Cairndell Institute: Fantastical Insanity
an excerpt

When the door to her room opened, Charity chucked the heaviest thing she had in her posession at the head of her visitor: a bible. "Get away from me!" she screamed again. "I'm not killing anyone! Especially not myself!"

A brunette about Charity's own head ducked from the projectile. She still stood out in the hallway, her head poking in. "Your demon has left." She said, by way of introduction.

Charity sighed, letting all the air exit her lungs, deflating her body flat onto the bed. "Thanks, Aislinn." She said. She waved her hand limply for the girl to come in.

Aislinn Driscoll inclined her head, and slipped into the room. She was still a waif, even after six months here, the first two spent dragging an IV along behind her. You could still see her skull beneath the skin on her face. Her brother brought in portraits done from before the incident, but Aislinn never regained that apple cheeked, filled in face.

Charity laughed. "We're the screamers of the ward, you know." She said. "I don't mind you, because you aren't convinced you've become a fantastical creature. You've demonified your attackers, just as I demonified my demon."

Aislinn turned, her face still expressionless. It was strange to admit that Charity prefered the deadened expression. The alternative was her terrified, banshee screaming face. Aislinn only had two expressions that Charity had ever seen. She'd prefer the corpse like one to the screaming in pain.

The animated death doll stopped moving, and started speaking. "I didn't demonify my attackers. I identified them. No one has to believe me, no one else was there. I was alone with them, they have never been caught, and they will never be punished. But you lie, Charity. You don't demonify your voices. You identify them as evil. You are haunted by a spirit, I can see it, a dark aura surrounding you."

Charity shivered. 'She may be loonier than most of us,' she thought, 'But she sure as hell is very perceptive, the creepy little freak.' Charity shrugged off her chills, and leaned against the wall. The feel of the cold white washed wall against her spine of course triggered a new set of shivers. "What do you mean, Ash? An 'aura?'" she asked, including the finger quotation marks.

Aislinn smiled, her lips curving upward with no trace of amusement or happiness traced on her face. "I meant exactly as I said, Charity," she replied. "You are haunted by an evil spirit. If I look at you in my world, not in the world of humans, I see dark bluish mist clinging to you. If anyone gets too close to you, it reaches out for them. But you never let it go. You make sure the only person the evil touches is yourself."