Asylum Box Set

by Sian B. Claven

  “Oh, yes, that’s it!” Molly groaned as she looked down at him, her cheek pink from where he hit her. “Make me pay for being dirty.”

  Bradley smacked her again and then gripped a fistful of her hair and, pulling her down to him, he kissed her forcibly. She moaned into his mouth and slathered her tongue all over his desperately.

  She broke away from him and kissed his chin, making her way up to his jaw slowly. He could feel her breathing in his ear the closer she got to it. She licked the outside of his ear and then nibbled on his earlobe.

  He closed his eyes, to get lost in the moment, trying to forget everything that had happened to him, to just be.

  “Not so hard,” he mumbled as she nipped a piece of skin on his ear. “Not so hard,” he said again, pulling away.

  Molly suddenly clamped her jaw down on his ear and yanked upward, ripping his ear off inch by inch. He pushed at her, punched her in the belly and on her arms, and eventually, she let go.

  Bradley held his ear and stared up at her. She didn’t look like Molly anymore. Her face was half-rotted, her teeth and jaw showing where the skin was missing on her face. Her eyes had a milky film over them, and her nose was falling off.

  Bradley screamed and kicked, trying to get her off.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” she growled. “Don’t you want to play with me?” She fondled her breasts, but they were decomposing in front of Bradley’s eyes.

  He closed his eyes and screamed. The weight lifted from him, and he opened his eyes to find his cell empty. There was a light on, and it was bright. The smell returned, and he glanced at the corner and gagged.

  The lock slid back, and Cooper opened the door. He gagged as well, placing a hand over his mouth.

  “Jesus, convict,” he said, “ever heard of a toilet?”

  In the other corner, Bradley saw a toilet, but he didn’t argue; he didn’t want to know why Cooper was there.

  “You screamed?” Cooper said. “What the fuck did you do to yourself?”

  “What happened?” Kevin asked, coming to the door. “What is that smell?”

  “Look what this idiot has done to himself.”

  “It wasn’t me,” he mumbled. “It was a woman called Molly. Dr Brock sent her.”

  “What was that, convict?” Cooper asked kneeling.

  “Nothing,” Bradley said.

  Cooper sighed. “We’re going to have to take him to the infirmary.” He stood up. “Get up, convict.”

  Bradley scrambled up, stiff and sore in all the wrong places. Kevin smirked at him from just outside the cell, and if Bradley wasn’t scared they would drug him again, he would have killed the fucker.

  Cooper took his one arm and, once out of the cell, Kevin took his other, and both marched him down the corridor and up the stairs. The doors opposite his cell were still open, but he didn’t want to look in there, he didn’t want to see what Clara had done.

  ——

  They passed the entrance to the Asylum and for one brief second Bradley considered fighting the two men off and running through the door to far, far away. He didn’t. They passed the door without incident and Bradley simply let them lead him into a room that looked like an old-school dormitory.

  “We’ll wait outside. Elsa will be with you shortly,” Kevin explained before both left.

  Bradley sat on a bed and waited, holding his bleeding hole of an ear as closed as he could manage. He glanced around the infirmary and saw that all windows had bars over them. Past those he could see nothing but rolling hills, so he knew he couldn’t be somewhere in a city or town.

  They were clearly in the countryside, and he had to take that into account. He hadn’t eaten, didn’t have any supplies. Maybe he could find the cafeteria and get some supplies before he made his escape. If he could just survive long enough to reach civilisation, he might stand a chance, and he would nail these people for what they had done.

  The clip-clop of heels on tile brought him out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see a pretty young nurse walking towards him.

  “Mr Walker, I believe you had an accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, I was attacked.”

  “Oh, of course, you were attacked.” She clearly didn’t believe him.

  He removed his hand so she could inspect the wound and waited, knowing without a shadow of a doubt she would attack him. He nearly jumped out of his skin when she reached up to touch his ear.

  She smiled. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you fix that up.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said simply.

