Status: Redo of my old story
Silence Falls
Chapter 141: Never Said It Was A Smart Plan
Charging forward, Bert secured both hands rigidly on Jack's shoulder, delaying him in his frenzied mid-pace. He needed to make amends with his Orderly and somehow cultivate a heart to his present quandary or else their current alliance might crumble in the palms of his hands. “Whoa, calm yourself down for a minute, okay? Look, I'm sorry about what I said. I didn't mean to come off like I don't give a fuck about your feelings and what you had to do to save my skin out there. It's just…” Bert sighed wearily and released Jack to rub his hands down his face. “This place is getting to me too, you know? It's getting harder to give a shit about anything or anyone anymore. Everyday I wake up I can’t feel a damn thing thanks to the medications. And every night I go to sleep is no different.”
Jack looked straight through Bert’s eyes into his very soul. He didn’t like what his patient just divulged to him. It was bad enough he was torn apart for sending an innocent man to his death just to save Bert’s life, but he didn’t need the usual level-headed lad to lose it too. Not when it seemed he was the only one keeping Jack together these days. Yet all he could manage to say was a single word. “Don't.”
“Don't what?” Bert inquired, feeling like Jack was seeing right through the dense fog of him to the real Bert lost inside.
“Don't just not give a shit. The last thing we need is for you to do something stupid again and end up getting caught.” Jack ordered him before clamping his mouth shut. He averted his eyes when his mind began to replay the earlier incident to him and when he looked back at Bert again he demanded an explanation for his thoughtless behavior. “Goddamnit, Bert! That could have been YOU sent to death instead of that old man if I hadn’t stepped in when I did! What the fuck was going through your fucking mind when you decided to pull a stupid stunt like that!?”
Bert groaned, not wishing to recall one of his worst moments where an innocent man had to die because of him. The truth was he hadn’t been thinking clearly, he couldn’t these days. His medication was overshadowing his judgment and so he just…acted without thinking. “It's called desperation, Jack. People tend to become desperate when they have nowhere left to turn. I had to find a way out of here for us, and since you weren't going to help us, I had to take matters into my own hands!”
“And almost got yourself killed in the process!” Jack snapped, glaring furiously down at him as he reminded him of that grisly fact.
“Hey, I never said it was a smart plan. I said it was a DESPERATE one.” Bert exclaimed defensively, wishing he’d just stop bringing that part up. Frankly, he didn’t need a reminder. “I was willing to risk whatever it took, man! My friends are losing hope as we speak and according to your daily updates it sounds like the girls are losing theirs too. I can't keep sitting around hoping the answers will magically come to me or wait until these assholes finally decide one morning to let us all go free! I have to DO something!”
"WE WILL DO SOMETHING!" Jack yelled, silencing Bert instantly. Jack blinked a couple of times in astonishment at what he uttered out. He said ‘we’, and this time he meant it! Everything was changing in the blink of an eye. One day Jack didn't want to assist in their escape, and now, he's more than willing to aid them without any further persuasion.
“Did you...did you just say 'we', as in…together, you and us?” Bert asked, having caught onto that too as he gestured back and forth between the both of them.
Surprised himself, Jack scratched the back of his head and took a seat back on the lower bunk bed. “Look, I know I've been rejecting all your pleas on these senseless escape plans, and I’ll admit in the past I was serious when I said I didn't want any involvement with them whatsoever.” He allowed himself a great interlude as he swept through this newfound change in his mind until he was certain it was trustworthy and not some careless confusion. Licking his lips, Jack continued on. “Recently, something happened to me. I met…someone that opened my eyes to what was really going on around here. It turns out I’ve been in denial for a VERY long time, Bert, but now I can say my mind is cleared and I know that this terror can't continue going the way it’s going any longer. This has to end.”
Bert had soundlessly taken a seat across from Jack, and was listening closely to his every word. He had a question for Jack, one that he already knew the answer to. “Who did you meet that changed your mind?”
“He's a friend of yours that goes by the name of Hermanni." Jack answered, confirming Bert's theory as he stared straight into his eyes.
Their foreign friend was alive and had been imprisoned inside the Asylum deep within the swamps the whole time. A small part of Bert felt stunned at finding out his friend had survived on his own, but the soul of him somehow already knew that Hermanni had been thriving out there somewhere since their arrest. He didn't know why or how he knew this for certain, but he did.
“Where is he!? How did you find him!?” Bert demanded Jack, leaning closer to grab him by his arm with a desperate hand.
