1: Soul

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Disgusting.

You should just die.

I bet you like it when we hurt you.

The voices rang in Oliver's ears like a loud siren. His head felt as if it would explode from all the different tones and pitches, the sounds emanating from the gray concrete walls to the tiled floor to the water-stained ceiling.

Hey, Oliver. Why don't you kill yourself?

Curled in the corner, Oliver held his arms over his head. He wanted to block out the sounds so badly. He just wanted some quiet, even if it was only for a minute. Half a minute perhaps...

Even for a second...

Oliver.

Oliver!

OLIVER!

"Shut up!" He screamed, frustration and anger finally releasing itself from his caged mind.

"Oliver?"

The teen looked up and immediately saw his usual nurse; her uniform still the same white and holding the same medication and clipboard. She had a concerned look on her face, obviously from Oliver's sudden outburst. It seemed like the more times she visited the poor boy, the worse he became.

"H-hello, Nurse Patterson. Is that for me?" Oliver asked, the voices still there but becoming a slightly quieter background noise.

"Yes. It's eleven o'clock. Time for medication and some activity outside of your room."

She gave a sweet, sincere smile, something that Oliver appreciated greatly, and handed the cup of pills over to the patient.

He immediately swallowed the medication without a second thought. The nurses always said they would help him, and he was willing to do anything for that to be true. He had even volunteered to receive electric therapy, something considered to be only used as a last desperate solution.

"You're the only patient in this whole place who is willing to take their medication without a fight." The nurse said as she saw the boy gulp down the pills like he hadn't eaten in years.

"Well...I want to get better."

She gave a curt nod before helping Oliver up by his scarred arm. She would always notice how a new wound would always appear on the thin arms of the boy, gashes and scratches decorating them like a knife would to a slab of meat. Oliver said he didn't do it; that the monsters would hurt him whenever they could, but, to her, it was just an excuse. No one is ever in the room with Oliver when it happens, and it never happens when someone is there.

"So, how is everything? Are the voices calming down?" Nurse Patterson asked as she led Oliver down the corridor to the common room where the patients are held for "outside" time.

The white walls within the hallway always made Oliver sick to his stomach, especially when he experienced visions of them being painted red. The monsters would laugh at his misery, showing him things that should belong only in nightmares whether that be blood, corpses, or something even worse.

"No." Oliver replied, his eyes shooting around the area around them. "They...are getting worse. Now, I see them."

"The monsters?"

"Yes. They are...something terrible. Something I can't even describe into words."

Patterson frowned at his confession. She learned, long ago, that some schizophrenics were haunted by hallucinations and voices, ranging from mild to severe, but she had never seen one as bad as Oliver.

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