✝ I don't live in

 darkness, darkness

lives in me ✝

--- *** ---
--- An Hour Later or So ---

An hour after the double clashes with the aspiring Monsignor's venomous, dubious jealousy and opening yourself about the prologue of your false institutionalization in the madhouse to Sister Jude, you were sent back to the common room just shortly before being conveyed to the bakery for double shift by using your mere culinary skills in baking and kneading the dough.

After your brief journey up to the common room with a handful of minutes of striding within a several steps, your elvish, {S/C} hands fashioned in balled fists, subsequently sweeping with your physical strength the double door, leading to the sufficiently expansive room.

Your {E/C} embers blazed a tempest amalgamation of despondence, sheer duvet of hopes and emotionlessness, landing on the tattered, uglily obsolete couch with its sufficiently average scale, taking in the room and fitting exquisitely a couple of patients, depending on their body structure. An eerie flat line smeared across your pallid, chapped lips due to the lack of proper care and hygiene to fertilise your health condition which was critically depending also due to the madhouse's gruesome conditions which it may offer for every imprisoned patient. The same monotonous, sinister French song was tingling its own ballad in your ears, regardless how oddly spooky was a mental institution to be equipped with a vinyl recorder and the vinyl disk playing on a loop in a foreign language which lyrics spoke volumes with its achromatic tones.

When your impending destination was the couch, managing your rear to perch on the sufficiently comfortable area to relax and recline, all of a sudden one of patients which was rather a pinhead, donner in similar tiresomely obnoxious attires hugging your figure, she opened her mouth in a soft, vibrantly amicable grin, glimmering across her lips with pure innocence and amiability, wearing thousand patterns of mirth that vibrantly contrasted the ocean of low spirited facial expressions. Far from vulnerable to be broken with a soft, vague grin.

"Dominique, nique, nique! S'en allait tout simplement! Routier pauvre et chantant! En tous chemins, en tous lieux,! Il ne parle que du bon Dieu
Il ne parle que du bon Dieu!"

"Play with me!" Pepper's inviting insistence drew your attention promptly, startling you as your facial expression broke in a hesitant sheepishly girlish smile, curling upon your roseate lips. In the interval, the pinhead spiralled in the spin, stretching her pudgy, asymmetric arms in the thin air.

"Who are you?" Too reluctant to get your rear from the sofa, what it was obvious for you that a young woman of the cloth entered in the common room. You posed seriously your question, begging for an exceeding response in a jiffy, quirking a perky eyebrow nimbly.

First and foremost, the stranger patient looked bizarrely younger and deformed with much shorter height as if it's anatomy belonged to a pre-teen with a chestnut, greasy high bun, framing her round, full profile with her purely unblemished sapphire blue jewels, igniting childlike innocence and warmness like a sanctuary which you might find hideout for the forthcoming apocalypse. Further, what you could instantly discern in the older woman's appearance was a physical illness was the symptom for her deformed appearance. What it struck you as a first impression about Pepper was her doubtlessly bare goodwill and her enormous, golden heart, being caged inside her ribcage with the frequent drums, affecting her heart rate. Last but not least, Pepper's rigidly shapeless stone blue patient gown flared across her knobby knees.

"I'm Pepper. What about yours?" The sheer optimism, spotlighting Pepper's vibrant, jubilant voice vaguely brightened your humor and resuscitating it from the low spirits. Further, calmness, interweaved with amiability snapped in your timbre.

"Urm, {Y/N}," Stutter limped forward and backward in your itchy, dehydrated throat, managing to not twist the smile in a frown even when the monotonous click of Mary Jane drummed against the dull cemented floor, speculating as higher chances to encounter the head nun of the facility.

"Pepper, leave her alone!" All of a sudden, your {E/C} embers flamed with stark irritation, brightening the palish nuances promptly, stinging widened in nonplus and speechlessness. Adrenaline pumping into your lava veins due to the young nun's reprimand at the pinhead inmate which was far from amiable and a warm welcome even though nobody seemed to be fond of you inside the lifelessly featureless, hoary walls of the mental institution except Kit, Pepper and somewhat the ambitious Monsignor.

"Sister, Pepper didn't mean any harm!" Suddenly the juvenile blonde cleared her throat with a soft, meek cough, whilst her petite, palish hand muffled the cough politely, flickering your {E/C} embers at her lapis lazuli, linking them with electrifying goosebumps prickling your epidermis. "She just wanted to play." Even when your rational, sufficiently explainable utterance attempted to persuade Sister Mary Eunice to flee your personal interaction with the pinhead, nevertheless, sarcastically demure stare was shoot at you, hinting something hazard for you and a sardonic smirk creased across her youthfully porcelain, marbled complexion.

