The years had been long and dark for Meghan Walsh. Precisely how long it had been, she didn’t know. She’d existed in bckness for so long that as her vision came into focus, it almost hurt. She was already standing in the middle of a room she didn’t recognize, dressed only in a hospital gown fastened loosely around the back. Slowly, she lifted her head to examine her surroundings, seeing others like her milling about or sitting motionlessly in decrepit seating. The color had drained out of them almost entirely in their stupor.

  Meghan winced as her eyes caught a glimpse of the long, white light overhead. It gave off a subtle buzzing that nonetheless felt like nails on a chalkboard to her. Averting her gaze, the woman took a moment to get her bearings. Something in her mind had difficulty getting traction, like a car’s engine struggling to turn over. Eventually, when it did, and her senses became less muddy, the pain induced by the buzzing began to ebb.

  With that increased awareness came an increased sensitivity to the cold pervading the room. She shuddered once, wrapped her arms around herself, and continued to shiver. The gown offered little to no protection against the draft.

  “W-where am I?” Meghan stammered hoarsely, gncing around for any indication that someone had heard her. Her lips were dry and cracked, and her throat felt dry. Taking stock of herself, she realized the rest of her body was in a simirly pitiful state. Her blonde hair had become stringy and ragged, and her wrists had become skinny and frail.

  Despite the fact that Meghan was surrounded by people, no one seemed to hear her. Something bad had just happened, though she didn’t know what, and her mere proximity to it had somehow roused her from the void she had existed in for so long. She couldn’t say how she’d come to exist in the void, but now that her mind had cwed its way back from its depths, fear began to get its hooks into her.

  Meghan caught sight of a few men on the far side of the room huddled around a counter. They were dressed all in white and appeared to possess more color and vitality than the wandering shades shuffling aimlessly around her. She attempted a step in their direction, only to find that her legs were stiff and her feet did not want to cooperate.

  “E-excuse me,” Meghan rasped, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Can someone help me?”

  As she continued to struggle toward what seemed to be a nurse’s station of some kind, pain, like a hatchet in her skull, settled into pce, preventing her from delving into her memories for answers.

  She realized after a moment that it wasn’t that she couldn’t remember anything but that years of information was trying to bubble its way to the surface of recollection all at once, preventing any sense of crity in the process.

  “C-can someone help me?” The frail woman managed a little louder before stumbling before the nurse’s station, barely managing to catch herself on the edge of the counter before colpsing onto the floor. There, she looked at her hands and arms once more and realized, to her horror, that something else was amiss.

  “M-my feathers,” Meghan gasped. “What happened to my feathers?”

  Where once there had been fluffy, luxurious feathers that ran from her wrist up past her elbow were now pathetic, brittle imitations. She turned her hands over several times, staring at her arms in disbelief before a distinct sense of discomfort overcame her. Not only did she feel strangely sullied, but she also somehow understood that what she saw of herself was not what others saw. There were aspects of her that simply went unseen to certain eyes. How that could be true eluded her.

  “Feathers?” the smaller of the two orderlies repeated. “What are you talking about?”

  The second orderly, who stood much taller with broader shoulders, frowned. “Hold on, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one talk before.”

  “What, really?” the first orderly responded, looking Meghan over curiously. “Damn, I think you’re right.”

  “P-please,” Meghan pleaded, dragging herself to her feet weakly. “Where am I? You need to help me. I don’t even know how I got here.”

  “What’s your name?” The first orderly asked.

  “Meghan,” she answered with a little sigh, finally feeling like she might have been getting somewhere.

  “Alright, Meghan,” the orderly continued. “Just have a seat over there, and I’ll page Dr. Fairchild for you.”

  It wasn’t quite the answer Meghan was hoping for, but it was better than nothing.

  “Actually, I think the doc just went on lunch,” the other orderly interjected. “Won’t be back for an hour. You know how he is about that shit.”

  The first orderly nodded his acknowledgment before turning his attention back to Meghan. “Alright, an hour then.”

  Meghan’s brief spark of hope was extinguished in an instant. How did they expect her to simply sit around and wait for an hour when she had so many questions? Not only did nothing make sense, but she was freezing. Still, she recognized the type of men the orderlies were. They could be cordial, but they didn’t tolerate those who pressed their luck. Having remembered memories of them manhandling patients in the ward bubbled to the surface, causing a wave of pain and nausea to wash over her.

  “Maybe sitting down is a good idea,” Meghan mumbled, pcing her hand on her head as she staggered over to the nearest chair. It wasn’t much, but getting off her feet came as an immense relief to her strained muscles.

  Sitting alone gave her time to collect her thoughts, as scattered as they were. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw fshes of terrible things that had happened in the time she was gone. The freshest among them, the most recent of those events, felt like it hadn’t happened to her at all but to someone somewhere else far away.

  The more she tried to focus on the memory, the more it seemed to slip through her fingers. The headache that accompanied it also grew in intensity. To escape it, she opened her eyes to scan her surroundings. It was her theory that focusing on the present was the best way to avoid the pain for a time.

