The 2nd Floor hallway was empty. Silent.

"What the hell?! You said we were trapped!"

"Hey! I thought we were, alright?! You think I have any idea what's-"

"We're going to die... God... We're going to die..."

No one dared to make the first move, shuffling closer to each other as shoulders brushed together, arguing.

"Can everyone get a grip?!" Alyce groaned, rubbing her forehead.

She stopped as someone stormed away from the corner of her eye. She didn't have to look twice.

"Joan!" Alyce shouted, running over. "What're you doing?"

"What does it look like? I'm leaving"

Alyce clutched her arm before she could move.

"Don't be stupid! You don't know what's out there!"

Roughly, Joan broke free, sprinting as Alyce almost gave chase.

She stopped midway, throwing her hands up in exasperation. Joan was stubborn. There was no point.

"Guys!"

Most everyone turned around, as one of the staff members pointed to the monitors.

"We've got a situation"

Alyce was the last to join them, all crowding around.

What was on the CCTV left most of them unable to speak, while Alyce cringed, a feeling that was halfway between disgust. It churned inside her, rising as she turned back around to see Joan was already gone.

"Oh no...".

///

Cassidy slowed down as she reached the corner, catching her breath. In that moment, everything she had learned, everything from that DVD, brewed violently- like the clench of her fists.

Joker. She wanted to help him. And yet...

She lashed out at the wall, kicking, punching, with enough strength to feel the pain in her knuckles. She slumped her head against the wall, her face screwed up in anger.

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Cassidy followed the chirping noise to see, abandoned, in the middle of the floor...

... A dollhouse.

Old, Victorian, fashioned with a cuckoo bird on the roof, popping its head out before hiding in the slot.

Cassidy stepped over, dodging a child's set of wooden alphabet blocks littering the floor.

The doll's house was almost an exact replica of Arkham, but it wasn't as wide, and long slats adorned the roof, spaced out enough so that she could see inside. The clock function ticked as the cuckoo bird hid for the next chime.

With care, Cassidy unhooked the latch, opening the doors.

Each little room showed a different scene, all with tiny figures. One, a lady on the floor in her wedding dress- crying. The next, a doctor beside a half-clothed man on a stretcher. Another room had a family, the father slumped in a little brown chair, an unmarked bottle next to him.

Last, a married couple holding hands: one with a bad fringe, the other with golden hair.

All of them. The Arkhams.

The end room was badly burnt. Only one figure standing in the far corner of the charcoal black, turned to the wall. Cassidy tried reaching for it, but something slumped down, and the ticking clock stopped dead.

One of the ceiling tiles had broken through, threatening to bring down the dollhouse in an array of cogs and splinters.

Fibers, long, dark, curled out from the cracks like unraveled rope.

But it wasn't rope.

It was hair.

Please... No...

Cassidy peered into the roof.

Peeping through the slats... Was a little girl's head.

Harriet.

Arkham.

Smiling.

As if she were still alive.

Cassidy recoiled- only to see the rest of Harriet's body, laid in a frilly dress.

Her mother, Constance- a few feet away in a slashed nightgown. Hands twitching.

Sprawled among the blood, the alphabet blocks spelled out:

'M

     A

         D

             D

                 O

                     G'

If Cassidy were going mad... It was clear that was the tipping point.

"♫O say, can you see...♫"

In a split second, she found herself in a dim cell, with no one except a disheveled old man in the corner, on his hands and knees in his mother's ivory wedding dress.

Amadeus Arkham.

He was scribbling onto the stone floor, unseen patterns, all while continuing to sing. Cassidy tried to stand, but felt something dig into her palm. She picked out, to her revulsion, one of Amadeus's fingernails, pink, pulled off. She flung it away, backing up into the corner as she noticed a circle of symbols carved on the floor, bloody and rough. Scratched in, when she saw Amadeus's hands, missing all fingernails but one, his last fingernail on the right thumb, bloodied. Skin tearing around it.

"♫Through the perilous-"

She turned away-

"!"

She gasped, smacking straight into someone.

The hallucination, or whatever it was, was gone, and in its place was an Arkham staff member, knocked to the ground- his arm cut in several places.

"I'm so sorry! I-"

She knelt to help him, but when he spotted his rescuer, his eyes widened in terror.

"S-S-Stay away!" He scrambled back.

"I-It's alright! I won't hurt you-"

He grabbed a knife from his back pocket, pointing it at her like she was some animal that had escaped from a zoo.

"Get the fuck away from me!"

Cassidy watched on the floor as he fled from sight, her lips wobbling in confusion and hurt.

Then, she turned her head, as something ran down one of the corridors out of view.

///

Cassidy wandered through the North Wing doors, seeing nothing except the Staff Room down the hall.

The hours before seemed like a dream...

///

"Oh- Uh. Rom coms aren't my thing, really"

"Suit yourself!" Pearl said as she walked away. "Invitation's still open if you wanna join"

Cassidy turned around at the last minute.

"What time is it on?" She called out.

"8- I think. My shift finishes at 6 but I honestly don't have anything better to do"

As Cassidy got in the elevator, Pearl ran back over like she had remembered something at the last second.

"Oh yeah, and if you know anyone else who'd like to choke on a cupcake, feel free to pass it round" Pearl laughed awkwardly "I'm practically giving them away at this point".

///

Snapped back into reality, the Staff Room table in view through the door...

... Heart-shaped cupcakes- pinks, blues... Growing stale. Abandoned.

Pearl...

Cassidy choked back tears.

Nothing could erase what happened. Nothing.

As she turned to the right-hand corner, but before she could see if anyone was there, the Arkham speakers screeched into life, making her jump.

"///107.7 is sponsored by Enid and Levigne Attorneys, call 1-800//GETOUTNOW//take advantage of our limited time////"

The speakers fizzled out, and panicking, Cassidy kept her guard as she stepped back. But what she saw when she turned paralyzed her to the spot.

Down the hallway... Was an exact replica of herself. 

A/N: Is the replica real? Or just another hallucination?