#theawkward

Waah...nobody noticed that I haven’t been on tmblr for...idk.

THAT”S GREAT !! (probably...)

There were three chairs in front of my windows. One for the father, one for the mother, one for the daughter. Since I remember they were always there, in the same position, never an inch more on the left or on the right. You see I have a good memory and a lot of time to notice details like that, it is one of the few advantages of spending your whole life in the same room, on the same bed; you notice things, you have time to notice them, it keeps you sane.

Anyway back to our chairs, every single day at seven on' clock in the evening they, the family, would sit there and talk for exactly one hour, their voice to feeble for me to hear. At exactly eight on clock they would stand up together and leave. They would move towards the house in the same way they came out, first the father, two steps, then the mother, two steps, than the daughter; it would take them exactly two minutes and half to reach the door that the father would then open, go inside and hold it until the mother got it, went in and hold it until the daughter got it and then she would turn slightly on her left side and let it close.

Every single day for the last seventy five years I set my watch on them and start eating my dinner with them, my way to be more than just a voyeur of this peculiar ritual. I don't think they never noticed me looking at them, their face showed no signs of being aware of anything outside the circle of their chairs; sometimes I am quite certain they didn't even know what they are speaking of and what the others were saying. Their faces were always blank and seemingly unfocused, never a smile, never a cry, a twist of the lips or eyebrows nothing, and trust me I observed them really carefully. Nothing seemed to stop them, rain, wind, blazing sun, doesn't matter the weather they would be there. They were always there.

I can't really explain my weird obsession with them; I mean they didn't do much but their routine kept me occupied with theories and possible explanation of their behaviour; TV shows repelled me ad as for books I had a very limited choice already exploited so many times that I know the words like the back of my hand, and no possibility to replace them. They, the family, are also the only secrets that I managed to have. Living in this place, having to rely on others for every small thing, makes impossible to keep something only for yourself, but with them I could.

Dinner time is the only time in which they left me alone, (and oh how long I had to wait for this small victory), in which I could have a parvence of privacy. And it was the only time the family came out.

Other people knew of our neighbours of course, they knew someone must be switching on and off the lights and own the car parked on the front but because they never met they just ignored them or tends to forgot about them. When I realized I was the only one to have noticed the evening routine well I was in no rush to share the news,I didn't want to lose my only secret.

I would have been contented to have the evenings as the highlight of my days, to keep my strange encounters with my elusive neighbours but of course it had to end.

On a normal Tuesday with nothing special on it, I was waiting for the family to start my dinner; everything was set on the table and I was rehearsing the mental conversation I would have had with them “How was your day?alright?” “yeah nothing special ,you?” “oh really”, the same as every day; when I heard the door open, I looked down and I realized with a shock that there were only two chairs in the garden, not three, two! How did it happen? How I didn't realize?

I looked again and a sense of dread filled my stomach, when I saw the father coming out, followed by, two steps, the mum but no daughter behind. I waited and waited while they carried on like usual having this weird one side conversation with each other, but the daughter didn't show up. At eight when they left still no sign of her, and yet they maintained the routine like nothing. My thoughts were bursting, where was she? What happened?

I spent an horrible night, tossing and turning and being agitated throughout to the point that someone came to check. That’s what stopped me.

I couldn't let them think something was wrong, I couldn't lose my privileges, not after having fought for them for so long. The next morning I tried to be rational, there were one billion reasons why she wasn't there, another engagement, work, boyfriend, girlfriend ,or maybe, yes, maybe she had the cold or something! Yeah that could work ,I mean they spent one hour outside everyday regardless of the weather! I repeated those excuse to myself for the whole day, while thinking what has become of me, that something so stupid can fill my day like that? But there was a part of me, a small frightened voice that was telling me that something was wrong in the house, something terrible had happened.

That evening ,dinner time saw me calm on the outside but tense as a chord on the inside; At seven I took a big gulp of air and looked down: two chairs, still the daughter missing. As it would have been the next day and every day for the next year, until, even in my mind, her presence became to fade, to be just a flicker of a memory. Sometimes I would still be thinking about her but ,hey life goes on, nobody else seemed alarmed and it is not as I could speak with anybody about that not without letting go of the only thing still completely mine.

Another year passed as I said, when something happened again; again on a Tuesday.

I was ready to eat, rehearsing my conversation like usual, I even had a good news to tell them “hey by the way, today they told me I am allowed to go out!I will have one hour unsupervised per day outside!” I was actually quiet excited about that, best news in years, when I looked down and I saw only one chair,not two, one. Only the father came out.

To say that I was shocked would be putting it mildly; my thoughts where whirling like an hurricane, the dread of last time was nothing compared to today; I don't know how but I was completely certain that something was horribly wrong, that something terrible was going on in that house. I was shaking the whole night; they came to check on me and tried everything to calm me down,until they decided to jab me with something that precipitated me in a deep sleep.

The next day and the weeks after are like a dream in mind, I was trying to reassure myself, think of what had happened, while at the same time, trying to find a plausible explanation for my behaviour of that night for them and convince them that it was nothing and it had absolutely nothing to do with my new privilege, and they should still very much allow me to go outside.

Why didn't I said anything? Why after four months passed and still no signs of the wife and the daughter I kept quite?

Well there is not a simple explanation; most of all I was being selfish and scared; scared of what they would find if someone would have believed me, scared of what would happen if most likely they didn't listen to me.

