Last night I dreamt I was doing my work experience in an asylum of sorts. As is prone to happen in dreams or at least my dreams - for those are the only ones I know - I knew the type of patient kept there, as I approached the up-lit grey and fog shrouded exterior. It was one of those dark places where everything looked to be under lit by Opaque shades of blue, green and grey. Upon arrival I was given a tour by the manager of this foreboding site. She was a short woman with cropped hair in a navy suit. I remember some part of me was not pleased with her lacklustre approach to the importance of patient care. Nor was this same part of me satisfied with the colour of shirt she chose to wear. After a time I was offering to help the bearded women clean up after tea in the common room. They laughed at me. They all laughed.
There was a group of four patients in the height of argument, teeth clenching screams, silent scowls and the emotional upheaval was palpable. Their argument was taking place as they lay wrapped in the same King size bed. Each had a corner of the bad and a poster behind them. Eyes darted accusingly and claimed another had more of the blanket ratio. I was observing a very agitating and non-musical round. I quelled the fight with ease albeit do not remember how I did so.
The one who had been crying stopped.
That’s when I entered the unisex toilet, the cubicle walls were low. How low? So low in fact that I felt quite on show.  I urinated on the floor while the Cleaner was kissing a resident of the asylum in the next cubicle, after I had regained my aim I looked again. Now she was kissing my ex in place of the service user. They were really going at it too.

Outside in the main atrium crowds were gathering, as well as a murder of crows. The crowds were mist-kissed and back lit. I could tell little about the state or intent of the crowd but, gathered that they were wearing hospital gowns. The crows huddled around on an array of indoor power lines. One looked down at me. Our gazes met. They all saw me through him. The one Crow, whose one eye I saw was Ruby red and unimpressed.
I felt fear then. There was a man in front of me, bald, hysterical, his grey shade of skin familiar. With his back to me he pointed toward the root cause of that horrible feeling. The feeling that was keeping me anchored, frozen in place and unable to speak. The people around us were phasing between their natural state - if that’s what you would call being drugged and experimented on for such a long time - and a negative alteration. The fear I felt deepened further, in my mind and body. My only escape attempt took hold then. My breathing became laboured in hopes of shocking me awake. I could feel the sharp pricks along my legs. It was no use though. I was there until it was over.
 
That is when she appeared, a little girl, face to face with me in the midst of all the bedlam. I bore witness to her face as it contorted spastically until her right eye was square and her left one jagged. Throughout the horrific changes she did not once break eye contact. Unnatural silence accompanied her excruciating-looking changes.  Her Irises green and her pupils black. I could not look away.
I tried to fight back against the ruthless darkness she wore as a mantle.
There was a mirror. I stared into it. My eyes are but black, my pupils had eaten the colour of my irises. My face darker than even the girl's own face.
 
I remember standing at the large patch of grass in my parents’ estate. We called it the ‘circle’ as children – it is circular in shape. I faced my neighbours’ house knowing full well that these neighbours could help me get back to the asylum. It was urgent that I get back you see. It was imperative to lock the Black roth Iron gate at the front entrance. These neighbours’ three daughters had looked after me during my youth. They could be trusted. Barney the family Dog, a black, old and cranky collie met me at the side entrance and soon steered me to the front door by way of continuously biting me on the left arm.
 
I was kindly greeted and invited in by the older couple. The warmth and calm of these people resounded though me as I crossed the threshold. I joined them in the living room while comfortably reintroducing myself to them as the adult form of the child I once was.
We sat in mellow and consuming silence in a room with exposed red-brick walls and a sand coloured carpet. The woman switched on the television. We sat there and watched what had happened at the asylum. I relived it - the whole bombardment of events again in quick succession. The distance between the married couple reduced as we watched. The vibrations were different now. I had brought this upon them from the couch opposite their clenching bodies.
 
Then, I see the young girl again, Contortia. She was standing in the room before us all. I became aware that I had two bodies. My second was somewhere hidden but she had found it. Where my second body was, so too was Contortia.
I could see more of her now, the Thing wearing a child’s form. Contortia. She showed all emotions at once. Her face was shifting still, reforming with the motion of a demonic lava lamp. Her dress was grey. No not she, It. It stood there and looked deep into my eyes, so deep that I became conscious of my other eyes, the eyes I left with my second body. I prayed the dream would end then as I pray now it was a dream at all. I was so scared. My body was prickling, tingling. I was frozen in place on the Brown leather couch opposite the couple, enthralled in what had happened in the Asylum, they cannot see her.

Then there came a strong knock on the front door.  My body unclenched and I regained my facilities as the knock resounded throughout the home. Contortia was nowhere in sight. I hoped this meant she was gone, thrown off by whatever Power lay beyond the front door. I answered the door and the couple still occupied with what had happened in the asylum. Before me stood three men, relations of the woman sitting inside with her Husband. They came in. We introduced ourselves. Their vibrations are kind and handsome. This comforted me. We stood on the sand coloured carpet. He spoke without words bit I could not understand them.
Of the three, the one who stood taller and more sturdy between his cousins had a facial twitch. Something small crawled upon his right cheek. It was a pair of ants. He smiled at me.
 
Then I awoke, so easily I awoke. It had been such a battle for so long to attempt to do so. I am conscious but still. I dare not move. My legs and eyes are still tingling in the way they do when you are frightened so. Even now I lay still because the girl, Contortia, the girl-shaped monster who kept me against my Will, I think she has followed me.