The Institute: A Dark Anthology

by Dani René

  Thank you to Deb for being gracious, uplifting, completely supportive, and for being a fantastic Alpha reader.

  Thank you to Kendra for saving my ass! If every author had an editor with such heart, they would all be as happy as me. Once you have worked on my manuscripts, I always feel relief that my book will be the best it can be for my readers.

  Thank you to Jay Aheer for, yet again, giving us authors an amazing cover. You are a goddess.

  Thank you to ARC readers and Reviewers. You are amazing and always getting this India train rolling on social media and all over the internet!

  And, a special thank you to my readers who, no matter what, have my back, heart, and soul.

  Music That Inspired India

  Spotlight artists:

  Freya Ridings, thank you for being so deep and dark, giving me much inspiration!

  Alterbridge, thank you for you album, Walk the Sky.

  “One Life” by Alterbridge

  “”Wouldn’t You Rather” by Alterbridge

  “You Were Good To Me” by Keremy Zucker & Chelsea Cutler

  “Poison” by Frey Ridings

  “In the Deep” Alterbridge

  “Ultraviolet” by Freya Ridings

  “Silent All These Years” by Tori Amos

  “Fully Alive” by Flyleaf

  “Fine Again” by Seether

  “Love in the Dark” by Jessie Reyez

  “Blackout” by Freya Ridings

  “The After You” by Miakoda

  Mr. Cat is Not Real

  Jennifer Bene

  Text copyright © 2020 Jennifer Bene

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  The walls are breathing again, but at least they’re not whispering this time.

  Yet.

  Dr. Nickelsen says it’s not real, that I just have to focus on something that still feels normal and push the bad thoughts away, but it’s not easy when I can hear every inhale and exhale like the volume’s been cranked up to eleven.

  I twist on the bed, trying to bury my head under the pillow, but all I manage to do is shove it off the mattress. Fuck. Now I’m stuck here until one of the orderlies gets me up for Rec Room time, and I have no idea what time it is.

  The lights came on a little bit ago, it’s what woke me up, but since my room is near the end of the hall, I’m always one of the last ones to be set free. Although, I know for a fact that some of the other patients aren’t tethered to their beds at night. I want to be allowed to walk around my room, to use the toilet, but Dr. Nickelsen says I’m still ‘a danger to myself.’

  “Pssst.” Someone, something, hisses from my left and I clench my eyes tight. If I don’t look, I can pretend it’s not real. The leather straps on my wrist and ankles are real. My socks are real, and so are my thin pants and shirt. The bed is real, the room is real.

  The voice is not real.

  “Talk to me, Nina,” it says, making a sad, whining sound. “You don’t like me anymore, do you? I thought we were friends.”

  It’s Mr. Cat. My oldest friend — hallucination. But I’m not supposed to talk to him anymore. They’ll never leave me untethered if they catch me talking to him.

  “I heard them talking about you.”

  “No, you didn’t. Stop it,” I whisper over the sound of the walls exhaling.

  “They said you’re a bad girl. Dirty. They don’t like you,” he purrs, getting closer. “But I do.”

  “Stop,” I beg, and I’m pleading more with my brain than Mr. Cat. He’s not real, and if I can just believe that enough then maybe he’ll stop showing up. Maybe then I’ll get privileges… maybe then I can go home.

  “I like you just the way you are, Nina. Will you look at me? Please?” He lets out a soft, meowing whine, and I give in. Turning my head, I see him on the floor, his furry head tilted to the side. Mr. Cat looks like if my cat Winky, from when I was a kid, had a baby with the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. He’s bigger than a normal cat, striped like a blue and gray tiger, and his mouth is much larger than it should be. Those sharp teeth could rip the skin from my bones if I let them, which is why I try to keep Mr. Cat happy.

  Even though he’s not real.

  “I am real, Nina.” He pads over, reading my mind again as he rubs his cheek against my fingers, and I can feel the texture of his fur where it passes over my skin.

  Not real.

  Cuffs. Bed. Clothes. Room. Those are real.

