Nightmare Asylum

[Wannatripbaby]

9 hours ago, Sophie ♥ said:

"It must be quite the burden to know that your own stubborn obstinance did her so much harm."

Whoa! Using Ria's love of Bridget against her! That's pretty evil. I have no idea how they'll get out of this, especially now that Ria has gone under the knife a 2nd time.

[SGTbaby]

Awesome update! This story is certainly full of twists and turns! 

[Selpharia]

I love this part! Of course, I also know the truth, but will never tell!

[Sophie ♥]

12.)

I sat in the corner of the white room with the soft carpet.  Through the glass, across the hall, the glass was shattered in the other cell.  I was alone.  Where was Bridget?  Where were the other three girls?  They only had one cell left.  What if I broke this one too?  What if I did what Bridget did?  But I didn't have the strength or the thin fingers to pull myself up.  I had torn the little plush mouse apart, seam from seam.  Dot.  Dot was a problem.  Everything in this place was a lie.  It was all tricking me into believing something I couldn't believe in.  No diapers.  No thumbsucking.  I was twenty-two.  I was an adult woman.  Bridget was my best friend.  I knew those were the truth.  I knew it...

"You've made quite the mess... did your little friend truly deserve that?" It was the woman in the pencil skirt, her eyes were black, her voice was soft, and she knelt down in front of Ria with a kind of precision in her balance on her tall heels that was truly admirable. "Are you scared? Confide in me, I will protect you. Are you confused? Question me, I will clarify you. Are you lost? Reach for me, I will guide you. You are very safe."

"I am not safe," I said aggressively.  Angrily.  I was done.  I wouldn't do this anymore.  I wouldn't feed into her stupid game.  I knew now what was going on.  I knew how to fight them. "I'm not saying a damn word to you until you let me see Bridget." And no matter what the woman said, what she did, I would stick to that honestly.

"Okay." Okay? Okay. She stood up, and held out one hand invitingly. She'd take Ria to see her friend; the girl she'd find in a recovery room with thick glass, opaque from the inside. The best friend she would see was dressed her apparent age of a child, clad in shortalls, coloring on the floor and humming to herself. It was impossible to know, of course, if anything she was seeing was real. But seeing it wouldn't come without cost when she did. Without consequence. "Come child, I'll take you to see her."

I put my hands on the glass wall, staring in at my best friend.  Best friend.  Not sister.  I had to keep reminding myself, so I knew I wasn’t losing my mind.  But there she was.  Bridget.  Sitting in short alls and coloring on the floor?  No, that wasn't right.  I shook my head and banged on the glass.  She wasn't stupid.  She knew better.  It was a joke.  A game.  She was playing along. "Let me in to see her."

"I'm afraid you might only inhibit her recovery, child." There was something else about the scene before her, too, something strange. The sense of scale. The sense of size. It was only apparent in focus that Bridget was smaller, smaller than she had been. Small enough to not be a girl in her early twenties. Had she been that small when Ria had first arrived at the window? The handprints she'd left on the window, though, were a few inches higher than her hands were now when she banged on the glass again, and maybe it wasn't only Bridget who was smaller. Or maybe she'd always been that size...

"LEMME IN RIGHT NOW!" I screamed at the woman, banging on the glass.  But she refused to let me.  She picked me up under my arms and sat me on her hip.  I blinked.  What?  What?  No.  Wait... "Lemme go lemme go!" Why was she so much bigger?  What was going on?

"It can be disorientating, coming out of your delusions.” With one hand, still propping her against her hip, the woman adjusted Ria's bandage. She'd need to be dressed properly, though, or soon she'd make quite the mess of her gown. Unlike the first time, which had her learn to suck her thumb, or the second, which had her wetting herself, the effects of her treatment were somewhat more complex. Flashing memories. Scenes. The farmhouse where she lived, with her sister. Scenes with her family. Crying when she wet the bed, and Bridget cuddling her and helping her clean up. Flashes to memories of a life that matched up to the one they'd been telling her was real.  "How about if you're a good girl, and let me get you dressed, I'll let you in to see your sister?"

My head hurt.  Bridget.  As a kid?  No.  I met Bridget in college.  No, I definitely went to college.  I wasn't a kid.  Were these the past?  No, they couldn't be.  Fighting it was so exhausting.  The woman played with my hair and held me to her chest.  I was feeling strangely warm... "You're... no... lemme go... lemme go!"
\
"Where would you go, if I did? Child, the door is locked, and I'm sure you remember how important it is for you to be here. Didn't you promise your Mommy that you would make an effort to be well by Christmas? And now, with Bridget here, you should set a good example for her, for the sake of your family. Tell me about your bedroom, do you remember the color of the walls?"

I wouldn't listen to her!  I wouldn't listen to anything she said!  It was a lie!  All of it was a lie!  But glimpses of memories flashed behind my eyes.  Things that didn't happen.  I told myself they didn't happen.  They were fake.  And they faded, then flashed back, and faded again.  It was so exhausting.  Only a minute of it and already, I felt sleepy and sick. "Lemme go..."

