The cabin has always been dulled. The absence of color was something she longed to change but everything remained grey. The walls, the ceiling, the furniture, the sheets.
     
When did it first bring her there? She can't remember.
     
Who she was, she couldn't remember. All memories, emotions, and longing has blurred as time went by, but the need to escape remained. Escape to where she was unsure, but she had to. She knew she didn’t belong in this world, not inside the colorless void. Deep down she knew she was meant to be somewhere else. That nagging thought lived like a crippling need in her very core, a need that could never be subdued.
      
Daunting silence has been her constant companion, except for the occasional crash of the vile-smelling sea. A sea that served as the only view of the lone window of the cabin. A sea that sheltered endless pool of carcasses. It was sight that terrorized her every waking moment. The dead animals which floated like soap bubbles that clashed with each other, sinking one another was grotesque picture that never ceased to mock her of the absurdity of her situation.
     
As always, "Release me," she whispered in the wind. But the wind betrayed her. It failed to carry her message over and over. As always, she got to her knees and begged for freedom, but the apparition appeared and stomped to a halt, her words and need to find liberty.
     
Its shadowy hand reached out to her as it stood outside her window.
      
"Release me," she begged the being.
     
"Nothing and no one kept you here," It replied.
    
Instantly, anger bubbled inside her. "You’re keeping me here,” she retorted, but her companion all but disappeared.
     
"Come back," she yelled helplessly, but all that was left was the sound of crashing waves and the acrid vile scent she learned to live with.
     
She closed her window and moved around her colorless cabin. Like a wandering soul, she went in circles, with no destination, no dreams, and no hopes. But curiously, her state of reverie was interrupted by the sound of thunder.

Her window was blown open by a thundering wind, carrying with it the vile aroma of rotting flesh. The rain  violently made its way inside her abode from the opened window, like angry bullets hitting the ground, ferociously, followed by a long steak of lightning that appeared in the crimson-colored sky.

She started at the beautiful line that parted the sky. Lightning dosen't always come. It was beautiful. However, her eyes suddenly turned wide as saucer when something emanated from the zigzag cracks that marred the sky. It was blurry at first, but as it descended from the sky, its appearance became clear. It was a gigantic hand. The sight made her screamed in terror, her legs began to tremble, and fear crept like electricity from her toes to her head, shaking her very core.
     
Fear made her nouseous and soon, she felt her consciousness drifting away.  Between her blurrying vision and pounding heart, a woman curiously materialized, hovering above her.

The woman's face looked so familiar and the smile she wore felt comforting. The woman reached out her hands towards her but just as she reached out her own, a shadowy arm wrapped itself around her waist and pulled her away.

Once again there was nothing for her, but darkness.
                                                                     ***
     
Esther sat in front of the woman which she regarded as her own. Viridian eyes stared back at her, blank, expressionless, dead. The face which was once full of life was lined with crease, skin sagging and pale. The lips that were full and pink has turned black, cracked, and dry. Her hair that once rivaled the midnight sky no longer shine, it cradled her heart-shaped face like an ominous cloak, swaying only by the wind created by the ceiling fan above her. But no matter how much Esther probed, begged, cried, nothing. No movement, no reaction, Gen was nothing more but a breathing corpse. The old housekeeper knelt in front of her, cupped the woman's face with shaking hands, and with a broken heart, she leaned in and rests her forehead on hers.
      
"Honey, you have to get better, everyone knows the truth now. You can come back home. There is nothing left to fear," she whispered with tears streaming down her old wrinkled face.
     
Esther stayed that way, palms resting on Gen's face, forehead leaning on the others, and when she finally deemed it to be enough, she pulled back and began to rise, but to her shock, the lifeless arm that had so long remained immobile suddenly took her wrist and held it in a vice-like grip. Esther remained motionless for a few seconds before her scream echoed inside the room, bouncing on the door, permeating through the corridors, and catching the attention of the lone nurse who sat on the nurse's station on the third floor.
                                                                      ***
     
Bertha who was busy with the latest fashion plastered on the women's magazine was taken out of her daydream when a mind-blowing scream enveloped her usually silent sanctuary. With furrowed brows, she got up and walked towards the end of the hall, to the room which she, though afraid to admit, avoided for the past three years. The woman it housed was catatonic but she swears to the life of her that there was more to that woman than a psychotic patient. Bertha came from a simple family of six. She, being the eldest has always been relatively sensitive to many things.

Her senses were trained to multi-task from cooking and watching over three other siblings, one of which suffered from a schizotypal personality disorder. The peculiar way in which her sibling acted was something she learned to live with. His paranoid and suspicious behavior, she learned to ease by simply watching from afar. There were nights when her sibling would come running to her room, crying, convinced that he will die. It was a torturous life for Bertha and her family, but they managed. Maybe, it was due to that particular reason that she entered the world of health care. But with all those experiences, Bertha couldn't put two and two together when it came to patient 304.

One may question her suspicious resistance to taking care of that patient, but there was something heavy surrounding her. The way those emerald eyes stared blankly at the wall gave Bertha the creeps. Some may think that her lingering fear may be uncalled for because patient 304 hadn't moved a single muscle in the past three years, but still, there was something, just freakishly something not right about 304. Bertha's attention was called back to the present when the shouting ceased to stop. She continued with her melancholic pace thinking that the old housekeeper was in one of her dramatic outbursts again, but as soon as she saw the scene from the fully opened door of the room, she took on panic-stricken strides.
     
When Bertha was a meter away from the door, she was thrown out of balance as Damien's huge form collided with her. She barely had the time to fully register what was happening until Dr. Mori's ashen face came into view. She watched how Damien pry Gen's grip from the old housekeeper with full force, but he failed to dislodge it, partly because the old housekeeper has wrapped her other arm protectively around the frail form on the bed. She threw curses at Damien, punching the huge man everywhere whilst using her old thin body as a protective barrier between Damien and the unmoving woman, whose hand remained locked on Esther's frail wrist. Dr. Mori immediately produced a syringe and with Damien's assistance, held the housekeeper down and plunged it into her arm.

All at once, Esther lost consciousness, but her wrist remained trapped in the vice grip of the woman on the bed. When her body finally pummeled on top of Gen, only then did the patient's hold on Esther's arm loosened, leaving the three health workers in a state of panic and confusion.