  “Does Cooper need to give you something to relax you?” she asked, turning towards the door.

  “No, no, no!” Bradley quickly protested. “It’s fine, I can sit still.”

  Elsa nodded. “I’ll be right back; I’m going to have to give you some stitches.”

  She clip-clopped away from him in those heels, and he looked around again. There were other patients here, in the beds waiting for treatment.

  Clip-clop and she was on her way back. Bradley marvelled at how quick she was. She carefully cleaned the wound and then gave him a local anaesthetic to numb the area before she started to stitch his ear back in place.

  “There you go, no worse for wear,” she said. “You can rest up for a few minutes, and I’ll discharge you once I’ve cleared all this stuff away.”

  She picked up the tray holding her instruments and the dirty gauze she used to clean his wound and clip-clopped away. Bradley sighed and rested, wondering if he could convince her to let him spend the night here without Cooper and Kevin watching. That would be a great way to escape.

  A low moan from the bed beside him stirred him from his thoughts. A man laid there, covers pulled up to his chin, and he moved as though trying to get them off. Sweat dripped from his head, and Bradley felt sorry for him. Assuming he was strapped to his bed, Bradley went over to him to remove the covers.

  How he wished he hadn’t.

  When Bradley pulled the covers down, he was met with the most horrific sight. The man was not strapped to the bed but was tied together with rope. It had cut into his skin at some points, such as his right shoulder, and his skin had healed around the rope, making it a part of him.

  Bradley backed away and then, in terror, turned and fled the room.

  Cooper and Kevin were no longer around, so Bradley made a dash for the exit. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going but did his best to remember the direction they came from. Now was his chance to get away.

  He reached the main foyer of the Asylum when Cooper suddenly tackled him from behind; he hit the floor hard. Kevin was soon with him, and together they pinned him. Bradley, immediately apprehensive that they would rape him again right there, kicked and screamed as loudly as he could.

  “What’s going on here?”

  It was Dr Wellbottom and, before Bradley could say anything, he barked, “Sedate the man, immediately, and return him to solitary.”

  Bradley felt the pinch of the needle in his neck and soon grew extremely drowsy. Cooper and Kevin lifted him up by his arms and dragged him back to solitary, where they tossed him into a dark cell and shut the door.

  Too tired to care, Bradley curled up in a ball and promptly fell asleep.

  ——

  When Bradley woke up, he was no longer in solitary, but he wasn’t in the room he had been in before. He was in another; this one had a normal door on it and, instead of one bed, had two. There was also a basin in the corner.

  Bradley got up quickly and went to the basin, running the water and taking deep gulps from it.

  “You’ll make yourself sick.”

  Bradley looked up. He was not alone. Another man was on one of the beds, watching him.

  “John,” he said, nodding his head at Bradley.

  “Bradley,” he said back, nodding as well. “Have they fed you yet?” he asked, going to sit on the free bed.

  “I won’t touch no nigger food.” John stretched. “I’d
rather starve.”

  “They are starving me,” Bradley explained. “They haven’t fed me in a few days, and until now I had to drink out of a toilet bowl just to stay alive.”

  John shook his head and spat in the corner. “Goddamn Negroes will do anything to suppress the white man.” He stood up and laced his fingers together, bringing them towards him. They made sick crackling sounds as they ‘clicked’.

  Bradley shivered at the sound. He had never liked people doing that, but he wasn’t about to tell it to this guy. He looked mean and was clearly a racist. Bradley needed to stay in everyone’s good books until he could make a run for it again.

  “They got me going to some German doctor later on - you seen him yet?”

  “Yeah, I have.”

  Bradley wondered if he should tell John about what the good doctor did to his patients. He decided not to, thinking he wouldn’t believe him anyway. Bradley rested on his bed and fell into an uncomfortable silence.

