[ 1 ] arkham 

Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane was the place many souls were sent to; souls that were thought had no chance for redemption in the eyes of society. It has always been that way, throughout the history of mankind. Its easier to lock someone away rather than help them overcome whichever problem they may have.

That was the case for Elaine Crawford.

From the moment that she learned to speak, she told of a creature lurking in a shadow. Mysterious, terrifying, deadly, beautiful...Each night when the sun went down and she went to her bedroom to sleep, he was there in the shadows of her bedroom, piercing greenish tinted eyes that would look back at her. Always watching, never speaking. He never approached her, or said anything, and she brushed it off as a figment of her imagination.

As she grew older she began to understand certain things. The beautiful apparition of her nightmares was there to guide her, though not through a path of good. It was a path that would send her to the burning pits of hell.

She didn't know why she was chosen, she only knew that she would be destined to a life of misery until the day of her death.

And when the murders started, terrible murders, they were all linked to her.

Elaine swore she had nothing to do with any of it. She begged people to believe her. No one did, not even her parents. But how could they believe her when the evidence was all against her? Witnesses, surveillance footage at certain places where the crimes took place. It was her in the images, but she didn't remember any of it. 

With a possible death penalty against her, the team of lawyers putting together her defense deemed her criminally insane and negotiated sending her to Arkham Asylum. It was a maximum security psych ward that kept within its walls some of the most vicious and deadly criminals. Elaine would be in the most guarded hallway of the hospital, for the brutality and violence in which her crimes were committed. They reminded the people of Sydney of another mass murderer, a young man who was coined The Ripper for the way in which he seemed to have easily ripped his victims apart. Bloody Mary was the name the press gave her.

The hospital she was condemned to spend the rest of her days in was Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. That was what they believed her to be. Criminally insane.

But the hospital had deadly secrets of its own.

When she was little, she had heard stories of a hospital in the 1960's called Sunflower Fields. It was a hospital for Sydney's most dangerous and notorious criminals, which were able to escape jail time on the claim that they were insane. 

Of the patients there was a young man named Luke Hemmings.

The story told that he had been adopted by a family of psychiatric physicians, the Jeffersons, whose family had founded Sunflower Fields on what had once been an actual field of beautiful sunflowers. They had a biological daughter, Alice, and from the very first day, their adoptive son Luke relied on Alice to an obsessive degree. 

He had been admitted into Sunflower Fields one day, when in a rage he killed his beloved sister Alice. The doctors Jefferson had been at the hospital all day, their kids were teenagers and they trusted them to behave on their own for a couple of hours. When they returned that night, they went to check on Luke, who was beginning to show signs of being an emotionally disturbed teen, and they found Alice in his bedroom dead. On the side wall was a big pentagram painted with her blood. Their son sat on his bed, lost in his remorse, tears streaming down his face.

For as long as he was kept in the hospital, he claimed Alice was with him, that she was a nurse volunteering there. They were his delusions that haunted him out of the guilt he was feeling.

One day he had just gotten tired of everything. He didn't have his sister anymore, the patients were given horrible treatments like electroshock and other brutal methods, and he showed no signs of recovering. He decided to burn the whole hospital down with everyone in it.

And the very spot where Sunflower Fields was the same place Arkham Asylum was on. It was even said that architects were following the exact same structure of the original building. Two years after The Ripper committed suicide in hi jail cell, a new hospital was founded, and Elaine was sent there as one of its first patients when her trial was concluded. 

Elaine was in her room for the afternoon, sitting on her sterile white bed. It was getting dark in the city, and patients had their afternoon curfew. Once seven in the afternoon hit, they were all to go back to their rooms where the automatic doors would bolt shut until the next morning at eight, when they were to leave for breakfast. Elaine hated the entire hospital, but what she hated most was her room because it was the place where she would see the shadow when the lights were out for the night.

She didn't know what time it was, but she saw him in the far corner of her room, watching her. Elaine never thought to call out to him, she had always been too scared to do so. But she steeled herself and spoke to him. She had nothing to lose. If he was a sort of grimm reaper and was there to kill her, she wanted to get it over with. Dying was surely better than a lifetime at Arkham.

"H-hey," She called, softly at first and then her voice grew a bit louder. "Who are you?"

He remained silent at first, but then his lips curled up into a grin that sent a shiver down her spine. "I thought you would never ask, Elaine." He told her.

And she felt her heart drop.

She knew nothing about the strange apparition of her nightmares, but he seemed to know everything about her.

-

after like a billion years, there is finally an update for this. thank you all for continuing to read this, as well as the ripper, and supporting everything i do. it really means  alot to me. i hope this chapter is something you will all enjoy. make sure to vote, and comment your thoughts.

and how did you like that little backstory bit? the part about how luke got admitted to sunflower fields? i had a lot of fun coming up with it.

thank you again.

have a blessed day!

-clary xx