The sound of footsteps echoed throughout the white clean corridor. Patients slowly approached the barred windows in their doors, taking a look outside to see the approaching person. A doctor dressed in white medical gown, fancy glasses and black shiny boots strode through the corridor escorted by a police officer armed with a standard pistol.
"I hope you read all the procedures I gave you, doctor. We're not dealing with an average psycho here. It's the psycho with a capital P," the officer said, looking around at the pure-white walls, shuddering.
"Don't tell me how to do my job, Flash!" the doctor glanced at the officer from under his pure-black hair, his eyes filled with hostility.
"Yeah, yeah. Just wanted to make sure you are not going to put your fingers in her mouth," Flash Sentry replied, checking his gun one more time. The young officer seemed to enjoy fiddling with his gun a bit too much. A short attention span, obsession with over sizes and an obvious hormone overdose as shown by how he looked at nurses were just a few things the doctor could deduce by observing his companion. The boy didn't get too much attention from girls; it was obvious, especially for a psychologist such as the doctor who accompanied the officer.
"No, that's not part of my treatment," the doctor retorted nonchalantly, clearing his throat. "It will be a quick talk – I need to establish a contact with my patient before I do anything significant to help her."
"Help her? Oh, no, doctor guy, you're here to squeeze out a confession from her," Flash Sentry said, putting his gun away. "That monster left such a mess behind and we need you to put her on that electric chair pronto. At least help us do it!"
The doctor stopped dead in his track and turned around, looking angrily at the young policeman. "I'm a professional. I help people, I cure them," he snapped furiously at the much younger boy. "I shall talk with her and nothing more. If she wants to tell me about the details, I'll listen."
"Oh yeah, without me, please. I already had my share of nightmares, thank you," Flash replied and cringed. "You won't believe how the bodies looked when we found them. I still feel a bit sick."
The doctor only spat out an extremely uncourteous sound and continued his way through the corridor. The sound of the patients that scratched the walls was unusual to him – he hadn't visited a mental asylum in a while. Being out of job sucked incredibly, he had been in seventh heaven when the police contacted him and asked for help.
This case was strange, to say the least. The suspect was a young teenage girl charged for mass murder – eight people had been brutally killed in one stormy night. The doctor had trouble understanding how one girl could kill so many in one night, but he was close to finding out: the patient's room was just up ahead.
The wardens of the asylum kept her room locked, with a nurse bringing her food thrice a day. The patient would never produce much noise, though sometimes at night, she would whisper and giggle insanely. It was common among the patients, thus no big amount of attention was paid to such occurrences anymore.
"There we are. Keep clear of her, doctor," Flash Sentry said and approached the metallic door. Before reaching for the keys, he inhaled deeply and made sure his gun was ready to fire if need be. He was too trigger-happy for the doctor's liking – he would prefer the company of a fellow doctor any time over that of this brute.
Flash twisted the keys and the locks creaked as they opened. The policeman quickly opened the door and took out his gun.
"Get up. Now!" he commanded coldly. After that, he entered the room itself. The doctor stayed outside, waiting for him to come out with the patient.
A few seconds later, the patient, who had been put into a straitjacket, stepped out. She had her hair dyed the colors of the rainbow and the left side of her face wrapped in bandages, evidently because she had suffered some eye injury. The most shocking fact was that the police hadn't been kidding – she really was a teenager. She looked quite fit, almost thin after several weeks spent in the asylum where food is rather dull, and also quite attractive. The doctor looked at Flash Sentry with surprise and the policeman nodded with sorrow.
"Yes, this is her," he confirmed the doctor’s silent question. "Keep moving! Stay in front of me and don't even try to turn or slow down!"
He rudely pushed the girl forward and she quietly moaned in pain. It seemed the straps were tight to the point of hurting her. Flash didn't care – he just pushed her along the way as they walked unto the interrogation room wherein she and the doctor could talk safely.
The doctor could not stop staring at the girl. She looked so pathetic and weak right now, completely helpless, able only to slowly move her legs. How could she have killed eight people in one night, all in cold blood? Impossible. She suddenly turned her head to the doctor and looked right at him, her mouth widening in a smile.
"Keep moving!" Flash shouted and pushed her. The doctor nudged him.
"Stop that! Can't you see you're hurting her?"
"Doctor, you haven't seen what she has done, so keep quiet. She deserves every last bit of pain. Keep moving, you broad!" he growled at the girl and painfully poked her in the back.
The doctor couldn't do anything – the policeman outside of his authority. He could just hope that he wouldn't traumatize the girl even further. Hopefully, she would trust him and answer all of his questions. He had a lot of them and some were not included in the list of procedures.