“Your...father sent me to do an errand for him.” Jack began, speaking rapidly as a frown took over Bert’s face. “I had to deliver a package to the Asylum behind the Hospital to a coworker. It turns out Hermanni had been caged down in the lower basements listed under the codename Lucifer the entire time you guys have been locked up in here. Matt and I went into his cell and…” Jack wavered off, remembering his vow to Hermanni to not tell his ‘family’ of the special powers he’d witnessed that day.
“And what!?” Bert spurred Jack on with a bold shake of his arm, needing him to continue on with his story. “What happened next!?”
Jack cleared his throat and quickly reconstructed some parts of his visit to Hermanni. As he spoke slowly, he invented a tale filled with truths and disinformation. “Oh uh…Matt introduced us and he told me about you guys. When Matt had…left to return to his desk, Hermanni opened my mind to what I have been too stubborn to see on my own. The more time I spent around him the more I began to realize things needed to change.” Glancing to his side where Bert sat soaking in his every word like a sponge, Jack confessed to him. “That day that he helped me see the truth in my world of lies, Hermanni asked me in private to protect you guys from the dangers of this Hospital. And that's what I've been doing these past few months in hopes that he would keep to his end of the bargain!”
“And what did he help you realize? What did he promise you in exchange for protecting us from these creeps?” Bert interrogated promptly, trying not to appear as frantic for answers as he truly was.
“He helped me realize that this place is evil incarnate, and that these people have to be stopped immediately.” Jack answered the first question. “I've realized I’ve been in such deep denial of the truth because I've been brainwashed by religion to believe that every patient that is brought here deserves these terrible treatments for the sins they had committed. I went as far to believe that we were helping them wash away their sins by the time they died so they could go to heaven.” Shaking his head to himself, Jack lowered his shameful brown eyes to his shoes. “Hermanni told me a part of me always knew that what we were doing wasn't right, but that I was too far gone to see it all for myself without any outside guidance. I want to end this madness, Bert, and Hermanni promised me he would help me only if I protect you guys from any form of danger in this Hospital. He also said if you came up with any escape plan in the meantime, he would try and help us out in any way he could from there.” Taking a deep breath, Jack’s eyes met with Bert who was gaping at him in bewilderment. “Look, I already know that even though helping you to escape will ultimately end in my death, I do still want out of this place. I don't want to work here anymore after all the things that I know now, and I don't want any more innocent people being caged in here ever again either.”
For the first time in what felt like a long time, Bert smiled a true bona fide at his Orderly. The man that was paid to keep them in line was agreeing to liberate them from the Psychiatric Hospital they were incarcerated in. Bert prayed he wasn’t having some medicinal hallucination right now and imagining this entire conversation up. His heart and soul was telling him it was truly happening and so he went with that. “Well then, it's only fitting to invite you to join in on making an escape plan with us, am I right?”
Jack looked straight through Bert’s eyes into his very soul. He didn’t like what his patient just divulged to him. It was bad enough he was torn apart for sending an innocent man to his death just to save Bert’s life, but he didn’t need the usual level-headed lad to lose it too. Not when it seemed he was the only one keeping Jack together these days. Yet all he could manage to say was a single word. “Don't.”
“Don't what?” Bert inquired, feeling like Jack was seeing right through the dense fog of him to the real Bert lost inside.
“Don't just not give a shit. The last thing we need is for you to do something stupid again and end up getting caught.” Jack ordered him before clamping his mouth shut. He averted his eyes when his mind began to replay the earlier incident to him and when he looked back at Bert again he demanded an explanation for his thoughtless behavior. “Goddamnit, Bert! That could have been YOU sent to death instead of that old man if I hadn’t stepped in when I did! What the fuck was going through your fucking mind when you decided to pull a stupid stunt like that!?”
Bert groaned, not wishing to recall one of his worst moments where an innocent man had to die because of him. The truth was he hadn’t been thinking clearly, he couldn’t these days. His medication was overshadowing his judgment and so he just…acted without thinking. “It's called desperation, Jack. People tend to become desperate when they have nowhere left to turn. I had to find a way out of here for us, and since you weren't going to help us, I had to take matters into my own hands!”
“And almost got yourself killed in the process!” Jack snapped, glaring furiously down at him as he reminded him of that grisly fact.
“Hey, I never said it was a smart plan. I said it was a DESPERATE one.” Bert exclaimed defensively, wishing he’d just stop bringing that part up. Frankly, he didn’t need a reminder. “I was willing to risk whatever it took, man! My friends are losing hope as we speak and according to your daily updates it sounds like the girls are losing theirs too. I can't keep sitting around hoping the answers will magically come to me or wait until these assholes finally decide one morning to let us all go free! I have to DO something!”