Determining the juvenile pious clumsy woman of the cloth's age, judging her appearance her genuine age was no more than in her late teens as if she seemed slightly younger than you. What it quizzically surmised you was how she's devoted herself to the cloth at such fragile, early age especially when she has to finish high school or at least attend regularly college, have her own personal life with a boyfriend or perhaps a fiancé, plotting their wonderful future together with a few children at least. Furthermore, the majority of the sisters of the church which you have spotted whether occasionally or not exactly were usually at the age-range of middle-aged and seniors with exception of small scale of ladies, taking solemnly their vows at young age to escape poverty, misery, the free lifestyle, humiliation or rather seeking spiritual guidance and peace with themselves at last. A fistful of flossy aureate tresses framed her long, full profile with her outstandingly adorable, childlike facial attributes, indicating her real age. Her lapis lazuli irises were drizzled with pure, ingenuous innocence, lavishly glimmering with hope and benevolence. Last but not least, her gracefully slender body structure was donned in a rigidly dark, conservatively rigid habit and wimple, coiffing her lion mane of youthfully aureate, perky tresses.

"Miss {Y/N}, you don't have any clue what she's capable of, besides she drowned her own sister's baby!" Meantime, the older lady retired from you and the sister of the church with a couple of inches, fleeing the battlefield momentarily after Sister Mary Eunice intervened with contempt. The vaguely beaming smile once blooming on your young-looking face was mopped off right away, blurring starkly vibrant mirth's stars with starless despondence and emotionlessness, unhealthily contouring your facial features.

"She doesn't even look like a murderer except she isn't like the others and I doubt she's capable of a homicide or something criminal."

"No matter what do you want to believe, Miss {Y/N}, it doesn't change the fact what Pepper has actually done something totally wrong and therefore being a patient in a mental institution for criminally insane!" Your front ivory, firm teeth manipulated to gnaw between them the raw, delicate skin of your lower plumpish lip, squinting up your {E/C} irises at the pinhead that initiated the brief conversation, transfixing it fierily whilst narrowing your perky eyebrows playfully grave, idly. "Since she's under the supervision of staff members and taking her own medicine, that means there's something wrong with her."

"À l'époque ou Jean-sans-Terre! D'Angleterre était le roi! Dominique, notre père, Combattit les Albigeois. Dominique, nique, nique! S'en allait tout simplement!"

"Just because she's a freak or anything, that doesn't make her capable of a murder or something else, involving her in something tremendously," The sharpness in your retaliation punctured your unembellished sincerity and seriousness, standing for Pepper's beliefs and interests even when you barely knew her and essentially judging her physical appearance to have higher chances of being capable of unimaginably apocalyptic deeds, tainting her morality with bleak darkness. "Tremendously dangerous and endangering her morality, life even the others' lives!" The heated debate between you and Mary Eunice bulked the further patients' attentions in no time as twain of inquisitive, groggy orbs were fixated in the center of the general attention even when you weren't very fond of drawing a pointless attention, in order to glimmer brighter than a full moon in the starless nocturnal sky. You flickered up a glare at the younger lady, stilling your front teeth to nip the delicate skin of your lower cherub lip."Do you know what is more disgusting than all that, Sister?" Dark, woefully sarcastic giggle clicked the roof of your dehydrated mouth to test Mary Eunice's patience even when cherry blush tinged generously her chubby, well-carved cheeks urgently, whereas she managed to shake her head in uncertainness, scarcely predicting the interpreted utterance, lurching backward and forward on your tongue tip and swimming through the stormy tempest of our thoughts. "To believe the filthiness of religious goody-two shoes robots, considering themselves so loyal to the church that they're fighting for the general population's justice with their bland lies and most of all, you blindly believing as an easily manipulative puppet of your mentor that somebody as harmless as Pepper should be isolated from everybody else." In the meanwhile, the juvenile blonde shrugged off her shoulders at your sharp rejoin, snapping her out of Jude's barriers that kept her safe in her presence unless she confronts the absolute reality she's currently living. "I don't care if I'm taken to the solitary confinement or to Sister Jude's office for a goddamn good punishment to make an ass of me, but as much as I've done my own job with standing for somebody who's being tremendously bullied, save your breath, Sister!"

