Midtown Manhattan, April 25th 2016

Today I'm feeling dizzy. I can't remember about anything but the play version of Swan Lake ballett that I was part of.

This morning I was forced to take a shower.

We all have to take a shower of course, but here they force the patients.

This isn't the 50's where mental ill people were tortured. We're in the 21st century.

I'm hurt to know that neither Sam nor Roderick came to visit me.

Well it's my fault, I treated them both like crap.

I've got to go to the common room. It's going to be very disturbing I can feel.

This time I don't go in my wheeled bed. I have to walk.

My body is still a mess, still weak.

It can't support the heavy burden that I am to myself and to the world.

I like to fantasize that I'm somewhere else and that people in here are other type of people.

It's my escape for this harsh reality.

The nurse that is taking care of me is dressing a white jumpsuit and has a green hat like those french berets.

And now I'm going to the drama club room.

Everyone's so excited and moving weirdly.

Well I guess everyone has their "skills" when it comes to dance.

I expect to get the lead role. Well the competition in here is not that big.

How is possible to have this much of shitty people in New York?

Where's the talented ones like me?

I walk slowly next to the piano and one of the nurses plays a song.

I start to sing it and soon I start to remember everything.

My Winter Showcase, NYU, the NYU christmas play.

I'm an actor. I can sing, act and dance.

I couldn't remember that when I came here. But this song triggered some memories.

Jordan (to the nurse) – Please let me go I have to search for auditions.

Jordan (to the nurse) – You can't have me here. I'm not sick.

Nurse – Quiet, you're going home in a few months.

Nurse – You're still sick.

Nurse – You have been talking in your sleep about some Elliott kid.

Jordan – That's because he's like my dark side that has a body of his own.

Jordan – And he haunts me every night.

Nurse (calming Jordan) – Shh... There, there.

Nurse – If you keep babling like that we have to go to the electroconvulsive therapy room again.

Jordan – Not if you can't get me. I'm going away.

I try to run even though I don't have the strenghts to do it.

I look back and the nurse isn't even running after me.

Why?! Isn't she afraid of losing a patient?!

I go downstairs and I talk to the receptionist to get me a cab. I've got to go home.

She tells me she's calling one, but when I find myself waiting for it.

She has called the buff male nurses and they grab me once again.

They force me to go upstairs even though I flail my legs to be released by their arms.

I don't know were they are taking me to.

When we reach the upstairs I find my doctor nodding his head saying this can't continue happening.

So he orders for more electroconvulsive therapy.

Everytime I'm forced to do electroconvulsive therapy I tend to be angry and remember things I didn't before.

Because before I was sent here I was in a hospital.

And the trauma of my fall made me forget everything but the Swan Lake play.

I'm brought to the common room. Now I see disturbed people.

There's a girl who's standing in a chair doing a strange pose. She doesn't blink or talk.

Another girl passes by me and says I should bow down to her since she's Cleopatra the Queen of the Nile.

I bowed down.

There's quite ill people in here. This room is dark and eerie. It seems like it's haunted.

I sit in a couch and a girl and a guyy sit next to me.

Joseph – Hey there. I know a way to get out of here.

Jordan – Really?!

Joseph – Yes, follow me. We just have to distract the nurses.

Christie – I know how to do that.

They seemed quite sane. They didn't shake or talk nonsense.

I believed in them. They seemed to been forced to be in here but they're quite awake.

Jordan – How can you stay that sane?

Joseph – I pretend to take my pills.

Jordan – How?

Jordan – The nurses always try to see if you swallowed them.

Joseph – I swallow it. Not all the way down on my throat.

Joseph – I let the pills midway my throat.

Joseph – Then the nurse searches in my mouth for any spot where I would hide the pills.

Joseph – When she goes aways I spit it out. Kind of regurgitate it.

Jordan – Wow that's quite complicated to do. But I have to try it.

Jordan – Have you been submitted to electroconvulsive therapy?

Joseph – No, I have faked that I'm getting better so they don't do it to me.

Joseph – What makes the doctors and nurses give you those kind of treatments is when you argue with them.

Joseph – Don't say you're not ill, don't fight them, don't sass them.

Joseph – Agree with every type of medication they tell you to take, but do as I told you.

Joseph – And most important, don't ever say you don't want to come to the common room.

Jordan – Thank you for the tips. I'm Jordan, I guess.

Joseph – You're welcome Jordan. I'm Joseph.

