Disclaimer: I own nothing…except my twisted imagination.

A/N: This fic is not meant to offend anyone or cause some outrageous revolt. It is simply another product of three options: too much smutty imagination and too much time on my hands to help it thrive.

(update: it's been a while since I updated this and I intend to finish it at some point. For now, I'm reworking it to spruce this story up a bit.)

A Residual Haunting

Chapter One

Amongst a chorus of incoherent mumbling of the many broken minds filling the common room, there was just one abandoned soul sitting alone in silence. Lost to the world. Forgotten. By the window, curled in a dusty and tattered antique chair, the reporter blended like a meaningless backdrop. She stared blankly through the holes in the chicken wire covering the window at the setting sun at her flank lazily tucking itself in behind the distant tree line.

It has been two months since she managed to turn in the confession tape that she and Kit managed to procure thanks to the help of one her colleagues from the Column that got wind of her confinement and came out on visitation. At last, someone on the outside that she knew, without a doubt, she could trust. If it wasn't for her, Oliver Thredson would still be on the loose, haunting her until she took her last breath. Anyone else with a shred of decency had either failed miserably, fallen prey to Briarcliff's horrors, or just didn't give a damn.

Once, the journalist made the mistake of putting her faith in Sister Jude, who promised to get her out before it was too late, before her mind was taken. The Monsignor however, was expeditious in his efforts to make sure no one would ever get wind of nightmarish nature lying within the mortar of this corrupted torture palace. A little too much juice during shock therapy and Jude was deduced to a shred of her former self, falling apart like wet sand between the Monsignor's fingers. And Kit Walker? Well, he was released of his wrongful accusations when the real Bloody Face was revealed. Unfortunately, Kit wasn't able to return the gesture to his dear friend. Wendy's initial decision to lock her away had been the cosmic joke to end all cosmic jokes, and all it took was the swipe of a ballpoint pen. As long as her sexual orientation is 'sick' enough to lock her up here—where the sane were driven mad by the crazy until couldn't tell who was who anymore—then she could and would be stuck here. Forever. Forever is a long time when you have nothing but time left. With Kit on the outside, they would never be able to bring down this hell hole as separate individuals but Lana, at least, took comfort in the fact that they were able to get that sociopath strapped in that electric chair if it was the last thing either of them would ever do.

Last she read in the newspaper, Thredson had gone to court. Days, weeks, and months passed by and every day, the reporter waited anxiously for news of his conviction and the Tribune's headline that would showcase the moment he fried.

"Lana," a voice called out, the gentle weight of a palm on her shoulder. Blinking, Lana emerged from the fog and craned her head to see Carl, the orderly. He was always so crisp and clean in a starched white uniform: the unused chess piece that didn't belong in the fifty-year old box. He extended a rolled up newspaper for her to take.

"I called ya' name three times. Don't tell me you're becoming like the rest of 'ese nut jobs around here," he joked, his eyes wandering across the room to the mindless drifters making their rounds. "I told ya' how difficult it is for me to sneak this to ya so ya gotta be a little more alert or else the charity stops, ya' hear me?"

She took it quickly like a squirrel snatching a nut, tucking it safely into the flaps of her red pullover.

"I've been holdin' it since this morning, but it's been a crazy around here. More 'an usual."

"What's happening," she asked quietly, glancing about.

"Everyone's been busy preparing for our newest 'family member' comin' today," he responded as another orderly called his name, urging him to hurry up. Offering her a wink, he moved to walk away and paused, leaning down to speak into the shell of her ear. "Word of advice, go back to ya' cell…and stay there. You hear me?"

Confusion furrowed her brow, questioning why he would suggest such a thing. He knew her cell is the last place she ever wanted to be and before she could question him, he was off as quickly and quietly as he had emerged. Still, she uttered a soft "thank you."

Being trapped within these walls day in and day out is detestable enough as it is, but stuck inside an even tinier cell was something she refused to tolerate. At first, she entertained Carl's irrational suggestion but thought better of it. Most of the original staff are either locked up or dead now. Carl is one the soul survivor of this place, one of the last decent people left. She couldn't imagine why a new inmate would cause such a frenzy. It wasn't like the asylum isn't home to some of the most horrifying monsters in town already. What's the one more? Turning away from prying eyes, she quickly retrieved the newspaper from the flaps of her sweater, untying the thread knot and unrolling it to the front headline. The moment she was waiting so anxiously for was is close around the corner she could feel it as real as the icy chill of the air creeping up her back. Any day now, Oliver is going to get what was a long time coming and she would celebrate the day with a batch of cookies made fresh in the bakery. Smiling softly at the thought, she smoothed out the rolled folds of the newspaper, already mentally envisioning hanging that makeshift death certificate on the wall of her grimy cell.

Greedily, her eyes scanned the headline in anticipation but an uneventful headline of some huge robbery downtown left her bereft. Slowly, she stood up from the seat, the momentary light in her eyes of excitement and wonder like some child on Christmas morning fizzled out. She shuffled her way towards the common room's double doors. They had been locked for the later half of the day and by this time she had heard the jukebox cycle through all of its records twice now. One more round of 'I Got You Babe' by Donnie and Cher and she would gladly beg for another session of shock therapy to forget.