"I swear I'll seek an advice from Sister Jude to report about your coarse, unacceptable behavior, Miss {Y/N} {L/N}!" Last but not least, your lips zipped in a subtly, attractively thoughtful purse, indicating your graveness while being all ears during the juvenile holy woman's caution, opting to regenerate strictness to highlight each word in an inescapable emphasis."You make it so difficult not only for me, but also for the staff members and the others!" Even when Mary Eunice struggled to clash you with the proper words, formulated in her retaliation, she attempted to interpret everything which she's been told by Sister Jude after facing a rebelliously unruly lunatic and most of all, using a professionally formal language to restrict your freedom. Even if it's been a handful of minutes since you've conversated one another without any final results, you weren't quite fond of Mary Eunice and viewing her as nothing else than the senior woman of the cloth's minion, or rather goody-two shoes, diligently docile marionette, following her austere instructions which weren't begging for a second chance and once the one-off and only chance to be accomplished was ruined, thereafter the punishments were unavoidably unforgiving and crude.

"Routier pauvre et chantant! En tous chemins, en tous lieux,! Il ne parle que du bon Dieu! Il ne parle que du bon Dieu! Certain jour, un hérétique, Par des ronces le conduit,"

"Do whatever it costs you to make me repent for my immorality, Sister!" Unmitigated sarcasm corroded your neutrality and swaddling it with naked antagonism, rolling dramatically coldhearted, ironically your eyes, whilst the younger woman was on her way to flee the common room and fountain of pride submerged in the pit of your stomach and molting your heart for defending the defenseless, vulnerable pinhead against the nun's bullying.

--- *** ---

--- A Several Hours Later or So ---

Within several hours, elapsing slower than molasses, dripping its own insatiably succulent dark juices from its jam downward to the silver spoon, the evening finally approached with great deal of anticipation in your case, in order to finish the double shift in the bakery.

Shortly after your confrontation with Sister Mary Eunice, subsequently you were conveyed back to Sister Jude's office to earn ten canes, contacting your bare rear and leaving tracks of welts, bruises and mauve tints adorning your buttocks in the name of repentance, according to the head nun of the madhouse, you were sent urgently to the bakery for double shifts as a punishment instead of ending in the solitary conferment for your insurrectional demeanor in the past hours.

For now the both women of the cloth were your biggest, worst foes after Cole your former boss. What it hideously boggled you was the former sleazy nightclub singer owned a grandiose armoire with luxurious collection of canes to punish her patients, depending on the cane's size and width. You've never heard of members of the clergy using such a method to penalize the victims of their own guilt and sins with something that barbarically painful, bizarrely kinky nonetheless. Sister Jude was the exceptional one, docketing in the list of the kinkiest devotional members of the church with such unorthodox methods of granting retribution to the wretched souls. Last but not least, what it make you wonder was how sadistically austere and authoritative became the former promiscuous nightclub singer and what made her to change her life's direction, marrying herself and her frail skeleton to God as each cell, each bone and each meaty muscle truly belonged to the divine, almighty God. You weren't an oracle or a professional fortune teller to hazard a guess, nevertheless, your acute intuition told you that she must have been struggling to overcome her demons from the past and no wonder what it transformed her. You didn't consider her a dreadful person, howsoever, her authority and running a facility with an iron fist which the fewest members of the clergy would be capable of rendered her a coldhearted, aloof woman of the cloth, solely thinking of her efficient work and efforts, invested in her hard work to keep the lunatics under an incessant supervision and not being involved in another mess. The cryptic aura, oozing with more somber nuances of her frail skeleton didn't disappoint you to still theorize her past and how the past has significantly impacted her true being nowadays. Perhaps a tough childhood? Being a former prostitute and serving the high-class prostitution to strive for her survival? Her ex-boyfriend or fiancé was gruesomely coarse to her and infected her with a vicious illness and she was still down with that sickness? Either one of these speculations was parallel to the genuine, celestial truth.

The sole inmates who were still in the bakery, working their double shifts due to their disobedience and rebellion were accompanying you even when you haven't exchanged a single word with them. Kit was the only inmate whom you could grant your trust or at least socialize fair-to-middlingly.

The soundtrack of nimble and clumsy fingers, kneading the bread and pita-shaped dough, besides chatters was playing on a loop inside the bakery. You spent a couple of hours without a single second to breathe properly and rest, recollecting sufficient energy for a few minutes, in order to resume with kneading the bread and pita-shaped dough. Thick, stickily hideous layer of perspiration coated your facial skin and clamminess, amalgamating with oyster-white dough baptizing your elvish hands. Dehydration and starvation agonized your figure even when the starvation for hours aided you to have less appetite per the elapsing hours rather than your body craving for the necessary elements part of your diet less than an hour.