Christie faked a psychotic crisis. That's sad of her, she will be forced to electroconvulsive therapy.

She's quite strong and very committed to do this because of the consequences. She's a martyr.

I see her being forcefully taken out of here and I just want to cry but I can't.

Her fake psychotic crisis triggered the other patients who soon started to fill this room with screams. Some weeped.

This place is tearing me apart.

They're all taken by the nurses, the nurses don't even remember Joseph and I are still in here.

Joseph – Come on. Follow me now.

Jordan – Poor Christie. I hope she makes it.

Joseph – She will. Now follow me.

I follow Joseph through a door that is in the end of the common room.

We go left then right and then we walk carefully through a long hallway.

This hallway has dimmed lights and it's dark blue colored.

There's a lot of picture frames, there's a lot of disturbing people in there.

They're picture frames of former and deceased patients.

You could feel their madness through their appearence.

Joseph takes a flashlight out of his pocket and starts to light the way.

We see a lot of doors and then a door on the floor.

A door on the floor?!

We open it and it has a lot of stairs.

Joseph lights the tunnel and it seems to not have an end.

He takes a calculator of his pocket.

How many things does he have on his pockets?!

He proceeds to throw the calculator down the tunnel and we wait in silence to hear the calculator fall on the floor.

But it has been ten minutes and we still haven't heard anything.

Does this even have an end?! It has to have. It can't be an endless tunnel.

Jordan – I'm not going.

Joseph – Then you'll be stuck here forever.

Jordan – But what if this doesn't lead anywhere?

Joseph – It has to. Let's do it.

Jordan – Okay.

We go downstairs, the first steps are hard because I'm scared of what's waiting for us down there.

Time seems to pass very slowly. I feel like Alice going through the rabbit hole.

20 minutes. 20 minutes was the time needed to reach the underground.

I can't see Joseph anymore. I won't scream for his name because I don't want to get caught.

So I walk without knowing where to go. I see a door far away.

It's red and it has a white doorknob.

I walk near it but I see a room that seems to be abandoned.

I'm torn between going through the red door or entering the abandoned room.

My curiosity is speaking louder than my desire to go away.

So I enter the abandoned room and there's a rusty bed with limbs restraints.

It might have been another torture room.

I see there's cabinets all around of it, I open one of them.

The door makes a screeching noise.

Inside there's an orbitoclast, a hammer, a vintage syringe and spatules.

These tools are really cold and just by touching them I can hear voices.

People who were tortured with them screaming and crying.

I put the tools back in the cabinet and I didn't even read what was on the door, or maybe it wasn't there when I open it.

But in the door says: Lobotomy tools.

Lobotomy was a therapy used in the early fifties to treat schizophrenia, manic depression and bipolar disorder.

The side effects would be like someone turn into vegetative state or made them more docile, passive, and easier to control.

It was kind of a manipulative torture.

I go away from the this room and I close the door.

I see someone running the opposite way of the red door.

I follow that person. And I see that that person stops walking.

I go near the person and the closer I get I see it's a guy.

When I get closer I see it's Elliott.

He smiles and laughs with all the evil he has in is body and grabs my arm and bites it.

Then he grabs it and forces me to follow him. I scream all the way where he is leading me to.

I close my eyes. It was a thing I always did when I was going through a traumatic or hard moment.

I close them and let Elliott taking me to where he wants.

When I open my eyes I find out I'm in my room. I see that a nurse is grabbing my arm.

Jordan – What?! But, you were Elliott.

Nurse – No, Jordan, I'm a nurse.

Nurse – I saw you were wandering through the underground tunnel.

Nurse – I grabbed your arm and took you here.

Jordan – What about the bite?! You bit me.

Nurse – There's no bite. Look at your arm.

I look at my arm searching for teeth marks, in each side of my arm. On both of my arms.

Jordan (softly and desperate) – There's nothing.

Nurse – Here take this pill. It will calm you.

Elliott is beside the nurse and he is smiling.

Jordan (hallucinating) – He's right beside you miss.

Jordan (hallucinating) – Elliott.

Jordan (hallucinating) – Please miss, make him disappear.

Nurse – There's no one in here.

Nurse – Come on, take this pills.

Nurse – Nevermind it, I guess I have to give you a shot through a syringe.

Jordan – No, I'm okay.

Jordan – He's not here anymore. I was imagining it.

Nurse – That's why you need this medication.

The nurse injected a needle with a great width through my arm and it hurts like hell.

Once it was done I fell asleep. I can't even hear any voices.