Wading through the zombie-like scattering of patients, she felt a hard object collide against her side, sending her tumbling to the floor and smacking her head against the cement. Wincing Lana, looked up to find the culprit of her attack sitting in a wheelchair. It was a young man, grinning from ear to ear, his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. He cackles at her then kicked off with his legs, howling as he zipped across the floor, having the time of his life.

Pulling herself up from the floor, she rubbed the bruising flesh of her scalp and frowned to realize a bump would form. Continuing to rub the gradually swelling knot, the opening of the double doors caught her attention, halting her steps entirely when a tall figure was pushed through.

A sharp intake of breath, prepared to choke her throat dry, she stared in disbelief as a familiar pair of thick brooding eyebrows came into focus. His hair, no longer shining with pomade, lay loose against his scalp. Despite the abrupt jarring of his person, he collects himself: as languid and graceful and as catlike as she remembered. Oh yes, she would never forget the characteristics of the man who continued to haunt her dreams: Oliver Thredson. Shutting her eyes tightly, she back peddled, shaking her head in an attempt to shake off what must be a dream. She was still in her cell, curled atop that lumpy rotting mattress. How hard did she hit her head?

Her eyes darted back to the common room doors, widening to see his looming figure still lingering—tall, dark, and prominent as a radiation shadow burned into a wall. She clutched the newspaper in her fingers tightly, watching his dark eyes drift slowly across the common room. Looking to the floor where she fell, she hoped she would see her body there, unconscious. Surely, this is an outer body experience. It has to be!

Maybe Carl was right. Was she really going crazy?

But her body isn't sprawled over the floor, just plain cement. Cautiously, she crept closer, glancing at the patients to see if anyone else noticed him. In reality, half of these people couldn't even tell their own reflection from the next.

It was him and yet it wasn't. He was…different. His temples had been shaved, the dark shadow of hair blotched pink with what she knew could only be one thing: a dose of electroshock. He was wearing the standard baby blue uniform of male inmates and a thin black pull over sweater, hanging open in the front. With his hands tucked away in the pullover's pockets, that monster was looking at her as though he was confused. Lost, even. And no matter how many times she blinked, his figure was still there. Watching her watching him and finally, he smiled.

That smile held none of the malevolence she had become accustomed to. It was the kind of smile he wore while she sat chained in his basement: impish, child-like, and sincere yet terrifyingly unapologetic in the rationalization of his behavior.

"No, no…you're just hallucinating," she told herself aloud, voice hoarse, eyes stinging with water. "You need to lie down. Go back…to your cell."

That look of recognition and the slowly building smirk on Thredson's bow-shaped lips made the journalist take a step back. Quickly, the reporter scuffled backward, bumping and nearly tumbling over a nearby chair. The loud and abrupt sound of its wooden legs scraping against the cement floor drew attention to her panic.

'He's not real!' her mind screamed before verbally yelling over her shoulder, "You're not real! You're in prison!"

Without watching where she was going, Lana's scrambling knocked over a small tv tray that held a chest board, sending chest pieces scattering across the floor in a spray of red and black. Her heart thunders in her ears, the blood in her veins rushing past her eardrums. The edges of her vision blurred, hot tears spilling down her cheeks when she tripped over a foot stool, tumbling to the floor. The newspaper slid out of her sweater, forgotten in her terror. Several of the asylum's orderlies and a middle aged nun rushed to restrain her.

"Hey—hey! Calm down! What's the matter with you?"

"—you've never behaved this way before!" she heard one of the orderlies yell as he forced her flat to the floor. Straining to see through white-garbed legs and a curtain of black robes, she peered up and saw Oliver lurking just beyond the shoulder of an orderly, watching her spectacle with a quiet intensity.

"Get him away from me. Get him away from me!" she all but screamed, thrashing about like a woman gone insane.

"Enough. Get her out of here," the orderly muttered as the nun prepared a medication cocktail and with a painful prick, administered a sedative into her arm.

The drug's effects were almost immediate but her eyes never left Thredson's figure behind them. Wild eyes drooped and the orderlies moved aside as a gurney is brought over. A sense of weightlessness overtook her, smog flooding her brain, lifting her up on top of the gurney and strapped her down beneath heavy straps. As Lana's eyes sagged, her wrists and ankles pulling weakly at the restraints, Oliver slid easily into the fray, his tall form towering at the orderly's flank, too busy securing her straps to notice.

"Lana—you haven't seen me in over three months and this is how you behave?" she heard him ask, her vision fading into darkness as she listlessly watched the orderly shove him back.

Thredson relented, cooperative for now, and slid his hands into the pockets of his pants, his dark eyes never leaving her as she was wheeled through the double doors and out of sight. Bending down, he plucked the stray newspaper left behind and after brushing the seat of a nearby lounge chair off, he plopped down into darkest corner of the common room.

Pawing around for the half empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket, the retired doctor slid one of the toxic white sticks between his lips and lit it in the shell of his hands. Inhaling deeply of the toxic fumes as if they were his lifeline, he sagged into the chair, crossed his legs at the knee, and unfolded the paper. Flipping it several pages to get to its heart, a small youthful smile played over his lips as he scanned the black and white photograph of himself in chains. Above it, a bold and daring title caught his gaze:

'Acclaimed Killer Of Women Sentenced To Life Briarcliff.'

=====To be Continued=====