  “Leave me alone!” I shout, and the lock on the door clicks at the same time. A whine wrenches its way out of my throat as I kick at the leather cuffs on my ankles. “No, no, no!”

  “Talking to the voices again, Nina?” the orderly, Tom, asks in a sad tone, but I can tell he’s already judging me, planning to tell on me, and I shake my head hard.

  “No! I wasn’t! I swear, please!” Twisting on the bed, I pull at the cuffs and try to beg. “Please, I wasn’t. Please don’t tell Dr. Nickelsen. I’ve been doing good. I’ve been so good!”

  “Calm down, Nina. You know I can’t let you up if you don’t calm down.”

  “Okay! I’ll be calm, I swear, just don’t tell him? Please?” I make myself be still, but it’s hard when Mr. Cat is sitting on the floor behind Tom, his eyes narrowed at the man’s back. I can see the fur rising along his spine, his shoulders angling down like he’s about to pounce, and I scream, “DON’T HURT HIM!”

  Tom jumps back from me, his brown eyes wide for a second before he sighs heavily. Panic rushes through me as I look back up at him, shaking my head, but he’s already pressing the little button on the collar of his scrubs. “I’m going to need assistance with Nina this morning.”

  “No!” I cry, feeling the tears start as I rip at the leather cuffs again. “I was just trying to help! I didn’t want him to hurt you!”

  “Who, Nina?” Tom asks, hands on his hips as he stares down at me with a tired look. “Was it Mr. Cat again?”

  All I can do is scream, but I try to suppress it through clenched teeth. I was doing so well, so well, and I never should have responded to him. I should have kept my eyes closed and waited for Tom to come get me, and now it’s all ruined.

  It’s all ruined.

  “I know he’s not real! Please! The bed. The room. My clothes. I know he’s not! It’s his teeth, and his claws — I just wanted to help!” My voice trails off into a whine as Tom shakes his head, keeping his distance from the bed, and when I scan the room again, I can’t see Mr. Cat anymore.

  He’s gone, and the walls sigh heavily in disappointment.

  I was doing good. I was being good.

  I just want to be good.

  Chapter 2

  Tom had to wait for Antonio to back him up before he finally let me out of my cuffs. I’d apologized a hundred times, babbled and begged, but it hadn’t mattered.

  Mr. Cat ruined everything.

  All I want is to be treated like the other patients. The more stable ones that get to play in the Rec Room all day. Half the time I get put back in my room because Mr. Cat says something or does something — but it’s not my fault.

  None of this is my fault.

  I never wanted to see Mr. Cat. I mean… I’d wanted a friend, I’d prayed for a friend every night at bedtime, but the day Mr. Cat showed up wasn’t a happy day. I’d been arguing with the toaster in the kitchen, the stupid black appliance that said so many mean things to me in the mornings, and then Mr. Cat had padded across the countertop like Winky used to when he was alive. Without saying a
word, he’d swatted the toaster onto the floor, hissing at the evil thing, and for a moment I’d actually felt happy. Protected.

  Then Mom started yelling.

  And crying.

  I tried to explain that I hadn’t broken the toaster, that Mr. Cat had knocked it to the floor because it was being mean to me… but that had only made her cry harder. She’d locked herself in her bedroom again, and as I lay on the floor in the hall, humming to her under the crack in the door, Mr. Cat had curled up with me and promised never to leave me. I’d made him promise, made him say it again and again in his purring voice — but that was a mistake.

  The toaster was dead, but Mr. Cat was alive.

  Or at least I thought he was — is — whatever.

  It doesn’t matter. A few months later Mom brought me here, to the Serenity Institute where the doctors promised her they’d make me better. Dr. Sterling had patted my mom’s hand and Dr. Nickelsen had smiled in his comforting way while they both promised that they’d help me distinguish reality from the strange hallucinations my brain likes to create… but that was so long ago. Years, definitely.

  How many years?

  I’m not even sure anymore. At first Mom used to visit me every week, she would bring me lemon bars and sweet tea and assure me that I’d come back home soon. Soon. That word was a lie. Every week turned into every other week, and then once a month, and then less and less until she stopped coming at all. There are no more lemon bars now, no more sweet tea, and the only promise that lies unbroken is Mr. Cat’s.

