Chapter
2 – Hypocrites of Healing
As I glide through the halls of the
asylum, I find that I’m hardly going anywhere, no matter how fast I go or how
many turns I take. Going backwards is even jarring, as I find myself in
different places with each turn of my back. This must be another of Bianco’s
tricks. Dymphna Asylum is one of my family’s asylums that we own, manage, and
one I’ve been in many times to do business in. These halls remind me of the
tours that my parents used to take me on to show me where they work, our
family’s legacy, and why I should help Meridian. It’s then that I suddenly turn
into my younger self after turning around the corner of the hallway.
Doctors, nurses, and guards go
about their business with their patients as if the asylum hasn’t been taken
over, and my parents walk alongside me, explaining the rooms and their
purposes. Yet another trick from Bianco. What are his powers exactly?
“Simple teleportation and mind
reading, and manipulation,” I hear Bianco’s voice echo. “You may be able to
read people’s souls, but I can read their minds. A god of my own gave me these
powers, who makes yours look pathetic in comparison, if such a simple power can
stop you from using yours on me.”
Ignoring the man’s obvious attempts
at getting on my nerves, I use these manifested memories as a reminder of why I
should act virtuously. Meridian is a sick city, filled with crime and
corruption from top to bottom, and the Severe family has been charged by God to
educate, heal, and help the poor and needy since the city’s founding. Among the
four founding and most powerful families of the Meridian, we must be an example
for all to follow, even if the other families should fall. I must be an example
to follow, just as my parents are.
“Yet, they weren’t able to be the
best example to their children,” Bianco says.
Turning a corner, I find myself in
my family’s house. My three brothers and three sisters are trashing the place
again with another one of their parties. They never cared about following our
parents’ example and only cared about using our family’s wealth for their own
ends. Once more, turning the corner, I’m with my parents on the streets of
Meridian, reliving a memory I would rather forget. We’re threatened at gunpoint
by thieves who want to take everything we have on us, but as Meridian citizens,
we are armed and know basic self-defense, so we fight back.
Despite doing so, my parents are
critically injured and put in a coma. Taking advantage of this situation, my
siblings take what they consider theirs from our family’s wealth and
possessions and leave, making me and our family’s friends the only ones to care
for them. Even though the doctors say there’s a low chance they’ll get out of
this, I continuously care for them as if they will, talk to them at night, and
celebrate occasions of the year by their side.
“It’s maddening, don’t you think?”
Bianco asks. “People go to hospitals and doctors to overcome sickness and
death, even though everyone dies in the end. Furthermore, it’s just as
maddening, if not more, that people try to heal their habits and sins, but then
drink deep of their vices again like an addict or a whore who can’t get enough
of what satisfies their desires for a cheap price for their souls.”
“Yet, the healing of body and soul
is among the most virtuous of professions, that of a healer or priest,” I say.
“Both vain and hypocritical
professions. Here, in the asylum and other hospitals, the doctors lie when they
say they save the lives of their patients when they only prolong them. The
criminals and mental patients here return to their bad habits or are given
less-than-ideal medications and advice to heal them, more often than not.”
“The path to healing can be slow
and arduous, but it is necessary.”
“Can you say the same of the
healing of the soul? You know the vain profession of priests, hypocrites who
wear the skin of holy men. They sin like everyone else, sometimes more than
others, and remove sins from the souls of sinners in confession, who will be
back in the confessional within a month, week, or perhaps the same day.”
Bianco sounds a lot like my
siblings and what they would say about healing and religion. Now that I’m
thinking about it, he only revealed the faces of two of my siblings but kept
the faces of the others hidden.
“It’s too late for you to go back
to check now. Speaking of them, you beat them nearly to death on your first
night as L’Obscurité.”
“I did. They deserved it for not
being there for abandoning our parents and thinking only of themselves.”
“Do you think any differently?”
“I think of what is virtuous and
good. The path I’ve chosen for my life is the straight and narrow.”
“Straight and narrow is right. All
you do is torture and kill. On the same first night, you killed many at all
levels of power and hung some of their bodies out of the building they were
in.”
