Miss Pie's eyes have gone blank again. We have learned to ignore it, she's simply going through another of her phases. It's afterwards that you need to worry about.
Miss Pinkemena Diane Pie was brought to our mental institution two years ago. She is a long time sufferer of depression, and to escape it, she created another world that she could escape to. As she described it, it was her 'Happy Place'. She says that she has lots of friends, and five best friends, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy. The hospital is used to dealing with cases like this. But none quite as servere as hers. The main problem was that her 'friends' aren't even human. In fact, when she escapes into her 'Happy Place', I am in strong belief that she herself sees herself as an equine, too.
We are always terrified for our lives when Miss Pie breaks out of her state. We have been instructed to tell her that her 'friends' are not real. The first time this happened, Miss Pie took a knife to her wrist and self harmed for the first time in months. The next morning, the nurse was found on his own operating table, his entrails scattered all around him. Miss Pie seemed happy that day, but not in her usual cheerful sense. In an insane, delirious state. She spoke in utter nonsense all day. I can remember she said to me,
"I'm so proud of all the things I've achieved in my life. Just yesterday, I put a wrong to rights." She suddenly turned over to me, her blue eyes sunken in their sockets, her face pale and pinched, and her hair straight and greasy, "Aren't you proud of me, nurse?" An insane smile grew on her face as she turned her head back over, "So, so, proud..."
I could do nothing but meekly nod my head and give a quiet squeak. I had never been one to deal with patients in their insane states, least of all, Pinkemena. But Pinkemena was different, somehow. I tended to enjoy her company in her normal state, yet her insane state terrified me. I don't know how someone so... happy, and cheerful, could become so sad and repressed, and even manic. It saddened me.
But what saddened me even more was her past. As a child, Pinkemena lived on a rock farm with her mother, father, and two sisters. On the day of her tenth birthday, her family was murdered, and she was drugged and kidnapped. When she awoke, she was stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no means of survival. She stumbled across a village, and was adopted by the local bakers, but it didn't last long after Pinkemena murdered their twin children. They were found in their cribs, in a pool of blood, their insides trailed along the room. On a wall, before she ran away, Pinkemena wrote in blood,
'Death is our only release.'
~*~
There is one thing I dread, and that is speaking to Pinkemena in the morning. She will always tell me about 'the most fantasical dream EVER!' that she had, and no doubt, it will be about her pony friends. Then I have to tell her that they're not real.
"Hi, nurse!" I hear her chirrup from her bed, "Have a good night?"
"It was wonderful, thank you." I reply.
"That's awesome." She says, "Y'know, my friend Rainbow Dash says that all the time."
Here we go.
"Hey, did I tell you about that really cool attack if changelings at Princess Cadence's and Prince Shining Armour's wedding? It was so awesome! All the changelings could turn into me, but they weren't very good at it."
"Pinkemena..." I start.
"Pinkie." She corrects happily.
"Pinkie... none that happened. All of it is just something that you made up."
Melt down in three... two... one...
"I know that the doctors tell you to say that. But you do believe me really, don't you?" She says, her sunken eyes glimmering.
"I... I don't know..." I stammer.
Pinkemena looks up at me, smiling a real smile.
"I like you, nurse. I want you to be my friend."
I don't know what to say at this point. If the incident with the twins was anything to go on, then her 'friends' frequently ended up mangled.
"Of course, Pinkie. If you want me to be your friend, then I'll happily be your friend."
"Nurse?" She says innocently, looking at me.
"Yes, Pinkie?"
"Now that we're friends, I have to tell you a secret. You promise to keep it, and then you tell me a secret, and I promise to keep it, and that's how we show that we're friends."
I swallow.
"The secret I'm going to tell you is my deepest, darkest secret," she continues, "and if you ever tell anyone, then we can't be friends any more. Ever."
I nod.
"I'm going to tell you my real past."
I have to mentally record every detail now.
"In actual fact, I had three sisters. But the oldest... she was different. Living life wrong. Boring. Bland. So I thought, 'hey, I'm going to help her out a bit.'. And we all know the best way to live life, right, nurse? Up there." She says, pointing up towards the sky, "But no one understood. They didn't get it. They though I was bad. Bad, bad, bad..." She looked at the ground, repeating the word bad for a while, before continuing.
"They sent me to a dark and horrible place. The grown up's were mean... they hit, they shouted, they starved... I didn't like it. So I ran away. It felt nice to feel free again..."
Where was this leading?
"But they caught me again... and they really hurt me. Then, when I turned sixteen, they sent me here with my fake backstory. I was afraid that they'd hurt me again if I told you the real one... that's why you can't tell anyone. Also, Twilight says that it's important to keep a friend's trust."
She looks up at me, expecting me to say it.
"Go on." She says, "Tell me they're not real. It's your job."
"I... uh..."
"It's okay. I won't be mad."
"They... They're not real."
She lays back, relaxed.
"That's better."
I think for a little while. I don't understand it. Had it of been anyone else, she would have started laughing manically, tears pouring down her smiling face, screaming that we were lying. And that was on her better days.
"Nurse?" She says in her happy, cheerful way, "Now that we're friends, I want to do something nice with you."
I really hope she meant that innocently. I like my internal organs right were they are, thanks.
"How about tomorrow, I bring in some of my hair and bath stuff, yeah? We can get ourselves all prettied up."
She looks at me dreamily.
"Yes... yes, I'd like that... you could turn me into a really pretty lady, like Rarity."
She lays down in her bed again, her eyes blank. I just have to pray that I'm the one on shift when she breaks out.
