criminally insane I have access to those records, especially since I’m the one who put you here,”
“But I’m not insane!”
“Actually Mr Clark, you are, as I said, you didn’t research jumping properly, you jumped too often in a short space of time, and that has had some negative side effect, causing you to develop schizophrenia,”
Immediately after saying this the door opened and a nurse walked in,
“Lucille?” I thought to myself,
The Detective must have known what I was thinking because he turned to me and whispered,
“Not in this dimension she isn’t,”
And with that, he got up out of his chair and left,
“How are we feeling today, Mr Clark?” The nurse asked,
Something didn’t feel right, first, the old man, now Lucille, and the Detective knew everything, I didn’t know if it was all a coincidence or if the Detective was right about me being ill and realities merging, maybe the old man by the canal was a flash forward of to this dimension, maybe realities are colliding and my Lucille and this Lucille are the same people,
“I… I’m not sure… Lucille, a little disoriented,”
“How do you know my name?” The nurse asked,
“It IS you!” I exclaimed,
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said with a huge smile on my face,
It was so nice to finally see Lucille again, even if she didn’t know me as anything more than a patient in this hell hole,
“Okay, Mr Clark, I was just stopping by to check on you before I clock off, is there anything I can get you? Something to eat? Do you need your medicine? A glass of water?”
-END-
