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Post by Genevieve Linton on Jun 20, 2011 7:49:01 GMT
Footfalls shattered the usual evening silence of the long, dusty hallway leading to the Asylum's black heart - the light steps of a white-clad wisp of a girl who drifted, wraith-like, through the gloom alongside her ponderous, brawny escort. Statues lined the passage, their blank stone eyes seeming to watch the pair as they passed.
The orderly was no greenhorn. He had toiled at the Asylum for some eight years now, and had seen more disturbing sights each day than most people did in a lifetime. And yet, he could not help but warily eye the tortured-looking sculptures every time he passed them. For her part, his charge, who had been an inmate for but several months, merely regarded them with the smallest and sweetest of smiles - the only hint of emotion she had displayed since being removed from her cell three minutes prior with the explanation that the new head of operations wished to see her.
The breadth and length of Darius' service brought with them a good sense of intuition - an ability to rapidly assess situations and react accordingly, so valuable in such a volatile work environment. He knew trouble whenever he sensed it, and his first glimpse of Doctor Bramsfield had set off every alarm bell in his head. Though he could not put his finger on the trouble's precise nature, Darius knew, deep down, that there was something terribly wrong about the man. Sending quiet, docile Genny to see him felt like sending a lamb to the slaughter. But what choice did he have? With a heavily-pregnant young wife to support and a three-year-old daughter to feed, there was little he could do but follow orders lest he be dismissed, or worse.
"God have mercy," Darius muttered as the half-open door to Doctor Bramsfield's office came into view, unearthly-looking orange light spilling out from it and into the corridor.
"It's overrated," responded Genny, her face expressionless and mask-like as she crossed the threshold and the portal shut behind her.
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 20, 2011 8:15:11 GMT
As Darius passed the two tall oak doors, hand carved with depictions of Ophelia in all her various arrays, the decaying scent of laudanum-laced masculinity lingered. It was a harshly chemical smell, but something about it smelled of...frankly...sexual pleasure. Not the stench left after a couple's frantic loving, but floral smell of pure lust one experiences but can never name.
"Welcome to my office, young Genevieve. Sit. Please...oh, I apologize. Sit. I command you," The voice that had started off so polite and gentile took on the dominating air of a man well suited to his post of headmaster in a house of crazies. Across the room filled with maroons and pine greens accented with golds, silvers, and brasses sat a man of one-and-forty, highly attractive for his age with an air of distict haughtiness. His face was well rounded at the jaw, bearing high cheekbones and eyes that seemed to sink back into his head.
The long, wavy shocks of auburn hair that framed his face gave off the appearance of a masculine woman at first glance, but closer inspection showed that this was indeed purely a male perched cross-legged in his high-backed chair. Resting on his shoulders, but not sheathing his arms, was a deep black labcoat crusted at the hems with blood and various powders from chemical experiments. Beneath he wore a crisp white cotton ruffle shirt, over which sat a matching cravat embroidered with silver roses on each layer of soft creamy lace. Around his waist and legs he wore a pair of gray tweed trousers trimmed to fit, a shiny new pair of black wing-tipped boots with porcelain heels keeping his feet protected from the elements.
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Post by Genevieve Linton on Jun 21, 2011 3:39:56 GMT
A brief flicker of surprise crossed Genny's impassive countenance as she took in her new surroundings. The opulent office interior, with its plush furnishings and exotic scents, seemed like another world to her, especially in contrast with the sepulchral environs of the rest of the Asylum. Amorphous memories of similar apartments rose behind her half-closed cerulean orbs, causing her brow to wrinkle ever-so-slightly in puzzlement, but the visions were as ephemeral as the dawn, and soon gone like the wind.
No less a breath of fresh air was the room's occupant. With his striking looks and elegant dress, it seemed as though he had shattered whatever mold the usual dowdy, unprepossessing individuals staffing the place had been crafted from. But might this ostensibly fresh breath of air ultimately prove noxious? All the Asylum's doctors projected an air of authority, and this one was no exception. However, there was something more to his demeanor than the usual Messiah complex his ilk were infamous for possessing - a strange facet to his character that was instilling her with a sense of wariness. As Genny complied with his order, she could already detect that familiar, protective presence, hovering, specter-like, in the wings of her fractured mind.
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 21, 2011 3:49:58 GMT
Without another word, the doctor withdrew from his labcoat pocket a sheet of paper made to record every inscrutible detail of the woman before him. But it was not from this parchment that he made his questions vocalized.
"State your name, young girl," he said in a voice not fitting of his face. What appeared to be the owner of a deep, baritone voice returned to Genny's ears a soft, almost female tenor voice. One of which he was the master of inflecting different tones notwithout. Too often this voice was the cause of nightmares in the lowly ranks of female inmaes in the asylum.
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Post by Genevieve Linton on Jun 21, 2011 7:29:33 GMT
It wasn't just the doctor's dulcet tones that Genny found incongruous - it was his present request, as well. Had he not addressed her by name not half a minute past, when she first set foot in his sanctum sanctorum? She wondered if he was testing her, or if this was merely the result of the office's heady, musky atmosphere getting to her brain.
"Genny," she replied, her voice uncertain. "Genevieve Linton. Who wishes to know?"
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 22, 2011 0:36:03 GMT
"A smart girl...I can see that you picked up on my repetetive question. Indeed, I asked you in the foyer. Practicalities, you know. I have to fill out your admissions form," he said quietly, his thin lips enunciating each word with care, so accustomed was he to speaking to girls who were so far over the edge they could hardly understand common linguistics.
