Excerpt:

Throughout the day she paced in her room. Lydia had all but forgotten about the book until she stumbled back upon it on her bed. When she saw it again, she stared at it. What was it again? "Voices of the Asylum." Something about that book still got to her. It was strange. Didn't Connie say that she came from a family of nurses. She was forgetting some vital detail, she was sure of it, but she could not place it. It was on the tip of her tongue too. And it irritated her that she could not remember what it was. But the more she tried to remember the more frustrated she became. The more frustrated she became the more her head ached.

She finally let go of the issue and picked up the book. Lydia was not sure if she really wanted to read the diary of a man left in an asylum, but it was better than losing her mind by herself. Slowly she turned back to where she had left off, and began to read his slow break down. It was the monotony, he wrote, that was the worst part of the place. The monotony was what was breaking him slowly. Day in, and day out they saw the same dull gray walls, the same people. They would not treat him like a human being! They would not even look at him. He was beginning to feel like cattle.

Cattle? Was that what he wrote? She stared at the words several times to be sure she read them correctly.

"I feel like cattle, with the way they are slowly draining me of myself. They want us to become nothing more than animals that feed and shit and sleep. They don't care how we are doing, if we are ill at all. They will do nothing more than give us our medicine. They won't even look us in the eyes as they do it. Medicine? Ha! That's what they call it. It's nothing more than cheap beer! Not that I'm complaining. the beer is the only decent thing in this god forsaken place. Oh Mary, please wait for me, keep Laura safe, and Josh. Does he even remember me? It feel likes I've been here too long! Dear god, why won't they believe me, I have the letters. But the last time I showed them the letters they said I wrote them and tore them apart. I'm not showing them anything of mine. Well hah! I still have a book of mine. One western that I smuggled out with me. I don't remember how now that i think bout it. It's always been there with me, and even that is warping. Every time I read it, it looks different. It's strange. Was this book here before I was? Why do the words change? Maybe I am crazy maybe."

---

Lydia whimpered as she got back to her room, and though Gwen was looking to her with a look of worry, she did not feel much like talking. At this point, Lydia figured that some sleep would do her good. She did not realize that these sorts of days would become routine for her. Nor did she realize that she would end up sleeping through a lock down period until she woke up at the end of the following day to find herself locked in!

Such periods no longer came as a shock to her though. She was locked in for weeks before, another day hardly mattered. And if she had slept through the day before, then she could sleep through the night. Her body felt exhausted still. Or perhaps it was because the room would not stop spinning. The figures around her continued to move, and she was sure she saw that nurse again. She was telling her to lay still as she gave her her medicine. She had no medicine she wanted to protest, she needed none. But her body was too weak to fight back, and she could only wince as she felt a needle puncture her arm. Whatever was given to her made colors fly before her eyes and she whimpered as the laughter rang around her and the world spun her around. The laughter turned into a wail, into the groan of the wind in the cave, and the weight of the room was coming down on her again.

"We told you to be a good girl." They didn't want her to fight against Roger, but then, she slowly realized that they did not want her to leave anymore. "We've grown fond of you Lydia, aren't you fond of us too?"