Institutional

Have you ever tried to scream but couldn't make even a squeak of noise because you were so out of breath that every last gasp of air went into your lungs. Your eternally gulping air and yet you can't make any of it into a noise. I like to think of it as the gulping scream. Because you're gulping air so fast trying so hard to scream that you look like a fish underwater. There are few occasions for this scream. Sometimes it's in your dreams, a maniac murderer is chasing you. He corners you. You've been running so hard for so long that all you can do is make the gulping scream. Oh, and die. And of course wake up out of breath and screaming. I've certainly done that a few times. Next there is the actual act of being chased by a maniac murderer where all of the above happens. A few times I did the gulping scream, even got stabbed and shot before someone managed to kill my intended killer. Murderers are a scary breed. They thrive on the gulping scream. They've got you powerless, you can't run, you can't fight back... You can't even scream.

I work in an institution for the criminally insane. It's not a widely known institution. It's not even a government recognized institution. We're one of those lovely conspiracies that doesn't exist. We aren't recognized and if anyone ever decides to blow the whistle we're all going to be arrested for crimes against nature. Oh, I'm sure there will be a more official name for the charge but really that's what the truth of this place is. Here is where they send the monsters of the world. The people who are so deranged that no other place is willing to accept them. You don't apply to work here either. You get drafted. You work in your chosen field whatever it may be from gardening to surgery to even writing and then, one night, when you are safe and warm in your house there is a knock on your door. But that's not when they get you. Sure you'll be a little creeped out by there not being anyone outside. But you accept that it's just a neighbourhood prank and you go back to bed. You never quite know when they get you. You only know that they have gotten you because you wake up in a different bed. There are qualifiers to being chosen. They prefer loners, orphans, people that aren't really all that noticeable on the radar screen. So when we go missing it's like we never were. I had two dogs and lived alone. My dogs were here at the institute, until an incident with one of the inmates made me decide that, if anything ever were to happen to our security system, they would be safer somewhere else. I was given a chance to choose their insertion point so I picked the park near where my family used to live. I knew some people around there and I was hoping one of them would pick them up. I received notice two weeks later that they were fine and being cared for by the aunt of my best friend. A lovely older woman who had been with me at my friend's funeral. To this day I wonder if her death were truly accidental or perhaps planned by the institute as one more step in my recruitment.

Perhaps I should explain the work that I do here. I'm not a doctor but I'm not a maid either. I am the designated "friend". In here our inmates often want someone to talk to. Usually when coming down off of the drugs or electro-shock therapies that are one of the favorite toys of those in power. We "friends" are the ones shoved into the room with them, with only our tongues and our ears to save us. From now on, never ever ever say that someone is a good listener. They might just end up like me. That's how I know the gulping scream. Sometimes the inmates don't want a friend. Anyway. I am a good listener. I hear people and I understand mostly what they mean by the way the sit or stand when they talk to me. Mostly they instantly trust me, sometimes they don't, again that's where the gulping scream comes in. I am a twenty-one year old Caucasian female with two years of experience here. Around this place that's a pretty long survival time for a "friend". I suppose that's why lately they've been tossing me in with the more severe patients. Now why on earth would they do that? Because a "friend" will learn things from the inmate. Things like what their favorite food is, or what colors they like. The Institute doesn't care about such things. What they do care about is how many they have killed, where are the bodies, when did they do it, why did they do it. After one particular discussion I vomited on the inmate. He looked at me and laughed, and then he lunged. Apparently he was a voraphile. Someone turned on by the digestive system... I had dry heaves for days. I was given verbal praise and commendation for a job well done. Apparently they found the twelve dead bodies he had described to me in exactly the place he had described to me. They also found that they were all missing the parts that he had described to me as items he had ingested from them.

Perhaps you wonder why I do my job. Simple. I have no other choice. I've tried civil disobedience. I lay in bed. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't move. They picked me up, bathed and dressed me, and then tossed me in with another inmate. And there I stayed until he tried to kill me. Gulping scream. I've tried escaping. I was chased down and attacked by a German Shepherd and Saint Bernard. I'm not scared of dogs. I am scared however of the wild pack of starved wolverines, that may seem a bit over the top to some of you but in truth, they are real. Very, very real. Again, gulping scream. After a few weeks in the infirmary I was again tossed in as a "friend". I am an inmate of the Institute much like any of the others, I just have more privileges.

Just so that we all know where I am headed with this I'll clarify a few things. One, I am not insane. Two, I haven't used my name because I don't want it to be known. Three, if you have found this tape and haven't destroyed it yet it would be in your best interests to turn it over to several newspapers. And if this tape has been found in the Institute itself, there's a chance my identity will remain hidden. And, if it doesn't, I suppose a gulping scream will be the first and last I know of it.

So far I've given you a few minimal details to catch your interest and to hopefully ensure that you'll listen to the rest of this tape. Now for the details that will help you find me. The Institute is somewhere with snow each winter and sun each summer. There are a few scattered trees around that look a little like oak, pen oak maybe. I can't really tell. We aren't allowed too much time outside for fear of discovering an escape route before they can sick the animals and even deadlier people on you. As I said before I am a young woman and I've been at the Institute for 2 years. That means to you that I disappeared at age nineteen. There were several of us taken at that time, that's why it's somewhat safe to tell you all of this. you have no way of knowing exactly how old or new this tape is. Maybe you'll find me in the middle of making it, maybe you'll find it years later, maybe you didn't find it at all. Hopefully it found you. It that is the case then there are several more copies of the tape that have been sent out to various people of interest. I am one of the senior friends here at the Institute. I told you that two years was a high survival rate. But surviving has its price. So far the price has been one pinkie finger bitten off and swallowed by an inmate during year one. One long red scar across my right forearm in a defensive position. Two teeth, one back molar and one lower canine. The first lost in a general brawl among inmates, the other lost when one of the inmates wasn't quite low enough on drugs to have stopped tripping. Since I have longer than usual canines he thought I was a vampire and tried to break my jaw. I've also lost a few handfuls of hair before I managed to get it cut too short to grab ahold of. Three bullet holes, one in my lower left leg, and two to my left side, one administrated "accidentally" by a guard during the subduing of an inmate who was rather lonely.
I am rather fortunate to have survived fifteen attacks. Maybe it's more. They have started to blend together with the dreams and I'm having trouble telling which is real memory and which is adjusted. I have the dreams because of the attacks, but do these dreams in turn make me so anxious that I set off the inmates and thus cause another attack? The survival rate of a friend is roughly 20 to 1. By the time you've seen twenty patients you're already dead. Except for me. I'm the reason that number keeps going up. But they are the reason that people keep dying.