Silence Falls

Otep laid in bed, snoozing soundly on her side facing a stressed, and pacing Bert. For the past few days it been the same habit for him, deliberating and pacing all the time. So far, all his schemes that excluded suicide as a way out culminated in the same way. No, there still isn't a plan in the making yet and goddamnit I'm not getting anywhere closer to making a plan better than the one before, Bert erupted in his mind. Running his hands through his greasy lengthy hair, Bert lifted his face to the ceiling of his room and for the millionth time composed a mental list of what they were up against now.

One: new sophisticated cameras which could take months to figure out without it's instruction manual.

Two: the doors no longer require just a key card to gain entry too but the staff's fingerprints as well which, in all honesty, left no other way to get around them unless they luckily come across one of the guard's severed finger sprawling around somewhere! Now, what are the chances that they'll come across a deceased body that ISN'T a patient's down here? It didn't take a genius to do the math.

Three: The vents, which has always been their means of getting around the facility unseen, have now been dabbled with. To expatiate, the vents have been tightly enclosed and traps have been appointed in different ranges of the vents. From the few expeditions Bert has taken lately to inspect on the transitions around him himself, he discovered the vents have been screwed down with some hefty industrial-size mechanisms that -unlike the tool box on a purple kiddy wagon down in the farthest reaches where they found Hermanni- don't look like they'll presumably be sitting around in the hallways. Sadly, Bert grasped that there was no way he'd be able sneak around at all anymore on his own. It was now impossible! Clenching his fist in violence, Bert slammed his back against the wall with it's wilt wallpaper and sagged down until he could feel the coarseness of the decrepit burnt orange carpeting beneath his hands. Sighing in defeat, Bert stared over at a dozing Otep.

I can't get her out of here, he lamented to himself, hell I can't get anyone out of here! With a shake of his head, he muttered softly to himself, needing to hear another person's voice out loud rather than in his head. “There isn't a way out. No matter how many times I've read this over in my mind, or close my eyes and visualized the blueprints I've memorized before in the past, I still can't see the answer. There is no conceivable way out of here. We're stuck here forever or until they fatally kill us.” Bert reclined his head back against the wall to peer up at his ceiling with it's few water stains. “Funny, I always felt so strongly that I'd get out of here and see my family again. I was gonna escape, get away, and live life like I should have before it was stolen from me. There's still time, I use to tell myself at night when the doubt would come lurking in. There's still time to make it to the surface.”

Bert shook his head gradually, hearing the strands of his hair scrape against the wallpaper. “No, there isn't a chance anymore. I had that opportunity at freedom the second I emerged the first time and breathed in that refreshing crisp air that night. But no...no, I came back.” Lifting his head back up, Bert glared at the figure of Otep dormant in a dream world of innocence. “I came back, but for what? For all of us to die here in the end? I could have escaped and got support from some other law enforcement in another county or state that my friends were imprisoned down here and in need of help!”

Bert scoffed, a slow amused smile spreading over his face. “Hell no, man, they wouldn't believe a damn word a crazy kid like me had to say. No fucking way in hell.” Closing his eyes back up again, Bert yearned he could see his friends right now, yearned that they could be here with him in his cell that unlike the others was designed to look like an actual bedroom than a the other patient's cells. But more than anything, Bert craved he could estimate a solution, a way to give these prisoners a taste of freedom again, of a life that was so brutally taken from them by their parent's and the people they entrusted most that was suppose to shelter them. He wish they would all incinerate in hell for what they had done to them.

Bert opened his eyes again with a sigh and meant to scan across the room at his bookcase only to get the shock of his life. “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, MAN!” Bert surged to his feet only to wobble back until he hit the wall he had been reclining again. His heart was hammering in his chest as his brown eyes connected to the vivid green and blue eyes that seemed to dazzle at him through the room's gloomy lighting. Perched cross legged in front of him somehow was Hermanni. “H-How the FUCK did you get in here!??!”

