White light does not bring life.
It reveals. It exposes the cracks in the walls, the stains of mold creeping upward like hands clawing their way out of the ceiling.
There is no window in this room—only an old lamp dangling from the ceiling, swaying ever so slightly, as if breathing.
Everything here breathes: the walls of the asylum, the rusted metal bed, the locked iron door.
Even the silence. Especially the silence. It breathes.
I breathe too—grudgingly.
My name? I've forgotten it. Or maybe I chose to forget.
It became unbearable, a burden like a memory stained with something that can never be washed clean.
I sit on a bed of creaking slats that protest each time I shift.
How long has it been since I last moved?
Days? Years?
It makes no difference.
Time is devoured here, ground beneath the weight of stillness.
They say asylums are for healing.
But this place doesn't heal—it watches.
I can feel the eyes of the walls slipping into my skull, inspecting the remnants of thought, of reason, of self.
Sometimes, I hear screams echoing from the far hallway—someone else's, perhaps.
Or maybe it's my own voice, returning to me after getting lost in the maze.
Sometimes, I hear water dripping from a faucet that doesn't exist, waking me each time I drift off.
As if whispering:
Don't sleep. Don't trust.
The real world?
If it exists, I've been banished from it.
Perhaps I committed a crime.
Or maybe I merely thought too loudly, dared to speak what should've remained hidden.
Here, thoughts are tried.
And punished.
In the corner, there's a surveillance camera coated in gray dust.
It doesn't blink.
Or maybe it does—but only when I'm not looking.
Perhaps they're watching, recording how I stare at the wall for hours, how I don't blink, how I don't scream, even as something gnaws at my mind from within.
That wall…
How many times have I imagined slipping into it?
Melting into its surface like shadow—unseen, untouchable, just a smudge in the backdrop of reality.
And night…
Night here is strange. The lighting never changes, yet the air thickens.
Tightens.
As if the souls trapped in these walls awaken and begin to roam.
I hear them.
Moaning.
The creak of a distant bed.
The faint scratching of nails across wood.
They call it hallucination—but no one denies it outright.
I speak to myself often.
Sometimes aloud, sometimes only within.
I ask:
Why am I here?
Was I always mad?
Or is madness simply the mind adapting to a reality too cruel to accept?
I laughed once—a sharp, sudden sound that startled even me—when I realized the asylum isn't a place for curing,
but for containing.
A vault for minds that have seen too much.
And isn't that a crime on its own?
To see?
Sometimes I knock on the door. No answer.
Occasionally, a nurse enters—wordless, carrying nameless pills.
He leaves them in a small plastic cup, never meeting my eyes.
I remember their gazes.
Not pity.
Just emptiness.
As if we're not people anymore. Just failed experiments.
One wall has a long, hairline crack. Barely noticeable.
But to me, it's become everything.
I stare at it each day, wondering what lies behind.
A secret room?
Nothing at all?
But that "nothing" is kinder than this suffocating "everything."
I don't dream anymore.
When I close my eyes, I see only gray.
As if my consciousness refuses to release me, dragging me down even in sleep.
They told me once that I scream at night.
I didn't believe them.
I don't sleep.
I merely close my eyes and watch the darkness grow inside me.
But last night…
I saw a faint light.
It didn't come from the lamp.
It came from far away—so far, like the end of a tunnel I never knew I had entered.
It looked like the moon.
Or… no, not the moon. But it carried the same strange peace.
I want to see it again.
To know if it was a dream—or a door.
But I'm afraid too.
Because maybe behind that door isn't light at all.
Maybe it's a purer kind of void.
One that would swallow me completely.
I don't know the truth yet.
And I doubt anyone here does.
But something inside me is changing.
And that wall—
I swear to God…
It just breathed.