  Between the nurses, orderlies, aimless patients, and the generally quiet atmosphere, Meghan had to assume she was in some kind of lunatic asylum, though she couldn’t remember what she’d done to be put there. She avoided thinking about it too much in order to escape the inevitable headache that would come with it.

  Before she could distract herself with the happenings of the other patients, her attention was drawn by some low noise from the other end of the rge room. Meghan gnced at the orderlies, who didn’t seem to pay any attention to it, then got to her shaky legs and decided to investigate it for herself.

  What she found at the other end of the room astonished her. Amid a few chairs, a couch, and a handful of patients who barely seemed aware was a television. The screen was the rgest she had seen, but the remaining portion of the device was much smaller. Not only that, it was in color.

  Though it seemed to be a simple newscast, it was the most colorful and vibrant thing she had ever seen on a screen since she’d seen An American in Paris in Technicolor at the cinema. It was breathtaking quality for something so mundane as a newscast. The reporter was female, and though beautiful, her clothes and makeup seemed strange to her. The woman’s hair seemed wild, but she held an air of professionalism and directness that felt almost masculine. She was reporting on some violence that had occurred in downtown Boston earlier that night.

  Then she caught sight of the date, speaking it aloud in a stunned, hoarse voice. “Monday, June 27th, 1983?”

  Colpsing onto the couch, Meghan sat with the information in stunned silence until the end of the newscast, unable to think of anything else besides the amount of time that had passed. How had she been there for so long? What else had changed in all that time? Had she been rotting away in a lunatic asylum for decades?

  “Excuse me,” a woman’s voice said from over her shoulder, jarring her from her shock. “Are you alright?”

  Meghan turned to look at the woman, who was a bit shorter than her but considerably less emaciated. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform but had a simir way about her as the newscaster she had seen before. She was strong, confident, and direct even while she was being polite. Her eyes were bright, compassionate, and intelligent, holding Meghan’s gaze for far longer than she realized.

  The emaciated woman nodded slowly, then quickly shifted to shaking her head vigorously. “No. No, I don’t think I am.”

  “I thought as much,” the woman responded. “My name is Isabel. Are you Meghan?”

  Meghan nodded, her brows furrowing in confusion. “You know me?”

  Isabel extended a hand to the other woman, easing her back to her feet. “I’ve read your chart and I think I may have a pretty good idea of what’s going on---at least a little. I think I can get you out of here.”

  Meghan stared at Isabel in disbelief before gncing in the direction of the orderlies, who still seemed occupied with their conversation. As heavily medicated as everyone seemed to be, there didn’t seem to be much occasion for them to watch the patients like hawks. The blonde cleared her throat. “Why? Why do you want to help me?”

  “Because I don’t think you belong here, and neither do you,” Isabel answered simply, brushing a lock of feathery brunette hair out of her face. “Now, would you like to get out of here?”

  “Yes,” Meghan answered without further dey. It was much better than waiting for a doctor with whom she might have to convince and bargain. She was willing to address the matter of how she had nded in there and for how long once she was free.

  Isabel led her away from the television and had her wait near the nurses’ station as she pulled some paperwork. Meghan couldn’t hear what was being discussed between the woman, the orderlies, and a doctor who seemed to appear out of nowhere, but it went from casual to serious very quickly. After what looked like a pause in the conversation, the doctor took the clipboard from Isabel, signed a few forms, and handed it back to her before making himself scarce.

  “What’s going on?” Meghan asked as the nurse returned to her. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not if we get our asses in gear,” Isabel joked, taking Meghan by the hand and leading her out of the ward without so much as a word of protest from any of the staff.

  Even with Isabel walking slowly and leading her by the hand, Meghan found herself struggling to keep up with her. It felt like she hadn’t used her legs for much more than shuffling around for quite a long time. There were multiple security points leading out of the hospital, but each time Isabel produced her paperwork, they were allowed to pass.

  “I dropped a pretty big name to pull this off,” Isabel expined, catching Meghan’s bewildered look out of the corner of her eye. “But I’d rather not stick around for longer than absolutely necessary.”

  The emaciated blonde resisted the urge to stop and look into rooms they passed or at additional devices that represented the passage of time to her. Meghan couldn’t afford to get bogged down in the state of awe she’d been in while staring at the television, especially if time was of the essence, as Isabel said.

  Unfortunately, even that was not enough for them to completely outrun those who would stand in their way. As they entered a lobby where the exit was finally in sight, a doctor and a few orderlies were already there waiting for them.

  The doctor, a tall man in reasonably fit shape despite his thinning gray hair, stepped forward with a hand held up. “That’s far enough.”

  Isabel moved to ignore him entirely, stepping to the left to get around him, but he and one of the orderlies were quick to intercept her. The doctor, whose name tag read “Fairchild,” looked pointedly down his nose at the woman. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I’m the primary on this woman’s case. Any release or transfer has to go through me, regardless of what friends you have in high pces may have to say about it.”