"Do you want to see your sister?" Instantly, reactively, she nodded. No argument with the statement. Sister. It just went over her head. "Then no more fuss, child, no more delusions. We do need to get you dressed, 'fore you have an accident and soil my uniform. I would be very disappointed, should that occur, and you've always had trouble with holding your water, especially when upset." Bedtimes. Diapers, thick, cloth, reassuring... comforting. In her memory, she actually had guilty recollection of wetting on purpose some nights, for the safety and comfort of a diaper. Of protection. She felt safe in a diaper, in her memories as a child.

I took a deep breath, forcing the memories out, but they kept pushing themselves back in.  I felt a heat on my cheeks.  No, no, no... this was wrong.  I knew this was wrong.  But the woman carried me out of the room all the same.  I looked back through the glass at my sis-- no.  At.  At... Bridget.  Playing.  I had to close my eyes.  I was feeling so unwell...

Idly, the woman pushed the girl’s thumb to her lips and left it between them, and only walked a short distance to the adjacent room before setting her down on the edge of a tall, soft, table, padded with a very thin mattress, and her size now completely reduced to fit into it perfectly.  Unlike the others, unlike Soren, the approach they took to Ria was new. It was slow, experimental, not brute forced. This time, they wanted a successful child.

The diaper around my hips was so thick and my legs were so short that I waddled when I walked, but I didn't care.  I had the child's frock covering it.  I knew I was smaller.  I knew this was wrong.  But I couldn't make it go away, not yet.  I had to keep us safe.  When I got in the room with Bridget, I pushed her to the floor and held her tight in my arms.  I had to tell her the truth... she knew about my feelings for her.  I had to remind her. "I love you.  I love you in grown up ways and we're both grown up and this isn't right, this is all a lie, we're grown up!  We're grown up 'cause I know how I feel about you and this is just a lie, Bridget please remember it's just a lie!" But the fact that I loved her - a girl loving another girl - well... that was news to the woman who had opened the door.  She looked bewildered at first, though I didn't notice.  And then, she smiled.  Interesting.

I didn't understand what she was saying, my head felt fuzzy and soft, and I looked at her with a tilted smile, the girl cuddling me right, confessing her love to me. Grown-up way? We were grown-ups, weren't we? I didn't feel grown-up, though, I felt weird, and different, but actually serene. And I nodded my head in acceptance. "I... love you too." Because we were sisters? No, we were friends? Hmm. If we loved each other, we had to be sisters, though, and we were pretty small so that made sense. "Is you loving me a lie? I don't understand...?" The doubt was evident in my voice, though, but the woman just watched with a curious smile.

"No!  No!  We..." I shook my head and looked her over.  Shortalls.  But her bottom wasn't puffed out like mine.  Memories came back to me.  She never wet the bed like I did.  I swallowed and felt a bit of heat filling my cheeks.  I was suddenly very self-conscious. "We are adults.  We are grown up.  This is a lie.  You and me.  We're bigger.  And we don't dress like this.  And... we go to college.  Please remember?" But she looked blankly.  I closed my eyes and pushed my lips to hers.  A kiss.  Real, adult, lip to lip kiss.  We'd kissed before, when she was drunk.  Those memories became fresh in my head.  It pushed the rest away.  I was sure now.  We were adults.

While the kiss may have cemented things for her, it only made things much more cloudy for me! I looked at her, blinking, remembering... and my brain did what it could and forced the two things together, the memories of her and the memories of elsewhere. “…we pretend to be little kids sometimes, but we're not little kids... we're... girlfriends...?" Right? Sisters loved each other. So did girlfriends. That was the only version of events that reconciled in my head.

Girlfriends?  I blinked, my eyes going wide, and suddenly, my cheeks were very pink.  Oh.  Oh... girlfriends.  I mean.  I'd always.. I always thought... I exhaled and bit my lip.  Oh my.. "W-well... n-not... I..." "I think that's enough for now," the woman said, and picked me up under my arms.  I kicked and wiggled, but I was still too taken aback by the word.  Girlfriend.  Wow...

There was clearly some adjustment to be done here: the woman was very aware of the both curious, and sinful nature, of the relations they described. But her and her husband, the doctor, the surgeon... they were never ones to shy away from frontier methods, to hide from opportunity to forge new pathways and take advantage of situations. While she had to isolate the two of them for now, this conversation would only prove to secure their fates.
 

[Sarah Penguin]

[Wannatripbaby]

Keep fighting, Ria! You can do it! Don't let them poison your mind!

... huh, maybe I'm getting a bit too invested in these characters... Nah, I'm fine!

Once again I feel like you keep switching from 1st to 3rd person perspective at really strange times. But now I'm wondering if you're doing it deliberately to give the sense of disorientation & confusion that Ria & Bridget are feeling. If we are experiencing this story from their eyes it would make sense that the phantasmagoric, Dream-like nature of their perspective would be present in the writing style. Kinda like when you're in a dream and you can be seeing things through your own eyes while also looking at yourself from above.

[Sarah Penguin]

What if the girls are ghosts who been committed to da asylum by their ghost parents cause they think they're alive? *ponders*

[Sophie ♥]

I AM REALLY BAD AT THIRD PERSON!!!  If you ever see anything that is first person other than Ria and Bridget please tell me because I think it's probably a typo. 

ALSO GOOD NEWS!  I finished round 1 of editing for the entire story so I'm going to put another chapter up in celebration.  It's going to be 30 chapters long.   

