August 12th, 2012.

"So, tell me... What does the face in the wall say to you, Robert?" Kasha Müller asked, keeping her tone of voice as calm as she could. She leaned forward on her desk, resting on her elbows, her hands intertwined in front of her as her brown eyes skeptically eyed her patient.

The patient in front of her, a young man by the name of Robert Smith, had been restrained to his chair. His wrists and ankles had been restrained with leather straps, his arms resting on the chair's arms. He stuttered, "I-It tells me... That I'm a bad man. Am I a bad man, ma'am? Is that why I'm here?" His voice was frail, and his body shook nervously.

Kasha's dark red painted lips turned upward into a faint smile. "No, Robert. The patients here within Mount Massive asylum are all here for treatment. You're not a bad man. The face in the wall wants you to believe that you're a bad man." Kasha shifted her gaze away from Robert to curiously glance over his patient file. She skimmed over it once more, making sure that she'd read everything correctly.

"... Smith has a criminal record of incestuous sexual assault, which resulted in the homicide of his assault victim; his mother..." Kasha read, a small sigh escaping her through her nose. Honestly, this was a pretty normal thing to read on patient files. She'd seen far, far worse than this.

"Mommy always told me that... I was a good boy. But the face says otherwise." Robert was beginning to throw himself through loop holes. No matter what Kasha said to him, he didn't appear to be listening. Suddenly, he began yanking against his own restraints rather violently. "MOMMY SAID THAT I'M A GOOD BOY!" He yelled, fidgeting viciously. "TELL ME I'M A GOOD BOY, YOU WHORE!" He roared, making eye contact with Kasha.

Kasha simply sighed, rolled her eyes, and pressed the button under her desk to request a patient extraction. Shortly after she'd pressed the button, two men, both dressed in the same medical attire, entered the room and detained Robert Smith. They took him from Kasha's office, while he kicked and screamed the entire way.

Kasha's therapist facade broke the moment her office door had shut behind the men. She stood up and walked away from her desk, pulling out a cigarette from her purse, which rested at the edge of her desk. She'd only just recently been hired as a therapist in this damned asylum about a month ago. She grabbed her lighter and lit her cigarette, regardless of the strict rules that had been placed against smoking within the asylum. "Fuck it." She said to herself with a shrug, in reference to her cigarette. "I don't get paid nearly enough for this shit, man." Her voice was naturally slightly low, but smooth. She had a rather sultry voice when she wasn't putting on that shitty, fake therapist voice of hers.

She really did dig psychology, but she wasn't anticipating this kind of extreme mental instability from this asylum. Before working here, Kasha had worked as a therapist in a number of different asylums. None of them were nearly as horrendous as this one, in terms of the severity of the patients' illnesses. Not only that, but this place was absurdly strict. Kasha, upon being initially hired here, had been made to sign contracts that restricted her from contacting her family. Whatever was going on here... The head honchos of Murkoff wanted to keep it top secret.

Kasha's office also doubled as her living quarters. Opposite of her desk, at the furthest side of the room, was the door leading to her bedroom and bathroom. She made her way through the door, her heeled shoes clacking against the wooden floor with each step. She heard her office phone on her desk ring as she entered. She decided to ignore it. Fuck it, she needed to piss. They could wait. Kasha entered her small bathroom, which was as pristine as ever, and looked herself over in the mirror for a moment. She silently scowled at her work uniform. It looked too... Granny-ish for her taste. She'd currently been wearing the standard uniform for the employees that weren't working in the medical labs below. A collared, white button up shirt. Although, of course, Kasha had unbuttoned the first two buttons on the shirt, and rolled up her sleeves to her elbows. Below, she'd been wearing a tight, black pencil skirt that reached down to her knees. Her employee identification card had been pinned to her chest. Kasha was a fully figured woman, and her work uniform certainly didn't hit that. In fact, it slightly accentuated her hour glass figure.

Her obsidian colored hair, naturally being long enough to fall over her breasts, had currently been tied up into a messy bun. You know, to look slightly more professional. She took the opportunity to touch her makeup up a bit, powdering her pale skin, and fixing up any imperfections that her winged eyeliner had suffered.

Shortly afterward, she went back into her office. Her phone was still ringing. Ugh. Kasha put out her half-smoked cigarette and picked up the phone, putting on her fake therapist voice again. "This is Doctor Müller, how can I help you?" She answered, shifting her voice into a slightly higher pitch. God, she hated doing this voice. But, hey, it got her a pay check at the end of the day.

"Ms. Müller? This is Jeremy." Came the slightly passive aggressive male voice from the other line, to which Kasha rolled her eyes. Jeremy Blaire? Oh, great, one of her bosses. What'd she do now?

