'...Someone Inside Me…'
Chapter 8
Annie remained asleep for the whole day. What happened was a shock to everyone. Exactly what happened, well, the Doctor was already working on that one.
I was simply standing by in case I was needed, but I also was listening to Emma’s little debate with the Doctor.
“I just don’t understand. She had a seizure right in front of us and the EEG didn’t pick up anything.” The Doctor scratched at his cranium.
“Do you know what I think!?” Said Emma, sounding like she was going to come out with something against the Doctor. “I think that it was never going to work in the first place! Listen, Doc, all your little EEG did was make Annie thrashing and screaming for her life again. And not only that! It made her go psycho!!!”
“My machine was not the cause for the extreme aggression she bared.”
“‘Extreme aggression’!?! She drove her head through a blinking window!!!”
“A result of her extreme aggression.”
Emma then stormed over to the Doctor.
“I have had enough of you and your technicalities! How can you be so calm and bliss when Annie’s acting like…like…” Emma then stormed away. “Urh!”
“Believe it or not, staying calm, Emma, is going to help Annie. I’d like to see a Doctor help a patient when he’s paranoid. Staying calm helps concentration, and I need to concentrate if I’m going to find out what is wrong with Annie. And I would concentrate better if you didn’t yell your little out burst while in my lab.”
I sighed.
I know Emma’s never got on well with Doctor Finklestein.
I didn’t want to listen to them argue all day.
I decided to go to my old room to see if Annie was awake yet.
I left Emma arguing with the Doctor and headed down the ramp.
But on my way down, I ran into someone.
“Jack.” I said as I joyfully greeted my love.
“Hi, Sally. Is Annie awake yet?”
“I’m just going to check on her now. Would you like to come with me?”
“Sure. I just need to have a word with the Doctor, then I’ll be straight down.”
I smiled at Jack as I watched him hurry to the lab.
I then proceeded down the ramp until I got to Annie’s room.
I knocked on the door.
“Annie?” I spoke. “Annie are you awake?”
I turned the handle of the door and slowly opened it.
As the door opened and the room was revealed, there was a sight I didn’t expect to see.
I saw paper, ripped paper, scattered all over the room.
They were Annie’s drawings. All her effort and work, torn to pieces.
The table was on it’s side and everything on it had been knocked over and the water spilled on the floor.
I feared for what else I was going to find.
Meanwhile, in the lab, Jack was with Emma and the Doctor and informing them that the citizens were getting worried.
“Everytime they see me, the first thing they ask is ‘Where’s Annie?’, ‘Is Annie alright?’, ‘When is she coming back?’. I know I can’t tell them exactly what’s happening to her, but what can I tell them about Annie’s condition that wouldn’t create a panic?” Jack asked the Doctor.
“Hmm, you could tell them the truth, but make it sound like there’s nothing to panic about.” The Doctor suggested.
“What!” Emma was surprised. “‘Nothing to panic about?’! Doc, Annie’s completely lost her mind! She disappeared with a scream and won’t tell us what happened, she been hysterically screaming and crying to no end, she’s been hurting herself, not eating and claming there’s someone inside her! You call that ‘nothing to panic about’!?! And what if she get’s worse?!”
“Emma, just calm down. Remember about keeping calm, and how that’s the best way to help Annie. I know she’s been psychologically ill, but at least be thankful that we didn’t find her in the way we found Nadallia.”
Emma tried to calm down from a few moments…and then she suddenly thought of something.
The mention of Nadallia Chime suddenly brought a haunting and chilling thought into Emma’s mind.
“You know, Doc, Nadallia did some pretty creepy things before she turned evil, and destroyed the IDCG. She…she hurt herself. And she screamed for hours on end. She did a lot of other disturbing stuff too.” Emma quietly explained.
“What are you trying to say, Emma?”…
Meanwhile, back in my old room I was gazing at all the ripped up paper on the floor.
I then noticed one of the drawings that was not torn up.
I picked it up from the floor and gazed.
It was a dagger. Black and shaded, and blood stained the edges of the paper. Real blood.
My attention was then brought to the bed that had been moved from the wall, and noise that was coming from behind it.
I heard breathing. Deep breathing.
I knew that it must be Anastasia.
“Annie?” I spoke quietly.
The deep, heavy breathing continued.
I kneeled on the bed.
At first I wasn’t sure if I should look over or not.
But if Annie was hurting herself again, I had to stop her.
I leaned over side of the bed to see what was happening on the other side.
“Annie?”
I saw her alright. And what she was doing.
I saw cuts all over her skin. But not just any cuts, they made up letters and symbols.
And more still, I actually saw Annie with a pointed dagger in her hand, cutting into her skin. Line by line, scratch by scratch, she was carving writing into her skin.
“Annie!” I cried. “Annie what are you doing?!”
I quickly grabbed hold of her wrist with the hand which held the dagger. I tried to pull it from her grip but then, Annie swiftly turned round and whacked me to the ground.
Annie then stood above me with the dagger still in her hand.
I was terrified. I feared for whatever was going to happen next.
And then, Annie spoke in a mature, alien like voice as well as her own…
“Don’t……touch……ME!!!”
He eyes the rolled up as she screamed. He eye’s rolled all the way back to the back of her head, and she began to bleed like tears rolling down her face.
I screamed…
(My screaming was heard)
“Sally?” Jack responded to my cries. “Sally!!!”
“Let’s move!” Emma cried.
Jack, along with everyone else, ran down the ramp and burst into Annie’s room.
He immediately saw the sight of the room. The torn paper of Annie’s drawings, the tipped over table and the smashed glassed of water and of course. . .me, in the danger of the psychotic Anastasia. I had been stabbed several times in the shoulder and then, in front of my love in the top of my head by Annie’s dagger.