He looked down at the yellowed parchment before him on his massive black desk and scrawled out. The parcel was close enough for the girl to view herself as he scrawled across it with a pencil. His delicate handwriting curled and billowed like smoke and ashes in the wind. His calligraphy was far too delicate for a man's chicken scratch, yet he took great pride in his ability to make far more readable copies of documents within the Asylum for the doctors who needed them.
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Post by Genevieve Linton on Jun 22, 2011 8:23:06 GMT
All that the doctor's praise drew out of Genny was a slow blink. She had passed his little test, but was his present statement a second one thrown her way? As far as she knew, her admission had commenced a while back; she vaguely recalled being subjected to a similar interrogation by the headmistress.
Still, chains of events and the passage of time meant so little hereabouts, where they did at all; each day seemed so much like the rest that they all seemed to segue into each other, a mad flux of sunups and sundowns, of intrusions and solitude, and frequent were the occasions on which Genny could scarcely tell when one ended and another began, or if she had lived through certain days before while in fact she had not. And besides, what did she truly know about the myriad, inscrutable processes that went into managing this godforsaken place?
"Practicalities. Forms. Bloody red tape," she murmured, nodding slightly. Her gaze drifted downward to where the doctor's pencil pirouetted and whirled over the parchment, his flowing script piquing her attention on account of its resemblance to her own.
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 22, 2011 16:31:36 GMT
"Excuse me?" his writing stopped abruptly in the middle of a particularly delicate letter L. Had his ears picked up a complaint? He thought the process was going well enough, she'd obeyed him so far.
His eyes narrowed, reflecting small slivers of two emerald green moons. The pulse of his blood sped up, racing corridors of veins through his complex heart. On one side, the blue, deoxidized blood raced through a perfectly normal organ, functioning as well as a heart in any other man. On the other side, the deep red blood that had passed through his veins travelled through a thick, cruel wall filled with spikes and with stone. The heart of a malevolent sentient being.
"I assume you find it appropriate to make snide comments while in my presence, Miss Linton?" he says slowly, staring the beautiful girl down. "You really do suffer from madness, don't you..."
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Post by Genevieve Linton on Jun 22, 2011 22:21:36 GMT
Sapphire met emerald as Bramsfield's outburst prompted Genny's eyes to dart back upwards. She unwaveringly held his searching glare, briefly fancying she could both see and feel sparks crackle along an invisible wire connecting their gazes. Somewhere within (or was it far, far away?), the hovering shadow tensed. The atmosphere was electric.
"We're all mad, after a fashion," she returned after a short pause that nevertheless seemed like an eternity while it lasted, her voice flat and devoid of feeling.
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 23, 2011 0:08:58 GMT
"Miss Linton...why don't you come here." he said with a grave face, also feeling the crackling sparks as their eyes conected. For once, instead of lust for a girl in his supervision, he felt the insane urge to throttle her.
Something about this girl wore on his patience. She was far too cocky for his liking, and he was going to change that. Something sick and twisted inside him yearned for her, a part of him that wanted after all the devious sexual deeds that were nearly taboo to perform in any other room but his bedroom.
But that wouldn't stop him. He'd have his way...He promised himself.
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Post by Genevieve Linton on Jun 23, 2011 2:56:43 GMT
Tonight's encounter with Bramsfield, like so many others between Genny and the Asylum staff, was akin to a dangerously sharp razor, with her (and them) toeing the line on its silver blade. Scant little might serve to upset the precarious balancing act, transforming nebulous neutrality into barbarous bedlam. That tenuous equilibrium had just been tipped.
It was a delicate, mentally fragile young woman who broke the clash of stares by squeezing her eyes shut. It was something else, something primal and atavistic, that opened them again and resumed contact, fixing Bramsfield with a look that could kill before mouthing, in a low voice dripping with ice-cold venom: "Be careful what you wish for, doctor."
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 23, 2011 3:04:53 GMT
"You WILL regret this, my dear," his tone also dripped with the venom akin to Genevieve's. At once, wordlessly, two chasers appeared at the girl's side, cuffing her wrists tightly together and hauling her forward.
"You're toying with a very dangerous man, mon cherie, a man who's also known for his quaint little ability to rape the fucking daylights out of you," what started as a bragging, jestful tone quickly deluged into pure and vile bestiality.
Something fierce and feral was erupting from the Schizophrenic Doctor Bramsfield, and he loved it. With a renewed sex drive, he was at once standing, towering over the girl by a good few inches, such as she was being borne down on by Doctor Bramsfield's own personal chasers.
"Can't talk your way out of this one, can you, bitch?" he laughed mercilessly as he swung a hand made primarily of strong, bony knuckles, hardly any meat to soften the blow as he struck her twice across the face, once on each cheek.
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Post by Wynter Willow on Jun 23, 2011 17:52:45 GMT
Wynter walked sleepily out of her master bedchamber into his office, shutting the door quickly behind her. She heard him talking to someone just as her eyes found him with another inmare she hadn't seen before cuffed to a chair.
"Master, what's going?" she said walking towards him slowly. Bruises stil visible but fading on her arms and face, and her growing tummy barely visible under her shift.
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Post by Dr. Edward Gideon Bramsfield on Jun 23, 2011 17:57:08 GMT
"Wynter...I'm a tad busy...you should return to Willow, keep her company in the music room," he said bitterly, running on complete master mode now. His stance was wide, his shoulders set in an overpowering appearance.
His fists clenched and unclenched angrily as he stared down the girl before him.
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Post by Wynter Willow on Jun 23, 2011 18:04:30 GMT
Wynter looked back and forth between the girl and her master. She had never seen him this angry while a girls clothes were still on. "Who is she darling?" she asked curiously. Her master and the girl seemed to be locked in a death match staring contest and who the winner was going to be she had no idea. She stood next to him waiting for his answer.
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