Sanatorium by Crazzak

[Crazzak]

((Here is a short story I wrote, feedback is welcome - Crazzak))

Cut your eyes out. Bleed on my floor. Watch the world die around you. Live my life.
-Inscribed on the floor of room 112.

Hey you! Out there in the cold. I’ve been here since I was twelve since I went blind. The only reason I am still here is because I say I still see. Which I do, just not what you want to me see. I’m not the youngest kid here or the oldest. I haven’t been here the longest but I still feel like I will die here, which is probably true since you live here till you die. This place is known as Round Rock Youth Clinic for Troubled Adolescents.

Here I sit and wait in this room drawing circles with my finger nails, writing skulls into the walls. Bleeding on the cold, cold tile.
You don’t want to die here. Getting lonely, getting cold, can you feel me? It is usually from exposure, the world outside is a freezing cold apocalypse waiting for you to die. This place is poorly run and no one seems to care. Records are lost. People are forgotten about. Lives are evaporated.


I don’t want to be here. I’m the only one sane enough to realize that. It’s not a good place. Yet, at this point in my life I realize no where is.

Hey you! Standing in the aisles! With itchy and broken smiles can you feel me? Of course you can’t your just sitting there and watching me die like the rest of them. All these doctors and nurse just want one less patient to deal with. Hey you! Don’t help them to bury the live!

I guess I should tell you about myself. I’ve been here since I burned my eyes out in a fire when I was eleven. I watched my friend’s house burn down. The fire wasn’t supposed to kill anyone. It had just started because someone put plastic in the Microwave. When they took it out they placed it on the counter to cool a spark hit the paper towels and it just got bigger and bigger. Eventually it consumed the whole house. There I sat and watched it burn and burn. The flames grew taller as they licked the edges of the walls. It was like a monstrous dragon staring down at me with its hollow red eyes, and I stood back and watched it end my life.

I ran outside. I looked back and saw my friend standing up straight as he stared at the wall.

“Don’t give in without a fight!” I yelled but it was too late.

Then he too was consumed by the flames. I tried to stop myself but I ran back towards the house as the walls caved in on him. As his skull was burned black and the flames licked his flesh clean I ran towards the fire hoping to save the life of a dead boy. I was restrained by a fireman left only to watch my friend die.
A beam collapsed inside the house sending pieces of timber in every direction, including towards my face. As a sharp piece of wood pierced itself deep into my eyes causing the flesh and to burn and the retinas to scar very deeply, I cried out for all of this hate. I watched my friend burn to death and now I had lost my sight. This was the first time I had ever tasted the bitter ichors of death.

It would not be the last. After I lost my eyes I still saw, but not what they wanted me to see. I hallucinated in the darkness of my mind and saw things crawling from the corners trying to kill me. They were never real but they were real enough for me. They hurt me. They stung me. They made me bleed in ways I couldn’t imagine.

Then they came out of the darkness. Their eyes shone with hate and utter disgust. The disdain they felt for me stung when it turned to physical abuse as they shoved me to the floor and handcuffed my hands. They beat me because they could.
Hey you out there on your own why did you let them do this to me? There people just standing there and watching. Was I just another distraught victim? Did you think this was right? This was wrong. Very wrong. I suffered and lost my humanity because of this. And you let it happen? What was the reasoning behind this? Why did it have to happen to me?

I was afraid as they shoved me into the back of the ambulance and my life began to speed off in a dangerously dark new direction. That day haunts me still. Apparently I was blamed for starting the fire but since I didn’t do it they just decided to have me thrown in here, with the damned.

Life is suffering. I have been sitting here since that day, sitting naked by the phone, would you touch me? That’s all I want someone to let me know I am not alone. That my suffering is shared, but of course it’s not. Of course you want to let me die. I am worthless trash in world. I steal valuable money from you and your family because I don’t contribute to society. For that reason no one should touch me or even look at me. After all I am nothing but a blind thief. So here I am.

I carry a dagger against my cold dead pale skin asking for someone to kill me. I do not want a life that only involves suffering. I did not choose this. I do not know what I did to create so much hate towards me. I pray to god asking for his forgiveness for crimes that I don’t remember. Yet he doesn’t answer. Only darkness. I am left to freeze and devour the flesh of the dead here in hell. I carry a knife and let its simple metal edge rub against my skin. The cold steel caressing the dead flesh. Asking me if I am ready. It calls for the shadow of my death, which I know you want.

So leave me to die, because I have never felt the touch of another human. I want to be heard. I want to be known for my humanity. But I am not one of you. I am less than you, a phantom among the living. I bear no mark from love or hate or disgust. I sit here and wait for someone to call out for me. But in this world only darkness answers my screams. For I am lower than the untouchables, the sewer cleans, and the damned. And I sit and wait.

Waiting for this cursed pestilence that devours my life to disperse into a puddle of nothingness. I am patient I will wait and plot but my life wastes away in this prison that I sit and rot.

Hey you! With you ear against the wall are you listening to me? I am dying and you do nothing. These words. These emotions. This is my blood and you have left it to dry on this page. That’s why you read this story because you wonder about my death. Will I die? Will I survive? You won’t know, trust me. Or at least believe the truth.

