Green Haven
Nightmare
In my dream there was always voices. Voices that wouldn't shut up. That’s always the first thing I remember when I woke up. Then I remember being strapped to a gurney, but more than strapped by my hands and feet. My head was strapped down and something was covering my face so I couldn’t look anywhere except at that damn bright light. I heard monitors somewhere near my head, beeping, torturous beeping that reminded me I was alive while they operated on me or did whatever they needed to do.
Then one of those things leaned over me and for a moment the bright light was eclipsed by something terrifying. It was a gas mask, the kind the military used to use when atomic bombs had been the latest fad. Ugly, scary things with tubes coming out of the sides like a deformed elephant with two trunks. There was two rings where the eyes should have been, but I could never see into those tiny windows. In my childhood this monster was eyeless due to that glaring handicap, more monster-like than man.
I felt something press down on my throat and I would become terrified that this monster was going to strangle me with it’s claws. I began to struggle, thrashing back and forth on the gurney until the monster would back away terrified. I would begin to grow desperate to escape, my fight or flight response kicking. As adrenaline seared through my body, I began to fight more against the gurney.
"He is ruining the test results with that flailing," I heard a deep, authoritative voice say somewhere from my left side. "Nurse, hook him up to the machine."
Fear crept into my being at the way he said 'machine'. The name was so familiar to me, and meant pain. Pain coursing through my body in waves of electricity. I began to tremble and shake with fear underneath the straps, wining in my trapped mouth. The trembling began to shake the gurney, and the male voice became more urgent. I felt something being put on my forehead, and for a moment a ghost of a hand appeared at the top of my vision. My body began to grow hot, and near the time I was beginning to accept I was going to be shocked, piss started to run down my leg. With that release, the heat from my body grew outwards. My inner energy and fear transpired to the gurney, and the nurse let out a shrill scream and then was cut off immediately.
I was jerked upright in the gurney, released from my binds. I stared down at the melting leather in grotesque amazement as flames crawled across the surface. I turned around and screamed when I saw the redheaded nurse still holding the machine. Her face that had been once so pretty was badly burnt, her once rosy cheeks melting onto the floor like a rubber doll. The deep voice doctor was lying dead on the floor, so burned he was black. I screamed again as the flames began to crawl off my table, coursing the floor and up the walls in orange flames.
Two of the creatures with elephant trunks came storming into the room, guns in their surprisingly human hands. Another wave coursed out of my body, this one from my materialized thought of an escape. They were blown backwards, spraying the walls with bullets as they went. An alarm was sounding from somewhere, alerting everyone in the building that something was happening. I walked out of the burning room, leaping over the creatures and running down the hallway towards a closed door. I was almost there when a man in a white lab coat and two creatures walked through. I really didn't mean to do it, but another wave was released from my body, blowing them backwards and shattering the windows. Pieces of the plaster and ceiling tiles began to rain down on the hallway and I could smell smoke coming from the other room.
I ran pass more bodies, trying to find an exit, trying not to hurt anyone else. The hellish nightmare continued as I ran into the nurses station. The three nurses at the desk were screaming in terror as they saw me, the little boy who had piss stains on his white hospital gown. They climbed over the desk, fighting each other for keys to the exit. I followed them, hoping that they would help me, not wanting them to be afraid of me. Once nurse, the one with gray hair and a sourpuss expression took off her white high heel and tried to club me with it as the threw open the doors and they ran into another hall towards a side exit. The old lady who had tried clubbing me barely went two yards when she burst into flames, a bloodcurdling yell ripped out of her mouth. The cells on the left side howled and screamed at the sight of the old lady. I ran, ran away, passed the scene of this torturous nightmare and out onto the green and flourishing grounds.
For twenty-two years I had went to session after sessions of therapy, therapist after therapist. None of them could understand where my dream had come from. It was too astounding of a story to be a suppressed memory, and for years I had been convinced by cooks that it had to be a metaphorical dream for another suppressed memory. Maybe my father had molested me and I had instead envisioned him as a monster with elephant horns and had wanted to burn him alive. People say they were abducted by aliens sometimes to suppress the truth about being sexually molested at a younger age. That would have made sense if I even had a father.
I was wandering around the country side when an old couple had found me back when I was nine. The newspapers said I was a feral child, one that had been probably kept secret from society by some hillbilly daughter that had gotten knocked up by a hitchhiker or some shit like that. Except I could read and write, so somebody must have taught me at some point. Except I had no birth certificate, no baptist records or school records or even a social security number when I was taken to a hospital.
It wasn't until one night when my wife asked what Green Haven was that I had began to think it was a suppressed memory.
"You were talking about it in your sleep." she said. That’s when I knew I had to find out whatever and wherever this Green Haven is.
So here I am, standing here in a corridor long abandoned. At my feet is one of those creature like masks, surrounded by piles of rubble. Green Haven was a mental institute in 1943, around the time I was six. Our government was rumored to have been doing science experiments on patients within when it burnt down sometime in August of that year. Most people would say it was done by the extreme heat. I know otherwise.
I feel the force building up within me, but this time I focus to concentrate it into my right hand. A ball of fire appears, and if I really concentrate, I can change the color and intensity of it. From blue to orange to yellow to red. I summon the power and it bends at my will.
I’m not sure how I got here. Maybe I was a normal orphan enlisted into a government program or maybe I had already been here beforehand, put away by my parents for having kinetic powers. Either way, the government was sure to burn all files of my existence. Hell, I was probably scared to return to society thinking they were going to turn me in so I stayed in the wilderness for a few years. Scared enough to block out all memories of this place.