1 hour ago, Sarah Penguin said:

What if the girls are ghosts who been committed to da asylum by their ghost parents cause they think they're alive? *ponders*

....this is a much better idea. o_o Sarah you're amazing.

[Sarah Penguin]

13 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

I AM REALLY BAD AT THIRD PERSON!!!  If you ever see anything that is first person other than Ria and Bridget please tell me because I think it's probably a typo. 

ALSO GOOD NEWS!  I finished round 1 of editing for the entire story so I'm going to put another chapter up in celebration.  It's going to be 30 chapters long.   

....this is a much better idea. o_o Sarah you're amazing.

*hugs* fanks!

[Sophie ♥]

13.)

"Please continue reading, Ria.” There, in the library, Ria sat on the floor, with Soren next to her on one side, Kori on and the other, and the librarian, Trudie, seated in an armchair in front of the three of them. Ria had a large printed picture book in her lap, and a fresh bandage around her head; the simple words on the paper proving a struggle for her to make out, although the pictures seemed to help. Her eyes were a little darker, too, not the pitch-black wells that took the place of eyes for the librarian, but certainly darker and more cloudy than they had been. "I'm sure Bridget will be here to join us soon. Do you know what that word is?"

I knew all of this was wrong.  I knew this was a disaster.  I was wearing a thick cloth diaper under my dress - a dress that was stupid and frilly and just downright impractical!  But if I didn't wear the diaper, I'd wet myself in front of Bridget.  If I didn't wear the dress, she'd see the diaper.  I had no choice.  She'd called me her girlfriend yesterday.  Was it yesterday?  It was hard to make sense of day and night in here.  There weren't any windows.  I closed my eyes and shook my head, then tried to read the book again.  A word I couldn't figure out.  I kept trying to sound it out, but it wasn't working.  I felt foggy...

There were a few more moments there when Trudie waited, before turning to Kori with a disappointed sigh held under her breath. "Kori, would you help Ria with that word?" Kori, who had her legs spread with her diaper in display, leaned over and looked at the book, responding almost immediately with glee. "Cat!" "Good girl, Kori. Now, let's turn the page and try one more, Ria, your sister will be very proud of you if you can get even this one right."

Cat?  I knew how to read cat.  But I knew how to read all of these words, and still, I wasn't reading them well at all.  I knew they were messing with my head.  I knew they were doing this to me, somehow.  I remembered the chalkboard.  I remembered those things they had written under my name.  I bit my lip. "I don't want to do this anymore.  I want to see Bridget." Who wasn't my damn sister!  Right?

"Your sister is resting, she had a big procedure earlier and needs her bedrest." Trudie answered as she stood up from her chair and retrieved a plate of cut-up pieces of fruit from the adjacent table. Little apple wedges, banana slices, peeled orange pieces, grapes, all in little child-sized pieces. "We'll take a brief recess and perhaps a snack will help with your efforts, Ria." The other girls seemed to think so, too, because each of them picked out a piece of fruit immediately and began eating.

I sat quietly and nervously, looking at the fruit, looking at the two girls, and then looking at my feet.  No matter what I did, it felt futile.  It felt like there was no way out.  This wasn't me.  I wasn't the person who could save us.  It had always been Bridget.  I had anxiety.  I had fear.  She was brave and strong and assertive.  She was our way out.  And I couldn't even find her. "Eat," Trudie encouraged.  I ate a grape.

"Hey..." Ria almost didn't wake up when I nudged her, asleep on a roll-up mat over one side of the library, with Kori and Soren to her left. The lights were dim, and Trudie wasn't anywhere to be seen.  When Ria rolled over, once it clicked who's voice it was, I put my finger to my lips to shush her. "Be really quiet, okay? Don't wake anybody up, or we'll get in trouble." There was mischief in my eye, a strange twinkling sense of something about to happen. When she went to speak, I put my finger to her lips instead, and then kissed her to ensure her silence. A long kiss. A girlfriend-sister-kiss.

We'd kissed.  A lot.  Drunken kisses, mostly.  Kisses when we were out and she wanted to avoid getting hit on in clubs.  But that.  That wasn't like those kisses.  That was... well, there wasn't a word for it.  Or maybe I just forgot it.  She pulled her lips off mine and my cheeks burned in the dim light of the library.  She helped me to my feet and led me by the hand out into the hall.  I could tell by the way I walked, the weird waddle to my step, that my diaper was wet.  Damnit...

"Something about this is wrong." I spoke in hushed whispers, my hand in hers, as we crept to the edge of the library and I cracked the door open to look out to the left and right, before leading us out into the hall. She waddled, I walked, her breath caught as she did and I squeezed her hand tight. "We shouldn't be here, Ria, I don't think we should be here, they're not telling us the truth." Her eyes were cloudy in a way I couldn't quite pinpoint, when I looked back at her, and I nodded my head in affirmation. "Mommy and Daddy would never send us to a place like this..."

Mommy and Daddy?  Tidbits flooded my memory.  About our life before.  Our cottage by the lake.  Mommy and Daddy... I shook my head and tried to remember why this was wrong.  Why was it wrong? "Bridget... we gotta get out of here.  I know you can get us out of here.  I just don't know what to do anymore, and they keep taking you away from me..." Once we escaped, we could sort the rest out.