I sit here and watch the darkness tell me the truth. It whispers to me as I run my hand down the ribs poking through the skin, as I feel my way across my eyes tracing the old scars. It sings in its beautiful ghastly voice that calls to me. It creeps around the wire frame of my cot and the cold metallic window sill barred from the outside world. Blue Birds fly and sing out their but not in this frozen winter paradise. That’s when I saw it.

And yet in every corner, every shadow, every nook and cranny, it was sitting there and waiting. So finally I sat down and listened to it. The voice sounded like nails scrapping on the chalkboard. I clawed red lines on to my face because of the screeching of the voice caused me to cringe in pain and yet I managed to stay there and listen.

So here I am waiting for someone to call, would you touch me? It eases my pain to know that someone is there with me. I just want a friend. Someone I can confess to. Someone I can tell the truth. I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want to cry myself to sleep in tears of blood. I don’t want to die and go to hell for who I am. Please if you’re out there would you please let me know I am not alone? Hey you! Would you help me carry the stone that binds me here?

Don’t let them crucify me like they did to the patient before me. I can still smell his death in this room. I taste his sins. Sins of him. Sins of me. Sins of my parents.

I want to tell my parents “Open your heart, I am coming home.” But it was only a fantasy.

But I will never see there faces. I am dead to them. I am the black sheep who could destroy them. I am a secret that must be kept. For if my existence were known it could shatter the happy life they live. I must die so those who hate me can live.
And I think back to the story of the man who died here before me. The wall was too high as you can see that’s why he died. They shoved him against the hard concrete. They said they needed to put him out of his misery. They said he was terminal. We only become terminal after we come here. That is the truth and that’s why they shot him because he understood.

No matter how hard he could not break free, and we helped them. We choose not to stand up to the monsters that trapped us here and we let them die. And you do the same and refuse to stand up for me. And the words ate into his brain, is that what you want to happen to me?

Hey you, out there on the road, will you let me die? Will I be abandon like the countless souls before me? Is this my fate? The answer to all is yes. I die so others can live. I die so money is pooled to help the helpless. I die because it betters the nation.
Always doing what you’re told can you help me? No because you will listen to the government and let me die. I realized this and left my room breaking bottles in the hall wonder if you can help me? But I knew it wasn’t true. That’s when the darkness called.
When the shadows spoke to me, I finally saw and then I marched out of the room. I grabbed a pair of scissors from an attendant who was not watching her back pocket then I walked into room 112 and set the world a flame. Into fire all life begins and all death ends. At least for me it does.

Hey you don’t tell me there’s no hope at all. After all together we stand, divided we fall. And I divide you so I must die.

Lyrics from Pink Floyd Hey You used for entertainment purposes only. No part of the lyrics are being replicated for personal gain.

[tamwyn]

I'd recommend spacing out your paragraphs a bit better, but that might be because you transferred it from Word, so that's okay, because the "enter/return" button doesn't always carry over from Word.

Wall of text is extremely hard to read.

[Crazzak]

Sorry I'll fix that now.

[tamwyn]

“I’ve been here since I was twelve since I went blind”

-I think this could have been worded better. It’s usually a bad idea to use the same word twice in a sentence. Also, more information would help the sentence, like for instance, giving a short reason why [you] went blind; i.e. “…from staring at the sun too long.” Obviously, don’t use that silly one, but you get the picture. If you were planning on revealing it later, then at least give a vague reason to give it a little more oomph. I’d suggest rewording it to say “I’ve been here since I was twelve when I went blind [insert for what reason].”

“Which I do, just not what you want to me see.”

-See me…as? This sentence just doesn’t make sense to me.

“All these doctors and nurse just want one less patient to deal with. Hey you! Don’t help them to bury the live!”

-Change “nurse” to “nurses” and “live” to “living”

“As a sharp piece of wood pierced itself deep into my eyes causing the flesh and to burn and the retinas to scar very deeply, I cried out for all of this hate.”

-Not a good sentence here. Put a comma after “eyes” or it’s just a run on. Also “I cried out for all of this hate”? What? That makes no sense. Maybe reword to “I cried out with pain and hatred.”

“Hey you out there on your own why did you let them do this to me?”

-Comma after own.

“I was afraid as they shoved me into the back of the ambulance and my life began to speed off in a dangerously dark new direction.”

-Another run on sentence. Consider commas and take out the “as”, because you gave no follow up to it in the next part of the sentence. Perhaps if you had deleted the “and” and added a comma after ambulance and changed began to beginning it would have worked and followed up.

-After all that, I couldn’t stay and continue reading. The story was just too much whining. Not enough story, in my opinion. Also, I don’t really like people –talking- to me out of a story, because it makes it impersonal; I can’t relate.
Also also, I just don’t like this genre so it may be that. I’d consider working on a few things, reading around the forum for Kaez, Agro, Taed, or Zovo’s writings in particular and see the way they word things. They’ve had years of experience at this and constant critiques to make themselves better, so don’t worry about this.

Also also also, don’t take offense to anything I’ve said. It’s all to help you become a better writer, not to bash you or your story. Good luck, mon ami.

[Crazzak]

Alright thank you.