  ——

  Chapter Six

  Bradley had reached a point in his starvation where he no longer felt the hunger that wrecked his body. He was dropping weight, but that didn’t bother him. He suffered strong cramps whenever he drank too much water, so he took to taking small sips at a time to stay hydrated.

  He had lost count of how many days he had been at the Asylum, but that too didn’t matter. He was working on a new plan to escape.

  Sharing a cell with John, even such a short time, was nothing short of entertaining, especially the way John riled up Cooper and Kevin. John was a true born Southern racist with a mouth on him to match, and if Bradley thought that Kevin and Cooper had it out for him, they were desperate to get their hands on John.

  There was a new nurse, Karen, seeing to them, and John constantly made lewd remarks to her, about her, Kevin and Cooper. She was becoming irritated with him, Bradley could tell.

  In their day room, John constantly talked about getting back at Kevin and Cooper, for being ‘nigger folk’. After the treatment Bradley had received from them, he couldn’t agree more. They spent their day talking about Bradley being starved and how it was completely race related. Bradley h of it that way until then, but now it made sense.

  Bradley plucked up the courage to ask John how he had landed up at the asylum, and John laughed as if the story brought back happy memories for him.

  John regaled him with the tale, starting with how one ‘nigger boy’ thought he could take John’s daughter’s virginity and get away with it. John, upset, had gotten into his vehicle and driven to where the boy lived and skinned him alive. Literally skinned him alive, John reiterated, and left his body there to die, taking the skin home as a trophy. John hung the skin outside his house to dry and to warn any other ‘nigger boys’ what would befall them if they dared set foot near John or his property again.

  The cops had no choice but to arrest him, but instead of putting him on trial for murder, John was declared insane and sent here. It was much like Bradley’s situation, except Bradley was pretty sure that John was certifiably insane.

  Bradley smiled at the end of the story; John was definitely someone you wanted on your side. Bradley imagined that when the man lost his temper, it was something to behold.

  “We should get them back,” John said suddenly.

  “Get who back?” Bradley asked, rocking back on his chair, glancing around the day room, bored.

  “Those nigger boys,” John said. “The orderlies who think they can do what they want to you without consequence. We need to teach them a lesson.”

  “Yeah,” Bradley said. “And how are we going to do that?”

  “We beat the tar out of them,” John declared, an evil glint in his eye.

  Bradley thought about everything Cooper, and Kevin had done to him, and for a moment he felt … what was it? Fear? Fear of those two boys? They had all the power to make Bradley’s life a living hell and yet he wanted his revenge. He wanted to show them who was actually boss. Rebellion rose inside of him, and he found himself nodding.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah! We are going to show those boys who in hell is the boss here and they’ll never start with me again.”

  John slapped Bradley on the back. “That’s the spirit!”

  They sat in silence for the remainder of their time in the day room. They didn’t have to say anything; both were thinking that the first opportunity they got to take Kevin and Cooper out, they would.

  Time flew by, and soon Cooper and Kevin appeared at the door and said, “Times up, convicts.”

  Bradley and John got up and ambled towards them, eyeing them menacingly.

  Cooper grabbed John’s arm, and he yanked it away. “Don’t touch me, nigger.” He preceded his statement by spitting at Cooper.

  Kevin reached for Bradley, but seeing his opportunity, Bradley punched Kevin in the nose.

  John jumped Cooper as the orderly went for Bradley and, before anyone knew what was happening, complete chaos had broken out. John fought Cooper while Bradley beat Kevin up by straddling him and continuously punching him in the face. Blood splattered onto his clothes, the floor, the walls - everywhere - and although his hand ached, he continued hitting, getting rid of his pent up anger and frustration.

  Hands tugged at him, trying to get him off the orderly, but there was no competing with that form of rage. He shrugged them off as easily as water slides from a duck’s back. It felt as if they weren’t even trying, and he continued to hit Kevin as quickly and as hard as he could.

  Suddenly, everything went black.

