Sweet Meadows
A Halloween Fiction

Written: October 2, 2013 9:25 am
Finished: October 4, 2013 2:19 pm
Rating: T
Warning: Torture, Death, Psychological Horror (all very mildly mentioned)
Pairing: Ashi-Le/Finitevus (one-sided)

"--and he was never seen again," Dr. Wilberly intoned with a wiggle of his fingers.

"It's always the same," Alys-Sa complained, picking at the pathetic-looking seven layer bean dip with a tortilla chip. "Ghost Hitchhiker, Ghost Peace Officer, Dead Puggles coming to haunt the Echidnas that aborted them."

"I've got a sixteen year-old daughter," Wilberly objected.

"Tell that story to her then." Alys-Sa teased back.

Dr. Dana-Ko scanned their faces thoughtfully, making marks on a checklist. "Alright, that was Wil. We still have Fitz and Egon, not counting myself, of course."

"Let them eat first!" They all laughed in relief at the first jab toward the heavily structured party. Scarcely had they arrived than they'd been launched into games, complete with points and prizes. Anyone who was looking forward to a horrible movie courtesy of Finitevus, some pot-luck, and more candy than they ought to ingest was sorely disappointed by this turn of events. The only consolation was that the drunker they got, the better the stories got. Subjectively, of course. (No one knew exactly what Dr. Kazan was talking about, when he finally got the candle. Half of the words he used weren't in their language.)

Finitevus stayed over by the punch-bowl, monitoring what additions were surreptitiously added to the drinks, and what anyone was trying to add to the source. Tequila in the drinks? Heavens no. Vodka? Could only emphasize the fruit. He'd given his story early on, and everyone had agreed that it was a frightening one indeed. Dr. Ashi-Le had gone on to say that it was inspired, and that his true profession ought to be writing these things out to scare children. In an attempt to impress him, she'd rehashed an older horror film, complete with the ax scene. That wasn't allowed, and she had forfeited all of her points as a result. She now stood next to him, amiably discussing seeing one of the newer horror movies at the cinema, together, of course.

Egon set down his squash stew and stood. "There... there was--"

"Hold the candle! Hold the candle!" It was passed down the table to him, and he took the glass gratefully, angling it under his chin as was required to look convincingly ominous. "There was a graveyard not far by--"

"That's inaccurate," Dr. Connor bellowed out, obviously on the drunker end of the spectrum. "This has been business-zoned for research interests since the Empress was around." Egon set the candle down and picked up his spoon again.

The other members of Finitevus' section stood up for their coworker against the blithely uncaring carbon-dater, but no amount of encouragement and support could get Egon to continue. "It wasn't that good of a story," he confessed, pushing the candle forward. "And as he said, it was inaccurate."

Dr. Dana-Ko subtracted some sympathy points from Dr. Connor, but it wouldn't ensure a win. They passed the candle to Dr. Fitz, sitting in the corner nursing something dark that definitely didn't come from the punch bowl. "I don't know any horror stories," he protested, voice thin. "Just s-some true ones."

With a flicker and a groan, the lights all went as one, plunging the facility into darkness. The exit lights were a faint glowing green on the floor from the bioluminescent backup lighting, courtesy of bacteria, but otherwise, they were in the dark. Dr. Chaer-Re tapped at the info station stubbornly, trying to get some sort of idea of what was going on. The rumble of thunder hit only a moment later; they'd been inured to the sound of the rain hitting the glass, but this gave them everything they needed to know.

"The labs have their own generators," Dr. Sellers reminded them. "Your delicate specimens are safe. Chaer-Re, would you kindly help me with the door override, here? I know you all want to get home at a decent time, and it would be rather embarrassing to have to wait for the cleaning bots to get the doors open."

Dr. Fitz moved from his chair to one of the positions vacated at the main table, bringing their only major source of light. "I m-may have one story to tell. Just until we g-get the lights back on." 

Dana-Ko smiled encouragingly. "That's great. Go on then, it would be good for morale." They ignored the mild swearing coming from the main doors and the sparks flying from the removed hatch, and everyone scooted in a little closer to make out his voice from the sound of the storm outside.

"You all know I was in a s-sanitarium a while back," he started apologetically, and whatever noises of fidgeting stilled. Ashi-Le leaned up against Finitevus, and he didn't bother to push her away. "I h-had some problems, then. It's better now," he assured hurriedly, although they were all still cautious around him.

"You know how it's like w-when you feel lost and helpless, like a ch-child. Your world feels large and frightening, and you've got n-no control over any of that! I mean, you do, you really do. You just don't think you do." He splayed his hands out and smiled, all awkward shakes and lopsided smiles. When he took more time with his words, they came through with fewer stutters. "It's like that when you have that sort of breakdown. I was actually d-due a year and a half earlier than when I actually came out of there.

"They treated me according to the manual, which is about as well as you'd expect. Pills at steady intervals, art sessions, check in on you every single hour, cameras in the corners, group therapy. The better you did, the less they had to do, and they r-really didn't want to do anything. That's not to s-say that Sweet Meadows was unusual. It was pretty par on course for loony bins. Save money on janitors and maintenance staff if you can j-just hire out the sane ones to do the job for you. One guy taking care of bedpans, another sweeping floors. I w-was on laundry crew. So in the mornings, I would get up and get clean linens and make up the beds in the wards, one by one, and then go and take the dirty ones to the laundry chutes at each floor."

While he hadn't actually said anything horrifying, his coworkers hung on his every word. He'd come out of there a broken and fragile man, although he said that it had helped things in immeasurable ways. They'd never gotten a word about it from him. Not until now.