"We have employee complaints of your office stinking of cigarette smoke. You wouldn't happen to be smoking against company policies now would you, Ms. Müller?" His tone of voice only got more passive aggressive with each word that he spewed from his mouth. He continued, "Because, well, you do know our policies. Smoking in the asylum is strictly forbidden... And there will be consequences if you're caught doing it, I assure you."

Kasha, honestly, was absolutely fucking baffled. First of all, how in the fuck did they file a complaint so god damned quickly? That was... Almost creepy. And secondly, was Jeremy Blaire seriously threatening her right now over a god damned cigarette? Fucking ridiculous. Kasha cleared her throat, restraining the anger in her voice. "You're mistaken, Mr. Blaire. I assure you." She mocked, while simultaneously throwing the rest of her half-smoked cigarette out of her window, along with the rest of her pack. "Although, my office has been stinking of cigarettes lately... Perhaps it's someone in the room below mine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some patients to see."

"I really shouldn't be having to warn you about our policies, Ka-"

"Goodbye, Mr. Blaire." Kasha interjected, putting her phone back on the receiver. Fuck, she wasn't planning on staying in this dump for very long. She leaned against her office desk, looking at at the ceiling aimlessly. "What a fucking joke. Flipping the hell out over a damned cigarette? Unbelievable. I can only imagine what Jeremy Blaire would do if I left a bag of flaming dog shit in front of his office door." She snickered to herself, grinning. "Maybe, when I quit, that's what I'll do on my last day."

~/~

June 9th, 2013

A year ago, Kasha had sworn to herself that she would quit this shitty job. After that whole cigarette incident, Jeremy had done some investigating, and had subsequently found the discarded cigarettes outside of Kasha's window. He put the pieces together, and had confronted her. However, she once again had managed to weasel her way out of it.

After that incident, Kasha knew that something was horribly wrong with this place. No company is that fucking strict about a simple regulation.

Kasha had tried to quit. Numerous times. But the contract that she'd signed forbid her from doing so, and frankly, Kasha was beginning to feel like a fucking prisoner here. She'd talked with her co-workers, and some of them had felt the same way. Some of them hadn't even spoken totheir wives of children in years. This was highly fucking alarming, and it raised all of the red flags in the world for Kasha.

Kasha sat at her desk, scribbling her thoughts away in her journal. However, she was interrupted by her phone ringing. She picked up, "Hello, you've reached Kasha Müller. How can I assist you?" She answered, putting on the voice. The dreaded voice.

"Hello, ma'am? We have a patient for you to see today. He's scheduled for an interview with you. However, he's a high risk patient. We'll be issuing two security guards for your protection."

Well, that sounded promising. Hey, at least it made her day a little more interesting. She'd been bored shit less anyway. She smirked, "That sounds great. Can I have his name and patient number, please? It's for the documentation of his session here with me today." Kasha responded professionally, getting her pen and paper ready.

"His patient number is 196, and his name is Eddie Gluskin. Age: 46."

Oh, boy. This guy. Today was definitely going to be fun. "Thank you, send him in." She hung up the phone.

She'd vaguely heard of Eddie Gluskin from her co-workers, who'd tried to interview him before, but were unsuccessful. Apparently, he was... One of the far more mentally disturbed patients here. Whenever he left his cell, he needed to be restrained and escorted by three different security guards. One of Kasha's co-workers had been physically assaulted by him once, actually.

Kasha simply waited.

After some time passed by, finally, a knock came at her door. "Come in, gentlemen." She politely gestured, silently gagging at her own fake mannerisms, to which they opened the door. Two security guards held Gluskin by his arms, even though his arms had already been restrained with a leather strap behind his back. Once they'd sat Gluskin down in the chair in front of Kasha and had properly restrained him, using an extra restraint around his torso in addition to the normal restraints around his wrists and ankles, the two guards backed off and stood at either side of him.

Eddie Gluskin was a pale-skinned, broadly shouldered fellow. His hair was in a slightly unusual style for the patients here, being shaved bald with the exception of some black hair being slicked back at the center of his head. He had quite a strong jaw line, and an all around handsome face. One of the security guards handed Kasha his official patient file, and she read it over carefully before proceeding with the session. As she normally did. As she was reading his file, Gluskin lifted his head to look Kasha over curiously, his blue eyes wandering.

"You're very beautiful, you know." He said, his voice surprisingly eloquent and smooth. He eyed Kasha like she was his prey. "There aren't very many women here. You're quite an exception."

Kasha ignored him. Honestly, a lot of patients said that to her during her sessions with them. She'd learned to ignore her patient's incoherent babbling at this point.