"WE WILL DO SOMETHING!" Jack yelled, silencing Bert instantly. Jack blinked a couple of times in astonishment at what he uttered out. He said ‘we’, and this time he meant it! Everything was changing in the blink of an eye. One day Jack didn't want to assist in their escape, and now, he's more than willing to aid them without any further persuasion.
“Did you...did you just say 'we', as in…together, you and us?” Bert asked, having caught onto that too as he gestured back and forth between the both of them.
Surprised himself, Jack scratched the back of his head and took a seat back on the lower bunk bed. “Look, I know I've been rejecting all your pleas on these senseless escape plans, and I’ll admit in the past I was serious when I said I didn't want any involvement with them whatsoever.” He allowed himself a great interlude as he swept through this newfound change in his mind until he was certain it was trustworthy and not some careless confusion. Licking his lips, Jack continued on. “Recently, something happened to me. I met…someone that opened my eyes to what was really going on around here. It turns out I’ve been in denial for a VERY long time, Bert, but now I can say my mind is cleared and I know that this terror can't continue going the way it’s going any longer. This has to end.”
Bert had soundlessly taken a seat across from Jack, and was listening closely to his every word. He had a question for Jack, one that he already knew the answer to. “Who did you meet that changed your mind?”
“He's a friend of yours that goes by the name of Hermanni." Jack answered, confirming Bert's theory as he stared straight into his eyes.
Their foreign friend was alive and had been imprisoned inside the Asylum deep within the swamps the whole time. A small part of Bert felt stunned at finding out his friend had survived on his own, but the soul of him somehow already knew that Hermanni had been thriving out there somewhere since their arrest. He didn't know why or how he knew this for certain, but he did.
“Where is he!? How did you find him!?” Bert demanded Jack, leaning closer to grab him by his arm with a desperate hand.
“Your...father sent me to do an errand for him.” Jack began, speaking rapidly as a frown took over Bert’s face. “I had to deliver a package to the Asylum behind the Hospital to a coworker. It turns out Hermanni had been caged down in the lower basements listed under the codename Lucifer the entire time you guys have been locked up in here. Matt and I went into his cell and…” Jack wavered off, remembering his vow to Hermanni to not tell his ‘family’ of the special powers he’d witnessed that day.
“And what!?” Bert spurred Jack on with a bold shake of his arm, needing him to continue on with his story. “What happened next!?”
Jack cleared his throat and quickly reconstructed some parts of his visit to Hermanni. As he spoke slowly, he invented a tale filled with truths and disinformation. “Oh uh…Matt introduced us and he told me about you guys. When Matt had…left to return to his desk, Hermanni opened my mind to what I have been too stubborn to see on my own. The more time I spent around him the more I began to realize things needed to change.” Glancing to his side where Bert sat soaking in his every word like a sponge, Jack confessed to him. “That day that he helped me see the truth in my world of lies, Hermanni asked me in private to protect you guys from the dangers of this Hospital. And that's what I've been doing these past few months in hopes that he would keep to his end of the bargain!”
“And what did he help you realize? What did he promise you in exchange for protecting us from these creeps?” Bert interrogated promptly, trying not to appear as frantic for answers as he truly was.
“He helped me realize that this place is evil incarnate, and that these people have to be stopped immediately.” Jack answered the first question. “I've realized I’ve been in such deep denial of the truth because I've been brainwashed by religion to believe that every patient that is brought here deserves these terrible treatments for the sins they had committed. I went as far to believe that we were helping them wash away their sins by the time they died so they could go to heaven.” Shaking his head to himself, Jack lowered his shameful brown eyes to his shoes. “Hermanni told me a part of me always knew that what we were doing wasn't right, but that I was too far gone to see it all for myself without any outside guidance. I want to end this madness, Bert, and Hermanni promised me he would help me only if I protect you guys from any form of danger in this Hospital. He also said if you came up with any escape plan in the meantime, he would try and help us out in any way he could from there.” Taking a deep breath, Jack’s eyes met with Bert who was gaping at him in bewilderment. “Look, I already know that even though helping you to escape will ultimately end in my death, I do still want out of this place. I don't want to work here anymore after all the things that I know now, and I don't want any more innocent people being caged in here ever again either.”
For the first time in what felt like a long time, Bert smiled a true bona fide at his Orderly. The man that was paid to keep them in line was agreeing to liberate them from the Psychiatric Hospital they were incarcerated in. Bert prayed he wasn’t having some medicinal hallucination right now and imagining this entire conversation up. His heart and soul was telling him it was truly happening and so he went with that. “Well then, it's only fitting to invite you to join in on making an escape plan with us, am I right?”