"It's important to mention that Sweet Meadows is part of the Old City. Big sprawling old thing, l-like that hospital that got knocked down earlier this month? Only parts of it were actually used for psychiatric rehabilitation, and the rest of the wards were empty. And you know, it was built like a maze, so you'd make your way through two or three empty wards before finding another pocket of civilization, as it were. The orderlies knew the floorplan, sure, but they didn't share anything like that with us. The empty wards didn't have any cameras or anything. They didn't need to monitor what wasn't there, after all.

"Sometimes," he laughed. "I'd shirk duties for a little while a-and go exploring. You could find vials of morphine and cocaine in the cabinets, straitjackets dropped all over the floor, a little porcelain baby doll with no clothing, face all cracked up..." His tone changed after that. "You know that myth about the alligators in the sewers?"

"You're not actually suggesting that they put--" Ashi-Le started, teasingly.

"No no. Where would they get their hands on alligators?" He looked confused for a moment. "Everyone argues that it's impossible for alligators to be in the sewers b-because they're so large and they'd be discovered really quickly. It's not true though. Not at all." Fitz took a moment to collect himself, dipping his head shyly. "I mean, they dumped bodies in the sewers, and I didn't hear a thing about it in all my time there."

Before they could tell him that it was a pretty shoddy excuse for a horror story, as great as his delivery was, he continued on. "It wasn't something they had out in the open. You know how wards have-- you wouldn't-- see, the sanitarium has these pale green tiles on the walls and on the floor, like old hospitals. It made it easy to just hose the place down of any material or c-contaminants. Each floor was built on wood, a little insulation in-between, pipes and wiring, and then you had the ceiling of the floor below you." He described it all with small, nervous hand gestures.

"I noticed that one of the empty wards on the first floor had some broken tiles in the flooring, and I just about fell through one time when I was pushing a heavy cart of linens. There was some work done on the paneling here, like they'd p-pulled a bunch of the wood out, and there were new cords and things coming out of there, connected up to generators." His hands bunched up into fists before he began to rub them against each other, hard, sharp motions. "So curiosity got the better of me, and I looked down the hole."

Chaer-Re approached and sat down wearily, Sellers following on her footsteps. "We couldn't get the door open. We got it unlocked, but it's a pressure-based thing and it's heavy enough--"

"I think I knocked it off its tracks," Dr. Sellers added. Everyone else assured them that it would be fine, and they nodded along when asked if they'd caught any of the story.

"Were there monsters down the hole?" Omi-Ta questioned, giggling.

Fitz shrugged. "If you consider your fellow man to be monsters, then by all means." He took a sip from his drink and leaned forward into the table, and the wavering light of the candle. "We all knew there was a basement. That's where they prepared the food and where the washing machines were. There was an operating theatre once, on the second floor, but they were pretty verbal about not using that. Said they were humane. I found the other one."

There was a long moment while he took breath after breath and followed each with a shudder. It didn't exactly give the group any ease of mind. "It was an operating theatre alright, set in the same manner as the empty wards, like it hadn't been touched since Weatherbee was on the Council. But it was definitely operational. The orderlies, the doctors, the one psychiatrist with the cane... they had one of the catatonic patients strapped into a chair with tubes running out of him, and they i-injected something into the tube. He opened his eyes, and tried to move, straining against the bonds, and he yelped like something was burning him. Blood ran from his ears onto his cheeks, and then he wasn't moving any more, and they pulled him out of the chair... said 'get another one, get another one.'"

The silence was deafening. Fitz sat there, expressionless, sipping at his drink.

"And then what happened?" Egon clutched at the edge of the table, stew abandoned.

"They emptied out a ward." He took another long drag from his drink, then set it next to the guttering candle, allowing the amber tones to tint his face. "All the w-while making notes and things. When they were done, they took the canvas bags you use for laundry, and they put a body in each of them and then threw them down a hole into the sewer main. Talked among themselves with coffee like they hadn't just killed a b-bunch of people, and then went their separate ways."

"It's fortunate they didn't see you, then," Chaer-Re offered. "I can't imagine they'd be kind to a spy."

"They weren't," Fitz agreed.

There was another long moment of heavy silence while they digested that. "I was found and captured," he hummed cheerfully. "They strapped me down in the same way that t-they had the others, and taped the tubes into my arms, and when I w-woke up again, they were giving me electro-convulsive therapy to... to... " He realised that he was twitching again, and stopped himself, shrugging. "All the time, they took notes on things, asked me about my wife, my family members-- I didn't know what they wanted to do with all of that, so I didn't tell them, but I started to forget things..."

They watched his eyes dart back and forth dully, as if he was seeing it all again. No one wanted to disturb him now, not even with a comforting clasp to the shoulder. "I don't know why it didn't kill me, and I didn't w-want to ask. I stayed quiet and p-pretended not to know anything, and they reconditioned me to the sort of thing they wanted to see, and let me go back home. And that was fine by me, I g-guess." He tapped his fingers against the wood in odd patterns, like playing the piano. "As far as I know, they're still doing it."

The lightning lit their huddle again in three bursts. "Dr. Fitz, is... is this true?" Even Dana-Ko was cowed by this narrative. "Were you really--"

He smiled softly and finished off his drink. "Well, they could have been alligators." The candle blew out at last, leaving a faint blueish trail of smoke wafting up, and they sat there numbly while nature ravaged the world outside.

"Who wants pie?" Egon was up in a flash at the dessert tray, wedging out a generous slice for himself. The rest of the group streamed from the table to get their own piece before it was all gone, and left Dr. Fitz to a well-deserved nap.