Silence Falls

A few months had passed in the Psychiatric Hospital and just about everyone had already lost most of their hope except for Jack.

The young orderly had been keeping a close eye on every member of Hermanni’s family since their first encounter, researching on each of their personal files on his breaks, then carefully scale down the dosage of their fatal medications, and finally deleting their names off any of the meritted torture lists whenever they were caught in a predicament and replacing it with another patient. Jack kept his side of the bargain since he spoke to Hermanni, and had never let any harm come his patient’s way.

However, this didn’t inhibit them from skating down the slippery slope into depression though.

Unfortunately, the females suffered worse than the males. They had already utterly given up any hopes of escaping and living an easy going life of their own somewhere far away from Silence Falls. They hardly spoke to one another anymore, didn’t feel the need to eat their meals and practically shambled around like all the other insane patients.

The males no longer cared about what happened to their well beings either. If anyone dared to pick a fight with them they showed no interest in defending themselves. They too stopped communicating with one another, and yet they still stuck together wherever they went in their ward. Out of the four, Bert was the only one that didn’t care about the risks anymore even to the point of jeopardizing his own life to find salvation.

Orderly Jack was making his customary rounds to check on his group of patients in the recreational room when he noticed something that almost gave him a heart attack right there on the spot. The two male nurses that were appointed to stand watch in the nurse’s station were hassling outside of the station to divide two patients from killing each other over what sounded like to be a green crayon. Within that very station, Jack caught sight of Bert McCracken frantically rummaging through the metal cabinets. Knowing that he had to desist him before he got thrown into some chastisement, Jack hastily zoomed past the unconcerned working nurses and headed for the station’s doorway where he seized a steel-like grip on a frenzied Bert’s upper arm.

“What in the love of God are you fucking doing, Bert!” Jack hissed loud enough for only Bert to hear.

Bert glared up at Jack with burdened circles under his eyes. “Looking for a fucking map or something! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“I’m saving your ass from something far worse than electroshock, that’s what!” Jack retorted, hauling him towards both exit and entrance. The forceful handling compelled Bert to drop the green crayon he had poached from his other hand, exposing himself to be the Green Crayon Thief all along.

“What the hell do you care about what happens to me!? About what happens to anyone here!?” Bert spat back, making Jack flash him an incensed ‘are you kidding me right now’ kind of expression.

“What’s that look for?” Bert demanded to know, his brows furrowed in puzzlement.

“HEY, WHAT'S HE DOING IN THERE!?”

Bert and Jack each whipped their heads to see one of the nurses pointing directly at Bert through the thick pane glass, an indignant expression on his face.

Oh no, Jack thought to himself in that split second moment, I have to think of something fast!

Jack stepped out of the nurse’s station while still yanking a silent Bert along closely behind him.

“Don’t worry about him, I got him!” Jack informed the male nurses, attempting to escort Bert promptly to his room so that they could see for themselves that he had the situation under control.

“Hold on a minute, what was he doing in there, Jack?” The other male nurse, Benjamin, interrogated behind their backs, not appearing the least bit swayed.

Jack let out a long sigh as he slowly turned around. Great, now he had to think of some way to enlist them to back off his patient and focus their sadistic brutality towards another defenseless soul. Feigning as if he hadn’t heard Nurse Benjamin, Jack inquired over his shoulder with a look of confusion. “What was that, Ben?”

“I said what was HE doing in there?” Benjamin repeated for him, crossing his arms over his chest while glaring daggers at Bert, who only stared right back impassively.

“Oh, what was he doing in there, you ask? Uhh…th-that crayon! Yeah, it was a green one that those patients of yours were fussing over, right?” Jack questioned, arching an eyebrow like he didn’t know the detailed story on what started the strife between those two patients in the first place.

Benjamin nodded, his eyes still narrowed at Bert. “Yeah.”

“Well, it turns out this idiot patient of mine was looking for the crayon to help you guys. That’s the strangest thing about this one here. I lose my pen all the time and he’ll go through heaven and hell to find it for me. He’s like a fucking puppy dog eager to please his master, if you ask me.” Jack quipped, making Benjamin laugh at his comparison and then nod his head in approval.

“Oh yeah, I had one of those too! A waste of time that one was. Turns out the whole time he was hiding my pens from me so he could cut his wrist and hopefully bleed to death in the night. When that didn’t work he stabbed himself in the neck instead. I ended up finding him just in time to finish him off myself.” Benjamin recalled in good spirits, laughing so hard his face turned red and tears began to fall from the corners of his eyes.

Jack stiffly laughed along with him. He never found these kinds of morbid accounts diverting in the least bit, but he was an Orderly of this Psychiatric Hospital and so he had to play the part. After all the years, he was pretty good at selling them all that he was just as diabolical as them.

“Oh lord, those were some good ass times! Well, I better get back to my shift. Gotta find that sonofabitch ‘crayon snatcher’ and give him the punishment of a lifetime for causing me to get hit in the nads twice today by those two freaks!” Benjamin grumbled before marching off towards another group of orderlies that were headed their way.

“Let’s get moving, now!” Jack whispered, roughly bustling Bert towards his room before his co-worker got it in their heads to mess around with him next simply because he was patient in their path. Shoving the young man into his empty cell just in time, Jack strode right up into his face and growled down at him for answers on the whereabouts of this missing crayon. “If you know anything about that goddamn green crayon, you better tell me right fucking now or else I’ll have no choice but to throw you to the wolves!”

“It’s on the floor in the nurse’s station.” Bert quickly answered, not wasting his Orderly’s time by playing stupid. Wordlessly, he watched Jack nod at him before striding out of his room to locate the small item that had turned a simple mundane day into mayhem. Bert supposed he should have felt bad for putting his Orderly through this ordeal, but that was the strange thing. He couldn’t seem to feel anymore.