"Uhhuh." I agreed, and stopped midway down the hall when something clicked to me, an idea in my head, and that idea saw me turning around and putting my hand up between my sisters thighs and pressing it against thick, warm padding between her legs, like that was the most natural thing in the entire world to be doing "You're wet.  I'm sorry, you must be so uncomfortable.. remember when we snuck out, and didn't change you before we went down to the woods? You had such an awful rash, sis..." Right? Right. Yeah, that sounded real. "I'll change you."

I opened my mouth in bewilderment.  She just... she put... how did she know?  She couldn't know... I wanted to say something.  To say stop?  But her hand was between my thighs, pushing the warm, wet cloth against me, and... she let me go and I turned every shade of red imaginable.  My face felt like the sun.  She pulled me by the wrist down another hall and into a room.  I tried to regain my composure. "Bridget... we gotta leave."

"There's be no point in leaving if you can't walk 'cause you got a rash, remember Daddy had to carry you home from the woods last time?" Everything I said felt real, maybe due to the fact I was heavily focused on the task of escaping, so the little details that came to mind felt trustworthy, felt believable. "You're so cute when you blush like that, Ria..." I bit my lip, feeling heat in my chest that came from a different place. She was my sister. Truth. She was my girlfriend. Truth. We kissed. Truth. We hid that from Mommy and Daddy. Truth. How was I to pick apart anything beyond that?

Something was wrong with Bridget.  I knew something was wrong with her.  She thought I was her sister.  She thought I was her girlfriend.  Both, at the same time?  I didn't know.  But where one was something I needed to convince her otherwise, the other... well, if she never remembered the truth... would it be so bad?  The room she brought me into had soft music and a machine that slowly spun stars across the walls.  It was small and dark and quiet, and on one wall was a large table, like from a doctor's office, except... I pulled my hand out of my sister's. "We have to go!  We don't have time for this!"

"Ria, I can't carry you if you get a rash okay?" I almost snapped at her with my tone, but not quite. It was more like... a solid plea and reminder. And that followed from words into actions, when I put hand to cheek and lips to lips and kissed her. Memories of last year when it snowed, and she was scared to come out of our room because the snow was scary and we had a chimney, flooded to me. Memories of my kissing her then, to pacify her. Pacify her. Pacifier.  Oh, she needed her pacifier!

The dichotomy between kissing my best friend and knowing she thought we were related was second only to doing it in a wet diaper, as she talked about me getting a rash.  But the kiss was enough of a distraction - gosh, was it a distraction! - for her to pull me forward and fumble around in the drawer under the table.  I opened my mouth to try again.  She had to be convinced!  But when I did, a pacifier was pushed between my lips.

The effect seemed to be instant, the fight in her eyes dulled and a small smile formed behind the pacifiers guard on her lips as I helped her up onto the changing table. I knew how to do this, I'd done it for her before, because we were sisters. Obviously I knew how. "We're going to get out of here, Ria, and we're gonna run and run and run all the way home, and never look back." A part of me saw the diaper as foreign, wondered how it pinned in place so snugly, felt momentary confusion. But my hands knew exactly what they were doing.

I'd been sucking my thumb for days.  A pacifier was a natural evolution of that.  But it was worse than that.  It was... intoxicating, almost.  It felt heavy and warm and when I was stood up again - dry this time - it felt like no time had passed at all.  But she'd seen me naked.  She'd seen me naked before, though.  But she'd seen me wrapped in wet cotton!  But hadn't she seen that before too?  I didn't know what to think...

"There we go, isn't that better?" I rubbed the front of her diaper. She liked when I did that. Flashes of arousal conflicted with flashes of reality, two realities, though, and I felt a little bit sick. How old were we? Mm. "Let's get out of here, this place is messing with my head, sis." The others, Soren, Kori? I didn't even know them, really, not before I came here. Wait. Did I? We only made it halfway down the hall before the dizziness got too much and I keeled over and threw up all over the plush red carpet.

Damnit... "Hey, Bridget, it's okay.  Um.  It's alright.  Sis." Sis.  Ugh, I felt so weird saying that.  But if she got sick it wouldn't help anything.  I knew what it was like to fight it off, the weird thoughts, the wrong memories.  Even now, I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. "Come on, we gotta go.  Come on."

"Yeah, um..." The hall was spinning and I put my hand against the wall for support, but found her hand instead, her words spoken around her pacifier sounding perfectly normal to me. She smiled beyond the guard and I nodded my head slowly. "Where are you going?" That was Trudie, who stood in a doorway off the hall, in front of us, but not in our way. "Home!" "If you leave before your treatment is complete, then you'll be stuck the way that you are." "We don't care, we're going home!" Defiant. Yeah! We were sisters, right? Sister girlfriends. We were kids. She wet the bed. We wanted to go home. What was so bad about that?

"Bridget, we gotta run." She looked at me and nodded, turning on her heel and dashing toward the other door.  I ran after her as fast as I could, but even without the padding between my legs, she was always faster than me.  When we were kids, we used to race on the beach and I never even came close to winning.  Probably because her legs were longer.  She was older, after all.  Wait, wasn't I taller than her?