Snooping across the room fearfully to check on Otep, Bert saw no sign of her ever being there. The bed was made and looked like it hadn't been used since that early morning. Where was Otep and when the hell had she gone, Bert pondered to himself as his eyes extended in horror. Gazing down at Hermanni again only to find him too to be gone, Bert began to wonder if his brain was finally failing him and accepted madness.

Hermanni abruptly materialized at the foot of Bert's bed with his back pressed to the wall from where he sat, his arms wrapped around his drawn up knees. In the lamplight, his eyes illuminated like a brightly colliding mix of emerald and sapphire, his skin porcelain white, his lips a healthy vivid pink, and his hair an ebony curtain of silk. “Friend not here.”

Bert hurtled back in return as his hands shot up to clutch his head. “What the fuck!? D-Did I just hear a voice in my head!?” When he received no reply but vibrant eyes staring back at him, Bert began to panic. “Oh fuck me man, I AM fucking losing it! Shit I'm going fucking insane like everybody else in this godforsaken hellhole!”

“No. This Bert dream.”

Bert's eyes yanked open to Hermanni, and urgently recognized that Hermanni's lips weren't moving at all, and yet somehow he knew without a doubt that the voice in his head definitely belong to the young man sitting by his bed. Bert cautiously dropped his hands from his head and cleared his throat before interacting back by speaking. “Oh, s-so this is all just a dream, huh? All make believe.”

Hermanni lips curved into a small smile as he casually bowed his head in affirmation.

“Weird...I usually don't dream this realistically.” Bert went on, finding himself feeling more complacent to communicate, and yet under Hermanni's gaze he still felt awkward at the same time. “But then again that's probably a blessing in disguise. My usual dreams contain mostly violence and gory shit anyway...”

When the voice in his head that he was convinced was Hermanni's remained mute, Bert elected to make sense of this peculiar dream of his. Crossing over to his bed, Bert lowered himself to down to sit with his back against his headboard. From here, he could only see Hermanni's face from the cheekbones up. “So uhh...what exactly brings you to be in my dreams tonight?”

“Plan.” Hermanni's voice conveyed in his mind as he swiveled his head to gawk at him.

“Plan? What plan?” It swiftly loomed on Bert that Hermanni was probably talking about their breakout plan. If not that, then what? He didn't exactly have any other big plan in his life other than the one that had been overruling their lives for the longest. Hating to be the bearer of bad new, Bert sighed and ran a hand through his long hair. “Look...I'm sorry, man. I wish I didn't have to tell you this but...we're not going anywhere. The plan is over, done, finito.”

When Hermanni only proceeded to gawk at him blankly, Bert chose to help it register for him by elaborating. “You see, I know the blueprints to this place like my ABCs and I'm telling you right now with the amount of upgrades and first-rate technology that they've now decided to install, it's damn near hopeless for any one of us to leave this underground prison. Hopeless, you understand?” Stretching out his left leg, Bert propped his arm on the opposite on. “Unless, of course, you don't mind a suicidal attempt for a more spiritual freedom instead.”

Still getting no feedback from Hermanni but his vacant stare that only made he feel pressured, Bert heaved a discontented groan. “Why do you keep staring at me like that? Look, I wanted to leave this place as much as any sane or insane kid in here! I wanted to live, breathe in the air that the earth gives us! I wanted to plummet into a lake during the summer with a group of friends, I wanted to go to a fuck ton of movie theaters and concernts! Hell, I wouldn't mind watching TV if that's all I could get my hands on down here. I want to taste and live that, I want to see it with my own two eyes!” Heavily panting from his hysterical rant, Bert threw his hands up and let them decline limply on his lap. “But there is only so much I can do, only so much a human being can endure before it becomes too late. I can honestly say, man, that I can't do this anymore. There's no light of hope even in the smallest of cracks in this prison. I had my chance at freedom but I chose my friends over the sunlight. I can't do this anymore! I'm tired! I'm weak! I'm done! I can only handle so much. I give up! We're all gonna die down here, all of us.”