Have you ever knocked out on the couch and ended up somewhere different when you woke up? Remember that intense feeling of complete confusion, and it takes forever to even realize it’s your own blankets, and your room. Well now imagine that feeling, but last thing you remember is sitting and being very much awake. Then imagine when you wake up you aren’t in your own comforting room, instead you are on a stiff bed, surrounded by white currents. There are needles shooting some drug up your arm and harsh fluorescent lights flickering above your head.

“Ivy?” Oh Jesus Christ my voice sounded like a prepubescent chicken. It was barely above a whisper so I doubted even if my sister was here, she would have heard it . A steady throbbing was knocking away at my eyes with each flicker of the light, and the beep of my vitals monitor might as well have been an air horn in the still room.

The room itself looked strange...I haven’t been here before….Which was impossible because I’ve been everywhere in the asylum. I knew every patient and every nurse. All the people who visited and all the staff who tended to the garden. I've been to the infirmary too, a numerous amount of times. The infirmary had ten beds for anyone who had gotten an external wound. It wasn't for the people who had constant health issues, but for impermanent injuries. Someone banged their head, or twisted an ankle, they would end up there. There was always an ER doctor on sight but the ER was rarely used, believe it or not life in an asylum is pretty uneventful.

This was different though, this wasn't a private room, the only thing shielding me from the outside were the heavy curtains. The lamps above my head weren’t old fashion upside down bowls, but long harsh tubes. I definitely haven’t been here before, and with every second that ticked by panic started to rise in my chest. Was I out ? The thought was absurd, ludicrous, ridiculous in every way... yet….it dug its spot in my conscious and latched on. Repeating itself over and over until the irrational didn’t seem so far out of reach, until I started believing it.

 The monitor started to beep faster as my heart rate lost it and decided to climb up my throat. Breathing became very difficult, why was it so hard to breath? Was it the new air ? The new air was poisoning me ! The drugs in my veins are causing this ! They are trying to kill me because I a bad influence on IVY’s recovery !!!! CHARLIE MoVE BEForE YOU DIE !

I grabbed the tubes lodged in my arm and yanked as hard I could ,there was a horrible sound as it tore my my arm and cracked against the metal stand. Drops of crimson made their way down onto the crisp clean sheets. The beeping had gotten so deafening, I crashed my hands against my ears desperate to block it out but its was no use. The sound was everywhere, it was surrounding me..I was screaming.

…There was a shift in the stillness, the slightest breathe in the room and it wasn't mine. The currents slowly exhale in front of me... parting to reveal a figure...

…..mommy?

At the edge of my bed stood my mother. Any attempt I was going to make at running was gone… I was frozen. Not that my unathletic ass would have gotten far anyways, especially in this bandaged covered condition. All I could do was look at her, dark wavy hair spilling over thin shoulders. A baby blue wrap around dress framed her slender figure and made her look sharp against the white. Her expression was blank and her eyes soulless, long arching eyebrows brought everything together to make a rather cold yet beautiful face. She didn’t say anything and made no attempt to come closer, but something was off. The currents had inhaled again before I could glimpse at what was on the other side, and took all the warmth in the air with them.

The beeping shattered the air everytime it sent its signal out into the silence. Nothing in the room even dared to breathe,yet my mother looked unbothered. It hurt my eyes to look at her because even if she was standing still, she wasn't still...she appeared to be...vibrating. No not vibrating..bubbling. It looked as if things were crawling under her skin, blue veins wrapping around her arms like lightning. The entire imagine looked like it shouldn’t belong in reality, like I was witnessing an optical illusion….”Mom are you-“ I couldn’t finish the sentence, my voice broke again.My mother could read lips well enough, her eyes were always trained on a person's mouth. Reading the language in shapes and tongue positions rather than waiting for a sign language interpreter. She usually did the same when I spoke to her but this time she wasn't looking at my lips. She appeared to not be looking anywhere, her gaze out of focus .

The beeping of the monitor had shifted, it was now a high pitched, buzzing like insects but there were none around. I backed away as far as I could,my back pressed against the wall. Don’t get me wrong I loved my mother, but I loved her in the asylum, where I knew she would show up twice a year. Once on my birthday to give me cake and once on Christmas to give me a sweater. I liked that arrangement very much. I liked the light conversation about the weather and, how I was doing, and if I Ivy and I were getting along. That was where I liked my mother...this… this was not where I wanted her to be. If this even was her, but then again...who else could it be?

This was too confusing...was I in hell ? The buzzing had set itself into rhythm with her skin as it began to violently ripple, up and down , up and down. It was like was watching a reflection in the water, like she had nothing else inside her but these unruly waves...until... she broke..“m-MOM !!!’” One by one they tore through her flesh...flies. Hundreds of them, ripping out as if she was made of paper. Every time one of the crimson insects squirmed it way out it let an oozing hole in its wake. Until she was covered in them, until she was rotting.

My stomach was empty but that didn’t stop me from dry heaving every five seconds. My vision was blurry from the hot tears filling them up, but I was grateful for it. No way in hell did I want to experience this in HD vision. It was a horror movie come to life. The figure that used to look like mother still stood in its mangled form at the edge of my bed. Her face, her blue dress, he dark wavy hair, all of it was unrecognizable. I dont have the words in my vocabulary to even describe the statinic thing, and the flies. Oh god the flies they were swarming in and out ,staining the currents red every time one took flight.

Filled with fear I did the only reasonable thing a seventeen year old injured asylum patient would do in this situation. Very slowly I gathered my trembling body into the corner. The covers on the bed were stained with red streaks as well but it was all I could think of doing. If the creature decided to move now I would have died from a heart attack right then and there. Didn’t even have to go through the trouble of killing me, I’m sure they could hear my heart burst from outer space that's how loud it was being. In one swift motion I managed to pull the blanket over me,closed my eyes and started whispering “your not real, your not real, your not real.Flies aren’t red, flies can't tear skin , that wasn't my mom, my mom is not here, I am in the asylum where I am safe and Rob will bring me cotton candy any minute now."