"It's locked." I banged on the door, the double door that I knew was the way out of here, and I didn't know how I knew, I just did! I knew it. "You can leave if you like." Trudie held something in her hand, jingling, dangling - a keyring. "But you'll always be who you are in this moment when you do. You won't grow older, you won't recover from your current issues. You'll live out there, frozen as those you are right now. Sisters. Lovers. Frightened easily, immature, codependent." "We don't care just let us go!"

Sisters... lovers?  I looked at my best friend and then back at the woman.  Was... was that so bad?  I was halfway between my sister and Trudie, exhausted from the run.  But Trudie hadn't even broken a sweat.  She held out the keyring.  We could get out.  We could be together.  The sister thing... well we could work on that.  But she wouldn't just let us go.  Would she?  I looked at Bridget, who nodded her head softly.  Okay.  So I took a step toward Trudie and took the key out from her hand.  We were... free?
 

[Wannatripbaby]

Now that's a plot twist! Assuming that this isn't just another illusion & they're actually still stuck in the asylum. Are they really free? Are they still trapped? I don't know which one to hope for. What even is reality? Am I actually reading this story right now or am I actually a patient in the Nightmare Asylum whose mind has snapped & can only comprehend reality from reading distance? Or maybe you--yes you reading this comment right now--are actually the patient reading your own story! Maybe I'm a figment of your imagination? Maybe you're a figment of MY imagination? What if my mind invented you so that you could invent me so that I could invent you so that you could invent me...

 

Whoa. Went a bit too far down the rabbit hole there. I apologize for any undue confusion or stress you may have experienced by reading this.

[SGTbaby]

Wow! More twists, more turn, more twists and more turns! Loving every single one!

[Sarah Penguin]

[Sophie ♥]

14.)

The wetness of the basement flood seemed so far behind us, although this time we didn't have any shoes on either of our sets of feet.  The tepid, stagnant water, felt FAR more disgusting this time. From here we could see the light from the filtering in through broken basement windows, reflecting off still water. "What... where..." Where were we? My head was spinning, trying to reconcile realities.

It was night, but the streetlights were blinding.  I pulled Bridget up out of the basement with me, through the doors on the side of the building, and leaned up against the brick.  The air was fresh, but it was thick and heavy from a recent rain.  I looked down at the dress I was wearing - what was once an elegant, albeit impractical, dress was now just dusty and old cloth, ripped and torn.  It could have maybe been a dress, long long ago, but the one I remembered?  No... I held my head and sat down on the grass.  I barely noticed how damp it was.

"What happened in there...?" The crispness of the night air felt like it made everything feel real, but everything else felt real, too. I was in college. I was eight? Ria was my sister. Ria was my lover. Both? "We're in love..." I tested those words, because they felt like the ones least likely to be real. After all, we were obviously sisters.

We were in love... no, we weren't.  I had liked Bridget since before I could remember.  I loved her, probably.  I had wanted to be with her for so long.  I did whatever I could to impress her, to win her favor, even though I knew, deep down, it would never happen.  Now... now it had happened.  It wasn't fair to her.  It wasn't okay.  But... but... "Uh huh.  Yeah... we're in love."

"I'm sorry we came somewhere so dangerous... are you okay?" I put my hands on her with affection and familiarity, ran fingers over her face, tidied her matted hair, cleaned streaks of dirt from her cheeks. Sibling affection, lover’s devotion. I felt dizzy. "We need to get home, Mommy... uh... Mom? Mommy... uh, our parents are gonna be worried about us." Right? Right...

She was confused.  I bit my lip and forced a smile.  I had to tell her the truth.  But when we got back to the car, we realized we had bigger problems.  We both just stood there, looking at the vehicle.  Neither of us had the keys.  They were in Bridget's pocket, right?  I looked down at the keys in my hand.  None of them were a car key...

"We drove here...?" It was clear enough that while Ria’s body had taken changes, while she might well wet the bed for the rest of her life, my mind was in a mess as tattered as our clothes. "But we're not old enough to drive..." I almost threw up again, but Ria caught me, held me up, and kissed me. And when she kissed me it felt like everything made sense, because this was the one unalienable fact of life I knew was something that I could trust in.

Okay... this wasn't going to be easy.  But I had to do it.  I broke off our kiss and smiled at my sis-- no.  At Bridget.  I knew, logically: she wasn't my sister.  She wasn't. "Bridget, we're not sisters.  We're friends.  We're..." ...oh jeeze. "We're girlfriends.  But we aren't sisters.  It's just... stuff they made us think.  I don't know why they would do that, but it's not real." I was pretty sure, anyway...

"We're... we're not sisters...? Then why were we... why were we in the hospital? You were there and I came to rescue you, I remember. I remember, Ria, I came to rescue you. You're just confused because you spent too much time in there." I nodded my head, my words getting more certain as I talked, until the end of the explanation when I was just so sure of myself.

"No.  It's not.  That's not..." But everything she said sounded real enough.  It made sense in my mind.  But at the same time, I knew it was wrong!  At least as much as I knew it was right... "We went in there, because..." Honestly... I couldn't remember.  I bit my lip. "Um.  Well.  It's not a real hospital.  We just went in there.  And... got stuck..." Honestly, her story made more sense.