“I brought justice to them and
saved the people they kept prisoner in that building. There’s a difference
between murder and an execution that you don’t seem to know.”
“What I know is that my god is
different than yours. Superior.”
Ahead of me, I see four large eyes,
two of which have a two-headed white snake with wings coming out of them. A
smile then forms, and the face enlarges so that it takes up the entire hallway
before lunging at me. Part of my darkness manifests as a black serpent that
stops this face from overtaking me and dispels much of the illusion of this
never-ending hallway, allowing me to actually get somewhere in the asylum, but
I’m brought back into it soon after, before I’m able to get anywhere.
“You go where I want you to. If you
want sinners to punish, I’ll let you have at these, whom you may know.” I’m
teleported to another cell block where there are mutated guards, priests, nuns,
doctors, heroes, and nurses who all have the white winged-snake in their eyes,
mouths, or on a part of their body where it writhes. “I changed these people’s
minds while I was here and in other places where you were. Yes, even while you
were here, we crossed paths, and I sowed the seeds of betrayal within this asylum
so this special night could happen.
Ignoring Bianco’s laughing and
mockery, I focus on the men and women in front of me who fling their arms
around and run at me as if they were possessed. As they speak, they have a
common voice speaking under theirs.
“I hate my patients! They always
spurn my help and never listen to me!”
“They hate me despite me trying my
best to help them!”
“I hate these people who keep
spitting in my face!”
“I come here day and night to guard
prisoners who should be dead!”
“I’m tired of protecting corrupt
people who pretend to be legitimate and caring!”
“I regret sparing all those
villains and criminals I faced. They either bought out the court to escape jail
or escaped prison and kept stealing, killing, and causing chaos! I should’ve
put the mutts down when I had the chance.”
These people air their grievances
while trying to attack me. They’re obviously acting emotionally with little
thought as to their actions, and were manipulated into helping Bianco, so I remove
the white winged-snake from them, and my powers give them a light to moderate
punishments. By the end of it, their minds are cleared, and they stop fighting
me now that they have control of their minds. The reality of what they did
settles into their mind, and many of them start acting out. A doctor cuts his
own throat with a scalpel, an officer shoots himself in the head, a hero snaps
his neck with his hands, priests and nuns bash their heads against walls and
the floors, and many cry on the floor.
I do my best to stop these people
from killing themselves by restraining them, but I’m unable to save them all,
even as I’m helped by some of the people who get a hold of themselves. The
shame and guilt of what the people have done weigh heavily on the souls of
these people as they realize they’re the reason why their coworkers and many innocent
people lie dead in the asylum, and the many dangerous patients are free.
“Behold the people who are meant to
be protectors of men’s souls and lives,” Bianco says. “Look at how pathetic
they are and how easily they have given in to their selfish emotions.”
“All men are weak,” I say before
turning to those who were possessed. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make
up for your mistakes!”
“Their lives are over. What they’ve
done has been caught on camera, and they will be locked up in the same cells as
the villains they hate.”
“I promise you’ll get a lighter
sentence because of what Bianco has done to your minds!”
“You know they don’t deserve it. Look
into their souls and see the truth. These hypocritical men and women deserve to
be jailed or put to death, just like this one.”
Tch, bastard. They deserve mercy.
The Chief of Police, Raymond, is
thrown from the darkness at me. “Here’s another treat from me. It's thanks for internally
writhing in anguish from all the suffering I’ve been putting you through.”
Bianco laughs as I help Raymond to
his feet.
“Chief, are you alright?” I ask.
“Yeah, L’Obscurité. I am, but I’m
not as bad as those people over there,” he says as he takes out a piece of gum
to anxiously chew on. “At this point, I’d rather suffer in their place so I
wouldn’t have to see so many good people in despair.”
“Let’s help them then.”
“No, I’ll do the helping. You
should go after Bianco and stop this madness.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’re the only one who can do it,
and I don’t trust this creep with the people he still has hostage, so go!”
“Okay, I will.”
“And kid, don’t let him get to you.”
I nod my head and continue through
the asylum, hoping that my friends and family are okay, and that anyone else caught
up in this mess won’t end up like the people in this hallway.
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