Trigger warning: Victorian asylum, self-harm, suicidal ideations, abuse, and violence
It's dark now, the evenings set an unsettling, frightening light in the library. It's through the eyes of a child, with a hushed murmur of fear that she glances through the library, everything so tall now, ridiculously tall. She is smaller than usual, more than she recalls. Through her bare feet, she turns on the hardwood floor, suddenly cold letting out a shudder. She's turning down the hallway now.

"Papa?"

Her eyes fall down on the worn, white rabbit stuffed animal, with a button eye on the right side about to fall out. Her chubby little hands thumb over it with a hushed whisper. So she tries once again in the dark hallway because she's been a stubborn child, "Papa?" She she timidly continues forward, clutching her rabbit underneath her little chin, hoping to find her father.

Father, mother, and her elder sister, but her father especially, to hear his gentle voice lulling her to sleep. She'll rest her head on his shoulder as he carries her off to be, because he does so, so often. She follows him, eager to hear his stories and see his photographs. She has always though they were pretty. She calls for her father in the dark, her feet pattering further and further down, until she's following him, the white rabbit!

"Please, rabbit!" Her pace breaks out into a run, still a child, running after the rabbit, "Please stop! Can't I go home, now? I want to go home!"

She follows him, as he squeezes through the hole, the very rabbit hole, crawling further into it, until the ground beneath her palms and legs is nothing more. Air fills her little lungs, as she screams, watching the light above dim and dim, into the rabbit hole again.

Not again!

It is not the same, and it will never be the same. The scent of burnt flesh has never left her mind, nor the stinging pain of her burns against the cold air. She's cried and cried, until her little mind cannot take it more. Her body is riddled in burns, the lines between reality and dreams are not even worth distinguishing anymore.


How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale?

Hours are days and days are weeks. Weeks are years.

Years, years, and years! There is no point in keeping track of the years, now, eyes fixated on the wall of a desolate room, confined in a small space with nothing more than a knife. It makes no difference how many years there are, there is no one else aside from imaginary friends. She cannot hear them well enough, for she has just come back into reality now. Was it real? Was it a dream? As soon as she hears them come closer, her eyes snap to the rusted door. Blisters and bruised hands grip the cold metal in her fingers tighter. In nothing more than a nightgown, she begins to crawl on all fours, underneath the table of the kitchen, as it were, for where else would she acquire a kitchen knife? Their voices become closer now and she is nothing more than caged, feral beast.

Why not? They had told her from an early age that she was never to be cured, she will be here forever. Her breath becomes tense as the come closer and it is without warning that the door bursts open, a slam against the wall as adults come pouring in.

They were supposed to help and they never did.

"Put it down, you fucking brat! Get over here!"

They're tall and she is so, so small. They've hurt her and tormented her, these men in the white coats and after the two of them come in, so does an older man who gestures her to put it down, put the knife down. She's almost forgotten how to talk, violently flipping a table, despite her little body barely manages to stay standing after being strapped to a bed for so long and left to starve.

"PUT IT DOWN!"

She's screaming at them, pushing further, and further to the wall. In the moment where they have her cornered in this damn kitchen, she attempts to bolt, only to be pushed down to the ground. SHe's screaming her lungs out, thrashing violently, refusing to let go of the knife, for it is her only way she will ever get them away

"GET OFF OF ME! GO AWAY!" She begs, she screams, throwing her head side to side. She hates to do it, but he has no choice, a small girl thrusting the kitchen knife up to his mouth. She rips it halfway open and why not, he deserves it, she hates that damn mouth. And suddenly, her cold skin on the ground is warmed by the touch of his blood as he staggers back. They're clamoring for her now, more men in white coats pouring in. But she seizes the opportunity to bolt out, slinking away like the cornered, feral child that she is. In her grief and despair, she's beside herself, covered in his blood that she finds herself laughing. Laughing since it is the only way she can cope with the fact she has seriously harmed another, for the first time.

As frightening as it is, why does it feel so good. She feels herself stumbling back against the wall, still laughing as she finds herself slipping against the wall. As much as she laughs, there's tears in her eyes.

I don't want to be without them anymore.

It is not without the cat's grin flashing in the dark, beckoning her closer. In his mangy appearance, she finds peace. Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life! Slumped against the wall, she's about to take the knife unto her own skin, closing her eyes to hear the faint words of her own. How can you think so lowly of yourself? She finds herself closing her eyes, into darkness once again, although it is not without the cat, beside her, of course. She is no longer that little girl and the world is not the same scary place she has feared, it is one that she's grown to hate and despise.

She is herself again.

"You can't content yourself in watching the suffering of others and yet you're so quick to inflict it on those who anger you. Now what will you do? Go to war? Irrational as always, I see."

The cat is gone, as always. So typical.