wings of the librarian | the end
[spoiler alert: things do not end well]
May 18th, 2015
The nightmares had been getting worse.
Recently, there’d been a great deal of change. Cody Michaelson, the owner that Atticus had met a handful to times, seemed to grab the supernatural problem by the reigns and pull it to a stop. Different species were getting separate floors, the death count had gone way down, and everything seemed to be falling into an even keel.
Except, that is, for the librarian.
One of two, Atticus had always loved his job. He’d been here for a grand total of five months, give or take, and it had been incredible. He loved working with the patients, and reading to those who couldn’t. But he struggled; even the therapy he discreetly had been attending wasn’t helping the nightmares, the pain from his scars. Poor Dana had actually walked in on him one afternoon examining his scars in the mirror -- that had been a particularly terrible conversation. After that, she looked at him different. Sympathetic. He hated it.
On the eighteenth of May, a fight broke out in the library. Although Cody had settled things down quite a bit, there was still some disarray, and the library was unfortunately big enough to toss fists. Dana had gone to the cafeteria for some lunch, so the job of breaking up the fight had moved down to him. With a sigh, he placed down the books he’d been organizing and lumbered over to where several patients had begun to gather, his palms in the air. “Hold up,” he called. “What the heck is going--”
Wham! Next thing he knew, he was on the ground. The world was spinning. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered that the two patients had slowed to a stop and were leaning over him, but all he could see were dizzying figures that were coalescing into one, singular form -- that of the man that had kidnapped and tortured him.
His back burned like it had when he was strapped to the table. On Atticus’s wrists he could feel the restraints, tugging and ripping at his skin. He cried out, but no sound came from his mouth, just the death of a noise that once belonged in his throat.
One of the patients grabbed him when he began to seize. They were burning figures before him -- the angels that sacrificed him so that they wouldn’t have to suffer as he did. “Y-you le-left me to d-die!” he snarled, jaw aching as he spat. “I would have died! I should have died! Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”
Eventually he felt himself being heaved onto a table, still thrashing and crying out, his back aching. They tore through his sweater, tossed his tie, and examined his back -- they found the scars. One of the paramedics said, “Oh my God.”
When Atticus woke up, everything was blurry. The sound of his abductor’s voice rang in his head, and he couldn’t get it out. He scratched at his temples, screaming, and they put restraints around his wrist. “Are you gonna cut into me?” he asked one of the doctors, eyes brimming with tears. “Are you gonna finish the job?”
They didn’t. They didn’t finish it -- they just left him there, a mess, on the gurney. They diagnosed him with PTSD and some other panic disorders that Atticus didn’t recognize a few days later. He laughed so hard -- he was going to be a patient, now, too. However, Cody thought it was dangerous to keep him in Broken, so they decided to transfer him to another hospital.
When they came to move him, they found him trying to cut into his back. Somehow he’d found a scalpel, and started screaming when they came to help him. There was blood everywhere. “I have wings!” he screamed, hysterical. “I have them! He told me I did!”
Atticus Parker, former librarian, spends most of his days in isolation now. He stares at a wall. He doesn’t speak at therapy. He shows no interest in getting better. When offered a book, he looks at the cover and then looks away. He’s a shell of his former self.
Cody Michaelson did a damn good job fixing up everyone at Broken Asylum. The death tolls went down. People went to therapy. The supernatural didn’t cause as much chaos as they did before because they had a home. But a few of them relapsed. A few of them were bad apples. Atticus Parker had been rotting for a long time -- he just had tried not to notice it. Now, he was lost in his own head. Wondering when the angels would come to take him to peace.