  “Her case?” Isabel scoffed. “She’s been shuffling around aimlessly for years without any change, then suddenly comes to, and you don’t seem the least bit curious. She wants to leave.”

  “Her discharge is a matter for her and me to discuss after I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate her. You, on the other hand, have no say in the matter,” Fairchild countered coldly. “Indeed, I can’t seem to recall what your purpose here is in the first pce.”

  Meghan scooted a little closer to Isabel, feeling a wave of anxiety and trepidation seizing her the more the doctor spoke. There was something about him that put her on edge.

  “You can take that up with the administrator,” Isabel responded confidently.

  One of the orderlies with the doctor scoffed and looked away, shaking his head. Meghan wasn’t sure why Isabel’s statement had garnered such a reaction. She supposed there was some inter-office politics there she wasn’t aware of.

  “Your sweetheart arrangement with the administration is short-lived at best,” Fairchild said smugly. “Or hadn’t you heard? He’s going to be taking early retirement with me handpicked as his repcement.”

  Isabel’s change in posture was so subtle that Meghan almost hadn’t noticed. It seemed like she had been blindsided by the information and was now on the back foot. Judging by the gleam in Fairchild’s eyes, he’d noticed it as well. Something about that look felt sinisterly familiar to Meghan.

  “That’s what I thought,” Fairchild muttered, motioning for the orderlies to take Meghan.”You’ll be remaining here with us for a little while longer for observation, Meghan. It’s for your own good.”

  Meghan’s breath hitched upon hearing that final sentence. In her mind, she was suddenly lying on an operating table in the dead of night. There was no one around---no one but him. Everything was dark save for a lone light that hung over the table. Her body remained limp and nearly lifeless as she stared into a trackless nothingness. There was an awful crunching and scraping that barely registered to her at the time, followed by pain and red---death. He’d said those words then, too.

  “It’s for your own good,” he assured her as he dropped the remains of the unborn into a stainless steel pan.

  Meghan was in another room suddenly, unoccupied by anyone but the two of them as he bent her over a bed and spread her legs apart with his foot. She heard the jingling of his belt. Then he was inside her. It was a younger version of him, but him all the same. Back then, he’d felt the need to speak to her while he vioted her. Words of no consequence fell from his lips as he used her like his personal pything.

  Her mind tumbled further backward through all the times that he’d been inside her, put things inside her, or shared her with others. She was their dirty little secret until she’d been all used up, her body hardly able to appeal to any of their sexual appetites after so long. So many times, he’d told her that something was for her own good.

  “You,” Meghan blurted fiercely as she stepped around Isabel. Her posture had changed along with her attitude. The woman carried herself in a way that gave the orderlies pause and visibly put the fear of god into Fairchild. Other members of staff who had gathered at the edges of the room to gawk were also unsettled as they mentally prepared for the worst.

  The woman who’d barely been able to keep up with Isabel or hold herself up now stood tall and furious. The tile floor beneath her feet cracked slightly as supports in the ceiling and walls began to groan under some unseen pressure. The orderlies stepped back uncomfortably as the doctor’s breath seemed to catch in his chest. It seemed impossible, but there was nothing more terrifying to people than the impossible made real before their eyes. Meghan’s eyes narrowed. “Move.”

  With the exception of the nurse at her side, everyone for several feet around Meghan was thrown clear as though yanked backward by a cable fastened around their waists. Overhead, the lights exploded, plunging the room into darkness as sparks spat from the fixtures and outlets.

  Meghan took a shuffling step toward the doctor. Even without the benefit of the flickering emergency lighting, she would have been able to see him clearly in complete darkness. Fairchild slumped to the floor against a badly damaged wall before reaching up to his head and pulling away a hand covered in blood from the head wound he’d suffered. The doctor stared at his hand in horror before his gaze shifted upward toward Meghan.

  Isabel took a hesitant step back, surprised and disoriented by the sudden show of force and change in lighting. “What the fuck?”

  “I remember what you did to me,” Meghan stated as she stood over Fairchild. Her silhouette under the flickering lights didn’t appear human to the doctor. The woman was like a giant, fierce owl peering down at her from a tree branch. He was little more than a scared mouse standing in her shadow. He pushed against the floor to get away from her, but the security door behind him didn’t budge in the slightest.

  “W-what are you!?” Fairchild gasped, eyes wide with terror. His hand spped uselessly against the wall beside the door, searching for a button that would sound the arm reserved for riots and dangerous patients. His hand wasn’t even close.

  All Meghan could see was red. The red of blood---his, hers, and that of the unborn child he’d destroyed to cover up his indiscretions. To cover up his crimes. How many others had there been besides him? How many others had there been besides her?

  Meghan lifted a hand, ready to tear him to pieces even without her talons. It would be the just thing to do. It would be righteous. They’d all be better off if he were gone.

  The woman’s lip curled with disgust. “It’s for your own good.”