Lucid Dreamer

[§ilvercell]

this was a great chapter!

[Murchadh]

Wonderful! Man, I can't wait to see what kind of preperations Crane had to make, or thier effects on Jane. This is so cool, please add more as soon as you can!

[jill]

i love it, as usual. haha i like jane's little joke, angie acts as though nothing's wrong most of the time, it almost seems as if she's having a little affect on jane that way, which is a good thing. can't wait to see how her next session with crane goes!!!!

[dior4ever]

i second that!!

[azina]

Interesting ... so she's not in the maximum security ward. Wonder what that looks like if they're basically stuck in that basement prison. I hope you're writing as we speak because I really want to know what happens to her.

[dior4ever]

me too!!

[kelsey]

wow i absolutely love your story! once i start, i just cant stop reading! you are amazingly talented!

[aurora10]

^ so true!!! This chapter was...wow. ;D

[Niquinga]

Great chapter. I can't wait to find out how the session with Crane goes.

[§ilvercell]

next chapter please,i'll give you a cill-bot?

[seonedevinian]

a cill-bot? wow, i'd better get to work...
sorry everyone, i was out all weekend buying neato comics and graphic novels...anyway, i'm back now, so...thanks for waiting!

[jill]

we missed you! hopefully i'll talk to you on msn sometime this weekend.

[seonedevinian]

okay, at long last, here is part one of chapter 12! so thankyou all for keeping up with me!

there's a crazy man singing outside my house. i hope he goes away....

~the storm descends~

Mr. Burlington led the way down the evening halls, empty at this time of day. Darkness was descending on the property, she would assume, as the florescent lighting had dimmed into its muted representation of night. All was eerily still.

“Right here”, the orderly said, stopping at another thick steel door. The small window showed little light inside the room as well; what illumination there was had a flickering blue tint, reminding her of the static channels on her own television set.

Jane held back at the door; she felt like she was about to enter the deep dark woods, where monsters lurked. Burlington reached past her and released the lock. “Go ahead”, he said, oblivious to her discomfort.

Tentatively, Jane entered. She heard the door close behind her, the lock setting with a heavy click. Eyes forward, she saw a chair, set ominously in front of a projection screen. She turned to see the projector set on a table behind the door; out of these shadows stepped Crane, back straight as always, chin held high. He was a slight man with a huge, unsettling presence.

“Please, have a seat, Jane”, he said just as he had so many times before. And as before, Jane had little choice but to obey.

“I have a different treatment I’d like to try today”, he went on. “Very simple, no hypnosis. Although, I must insist on using a mild sedative and restraint.” Before she could argue, Jane felt the needle tear the tiniest hole in her skin. Crane was a sneaky one; giving her no warning, he slid the cold liquid into her vein. Already she felt the paralysis set in.

“Is this…supposed…to calm me?” she managed while she still had energy enough to speak.

He stood behind her, out of her sight. Nevertheless, she could hear the dark, cold sweep of his voice.

“It’s my own concoction”, he said. “Formulated to solicit the greatest and most efficient response.”

Greatest and most efficient response? To what?

Then:

Own concoction?!

She’d be damned if this was a sedative; she did not feel sedate. Panic welled up inside, finding no outlet due to the numbness of her restrained limbs. Her breath became ragged, her pulse jumped from her heart to her overwrought brain. Dr. Crane observed this with a satisfied little sigh.

“We’re off to a good start”, he said, optimistically. As he moved in her blind areas, running the projector and focusing the centre light onto the great white screen in front of her, Jane wondered how things could have gone so completely wrong in her life. How had things gone so far downhill, so fast, that finding herself strapped to a chair with some mysterious drug running through her while her doctor excited himself at her panic had become a common occurrence? Where had she gone wrong?

Her heart did not steady its pace as the projector’s fan started its hum. The first image presented itself to her; she was hypnotized, whether Crane admitted it or not. She could not take her gaze from the screen.

It was a girl, a photograph of a girl. A teenager, blond, smiling, jeans and fitted t-shirt. Obviously Jane’s demographic, presented here in a kind of Clockwork Orange Lodovico treatment – first she walked the city street alone, followed soon by a dark stranger. Where was Beethoven playing in the background, where was the little assistant dripping Visine into her forced-open eyes? As the next picture replaced the last, and Jane found herself – or, the anonymous girl, if she was to keep her wits about her – actually being attacked by the now masked figure, she marveled at Crane’s sudden lack of originality.

Then, of course, things changed. The color photos disappeared, and the empty white screen flickered at a growing pace. Jane’s head hurt; this was an original idea, after all. She tried to awaken her voice, to ask him what he had planned, but she was still largely dead on the outside. Inside, though, she was a boiling storm.

“Jane…”

That monstrous voice reasserted itself, playing back like a recording of her last private session. Her heart seized and contracted, as the flickering white light reached a fever pitch, and the terror reached out from behind her to twist a hand in her hair.

What does he want?

Was he the monster? Crane? He was a monster, surely, but her memory always seemed to fail her at crucial moments like this – was he the monster? The one who attacked her, or was he just the latest monster in her waking life?

to be continued...soon, i promise!

[jill]

ooh my god, perfect, i love where you ended it! and as i told you, i looooove her personality, haha.

[azina]

Oh wow ... this was amazing ... I hope you post more soon.