~*~
I wasn't. We found nurse Winterson lying dead on the floor, blood still seeping from her chest, Pinkemena knelt beside her, a sobbing, quivering, yet still laughing, mess.
"Tell me she's lying..." She sobbed, "Tell me she's lying..."
I don't know what to do at this point. If I do, then I could lose my job. If I tell her truth, the one of us is going to die.
"Come on, Pinkie..." I say, lifting her from the floor, "Look at the state you've got yourself into! It's okay, Pinkie, I brought my things, we're going to pretty you up, remember?"
I felt as though I were talking to a child. And in reality, I was. A scared child in an adults body.
Her face brightened, like someone suddenly opened the curtains and the light had come streaming through the window.
"Oh, yeah! We were, weren't we? You're going to make me all pretty, aren't you?" She said, skipping off to the bathroom, girlish giggles escaping her lips. I heard the running of water.
I lined the scents up along the side of the bath so that she could see her options.
"I've got lavender, strawberry, a kind of fruit salad-y one, and candy." I say, pointing at each bottle.
"Can I please have candy? Then I can smell like my favourite thing!"
I pour the pale pink scent into the water, some of the bubbles already forming. Pinkemena giggles, scooping up a handful and blowing on them, making them scatter around, like snow.
I turn off the water, and Pinkemena climbs into the bath. I pull some of the provided shampoo off of the shelf, and rub it between my hands, making it lather up. I rub it into her long, greasy hair, the smell of strawberries tickling my nose. I wash it out, and then wash her body. She's covered in scars, some self inflicted, some white and old, others pinkish and new. Her shoulder blades stuck right out, and every detail of her spine and ribcage was fully visible. She was weak, and frail.
I got her out of the bath, dried, and began to style her hair. We eventually settled on twisting it into an updo. She looked so much different to before. Mere minutes ago, she'd been insane and frail looking. Now, she looked like an elegant young lady.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!" Pinkemena chirruped, happy as larry.
The doctor walked in.
"Can I please talk to you, Miss Pie?"
My God. I'd completely forgotten that I'd told him what Pinkemena told me. A loud cry could be heard from the doctors office. Someone smashed something against something else. Glass broke. Someone yelled them to stop.
She ran out, tears running down her face.
"Lies! " she screamed at me, grabbing me by the shoulders, "Lies! Promises mean nothing to you! All you care about is your stupid little job! I HATE YOU!"
She collapsed to the floor, wailing loudly, plummeting her fist against the floor.
"Lies, lies lies..." she sang gently to herself, before shrieking once again, "LIES!"
She was taken to her bed, and I was given the rest of the day off. I needed it. I was sick and tired of tending to a fully grown adult like a little sister. Still, she was my patient, and it was my job to unsure her well being. I slipped my head around the door just before the time my shift would usually end, and I saw her. She was scribbling away on some paper, before placing the sheet on top of a pile of them, and grabbing a new sheet to scribble on. She didn't see me. Or she just didn't want to.
I was covering my friends night shift, so I had to stay for a couple of hours. I was just checking in on some of the other patients, making sure that they slept soundly. I thought I could hear someone walking behind me, slowly. I turned around at an even slower pace, but I never got to see who my predator was, because they got to me first.
~*~
When I wake up, I can't tell where I am. All I can see are childish pictures surrounding me, all of them with the same thing on them. A little stick woman, a big red cross over her, with the word 'lies' written down. A pair of hands brushes them off with great force, the papers scattering about the room.
"SURPRISE!" the voice yells.
I think I'm in theater. I can feel hard metal against my back, and I've just noticed that I'm gagged. I look to the left, and I can see the doctor, him in the same position as me...
With Pinkemena stood in between us.
"Hi, guys! How are you doing?" She says, her voice forced happy, "I'm going to do a little experiment on you guys today. I'm going to try something new. I'm doing an organ transplant. You two are going to swap organs! Isn't that cool!"
The doctor makes muffled noises against his gag as Pinkemena reaches for a hammer.
"Oh, you wanna go first?" She giggles, "Well, if you insist."
She pulls the hammer back, before whacking it forcibly against his head, fragments of his skull flying everywhere. She takes a knife, and begins hacking away at his head where there is no longer any bone. With the hack made, she reaches her her hand into it, and pulls out his brain. She casually puts it on the table next to her, humming to herself.
She begins cutting at his stomach, trying to remove the skin that covers the internal organs. Once removed, she waves it in the air a couple of times, like one would beat a rug. She sets that aside, too, and begins to delve into the newly exposed flesh, deftly pulling out his liver, bladder, and intestines. She then grabs the hammer again, this time smashing it over his ribcage. A few of his ribs stick up, and tear through his skin. She casually snaps these off, setting each one aside, and then begins hacking again. She removes his lungs, and finally his heart.
She picks all these up, bundling them up into her arms, and strolls over to me. Her face is smattered with blood.
"Now it's your turn, nurse."
~*~
I'm not at all excited for my new job. The last nurse was murdered by my next patient along with the doctor, with the doctors entrails haphazardly stuffed into her where hers should have been, which were found in the doctor.
"Hello there, Miss Pie. I'm your new nurse."
"Hi! You can call me Pinkie."
Author's Note
I based some of Pinkie's behaviour off of some of my mum's experiences of working with Alzheimer's syndrome, so while Pinkie does NOT have Alzheimer's I apologise in advance if I accidentally portrayed it in a disrespectful way, but I don't know how to as I was not there at the times she described, and my memory is very hazy of it as I was only eleven at the time.
That aside, I have a plan for an extra chapter is this receives a lot if positive attention. Most likely from Pinkie's view of what she experiences and suffers from, but who knows if I'll come up with something I prefer before then?