"I don't think you're right, but let's not think about it. Let's just get going home. How's your diaper?" I lifted the shards of her tattered dress from the hem but found the undergarment she was wearing to be be threadbare and barely held in place by pins that looked tarnished or rusty. "What happened to our clothes? Why is everything is worn away? I don't remember tearing anything on the way out."

I puffed out my cheeks.  I was getting frustrated. "It's not real!  It's not real, Bridget!  It's just make believe!  We went in there, and... and..." And what?  It was a fever dream?  Gas leak?  No... it didn't feel like that.  It felt like we went back in time.  But we couldn't have gone back in time... I bit my lip.  Maybe we had brain damage... then I remembered the surgeries.  Did we actually have brain damage?! "We aren't sisters, okay?  We just went in there, and something happened, and we're grown ups, and, and..." And I was crying.

"It's okay, hey..." I felt something weird, some mix of maternal and possessive love. I didn't know what to do about this, but it felt right just to hold her.  We stood there, under the light of the crisp full moon, and I held her in my arms. What had happened to us? "I wonder how long we were gone? It felt like we were in there for months..."

Months?  Sometimes, maybe.  But based on memory alone, I could only remember a few days.  Maybe a week?  I closed my eyes and held onto Bridget's arms, pushing my forehead into her neck.  She had always been so good at comforting me.  Hadn't she? "We gotta get home." Then Bridget asked a really important question: "Where is home?" ...uh...

No keys. No phones. And we were so far away from home, but I didn't know where home was. "I guess we should start walking, and maybe ask somebody where we are if we find someone." Though at this point, in the middle of the night, I didn't know how likely that was...

It didn't take long.  Before we could so much as get away from the hospital property, the police had arrived.  Flashing blue and red lights.  I held onto Bridget's hand as they led us away from the condemned grounds and started calling for a tow on the car.  One man - much taller than either of us - had us stand by his car and asked a lot of questions. "Is that your vehicle across the street?" "Yes." "You know this place is off limits?" "Yes." "Why were you here?" "Just looking." "Do you have ID?" ...we didn't. "What are your names?” And we both gave our names.  Different last names. "Ria Calloway." "Bridget Vanderbough."

We both paused when we gave our last names, because we both wanted to say the one thing: Hemmingslee. And I think we both saw that in each others eyes, too, although neither of us said anything until we sat in the back of the police car. "I was going to say Hemmingslee,” I admitted, quietly, and although my sister... friend? lover? Although she said nothing in response, I knew she felt the same way, too. “We'll figure out what's real and not real, right? We'll be okay, won't we?"
 

[Wannatripbaby]

I don't think I've ever seen this kind of a twist in any story; the protagonists overcoming the great terror halfway through the story & spending the rest of the story dealing with the damage. You & Pudding are truly amazing!

[Sarah Penguin]

[Sophie ♥]

15.)

The car was impounded.  Was it my car?  No, it was Bridget's.  I was having trouble remembering.  Things were supposed to go back to normal, weren't they?  But that woman - Trudie - she said they wouldn't.  She said we were stuck like this.  When the officers dropped us off at the house, we were given a number to call about a court date.  At least we weren't in jail though, right?  We both went into Bridget's dorm - a single on the second floor - and I realized for the first time that I'd only been in here maybe once or twice before.  She was my best friend.  She was my crush.  But we weren't entirely that close...

"Oh uh..." Our feet were stained with mud and I found it more awkward than it should have been to watch her wandering around my dorm. Awkward when it shouldn't have been. We could talk for hours and hours about things that didn't matter, but we didn't have all that much in common. Did we? It felt like we did. "I'm gonna go have a shower, I can't wait to get the memory of that place washed down the drain. I have some spare towels if you wanna shower after?" Although a big part of me thought we should be showering together...

"R-right.  Yeah.  Okay..." I looked down at the papers in my hands, reading over the citation.  Bridget walked into her bathroom and closed the door.  I tried not to track mud all over the place, but most of it had dried by now.  Bridget's dorm.  I'd been here once for a party, with a couple other girls.  Once to pick her up for lunch.  Once I brought her homework when she was sick.  But Bridget was popular.  She was special.  Everyone knew it.  I just... waited for her to be free.  Which I guess wasn't that often.  That was why I went to that stupid hospital with her in the first place: I wanted to spend time with her...

"It feels so much better to feel clean." Ria stared at me as I wandered out into the living room, wrapped only in the towel I was wearing from the shower. I wanted to kiss her. Because she was my lover, right? But the longer it had been since we left that place, the clearer those foggy thoughts seemed to become. I felt like we were lovers, but I also felt like we weren't. "I still think you're my sister, when I look at you, and then I don’t. That place is scary..."

“Yeah, scary..." She was radiant.  Clean.  Beautiful.  Her hair was wet and her skin glistened softly in the ambient light from the living room.  I swallowed hard. "I... uh, I'll shower now too?  And maybe we can just lay together or something.  You know?" I went to walk past her, but as I did, I kissed her instead.  I let out a little sigh.  Of all the things to come out of this, at least I had her... her and me.  I didn't have to be lonely anymore.