  He says he’ll never leave me, that he’s the only one I can trust, but more than anything I want him to go away.

  I want to be good.

  I want Dr. Nickelsen to tell me I’m sane. That I can go home and be like everyone else. But he’ll never tell me that as long as Mr. Cat keeps showing up.

  “Did she piss herself?” Antonio asks, and I can hear the disgust in his voice. I didn’t pee the bed. I’m actually very good at holding it now, but when I look up at him the scrunched-up expression on his face tells me what’s coming before Tom responds.

  “No idea, but we should get her cleaned up.”

  My body goes rigid, legs locking as I lean back against their firm holds on my arms. “No! No, you can’t. I’ll use the washcloth, I promise, I’ll be good, just please—”

  “Nina, you have to take a shower. You know the rules.” Tom sighs, half-lifting my feet off the floor as his fingers mold bruises into my bicep. “Everyone has to shower twice a week at a minimum.”

  “NO!” I squeal, my socks slipping on the tile in the hall as they drag me around the corner. To the right. The opposite direction of the Rec Room. I flail, kicking out at the air in front of me like I can somehow stop their forward march toward doom. “Please, please, Tom! You know it’s not safe, it’s—” I cut myself short from saying it’s poisoned because Dr. Nickelsen told me that’s not true. That the chemicals in the water are in my head just like Mr. Cat is… but I can’t turn off the fear running like slivers of ice through my veins.

  “Don’t make this harder on yourself, Nina,” Tom replies, and as much as I hate him right now, I’m grateful that he’s here. Tom is more patient, kinder. Antonio never says nice things to me. Mr. Cat says he wants to kill me, and even though Mr. Cat isn’t real… I believe him. The way Antonio’s nails dig into the tender skin on the inside of my arm is proof enough of that. He doesn’t like me, he wants to hurt me, and I’m pretty sure he only lied about me peeing in the bed because he wanted to make me go to the showers.

  “That’s true,” Mr. Cat says as he slips out of an open door ahead of us. His blue-gray tail flicks through the air, slicing it like a scythe as he glances back at me with large amber eyes. “They think you’re dirty, just like I said.”

  “I’m not dirty,” I whine, and Antonio shakes me roughly, jostling me into Tom’s side.

  “You reek, Nina. Stop fighting us and just do what you’re told.” The mean orderly mutters something under his breath, and I know he’s saying more mean things. Mr. Cat will tell me what he said later. His ears have always been better than mine, and although he’s just a hallucination, he’s helpful like that sometimes.

  When I finally see the door to the showers my knees give out, but Tom and Antonio don’t let go of me. Antonio spits out a curse and Tom groans as their fingers dig deeper into my arms, dragging me the last ten feet across the tile.

  “Please don’t do this,” I beg through the first hints of the sob building in my chest. I can feel the panic rising, the raw terror that Dr. Nickelsen says I can control if I breathe deeply.

  So, I try.

  I drag air in through my nose, count to five, and then let it out in a rush past shaking lips. It doesn’t help — it never does — and as Tom kicks the swinging door open, catching it with his foot, the tears spill down my cheeks.

  “Jesus Christ, it’s a shower, Nina.” Antonio sighs, wrapping his arms around me in a bear hug to lift me off my feet so Tom can step away to turn on the water.

  “You don’t understand!” I scream through the next panicked sob. My breaths are way too fast, too shallow, and I know they’re going to tell Dr. Nickelsen about this. They’ll tell him about Mr. Cat, about me talking to him, and I’m sure Tom won’t even mention that I tried to save his life.

  “The water is perfectly safe, Nina. Look.” Tom swipes his hand through the stream of poison pouring out of the shower head, and I shake my head violently, trying to wiggle out of Antonio’s iron grip.

  “Don’t do that! Please!” I’m trying to protect Tom. Again. But he doesn’t see it. He can’t see the shiny, metal particles in the water. The infinitesimally small knives that can slip through the cells of your skin and burrow into your blood, riding the currents of every pulse to slice your organs to shreds. Each little cut making way for the poison that lives in the pipes. It lets it in — and I can’t let it in.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Cat purrs. “If you let the poison in then you’ll be too weak to fight them when they want to lock you away again.”