Once kneaded properly beehive of compact bread and pita-shaped dough on the counter, you stopped in a halt to rest for awhile, growling aggressively under your breath even when it was awkwardly distinctive for a handful of patients at least, hearing your roar after the restless hours of pressuring yourself in the bakery.

"Fucking goddamn!" Your strawberry-coloured, dryly dehydrated tongue opted to conjugate the syllables and vowels, successfully forming the cuss after dumping the swarm of dough on your workplace, flaring your flexible nostrils after inhaling and exhaling abundance of times the reek of urine, human waste, poor hygiene, human flesh, human sweat, heavy medicaments and the lavish fragrance of fresh dough, freshly baked bread in the oven as only contrasts.

"Hey you! The new one!" All of a sudden unfamiliar female voice with mischievous timbre attracted your attention promptly, turning you back to face with partly shaved head inmate, who seemed visibly in her thirties with gilded on one side mop of strands, framing her fair-tanned-clad, full profile and azure blue pools, blazing impurity and sensuality. You swallowed hard how naughtily playful her aura was, dripping from her identity. "I haven't seen ya, the new girl!" The eccentric amiability, hilariousness in Shelley brought you a flourishing embarrassed, vaguely sympathetic smile, tattooed on your cherub lips.

"So as I do. Who are you?"

"I'm Shelley! What about you too, youngster?"

"It's just {Y/N}." Even when Shelley was eccentric, you quite liked and appreciated her company and she didn't seem a horrendous human being at all except you opted to speculate that one of the crucial reasons why the blonde was imprisoned in the asylum was because of her nymphomaniac behavior and impure morals, thus leading to her institutionalization even when you seemed the nymphomaniacs as perfectly normal people instead of immoral, according to the contemporary standards which were peculiarly questionable, in your humble opinion. "Are you actually new either?"

"It's true but not as new as you, {Y/N}!" Complacent, mischievous grin perched on the older woman's face, brightening her facial attributes after tucking a couple of stray, riot gilded tresses behind her ear. What it struck you was how her head was partly shaved and it sent shivers down your spine with paradoxal sensation of ocean of questions to enquire right away the nymphomaniac inmate and how sinisterly treated she's just because of her immorality. "And Sister Jude is pretty tough cookie without any mercy." Heavy sigh left your nostrils after constricting your chest, moistening your chapped, roseate lips with a tongue. "And that's why ya looked at my partly shaved head as if I look like a cuckoo, right?"

"I'm unsure how she's capable even of shaving somebody head especially yours. She has completely lost her mind to punish us like that." Your rear yet ached after the relentlessly inexorable canes contacting your bare buttocks and wounding them severely, bloodily. You couldn't even seat on single furniture to take a brief break from the working process and you've never been canned.

"Why us, {Y/N}? What the hell are ya even talking about?"

"Because she canned me after confronting her goody-two shoes minion for warning me what kind of a being is Pepper!" In the interval, a salty, dry lump seethed in your throat, subsequently manipulating your throat muscles to gulp it with an ease after hesitantly exhaling sharply, whilst the older lady managed to arch a dark eyebrow at you gamely. "Pepper doesn't even seem that harmful and malicious at all and they just make an ass of her for being a freak."

"I'm afraid I've to agree with ya, because I really don't like Mary Eunice for being that too innocent and easily manipulated by older hags." Thereafter Shelley patted her own mid-thigh with the flat of her palm, whereas you folded your arms, listening attentively her exclaimation. "But Jesus! Those canes and struggling to seat on furniture to rest for awhile. That's just gruesomely terrible shit!" Frustrated hiss scratched her throat, whilst you managed to bob your head in a solemn agreement. "It's better for ya just to keep it cool and chin up while facing the demons of Sister Jude!" Suddenly you couldn't suppress a healthy guffaw as Shelley joined you, your bellies hurting tearfully due to the punchline of the older lady's joke.

All of a sudden, the bakery's door swung opened, notoriously creaking which drew the patients' attentions in no time as the ambitious Monsignor set a foot and his impending destination was approaching you.