I picked up the face mask and stared at the eye holes, still seeing nothing behind the glass. There probably wasn't nothing much behind the mask in the first place. I dropped it on the floor and walked again towards the side exit, hearing the lunatics howling from within my memories. I summoned the force to throw open the door, almost blowing it right off it’s hinges. I smiled to myself, thinking my nightmare has finally ended.
Then one of those things leaned over me and for a moment the bright light was eclipsed by something terrifying. It was a gas mask, the kind the military used to use when atomic bombs had been the latest fad. Ugly, scary things with tubes coming out of the sides like a deformed elephant with two trunks. There was two rings where the eyes should have been, but I could never see into those tiny windows. In my childhood this monster was eyeless due to that glaring handicap, more monster-like than man.
I felt something press down on my throat and I would become terrified that this monster was going to strangle me with it’s claws. I began to struggle, thrashing back and forth on the gurney until the monster would back away terrified. I would begin to grow desperate to escape, my fight or flight response kicking. As adrenaline seared through my body, I began to fight more against the gurney.
"He is ruining the test results with that flailing," I heard a deep, authoritative voice say somewhere from my left side. "Nurse, hook him up to the machine."
Fear crept into my being at the way he said 'machine'. The name was so familiar to me, and meant pain. Pain coursing through my body in waves of electricity. I began to tremble and shake with fear underneath the straps, wining in my trapped mouth. The trembling began to shake the gurney, and the male voice became more urgent. I felt something being put on my forehead, and for a moment a ghost of a hand appeared at the top of my vision. My body began to grow hot, and near the time I was beginning to accept I was going to be shocked, piss started to run down my leg. With that release, the heat from my body grew outwards. My inner energy and fear transpired to the gurney, and the nurse let out a shrill scream and then was cut off immediately.
I was jerked upright in the gurney, released from my binds. I stared down at the melting leather in grotesque amazement as flames crawled across the surface. I turned around and screamed when I saw the redheaded nurse still holding the machine. Her face that had been once so pretty was badly burnt, her once rosy cheeks melting onto the floor like a rubber doll. The deep voice doctor was lying dead on the floor, so burned he was black. I screamed again as the flames began to crawl off my table, coursing the floor and up the walls in orange flames.
Two of the creatures with elephant trunks came storming into the room, guns in their surprisingly human hands. Another wave coursed out of my body, this one from my materialized thought of an escape. They were blown backwards, spraying the walls with bullets as they went. An alarm was sounding from somewhere, alerting everyone in the building that something was happening. I walked out of the burning room, leaping over the creatures and running down the hallway towards a closed door. I was almost there when a man in a white lab coat and two creatures walked through. I really didn't mean to do it, but another wave was released from my body, blowing them backwards and shattering the windows. Pieces of the plaster and ceiling tiles began to rain down on the hallway and I could smell smoke coming from the other room.
I ran pass more bodies, trying to find an exit, trying not to hurt anyone else. The hellish nightmare continued as I ran into the nurses station. The three nurses at the desk were screaming in terror as they saw me, the little boy who had piss stains on his white hospital gown. They climbed over the desk, fighting each other for keys to the exit. I followed them, hoping that they would help me, not wanting them to be afraid of me. Once nurse, the one with gray hair and a sourpuss expression took off her white high heel and tried to club me with it as the threw open the doors and they ran into another hall towards a side exit. The old lady who had tried clubbing me barely went two yards when she burst into flames, a bloodcurdling yell ripped out of her mouth. The cells on the left side howled and screamed at the sight of the old lady. I ran, ran away, passed the scene of this torturous nightmare and out onto the green and flourishing grounds.
For twenty-two years I had went to session after sessions of therapy, therapist after therapist. None of them could understand where my dream had come from. It was too astounding of a story to be a suppressed memory, and for years I had been convinced by cooks that it had to be a metaphorical dream for another suppressed memory. Maybe my father had molested me and I had instead envisioned him as a monster with elephant horns and had wanted to burn him alive. People say they were abducted by aliens sometimes to suppress the truth about being sexually molested at a younger age. That would have made sense if I even had a father.
I was wandering around the country side when an old couple had found me back when I was nine. The newspapers said I was a feral child, one that had been probably kept secret from society by some hillbilly daughter that had gotten knocked up by a hitchhiker or some shit like that. Except I could read and write, so somebody must have taught me at some point. Except I had no birth certificate, no baptist records or school records or even a social security number when I was taken to a hospital.
It wasn't until one night when my wife asked what Green Haven was that I had began to think it was a suppressed memory.
"You were talking about it in your sleep." she said. That’s when I knew I had to find out whatever and wherever this Green Haven is.
So here I am, standing here in a corridor long abandoned. At my feet is one of those creature like masks, surrounded by piles of rubble. Green Haven was a mental institute in 1943, around the time I was six. Our government was rumored to have been doing science experiments on patients within when it burnt down sometime in August of that year. Most people would say it was done by the extreme heat. I know otherwise.
I feel the force building up within me, but this time I focus to concentrate it into my right hand. A ball of fire appears, and if I really concentrate, I can change the color and intensity of it. From blue to orange to yellow to red. I summon the power and it bends at my will.
I’m not sure how I got here. Maybe I was a normal orphan enlisted into a government program or maybe I had already been here beforehand, put away by my parents for having kinetic powers. Either way, the government was sure to burn all files of my existence. Hell, I was probably scared to return to society thinking they were going to turn me in so I stayed in the wilderness for a few years. Scared enough to block out all memories of this place.
I picked up the face mask and stared at the eye holes, still seeing nothing behind the glass. There probably wasn't nothing much behind the mask in the first place. I dropped it on the floor and walked again towards the side exit, hearing the lunatics howling from within my memories. I summoned the force to throw open the door, almost blowing it right off it’s hinges. I smiled to myself, thinking my nightmare has finally ended.