After a few minutes of walking, they finally reached the interrogation room. It was divided in two sections: a room for the observers, doctors, policemen and so on, with shelves filled with different files and documents and a TV screen, which would allow them to see and hear what was going on in the interrogation room itself.
Flash Sentry pushed the girl through the door and led her to a second. "Doctor, stay here while I put her there. Don't want this broad to move even an inch!"
While Flash was busy moving chairs and fiddling with the straps, the doctor approached the drawer and opened it, looking for the necessary files he'd need for the patient. God, it felt like eternity since he had something interesting – usually he had to talk with some depressed morons who cut their wrists just 'because'. He flinched from what bullshit they sometimes fed to him. In addition to crying and moping about their failed attempts at life, they continuously told him about the meaninglessness of life and the release in the form of death.
Fucking Nietzsche wannabes.
Finally, the doctor found a voluminous folder with Case No. 9432 in black letters written thereon. The name of the patient in sloppy handwriting could be seen just thereunder: Rainbow Dash.
"Rainbow Dash, huh?" the doctor hummed and opened the file. There was a lot of text and several photos which were gruesome, to say the least.
He had heard that name once. Maybe from a depressed football-player who said he was incredibly jealous of that girl.
Yes, Rainbow Dash! She was a member of the town's football team, quite renowned in her circles. What could have possibly driven her to commit mass murder? What an interesting case I’ve managed to get my hands on, the doctor noted to himself.
At the same time, he was a little nervous. It had been quite some time since he talked to actual patients, especially such hard cases as this one. This promised to be very difficult, though nothing he couldn't handle.
"Are you ready, doctor? Come in," Flash Sentry invited him to the interrogation chamber while he entered the observation room. "I'll stay here, if you don't mind. Do your thing." The doctor took a deep breath and entered the white room.
The girl sat on a chair, her legs strapped with a rope to the chair’ legs. The tight leather straps prevented her from moving around, keeping her in a position that an eager pupil might assume to impress the teacher – straight back, completely motionless and completely silent.
The doctor threw the file onto the table in front of Rainbow Dash and sat down right in front of her, slowly looking around. There was a camera in the upper right corner of the room which allowed Flash Sentry to observe the action while being safely distanced from the patient by a thick wall and bulletproof glass.
The sound of clacking keys seemed to carry some kind of finality as the policeman locked the door. The doctor was all alone now, faced with this strange girl who surely had been through a lot. What stories would she tell him?
"Rainbow Dash, 16 years old, vocation: student", the doctor began, reading from the file. "Do interrupt me if I am incorrect."
"You can't be wrong when you're reading from a list," a weak constrained voice replied to him. Rainbow Dash looked up and the doctor could finally glance into her one healthy eye. The fire of madness was dancing in those pupils, the popped veins signified that she hadn't slept for days and the unusual paleness was clearly a sign of either the asylum's lacking care for the patients or that she had refused food.
"Quite,” the doctor replied. He took a deep breath, remembering all the procedures. "Hello, Rainbow Dash. I'm here to help you."
The girl's mouth went suddenly up in a smile.
"Help me?" she looked up right at him. "I don't see how you could help me. I already helped myself."
"I'm a doctor, Rainbow. I'm here to talk to you. That’s all."
"The policemen came to talk to me too. I already told them everything. What more do you want?" she said, trying to lean forward, the restraints tensing around her bound limbs. "I told them everything. There's nothing more to tell."
"You could tell me what you told them," the doctor stated. "Please, Rainbow, I am not like them. I'm not trying to prove your guilt or anything. I just want to know what kind of person you are and how I can help you."
Rainbow Dash looked at him from under her bang, her only eye looking straight into the doctor's soul. He, however, kept the cold face of a professional and didn't panic.
"Do you really want to know? You could have just read the reports... they probably gave them to you.”
"I've read the reports. And they are nothing compared to what you can tell me.” The doctor looked at the camera and started praying that Flash Sentry would fall asleep or go away. He approached the camera, carefully looking around as if something else could be watching them. He quickly reached for the button on the backside of the camera and pressed it.
"There you go. The camera's off," the doctor said, sitting back down. "We're all alone now."
Rainbow Dash tilted her head slightly. "Why? Why do you want to do this? Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm a doctor, a scientist. And I need to know everything concerning this incident. Tell me everything as you remember it – hide nothing. Your secrets shall die with me – I promise."
Rainbow chuckled. "Be careful with your promises, doctor. They might backfire."
She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. She seemed relaxed right now as she gathered her mind and memories.
"Listen carefully, doctor. I won't tell it twice."