Excerpt: Never Ever After

When a child is bad they are scolded. They are sent to their beds without supper, or made to stand in a corner, or sometimes, when they are truly naughty, they are given a sound spanking or whipping, to make sure they understand the gravity of the situation.

Those children are lucky.

In Fantasia, one of the many kings began plans for a safe place that he could send his youngest daughter. Somewhere that she could be cared for and treated for her problems. The poor dear was so sensitive as to bruise at the faintest touch, and was an insomniac to boot. For years she had complained of problems with her bed; it was lumpy, or too soft, or too hard, or all manner of tiny problems. She had always been a fussy child. Her father, the king, began negotiations with the other kings nearby his realm – certainly they had children or subjects who were in as bad shape as his poor daughter, or worse! And so they had.

And so the kings and leaders of all the countries in Fantasia began discussing the safe place for the mentally unfit. Somewhere that those who were inept could live and perhaps become healthy. A lovely central location – in a valley with a large, clean lake – was chosen, and construction began. Each country contributed, and no expense was spared. The best doctors in the land were recruited, nurses and orderlies were trained, and before long the Never After Asylum opened its doors to welcome its residents.

Each of the countries offered the best they could to the construction and operation of the asylum. Those closest to the fairy lands made some questionable deals with the Fae, in return for magics and tokens to use. Others offered artisans to make the asylum as beautiful as they could. Still others simply offered basic staff – nurses and orderlies, cooks and housekeepers.

One of the first inhabitants of the Never After Asylum was the princess who had inspired her father to create such a place, still a young girl (at this time she was nearing her tenth year). The princess, named Pea, was given her own specialized room. Everything in it had been handpicked by her father, and handcrafted by the best artisans in the land. The girl immediately loved the room, and her father promised to visit her often. At first he did – coming to visit her every endweek, using a special portal he had commissioned. But as time went on and the old king became older and needed to focus on his own land and estate, the visits became less and less frequent. The last time the king visited his poor daughter was the eve of summer solstice, the year the girl became a woman and turned sixteen.

With time the slowly ageing asylum began to fall into a state of disarray. More and more patients were entering its halls, and the proprietors – those great leaders who dreamt of such a place for those who needed it – visited the buildings less and less often. Certain values began to fade, as more violent patients were admitted, and less room was afforded to them.

Then a new doctor from some far-off land came to the hospital and began taking charge. He only gave his name as Doctor Crooked, he claimed to have been highly educated in the emerging science of psychology, and said that he was sent to the asylum to be it's overseer.

No one resisted the strange man's takeover. Many of the current doctors had no knowledge of psychology or psychiatry, and had come to the asylum under false impressions – many had great visions of curing diseases that left many crippled, and of healing the lame so they could walk, the blind so they could see, the deaf so they might hear! But instead they dealt with those who were damaged mentally – and the mind was something these doctors did not know how to fix.

But this man, this strange Doctor Crooked, brought a ray of hope with him as he began taking over the asylum. Patients began to have specific diagnoses, and the doctor began attempting treatments to help with the patient's symptoms.

The euphoria faded quickly, as some of the Doctor's treatments raised the brows of his colleagues. Heavy sedation was the usual so-called “treatment,” but other treatments included such things as being left alone for days in a small room or being sprayed with cold, high pressured water. Some of the other doctors began to raise objections, only to be laughed at by Crooked, “Are you a doctor of the mind, Doctor?” he would demand. When the objectioning doctor would not answer, Crooked would simply nod and harrumph, “I thought so. Now get back to work.” Sometimes he would point to a document he kept on the wall of a tiny room he claimed as his office, “I was chosen by joint commission. I am on a quest from God and the kings of all of Fantasia.”

With time, the objections ceased, as the doctors either left the asylum to find a new place to work, or they simply stopped caring. Crooked then began poisoning their minds, “These people aren't people at all. They are animals: worthy of the basest of kindnesses, but unable and unfit to live among proper humans. These people, these patients, are a well-loved pet. A cat, or a dog. Nothing more.”

And soon, those who worked for him began to believe him, and the Never After Asylum became, not a place of hope as it had once been intended, but instead a dark, fearful place. One which mother's would use to threaten their naughty, disobedient children. It became a bogeyman, a ghost in the darkness, the monster under the bed.

It became, simply, hell.