"Monsignor!" Your tongue crafted the revered title of the clergyman as you maintained an appropriate proximity, in fact, the clergyman would be menaced to break a vow if his distance was oddly less than an inch with representatives of the opposite sex especially objects of sexual desires and pleasure and tempting.

"Excuse us, Shelley, but I and {Y/N} have to discuss something in private!" In the meanwhile, the blonde nodded, affirming in a strong agreement, whereas you docilely followed Timothy and exiting the bakery altogether.

When you're both solely outside the bakehouse, consequently an abrupt exhale coursed through your lungs, nibbling your lower lip girlishly sheepish especially when you had to talk in private with nobody else than a revered man of the cloth.

"What did you exactly want to talk with me in private, Father?"

"I know everything what happened between you, Sister Mary Eunice and Sister Jude!" Vermillion ablaze blush powdered your chubby, well-sculptured cheeks, squinting up at the older man's coffee brown jewels, finding strangely somehow comfort and warmness in them as a sanctuary. Grotesque frown decorated your rosy-coloured, cracked lips. "I particularly don't blame you and I'm not quite fond of Sister Jude's methods for punishment."

"What the-" Syllables and vowels verged to form a coalition of cuss, inking your tongue and almost slipping from your mouth like a feather, blew in the windy dance of the nocturnal wind of a forgotten summer. What it mesmerized you was how Timothy demonstrated signs of jealousy and being overprotective over you earlier today and now especially tonight defending you or at least you fathomed signs of his neutrality in certain conflicts.

"You've every right to communicate with every patient who seems friendly, in your humble opinion! Needless to say, that I'm frankly apologizing about my behavior earlier today." Meanwhile, what it bafflingly struck you was how the British compatriot expresses his own apologies.

"You're apologizing me for earlier today when you almost forbidden me to have any interactions with Kit as if I'm a little girl?" Fussing under your breath, solely distinctive for both of you, you fashioned in balled fists the fury pulsating in your body how changeable was the British compatriot's opinion per certain amount of time. "And for showing signs of jealousy as if you're deadly scared anything to not happen to me? I've had enough with such stuff through my life journey, Father!"

"You know that with the jealousy when the chickens have teeth."

"I know what do you exactly feel for me, but the sad truth is that you're just a priest and you aren't capable of breaking your vows, just because of a former drug dealer." At the moment, gruffily clearing your throat with a dry cough tingled a flickering screen's tunes into his ears, raising an arch of his dark, thickly fuzzy eyebrow. "I'm just sure once you grant me the freedom for believing me as a completely innocent, thereafter the papacy is going to be your top priority for which I'm," Shrugging your dainty shoulders whilst twisting the frown in an ironically weak grin, baring your ivory teeth. "I'm wishing you good luck and that's all!"

"{Y/N}," Heavy sigh streamed from the top of his lungs, mild generous layer of sweat battering his forehead. "Even us, the priests have our own needs and feelings!"

"Needs?" In the interim, Timothy managed to bob his head in agreement, pursing his pale-pinkish, cherub lips. Somber, sardonic snicker fried on your tongue. "I don't want to talk about it." You could picture the scenario of abysmal heated debate between you and the holy man about the clergymen's needs and feelings and how they're even the same like the general population though you weren't doted to continue with your headstrongness to prevail a farther, sinister retribution as a sequence of your stubbornness.

"As you insist! And your release is going to be arranged within a few days."

Author's Note: I'd like to apologize for postponing with updating this book though I'm planning to update it like twice or 3 times a week, in order to not catch up with abundance of missing days and nothing paged up. 

I know how bland are the first chapters where the reader is housed in Briarcliff, but after fleeing Briarcliff, subsequently the journey is going to be exceedingly intriguing and dynamic. Full of surprises as well! 

A quick question to my readers! After this book with Timothy x Female Reader once I finish it, which fictional character/celebrity x Female Reader do you want me to write? (PS: I don't want to read the sort of comments that it's up to me and I've an utter control over anything I write, because that bugs me off, besides my questions being ignored.) Jude x Female reader, Elsa Mars x Reader, Dean Winchester x Reader, Skyler White x Reader, Castiel x Reader or anything else with x reader? Feel free to express your own thoughts and drop me other fictional characters or celebrities which you want me to write about with a reader as mains! Don't be shy anyway! :))

In addition to even if you have given me a prompt to write for example Constance x Female Reader and I don't write it as an imminent project with x reader story, thereafter don't be worried at all! I'll keep it in mind after my most desired project I want to pour my imagination and hardwork! I hope you liked and enjoyed this chapter anyway! :))