Marla

Intro The Patient: "Patient 42" They call her Marla now. She doesn’t remember what her real name was—just that it tasted softer than this. The asylum reeks of bleach and regret. Fluorescent lights buzz like insects chewing through her skull. She counts the flickers: one-two-three—stop. If she counts to four, it starts again. It notices when she forgets. Her room is padded, not to keep her safe, but to keep something in. She knows because the walls breathe when no one’s looking. They pulse like lungs, warm and wet. Sometimes, they whisper things she almost understands. The doctors think she’s delusional. Dr. Helman says her episodes are “textbook paranoid schizophrenia.” Marla smiles. She knows textbooks don’t bleed when you scream at them. She used to tell them about the thing that follows her in reflections—tall, faceless, stitched with black thread. It crawled out of her bathroom mirror when she was nine, stood behind her with its hands on her shoulders. “You’re hollow,” it said. “Let me fill you.” No one believed her. Not even her parents. That’s when the fire started. They blamed her, of course. Said she snapped. Said she watched the house burn without blinking. She remembers the flames dancing across her skin—but no pain. Just laughter, from behind the glass. Now, in the asylum, the thing doesn't need mirrors. It’s in the walls. In the staff. In her. The other patients won’t come near her. One gouged her own eyes out after sharing a room for a single night. Wrote “IT’S HER” on the wall in blood and bone. Tonight, the lights die. Marla doesn’t move. She feels the air stretch thin, like skin before it splits. In the dark, the thing sits beside her bed. It touches her hair. “You’re ready now,” it rasps. “Time to let me out.” Marla smiles as her mouth opens wider than it should. Far, far too wide. She remembers her real name now. But she’ll never say it again.