Silent Letters; The Key Marked 'S'

Silent Letters; The Key Marked 'S'

"I'm going to laugh so hard if he's just sitting in the Day room like a dumbass..."

Out of politeness and habit, Monika forced a smile, even though Trish probably couldn't see it in the dark. It wasn't dark dark, exactly. Not pitch dark. But still, a very scary, very overwhelming dark, that certainly villified an already frightening mental hospital.

Monika kpet close to Trish, her heart skipping a beat every time her friend turned, or made a sudden move out of Monika's limited line of vision.

"It's not too much farther, is it Trish?" Her voice was edgy.

There wasn't much of a point in her responding since just a few seconds after Monika asked did they end up being right in front of the door they needed. Trish stood up a bit straighter, fairly uneasy with the still, silent darkness. Still, there was no turning back at this point, and she opened up the door, which gave a loud, sickening creak.

Well.

How fitting...

"Umm... Monika... I don't think he's here..."

It was so hard to tell.

So damn hard.

The darkness in this place, it looked as though it was eating away at the very rooms. Making them disappear. The room was entirely barren, not a singe piece of furniture or anything at all around. What the hell was a completely empty room doing in a place like this? There had to be something around... Anything.

"What the hell... this doesn't make any sense."

Unless he was hiding somewhere in the dark. Close to the corners, where the meager lighting let in through the open door didn't penetrate. Just maybe, although why he might do such a thing was beyond Monika.

Come to think of it...

Why someone she'd never met in her life and only just recently heard of would write as if he were her long lost lover was beyond her. Empty, foggy cities and abandoned mental hospitals that her aunt supposedly worked at...all beyond her. Monika tried not to think about it too much, but such a task was easier committed to than done.

"Why would he send us to the Day Room, then?" It didn't occur to her that Trish wasn't exactly qualified to answer that. All Monika's mind could think about was how unbelievable it was that Ian could not be in the very place he had obviously coaxed them into...

The possibility of misunderstanding teetered on the edge of her thoughts...

"...I don't know," Trish mumbled quietly after a moment's pause, squinting into the darkness to try and get a better view but to no avail. A sigh. "We can't go in there until we find a flashlight or something.... Wait, do you have your cell with you? We can use the screen..." yes that momentary bit of genius was based on her training, use what ever is at your disposal, even if you normally wouldn't think of it that way.

While a cell phone screen wouldn't be too far fetched to be used as a light, it was the closest thing they would have had at the very moment, leaving not much room to be exceedingly creative.

Flipping open the screen Trish pressed the power button, waiting for it to start up and wincing when the bright light flashed into her eyes which had gotten used to the darkness. Without another moment's delay she flashed the light into the Day Room, which turned out to be quite large and only the dimmest hint of light was bounced off of the adjacent wall.

Static.

Trish nearly jumped out of her skin, pulling the phone back to her and nearly smacked it for its volume to be turned down, but finally she found the volume button and turned it to zero, giving Monika an almost disgusted look by how shrill the radio snow had been, almost mixing with a high pitched tone instead of just normal static. That definitely wasn't normal. Still, she composed herself and turned the phone towards the pitch black room once again, taking a cautious step inside, flashing the light around here and there to get an idea of the room's shape.

And just barely as soon as Monika was thinking: Thank goodness I remembered to charge this thing ealier, the silence of the seemingly empty Day Room suddenly errupted into loud static. Needless to say, Monika's gratefulness was considerably dampened by the time Trish had found and fixed the problem. Still, she tried to take into consideration just how much less she liked absolute darkness, and swallowed her complaints.

And absolute darkness was the only thing Monika's cell phone's tiny, backlit screen was preventing. It was like trying to use a steak knife to hack a trail through the Amazon: frustratingly futile. By the sounds of their echoed shuffling, Monika was pretty sure they were in a fairly large and empty room. There seemed to be no real hazards, except maybe accidentally walking into a wall. Beside, of course, the constant threat of this Ian Scarlet. But at least they weren't in danger of tripping or anything, right?

Trish is a cop...she knows what she's doing...we have a gun and Ian doesn't. She certainly hoped he didn't.

"You'd think a place like this would have some windows..." Monika kept her eyes trained on the little square of moving light. "I guess...maybe there's a reason...if they get a lot of autistic people, maybe. Or...maybe Ia-- this guy is autistic. They have a hard time communicating emotions, you know. Autistic people. Maybe that's why--"

Monika was cut short by the sound of metal against wood, just below her. Experimentally, she pressed the toe of her sneaker down, and felt something small and hard through the sole.

"Wait a second, Trish..." Monika crouched down and groped about just in front of her foot. "There's something on the ground here."

Her fingers brushed against something besides the dusty wooden floors. Something wide, then tall and thin, then jagged. "It feels like a...a key I think...there's a piece of paper wrapped around it..."

Trish bit her lip a bit, hearing that news. A key? Wasn't that just a little too convenient for them? Especially in this situation... and another piece of paper. Great. Awesome. Just dandy. She took a few steps back towards where Monika spoke from, turning the cell phone so that the light flashed against her momentarily before cutting out from inactivity, which a quick button press fixed and the bright light was once again shining forth against her friend.

"Can I see?" she asked a bit hesitantly, assuming, of course, that this was once again from that stalker. And yes, upon reading it, she was quite right.

"This room.

I always hated it.

They'd bring us here in groups to make us do something boring.

Usually sitting in a circle and discussing one topic or another so they could judge our sanity that way.

I believe it was these studies that allowed me to leave this place a few months ago.

One just has to act in such a way for long enough... it did take a while, though.

They're not exactly fooled easily.

So I'm back because I do belong here.

I belong here to meet with you.

That's all.

We can leave after."

Not only did this guy assume that she was completely alone in her travels, he was even so disillusioned that he thought she would be willing to go off with him somewhere. To what end? What if, when they met up with him, she refused--what would he do to her, then? Damn... Trish moved the light again as she perched down next to Monika, handing her back the piece of paper and swapping it with the key, rolling it around in her fingers. It was dull, rusty looking but still obviously silver with a letter 'S' printed on the flat end.

"Es?"

A quick check of the map. What on earth started with 'S' in this place? Lucky for them all of the rooms were so clearly marked...

A few Store rooms, a Shower room or two, a whole row of numbered 'S' doors on the third floor, a Special Treatment Room. Damn and damn again.

Trish let out a heavy sigh and stood back up, tucking the map under her arm and handing the key back, gave Monika a quick nod to the open door. As soon as they were out she closed the cell phone and pocketed it, dropping to her knees a bit roughly and laying the map out in front of her, looking up at Monika.

"Key's got an 'S' on it. Now, according to this, we've got about twenty-one different rooms that start with 'S'. We can not go and check each and every one of them so lets start with this whole damn row on the third floor. There's no number on the key, right?"

A definite 'no', she had looked straight at it. Knowing that, Trish looked around her person a bit frantically for something to write with, but, nothing available, just snatched the key up and made a long, thin slice through that entire row of rooms so they wouldn't have to check them.

Another sigh.

That still left seven other rooms to check. It would take too damn long and Trish wasn't the most patient person on the planet to begin with.

"There's got to be a way we can narrow it down more..." she glanced up at Monika, a worried and almost pitiful look showing in her eyes momentarily but she blinked it away quickly, casting her gaze back down to the map.