And would you?Would you believe me if I told you that a family of three comes out at the same hour every single day,in every weather, with the exactly same routine and start talking all together without listening to each other for one hour and then leave? And that then the daughter disappear and then the mum? And the dad still kept going out but without speaking?Just staring for one hour in the darkness? Would you? And nobody ever ever saw them? And in this place it would have come out, trust me. Would you believe someone like me?Someone who spent at that time has spent ten of his thirty five years in a mental institute for compulsive lying and for violent and antisocial behaviour? Blimey I wouldn't believe myself!

And in the end this place, here in the middle of an anonymous town in a an anonymous place it is not exactly your normal certificated mental institute isn't it? No proper doctors would ever work here, this is the place for people like me,people deemed irrecoverable, that nobody cares about and is best to keep away locked somewhere.

So would you? Would you listen to me?I don't think so and I had to wait ten years to convince them to let me out for one hour, to let me enjoy a walk on my own, I was not going to let go of my privilege.

So I kept quite and life went on again. The father was still coming out alone and I had my hour of walk; I was even going to say I was close to being happy-ish.

But then of course everything changed. Again on a Tuesday, again the family wrecked my routine.

As I looked down prepared to see the father and him alone, he was followed by the mother and then the daughter. I couldn't believe my eyes, after so many years, I looked again and yes there were three chairs and yes three people, but only the father was familiar to me, the women were strangers, they were not the mother and the daughter from before!

My heart was racing, how can it be possible? How can they be two different people and yet do the same thing as the other before them? What was going on in that house? What was happening? I watched them in a daze, finishing their conversation and leaving after one hour, and I too went to sleep still utterly confused.

For the next two weeks I kept walking like a zombie, until I noticed them looking at me closely and with suspicious, and I snapped out of it. I couldn't go back to being closed up forever, not now that I finally had fresh air for one hour that could be two if I kept being good.

So I kept quite.

Until today, today I decided to leave this message to you, to you that I know are not a normal nurse, to you that I know are not really working here, to you that I saw poking around and I know, I know, you are here to find out what is this place and what is happening inside. So now that I am dead please do what I should have done and check what it is wrong with that house, why in eighty years that I spent here mother and daughter changed three times. And please shut this place down, better be dead than in here.

Adam

The quite and unassuming town of Abbey had in its anonymity one peculiar characteristic that made it dear to the locals and some of the national authority: it keeps its secrets; whatever happens there stay there. This tradition of silence and looking the other way had assured the continuous existence of the Institution and ,in return, the afflux of money, aids and protections to her citizens from the people who benefited by the Institution existence It was the ideal place for those wishing to be left alone by society, family, friends and of course for people whose morality and lifestyle would have been judged aberrant by the outside world.

The arrival of the man in the house just outside the external border of the Institute, generated at first disconcert and suspects within the Abbeyonians and their protectors, but as the years passed by and the man kept by himself without disturbance to their daily life, everybody felt back in the usual indifference.

However everything has to end and Abbey's existence was soon to be challenged and changed forever by the curiosity of a detective in the strange institution,maybe piqued by the contrite conscience of an insider, the arrival of a nurse, who was not a real one, and who became the chosen confident of one of the inmates and the end of the story of the strange man who arrived to Abbey many a years ago to find his place.

Report number 0987

This is the true and faithful report of the events occurred in the town of Abby from November 1935 to March 2005

The building object of the inspection, that was said to be an house for the mentally ill, for people disabled and without a family for whom medicine could do nothing, was in reality a place of torture and neglect. A place were the patients unfortunates enough to end up here were kept in dark rooms without any access to free air, to distractions, expect for rarely TV's show, or any kind of human comfort.

We believe that the institutions, that according to the local register was founded in 1898 with funding from the local nobility was kept functioning in the current conditions with the compliance of the local authorities; politicians of the county used corruption, threatening and influence to avoid any leaking of information about the institute.

Our investigations has brought us to the unintentional discover of another atrocity.

One of the patience of the institute named Adam, spent seventy five of the ninety five years of his life in compete isolation expect for the last twenty years, when he was allowed one hour of unsupervised walk in the garden. His only distraction came in the form of a family of three,mother, father and daughter, involved in a strange routine: every night at exactly seven, they would come out, sit, speak for one hour and then leave, every day every year. But then Adam noticed that while the father was still the same, even if older by the years, mother and daughter changed three times in the period of his observation. Adam didn't say anything to not lose the privilege acquired in the institute, but he left a note when he died to one of our agent working undercover in the institute, that he rightly spotted as being different from the others employees there. We respected his wish and went to check the house of the family in the night of the 25th with a small squad of three. -I will take full responsibility for the unauthorized operation-.

The house was neat and tidy even if a horrible smell lingered in the rooms, stronger the closer we got to the cellar. There, we found the body of six women nearly decomposed and lying next to them the body of an old man dead for a gun wound to the head; apparently suicide.

An inspection of the house revealed a secret room hidden behind the bedroom walls, full of books on hypnosis, brain washing and mental manipulation. There were also folders full of notes with details of the women we found in the cellar, their photos and an accurate tale of how he managed to hypnotized them and brainwash them day after day to stay with him. They only got killed when they started resisting his control. They seemed to be homeless by the notes left by the killer. We couldn't find not even a single details about him or his life. Investigations are under way. I will send an official and more detailed report as soon as we manage to conclude the investigations.