“No!!!” Jack rushed to help me.
He grabbed Annie’s wrist with one hand and her shoulder with the other. He pushed her away while holding onto the dagger handle.
“Leave Sally alone!!!”
“Aaarhhh!” Annie screamed as Jack practically battled with Annie to try to get the dagger off her.
The Doctor wheeled out of the room and back up to the lab, I knew he was going to get a sedative.
“AAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Annie screamed and yelled in what sounded like two voices.
Emma quickly rushed in to help Jack.
“Emma, stay back!”
“You can’t hold her by yourself!”
“AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Trying to keep my stuffing from falling out, I laid helpless on the floor. Watching Jack and Emma try to wrestle Annie to the ground screaming.
Jack saw his chance and banged his fist on Annie’s wrist.
The dagger fell out of her grip.
Emma kicked it away before Annie could reach it again.
The Doctor then came in with a syringe filled with a powerful sedative.
As soon as Annie saw the needle, she battled even harder. Screaming even louder.
“Hold her down as hard as you can!” The Doctor shouted out.
He came as close to the screaming Annie as he dared.
He the jabbed the needle into her ankle, as was the only part of her in reach.
“AAAAAAHHHH!” Annie screamed as she threw Jack off her arm.
She then used her free arm the punch Emma in the face.
Annie then pushed the Doctor back and sent him flying off his wheelchair. Annie attempted to pull the needle out of her leg.
But Jack grabbed hold of her arms and pulled her back.
“Sally!” The Doctor cried from being paralyzed on the floor. “Reach the needle! Inject the rest of the sedative!”
I limped over to where Jack was fighting to get Annie under control.
Emma, recovering from her dinted face, rushed to help Jack.
Jack had Annie in an arm lock with both her arms wrapped round the front of her body.
Emma then tried to stop Annie from kicking so I could finish the syringe.
Emma tried to hold Annie’s legs with all her strength.
As soon as I was close enough, I reached for the syringe and quickly injected the sedative.
“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” Annie screamed as the liquid entered her blood stream.
She head butted Jack from the arm lock she was in. Bashing her head backwards. After three hits, she fought her way free of the arm lock. And them simply kicked me and Emma away.
My stuffing was scattered all over the floor.
Emma was still in pain from her dinted aluminium face.
And Jack was holding his head with the pain.
But Annie was no longer fighting. She was laid face down on the floor shivering and gasping.
Jack quickly came over to her when he saw that the back of her head was bleeding.
He turned her over.
Her eyes were all white and blood shot.
But then, she slowly rolled her eye’s back down until her pupils were once again at the front of her face.
She stared at Jack. Still all but her shaking and trembling.
And then, she spitted out some angry unknown words.
“Ich hasas zie…”
Annie then closed her eyes and fell unconscious.
I was almost in tears. I was so shocked at what I had just seen.
With Annie now unconscious, Jack turned his head and noticed me in my battered state. My shoulder almost torn off, my stuffing all over the floor and I was shaking in my moment of fear.
Jack immediately came over to me.
He threw his arms around me and comforted me as I started to cry.
He hugged me tight and tried to stop me crying, and then kissed my on my forehead.
Emma helped the Doctor back in to his wheelchair.
He then wheeled over to Annie.
She was still lain on the floor unconscious.
He picked up her arm and placed two fingers on her wrist.
“Her pulse is fine. But she’s very cold.” He took a few moments to think.
“Emma, bring her bed covers down here and try to keep her warm.”
“Of course!” Emma pulled the covers off the bed and wrapped them carefully round Anastasia.
“Jack, help get Sally to the lab so we can stitch her up. Then I’ll need you and Emma to take Annie to the examination room next to the lab. We’ll need to take some extra precautions for when she wakes up.
So, Jack scooped me up from the floor and carried me to the lab.
Emma helped pick up the bits of stuffing that had fallen out of my arm and head and brought them up to the lab.
I helped Doctor Finklestein repair my severed arm and then, since I couldn’t see, he had to do my head on his own.
As soon as I was salvaged and sewn back together again, Jack then brought Annie to the lab from where she laid on the floor in her room.
“We’re going to need to put her in here until we can safely get her to stop hurting herself like this. And others too.” The Doctor opened the door where stood a bed for examination where Annie had her EEG.
The Doctor then wheeled over to a cupboard in the main lab.
“Place her down on the bed and I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Doing what the Doctor said, Jack laid Annie down on the bed and waited for the Doctor.
He stared worryingly at the unconscious Annie Rose.
“What’s happening to you?” He whispered.
The Doctor then came back into the room carrying something that at first made Jack a little surprised.
“Restrains?” He questioned.
“Yes. I can’t risk Annie trying to hurt herself again, or anyone else for that matter.”
The Doctor dropped the belts and bands onto the front of the bed.
“If you help me it will make the job much quicker.”
“Of course, Doctor.” Jack took hold of one of the bands and secured it to the bars of the bed.
“Oh, I just wish we didn’t have to do this to her.” Jack sighed. “What exactly is happening to her, Doctor?”
“I’m not yet sure. I’ll have to keep an eye on her and study her behaviour for a day or two to come to a conclusion.”
The Doctor took another secured band and tied it to Annie’s wrist.
“I must install a camera in this room, so we can monitor Annie from a safe distance. And without having to enter the room.”
Jack took hold of another restrain and secured it to the bed.
Soon, after a few minutes, the whole set was complete.
Though he didn’t show it as much, Jack was as worried as me and Emma. This little girl who had made Halloween so special had disappeared, was found barely alive, and with in only a few days, had been reduced to this.
The question on everyone’s minds was the same.
What was happening to Anastasia Rose?
