Silence Falls

Otep had spent the greater part of the week hanging around by the entrance of the Women’s Ward in case Orderly Jack happened to appear for any reason. She made sure to integrate with the unhinged by staggering from left to right, her head lolled here and there as she slouched against the walls to keep herself from sinking to the floor. She moaned, and babbled gibberish to herself all the while peeking through the strands of her blond hair, spying on her surroundings like an undercover agent.

The nurses were still on edge over what happened the night the blueprints had turned up missing.

The following morning, Demitria, Onika, Natasha and Alexis had all woken to deafening shrieks from down the hall towards the entrance of the Women’s Ward.

Onika shot up in bed and gaped at the door. “Holy shit, what the fuck was that!?”

“The staff!” Alexis answered, sitting up in bed too, her hands clutching onto her crisp white sheets.

“But what the hell are they screaming about?” Natasha whispered to them, her brown eyes darting to the pair opposite of her bunk bed.

Demitria shuddered in her bed as she watched the others rise from their beds to huddle around the door for a snoop through their small window. Gradually getting out of her own bed, she whimpered to herself. “God, I don’t really wanna know what’s going on out there.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to leave their cells to see what the bustle was all about because they had been sealed within their cells by Otep who had idled behind to clean up after their prosperous pursuit to swipe the blueprints from the visiting Contractors.

“Anybody see anything?” Natasha whispered, trying to gander around Alexis who was taller than her.

Alexis shook her head, her eyes squinting to see anything through the dim lighting from down the hall. “I can’t see anything. They’re far out of our view.”

Collectively, all they knew was that whatever Nurse Leah and Beatrice were screaming about it was coming from the same direction of the patient’s bathroom, the very same spot they had witnessed Otep dragging the bodies of the contractors to.

At first, the four were all terrified that Otep had brutally murdered the drugged bodies of the three contractors and maybe smeared their organs all over the bathroom walls for the nurses to be screaming so blood-curdling like!

“Nope, I refuse to believe it!” Onika disbanded the graphic gory presumption from the discussion with a swift wave of her hand. “Now I can agree that Otep can be a whole lot of crazy ass shit, but murdering senselessly is not one of them! I mean, what would be the gain in slicing these guys into pieces? What’s the logic in that?”

“There is no logic.” Natasha answered firmly with a shake of her head. “Unless it’s to put the blame on another patient or something so they’d get accused of breaking out and committing the murder.”

“I’d like to think Otep wouldn’t do that.” Demitria crossed her arms over her chest with a frown. “We don’t need to be pinning murder on these sick peoples in order to get out of this place. It’s uncalled for!”

“I’m with Demitria on this one. I don’t believe Otep did anything as far-fetched as that. Our plan will work just fine without taking a life.” Alexis concurred, draping an arm around the younger one’s shoulder. “If we’re looking for answers, we’re gonna have to wait until they open the doors. Then we can find Otep and get the real story behind those screams.”

And as the day progressed, they heard the truth about what had been discovered that very morning. It turned out the first group of nurses that arrived that morning to discharge Nurse Leah and Beatrice of their nightwatch had noted with concern that the nurse’s station had been deserted. Now every employee that worked there knew that the rules are to stay within the station during the entire night shifts, except for emergency reasons.

The curious nurses assumed there had indeed been trouble, and so proceeded to hunt down their missing co-workers Leah and Beatrice. In the shower stall, they came upon a gruesome sight!

Nurse Leah and Beatrice were lying on the ground butt-naked with three visiting male contractors, their clothes also distributed everywhere among limps tangled with one another. The positions of the slumbering bodies were in SCREAMED a massive sex orgy had taken place in the Psychiatric Hipostal in the dead of night while the patients were locked away sleeping.

Hearing such a powerful uproar, the nurses and contractors woke to the piercing sound of screams after screams of outrage. Nurse Leah and Beatrice were beside themselves with shock at their lack of clothes and the proximity of the male bodies mingled against their own. They screeched even louder as they kicked at the three dumbfounded men to get away from them.

“And so those two believed the contractors had snuck in, drugged them while their backs were turned, and raped them last night.” Otep wrapped up during breakfast as she concentrated on satiating her empty stomach with food. She needed all the energy she would get especially after last night’s objectives in staging the scene of a bogus crime that never occurred.

“Goddamn, Otep.” Onika replied in awe of their leader’s plan. None of them had been prepared to hear this when they entered the cafeteria and saw Otep eating her breakfast quite nonchalantly. No one would have believed she’d been up carrying out a mission all night long. “Did the contractors remember anything from last night?”

“Yeah, did any of them remember you in particular?” Alexis asked, recalling the man she should have knocked out but had been too frightened to. “I think he got a good enough look at you from behind.”

Otep shook her head, her eyes on her scrambled eggs. “Nope. They didn’t say a thing except to deny Nurse Leah and Beatrice’s accusation of rape.” A grin suddenly stretched across her lips, a humorous one. “IN fact, they claimed the nurses had been the ones to drug them since they have no recollection of anything after inspecting the wall last night.”

“That’s horrible.” Demitria whispered, lowering her eyes to her own eggs that she was pushing around on her tray. She’d lost her appetite.

Otep ignored her, not wishing to hear her chastise her for what she’d done to protect them. “Anyway, they were screaming back and forth until the contractors were forcefully escorted off the premises.”

“And so neither party remembers what truly transpired last night.” Alexis said, closing her eyes with relief and letting out a breath. “It remains an unsolved mystery for now, and we remain safe from their torturing clutches.”