I was puzzled to find I had seemingly re entered the room I'd just left, yet the atmosphere was different.
It felt like I'd been transported back in time. In front of me lay a psychiatric ward. A strange thick fog hung around in the air above and my vision had turned sepia. Looking around I took in my surroundings.
It smelled strongly of medicine.
There were a dozen beds lined on either side of the room with patients lying or sitting beside them. A man in a straightjacket with dark hair was pacing up and down the gang way between them. When he turned and looked at me and Louie he panicked and ran straight to his bed and got under the covers. A nurse came up to us and Louie whispered something in her ear, she nodded and headed towards the back of the room.

"Come" his lips curled up into a sinister smile as he called me over.
Distinctly I followed.

I slowly trailed behind him as he walked down past the beds.

"These are my fellow patients I looked after before I eventually lived alongside." The more he spoke I noticed his deep dark voice slurred every now and then.

"An outbreak of Tuberculosis hit the hospital and the patients didn't react well to the given medication. Some of them killed themselves. Unfortunately I myself caught it which eventually killed me too." He paused at a bed where a young man was standing repeatedly knocking his head against the stone wall.

"Poor Alexander never knows when to stop. He turned into this empty shell of a being when his whole family died. His skull fractured in several different places."

I noticed upon looking around there were very few women here apart from the nurses. We continued walking and I watched the patients closely. A woman was sat on a bed playing with two dolls mumbling to herself whilst a man in the bed next to her was biting his fingers down to the bone, no one had seemed to notice so I pointed it out.

"Grace, Jeremy has started again."

Two nurses appeared and struggled to restrain the man whilst putting his jacket back on. To the left of me was a frail woman without much hair rocking back and forth, she had obviously pulled it out in distress.
I noticed everyone's eyes were black lifeless voids of despair.

As we reached the last few beds he turned to me, "The unfortunate people who visit this place don't often leave, with their sanity anyway."

He ushered me towards a bed right at the back out of view from the others.
A woman was sitting in a wheelchair with her back to me and her head down. She had long dark hair.
Horrified I realised who it was.
I grabbed her shoulder and her head slowly turned, I was looking into the empty face of my best friend.

Her black round eyes seemed to burn into my soul. My hand covered my mouth and I gasped. "What have you done to her?!"  I shouted and pushed over a tray of surgical instruments nearby.

With a sudden metal clash they hit the floor and the room turned into uproar. Patients shouted and screamed whilst knocking into one another. It was chaos.

Louie chuckled to himself and simply replied with "Her mind has gone. We took her soul which was once so full of life. We will be needing it for our own purposes. To bring back life to this hospital. A human hasn't dared walk down here into this never ending pit of sorrow. Your friend is the first and probably the last."

Looking around wildly I had no idea what to do. But then it hit me. I grabbed onto the handles of the wheelchair and noticed there was a clear gap down the gang way. Quickly pushing an empty bed into Louie I wheeled Chloe down the space between the beds. With all of the commotion the nurses were too busy taking care of the patients to see that I was making a swift escape. I finally reached the doorway that I'd originally came through and looked back at the anarchy unfolding.
Louie was stood still in the middle glaring at me.

"Good luck with your journey." He shouted as malevolent black masses of shadows flew out of his mouth towards me.
I pushed open the door and slammed it shut behind me.

Please vote for each chapter! 🌟