She showered. We laid together, in my bed, and cuddled close. And fell asleep, like everything was normal. I was woken up by a scream in the middle of the night, though, and when I shot upright in my bed I found myself alone and Ria huddled in the corner, screaming at someone, talking loudly as though somebody else was there even though she was alone. I stumbled out of my bed and crawled across the floor to her. Hey! Ria. Ria, baby, Ria you're having a bad dream, Ria... Ria..." I shook her shoulders, trying to get her to snap out of it, and she slapped my cheek hard.

I didn't know what happened.  I didn't know why I did that.  I thought... I thought she was here.  That woman.  The woman who had made me small and put all those wrong memories in my head.  She was saying something, I swear.  But now it was just me and Ria and... and my very wet nightgown.  Tears poured down my cheeks.  I'd hit her?  I'd hit her... "I... I'm s-sorry... I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

My cheek hurt, and it wasn't okay that she'd hit me, but she needed caring right now and getting upset with her, especially over the fact she'd peed all over my carpet, wouldn't do us any good. So I wrapped my arms around her again, and this time squeezed tight. "It's okay, it's fine..." Behind me, though, not visible to me and only to her, there was a woman with black eyes sitting on the edge of the bed and shaking her head... and that just got Ria screaming again.

I buried my head in Bridget's shoulder, crying hysterically.  I couldn't even form words.  I kept mumbling, incoherently, under my breath, "goawaygoawaygoaway".  She wasn't real!  Of course she wasn't real!  That whole place wasn't real!  Everything they said, everything they did... but Bridget was real.  She was here.  She was my girlfriend now.  That was real.  Right?  Right.

"You're fine, you're safe. I'm going to get a towel, alright? Wait here, I won't be long, just going to the bathroom." When I stood up, though, she refused to let go of me, so I took Ria with me to the bathroom instead. She was mumbling to herself, talking quietly, incomprehensibly, not loud or clear enough for me to make out. But then again I couldn't hear the woman behind me, either, the one telling Ria that she was sick and shouldn't have left.
\
"LEAVE ME ALONE!  GO AWAY!  GO--" Bridget covered my mouth and pushed me into the wall, holding me tight.  She was shorter than me, smaller, but she knew how to be aggressive when she needed to be. "No one is there, Ria.  No one is there." I looked back.  The woman wasn't there.  I was trembling.  I couldn't stop crying.  Was this a bad dream?  How much of this was a bad dream...

"It's just you and me, Ria, it's just you and me and nobody else is here and nobody else can get in okay? The door is locked. And look." I clicked the bathroom door locked and smiled. "Now another door is locked." I felt like I was getting through to her, things felt calmer, quieter, but when she looked in the mirror and saw the two of us in the period vintage little girl dresses we'd been wearing in the hospital, her sobbing started up all over again.

It was just a bad dream, a bad dream, a bad dream... Bridget got me in the shower and cleaned up her carpet.  I kept hearing her voice. "You're sick." "I'm not sick," I mumbled back, holding my eyes closed while I washed the shampoo from my hair. "You're in a make believe world." "I am not." “A world where your sister isn't your sister?" "Shut up." "She's your lover?" "Shut up." "She hates you." My words caught in my throat.  She...

"I bet you're just sick from being in that place, probably picked up a fever from the gross water in the flooded basement, right? You're probably just sick." I smiled at her, innocently enough, with a loving and gentle sentiment. But those words made her look as though I'd just told her Santa Claus wasn't real, and I tilted my head with a smile. "I bet a kiss will help you feel better?" Kissing felt wrong. Probably because they made us think we were sisters, obviously...

"...y-yeah," I mumbled, looking around the room quietly.  The voice stopped.  I had dried off.  I was wearing a pair of her pajamas, but they were a size too small.  The woman was gone... the visions were gone.  It was a dream after all.  I sighed.  A bad dream... but Bridget was the opposite.  She leaned down and put her lips on mine.  She played with my hair.  She leaned me back on her sofa.  Wow...

We had sex. A part of me knew it was taboo. A part of me knew it was our first time. Another part still told me we did it all the time and not to worry, so I didn't worry past that. It seemed to make her happy, and it wore me out enough to get back to sleep. Ria didn't sleep, though; she laid next to me in bed, eyes wide awake, staring at the ceiling. To her, some time during our love making, I'd started wearing the dress in the mirror. To her, my eyes had gone black. "You shouldn't have left." The voice came from nowhere, but it belonged to that woman.

It was the perfect moment.  It was what I wanted.  Her.  Bridget.  I had always wanted her like that.  And after I'd pissed all over her carpet, after I hit her across the face, she still... and then it was ruined.  Ruined by that dress, that voice... our first time and it was ruined.  I pushed the pillow down over my face.  Shut up shut up shut up!  Leave me alone!

"You're deceiving her... your own sister. Twisting her to your own sickness, your own perversions, sullying her so that nobody will ever be able to love her. She loves you, she trusts you, and you're ruining her." The woman was nowhere to be seen, of course, just a disembodied voice that only Ria could hear. But that perhaps only made things worse, because at least if she were visible she could be quantified.
 

[Wannatripbaby]

This is getting heavy. I would say they should check Ria into a mental hospital, bit given the circumstances maybe an exorcism is more in order?