  It’s true. Mr. Cat isn’t real but the poison… that’s real. I knew about the poison before Mr. Cat even showed up. It’s everywhere. Not just in the pipes carrying water to the Institute, or even the town of Cove Hill, but everywhere. I discovered the poison at home, when Mom made me take another bath. She made me take one every day, sometimes twice a day, and I’d always wondered why… until I saw the shiny glints. The light caught them whenever the water was moving. Little shards of metal so small that I couldn’t see them without some kind of microscope, but I knew what they were on instinct. It all made sense once I realized they were there. How calm I felt after the baths, how my muscles and my body felt tired… it was the poison. At first I’d thought Mom had done it, a new attempt to get what she called ‘medicine’ into my body, but the poison in the water is too big an undertaking for it to have been my mom’s doing. No, this was the shadow people. The hidden people that try to keep the truth a secret — and the water is how they do it.

  “God, she really smells, Tom,” Antonio complains, and I twist my hips violently, managing to break his hold, and my knees hit the tile hard. “DAMMIT!” he roars.

  I throw myself toward the door, scrabbling my sweat-dampened palms over the tiles as I try to get away from the shower, but a rough tug on my ankle flattens me against the floor. My cheek cracks against the tile before I flip over to kick at Antonio.

  “Fucking help me!” Antonio snaps, and Tom grabs my flailing arms just as Antonio lies across my legs.

  “You have to stop, Nina. Do you want us to sedate you?” Tom’s face is upside down above me, a wrinkle forming between his brows as he looks at me with exhausted concern. “Please don’t fight us today.”

  “Yeah, let them coat you in poison so you’ll be a well-behaved little robot,” Mr. Cat says, his voice shuddering with the low, rumbling growl in his furry chest. He stalks closer, his sharp claws clicking against the tiles with each step, and I can
see that he’s focused on Tom again.

  “Please don’t,” I whine, pleading with Mr. Cat, but at least this is something that makes sense to the orderlies. They still think I’m talking about the shower, but that’s only because they don’t know how dangerous Mr. Cat can be, especially to Tom. I know that he hates Tom. He hates Tom because Tom is nice to me and I’m nice to him. I listen to Tom more than Mr. Cat likes, because — as Mr. Cat has told me again and again — only he can keep me safe. Everyone else wants to hurt me, wants to drug me or kill me.

  Just like Mom.

  “I’ve got her arms, go ahead and get her undressed,” Tom says, tilting his chin toward Antonio who quickly grabs the elastic waistband of my pants, his fingers dipping into my underwear to drag them down as well in one quick sweep.

  I’m so focused on Mr. Cat that I don’t even try to fight them. He’s smiling, every one of his sharp teeth catching the cold, clinical lights of the bathroom, and I know that if I look away, he’ll hurt Tom, and if he hurts Tom then I’ll just have Antonio on the morning shift.

  “Will you behave, Nina?” Tom asks, and I risk a glance up at his eyes before I stare at Mr. Cat again. He’s sitting just a few feet away, more than close enough to leap onto Tom’s back and tear those terrifying teeth through his throat, ripping out rib bones with his claws.

  Tom doesn’t deserve that.

  I’ll let them dose me with poison if it means Mr. Cat will let Tom live.

  If only they understood what I do to keep them safe.

  “We’ll be good,” I answer, glaring at Mr. Cat, and I know as soon as the words leave my lips that they were wrong, but Tom just shakes his head a little as he helps me sit up on the floor. “I meant I’ll be good.”

  “Okay, Nina,” Tom answers in his soft voice, gently lifting my shirt over my head, and I duck out of it quickly so I can turn my head back to Mr. Cat. It doesn’t matter if Tom thinks I’m crazy as long as I keep him safe by watching my dangerous friend — hallucination. Dr. Nickelsen says hallucinations can’t hurt me, or anyone else, but Dr. Nickelsen has never seen Mr. Cat. I think he’d change his mind if he did.