“I don’t belong here. I’m not crazy,” Joshua said. He winced when he told that to the head of the psychiatric hospital.
“Nobody is here who doesn’t belong here,” Doctor Matthews said, taking a closer look at Joshua, tired of hearing hundreds of patients saying the same thing. “Sure, you are all here by mistake,” he said. “When you’re all a danger to yourselves, and we have to try to clean up the messes of your unmanageable lives.”
Doctor Matthews didn’t realize despite his decades of experience with patients that Joshua didn’t belong there, and he would find that out before the night ended.
“Okay, but I tried to tell you,” Joshua said as he strode away to the recreation room. After Joshua left, something eerie hung in the air that made Doctor Matthew shiver. For the first time since he took charge of the psychiatric hospital, he felt a chill over what a patient said. And the entire hospital grew colder as if the electric power had dimmed down supernaturally
Then he saw red lights emerge from the floor. What the hell, he thought. As if the word hell summoned dark things from that fiery pit, he saw red horns poking up from the floor. He rubbed his eyes thinking he was seeing things or if he had taken too many meds that day. No one knew Doctor Matthew should have been a patient there too instead of its director, but he was good at hiding his symptoms. He sensed Joshua knew this. He sensed Joshua really didn’t belong there. He believed Joshua was the cause of the strange things he was seeing and feeling.
“Your right,” Joshua said, alarming Doctor Matthews and appearing to have materialized out of the ether.
“Joshua!” You startled me. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“What’s the meaning of life?” Joshua asked, a freakish smile lighting up his face that seemed to glow.
“I don’t know what games you’re playing, Joshua, but it’s time for you to go to your room.”
“It’s time for you to go to hell,” Joshua said, and Doctor Matthews, a secret serial killer, felt the ground give way under him and dropped into the fiery pit screaming with flames shooting up from hell. When he hit bottom, he saw Joshua there.
“Who are you?” the doctor said.
“You remember the line from a song that went, “Pleased to meet you glad you know my name?”
“Yes, it’s from a Rolling Stones song, one of my favorites, Sympathy for the Devil.”
“Bingo! And welcome home!”
At that moment, flames licked the doctor’s body all over, and he screamed and heard Joshua laughing hideously behind him.
He woke up terrified at first but relieved when he realized he’d had a nightmare. He wondered why he had dreamed of a man named Joshua. He didn’t know anyone with that name and never had a patient named Joshua … until a patient named Joshua was admitted to his psychiatric hospital later that morning. And the doctor saw red lights rising from the floor.
Bob Boyd