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gjnhjfdhns: Part TWENTY-FOUR: Rooms

"Oh CRACKERS!" I cried, running over and looking helplessly into the darkness. "Mitchell!? /Mitchell/!?"

"Don't step forward!"

I looked down and saw him clinging onto the ground for dear life. It appeared that the room was just a big hole. I leant down and, bracing myself against the door frame, helped him get up onto solid ground. "Are you okay?"

"'Oh crackers'?"

"Shut up." I walked back to where I stood before he fell. "Ready?" Seeing him nod, I opened the door, and found a simple room. It was furnished with only a bed, a nightstand and a stool, and it had curtains hanging on the wall beside the bed. The room was about as clean as the hall, this fact strangely making me feel more safe than I had been in a clean room. I took a slow step in, and then another, and then decided that the floor was actually there.

"What's in there?"

"It's just a room," I called back, taking hold of a corner of the curtain. I gagged- It was blood red, but I didn't know it'd feel damp, too. I flung it open in disgust, only to find a rust-coloured rectangle of wall behind it.

I walked- maybe ran, maybe ralked- out of the room, feeling apprehensive. "There are curtains but no windows."

"Eh." Mitchell had his hand on the knob of the next door. "Ready?" He opened the door and stepped back. "God, it /reeks/!"

"Why? What's in there?"

"Looks like..." He cocked his head to one side, squinting into the room. "Looks like a bunch of people... All tied to the walls with barbed wire, their blood- It's /still dripping/!"

"What/!?" I shrieked, biting my thumbnails again. He walked over and pushed me toward the door. I screamed, trying to get away, before stumbling in and finding that the room looked exactly the same as the one I'd just been in. "You /jackass/!" I glared at him, catching my breath. "/You open my next door, now!"

He walked to where I had been, smirking like there was no tomorrow, and walked to the door I was previously standing in front of. He opened it quickly, and froze before the light from inside the room hit him.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?" Getting no response- Unless you can call growing pale a response- I ran- /Okay, 'ralked' should really be a word/- over and looked into the room myself.

"A.. /Angel/!?"

Inside was a room much like the one I had been in, except for two differences- Everything was a spotless white, and one of my closest friends was laying in the bed, hooked up to tons of pointy things.

"Oh my God oh my God oh my GOD!" I cried, running over to the bed. Angel looked like she was sleeping- Wait, scratch that. Sleeping people looked peaceful. Nightmare-ing people looked like she did. I grabbed her shoulders. "Angel! Angel! Wake up wake up /wake up/!" She lay limp, and for a moment I feared she was dead, but I noticed all those hospital doohickeys pointing to her living status. "Mitchell! Whatta we do?"

"We get out of here."

"/What/? Why?"

"Haven't you noticed?" He gestured to the room we stood in. "All these rooms that're clean, white, what hospitals are supposed to look like, all of them have been dangerous! It's not safe in here!"

He was right, of course. There was cafeteria fiasco, and then the morgue, and then the room with Candace in it- All those rooms were a spotless white. No wonder the first room I went into made me feel safe. At least, as safe as you could feel in a place like this. It was like bringing us into a familiar reality, the hospital lulled us into a false sense of security- /No blood on the walls means clean, clean means regular, and regular means safe/- before striking us at our weakest.

No way would I let that happen to me again.

"But... We can't leave her here!" I frowned at him, trying to look as stubborn as I was going to be. "I'm not leaving another friend behind!"

He glared back. "He wasn't a friend."

"You don't know that! He helped us!"

"Helped us get out of a mess he caused!"

"/This/," it was now my turn to gesture around us, "this isn't his fault!"

"You don't know /that/."

"I..." Trailing off, I crossed my arms in a huff. "I just don't think he'd do this. I just don't think he could do this. This is way too messed. This is a nightmare..."

"This isn't a nightmare." At my inquisitive look, he continued on. "You can't feel pain in a dream."

"Touché." I sighed and looked down at Angel, who seemed to have gotten even more pale. "But, back to the point... I'm not leaving her."

He ran a hand through his hair, and was quiet for a moment before answering. "Okay. Let's find one of those wheeling-table things."

I nodded, content with the decision, and we left the room into a crowded hall.

A crowded hall. Meaning a hall /filled with people/.