[Sophie ♥]

XD An exorcism!  Now that's an idea!

[Wannatripbaby]

Oooo! And maybe the priest they get to do this wasn't really expecting an actual spirit to me haunting Ria, so then Trudie shows up & he totally freaks out! Maybe even siding with Trudie? So then Bridget & Ria will have a ghost as well as a crazed priest after them!

... Or you could have the exorcism work & Trudie would get banished or cast out or whatever.

Could go either way.

[Sophie ♥]

We'll just have to wait and see. 

[Wannatripbaby]

16 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

We'll just have to wait and see. 

(In a thick German accent)

Oh really? Is that vhat you think? Vell, ve have vays of making you talk. Perhaps an hour or two vith Mister Cuddle-Bunches vill loosen you lips! 

 

(I apologize to an Germans I may have offended with the previous statement.)

[Sophie ♥]

16.)

I woke up the next morning to another wet bed.  Bridget's bed.  She was already awake, undressing from her nightgown, which had dark stains all over it.  I thought maybe she had wet the bed, but she hadn't.  It was me.  And it was everywhere. "I... um..." I rubbed my eyes to try to clear my head.  But before I could apologize, Bridget answered: "It's fine." But it didn't sound fine.  She sounded annoyed...

"I'll get a mattress protector or something after my exam this morning, can you do the laundry?" I didn't know if she had a class. She probably did. But she'd peed all over my clothes and my bedsheets so I kind of expected her to make it up to me by cleaning up after herself. "She's mad at you. She thinks you should be in diapers, or seeing a doctor. She thinks you're a baby."

"I'm not a baby!" But Bridget had already left the room.  I sat there, bewildered, dizzy, sick... and I just heard the light disapproving clicks of her tongue in the background.  I didn't understand.  I didn't understand any of this.  We were happy!  Her and me, we were happy!  Weren't we?  Weren't we...?  I went downstairs to the laundry room later that afternoon.  Classes?  She had classes?  Did I have classes?  But when I got there, I just stared at the laundry machine.  Had I ever done my own laundry?  No, she always did it growing up.  Bridget had always gotten my laundry out of my closet, even my wet sheets, and... no, no, that's not real.  No...

"It is real, though. Bridget always took care of your laundry, she always hid it from your parents, she took care of you. And you selfishly chose to live in a fantasy and hurt her, instead of trying to get better. Your own sister, you betrayed her." The woman was there, this time, but only in the mirror above the folding shelf by the dryer, a figment in the reflection, and the version of Ria in the mirror had the bandage over her head, and the ornate vintage dress, even though she wasn't wearing that on her own side.

I threw the laundry basket at the shelf and it fell to the concrete, shattering the mirror.  My clothes gathered up dirt off the floor.  I leaned back against the wall and held my head.  No.  No!  I didn't do this!  This is the real world!  This is it!  That place was... it was a lie!  Bridget isn't my sister, she's my best friend!  I stormed out of the room and ran all the way back to Bridget's apartment, slamming the door shut behind me.  I couldn't catch my breath.  I needed my medicine.  But I wasn't even at my house...

"You do need your medicine." There were three pills next to a glass of water on the counter top, the disembodied voice came from that direction. They were old-styled, big and clunky, plain beige pills. "The sooner you start your treatments again the sooner you'll be back to the real world. With your sister. With your parents. A happy little girl again."

I'd always had anxiety.  I'd always had attacks when things got to be too much.  This was so far beyond too much.  My chest was hurting.  Everything felt like it was on fire.  The pills weren't my usual ones.  They just sat there.  On the counter.  I had to calm down.  I had to do the laundry.  I couldn't let Bridget think I was a baby!  So I fumbled for the medicine and washed it down with the glass of water.  Immediately, I felt the anxiety subsiding.

"Relax..." The woman faded out of thin air, the same neat uniform, the same tender touch, and the same sense of her growing as Ria began to tumble down in size until she was truly the size of a child and held in the woman’s arms. Held tight as the pacifier was pushed between her lips. Everything felt warm in a way that it hadn’t until she'd taken the pills, warm and safe, content and comfortable, her own eyes swirling with tendrils of darkness as she stared up into the empty milky darkness of the woman’s gaze.

Finally, things were feeling better.  Things were feeling right.  She held me and I sucked softly on the pacifier.  I felt warm.  I felt soft.  Like I was naked and wrapped up in nice blankets in a cold winter month.  Relax.  She said one word and I listened without question.  Relax...

Ria was in a dress that felt right; simple and black and white, with scalloped lace and a billowing skirt, easier access for the diaper she was wearing; thick layers of cloth between her legs that felt as natural and comfortable as anything else ever had. Her rubber pacifier between her lips was a natural fit, and she had a bandage around her head. A bandage that the man pulled aside while the woman played with her hair.
 

[Wannatripbaby]

Pills that change your reality or perception thereof? Is this Fran Bow now? Because if it is I'm totally fine with that. I love Fran Bow!

Also 2 chapters in 4 hours! Sophie! Does your mommy know that you're spoiling your fans? 

[Sophie ♥]

I don't know what Fran Bow is... *googles*

Yes, that's exactly what this is.

If I've learned anything from my Mommy it's that spoiling the people you care about is important.