  ——

  When Bradley came to he was strapped to a table in what looked like the basement. Pain, in his hand, stirred him awake. He craned his neck to see his right hand was swollen and bloody, and collapsed back against the table, feeling groggy.

  He opened his eyes again and realised the table was tilted up, so it was as if he was standing. The bindings that kept him in place cut into his arms, legs and abdomen. He opened his mouth to call out but seemed to have a mouth full of cotton. His tongue was dry, and his lips scaly.

  John was strapped to a table, too, but lying down, no more than three meters from him.

  A heavy door opened, and Kevin and Cooper walked in. Bradley stared at Kevin in disbelief; there wasn’t a single mark on his face. He clearly recalled the taste and smell of Kevin’s blood as it sprayed all over him. Here he stood, right in front of Bradley, with not a scratch on him. It was impossible.

  “How?” Bradley gasped out, trying to lick his lips.

  “Give him water,” a voice called out, and Bradley recognised it as Dr Brock’s from their sessions. It felt like an eternity since they had last seen each other, since the episode in the basement.

  Kevin obediently held a glass of water to Bradley’s lips, and he gulped it down, enjoying the cool liquid coursing down his throat. Kevin took the glass away and put it down, moving to stand with Cooper near John.

  “Make sure he is secure,” Dr Brock said almost lazily, as though he wasn’t paying attention to what they were actually doing.

  Bradley watched as the orderlies tightened the bonds around John’s abdomen, his wrists and legs. John was out cold as they did this, so there was no resistance from him.

  “Bring in the specimen,” Dr Brock said.

  Cooper and Kevin moved out of Bradley’s field of vision for a few minutes. He heard them shuffling around not far away, followed by the sound of something squeaky, like a wheel that needed oil. That was exactly what it was; Kevin and Cooper brought in a gurney with someone on it, covered with a sheet.

  Recalling his time in the basement, Bradley squirmed, panicked by the endless and horrific possibilities running through his mind about what the doctor and his minions could do with yet another cadaver.

  “You may leave now,” Dr Brock said, coming into the light where Bradley could see him. Near Dr Brock was a pretty nurse whose name tag read Karen. She seemed familiar to Bradley; it was quite possible he had seen her around the Asylu
m before.

  Karen smiled sweetly at Dr Brock and then proceeded to remove the sheet from the cadaver. It was a middle-aged black man, his naked body exposed for Bradley to see. Bradley’s thoughts went wild, anticipating what they were going to do, but didn’t prepare him for what he saw next.

  First, Dr Brock injected an opaque liquid into John’s body, and then he started to talk. Bradley thought he was talking to him but then noticed Nurse Karen making notes and realised she was recording whatever it was Dr Brock was saying and doing.

  “We have injected a sedative and anaesthetic into the patient to minimise him moving during the procedure. We will give this a few moments to take hold. While we wait, we will remove the required specimens from our cadaver.”

  Karen scribbled furiously, and Bradley couldn’t look away as Dr Brock picked up a scalpel and went towards the cadaver.

  “We were going to do only one transfusion, but given the degree, the level of hatred that the patients feel towards people of colour, we have decided to proceed with a more drastic transformation. A bigger piece of the pie, if you will.”

  Bradley felt like throwing up as Dr Brock cut into the cadaver. No, he wasn’t cutting, as he explained to Karen; he was removing large pieces of skin instead. He transferred those pieces to a metal bowl beside him and then carried that bowl to where John was. Bradley couldn’t stop himself from vomiting when Dr Brock sliced off sections of John’s skin as well.

  “Before we start the transfer, we first have to remove the unnecessary skin from the patient to make room for his new skin.”

  Bradley violently threw up and, while spitting out remnants that remained in his mouth, tried to withhold the next surge of vomit by swallowing it back down. The doctor and nurse didn’t pay any attention to him. They simply continued to cut away at John’s skin, lifting it carefully from his body and placing it in a separate bowl. Bradley tried to avoid seeing what they were doing, but it was hard to turn his head; he could see them no matter where he looked.