Kasha's mouth slumped into a flat line once she read further into his file. She'd read a lot of atrocious patient files, but never a patient file that played the patient out to be a victim. "... records indicate a past of incestuous trauma during his childhood years..." She read, scanning the document over. "... the experience was traumatically violent, as photographic evidence has proven..." The document also stated that, in Eddie's past, he'd been known to mutilate women. Kasha would need to question him on that. Just as Kasha read that last line of text, however, the second security guard presented Kasha with an envelop. She opened it, and pulled out two pictures and a post-it note with a message scribbled on to it. It read: "Kasha – When interviewing Eddie Gluskin, present these pictures to him. Proceed with caution. It has been years since he's seen these photographs."

Kasha took a look at the photographs.

She literally had to physically restrain herself from gasping, or giving any kind of reaction to the pictures. Both pictures depicted two older men, with a small boy in the center of the two of them. Presumably Gluskin. In one photograph, one of the older men had been penetrating the younger boy anally while the other penetrated him orally simultaneously. In the second photograph, the two older men seemed to be proudly presenting the "work" that they'd done on the small boy, clearly showing the blood dripping from the boy's anal cavity.

Kasha sighed, and shook her head. A wave of sympathy washed over her as she finally lifted her head to make eye contact with her patient. She set the photographs down. Honestly, she felt like fucking burning them.

"Hello, Eddie. I'm Doctor Muller." Kasha began, fixing her posture. "I've got some questions for you today, are you willing to comply?"

Gluskin nodded. "For you, darling, I'll answer anything."

Kasha cleared her throat. "Have you achieved a lucid dreaming state during your last exposure to the Morphogenic Engine?"

Gluskin seemed to suddenly perk up, "Ah, yes! I have! I have constant control of my dream state, doctor."

Ah, crap. That couldn't have been right. The documentation in front of Kasha had stated otherwise. He must have been lying... Probably telling her exactly what she wanted to hear. She wrote that down in her assessment of him.

She proceeded, not confronting him on his blatant lie. "How do you feel, Eddie? Has your mind been clear?"

Again, Gluskin assumed the overly cheery attitude. It was very obviously a facade. "Clearer than your eyes, darling. Crisp... Clean... Clear... And fresh. I haven't felt this sane in months!"

Kasha raised an eyebrow. "My eyes are brown, Eddie." Obviously, brown eyes couldn't be "clear."

Gluskin grinned mischievously. The woman was smart... He'd give her that.

"So, is that your way of telling me that every word that you've spoken to me this far is nothing but sheer sarcasm?" Kasha said, her voice getting slightly confrontational.

"Perceive me however you wish, doctor... My mind is clear. I've achieved complete control of my dreams, even! I see no reason to keep me around. This place isn't for the mentally sane, you know."

Kasha moved on. Clearly, he wasn't going to stop trying to convince everyone in this room that he was "sane" now, all of a sudden. She asked the next question, "In your past, records show that you've mutilated and tortured women. Why did you do it?" One of the security guards, at that time, presented Kasha with photographs of Gluskin's female victims. Kasha looked them over for a moment, unphased, then presented them to him. "You know, these victims. What motivates you to carve women out in such a way? Is it hatred?"

Gluskin almost seemed offended. As if the photos being presented to him were absolutely foreign to him, and like he'd never seen them in his life. He frowned, "The women in those photographs are very much alive, doctor. They're so... Beautiful." He affectionately commented, eyeing the photographs over slowly.

"Eddie... You claim to be "sane," yet you sit here and try to tell me that the women in these photographs are alive? Look..." Kasha suddenly shifted, and she broke her therapist facade completely. She leaned forward, her eyes challengingly narrowing down on her patient. She was losing her patience with him. "If you're seriously trying to tell me that these women are alive, then you belong here. These women are horribly mutilated, Eddie. By your hands."

Again, he seemed quite genuinely offended. Internally, however, behind his delusions and facades, he was enjoying the challenge that this woman was presenting to him. She wasn't like the other therapists. He continued, "No! No, doctor, you belong here if you truly believe that those beautiful women are dead! How dare you!"

Kasha shook her head and sighed, giving up on that topic altogether. It was clear that she wasn't going to get anywhere by arguing with him. She also wrote this little "exchange" down in her assessment: "... He refuses to discuss his victims, both categorically and specifically. When I showed him pictures of the women, he would not admit that they were dead or mutilated." She wrote, putting her pen down. Now, it was time for the final question.

"Tell me about your childhood, Eddie."

She really, really didn't want to ask him this question. She knew that nothing good could come of it.

Much to Kasha's surprise, he again answered enthusiastically. "My childhood... Ah, yes! Yes. It was a grand time, I'd say. I grew up in a wealthy, but simple home... Mommy and Daddy loved each other very much, and I was a curious little boy. I was quite popular at school, too. I had quite the loving relationship with my parents."

God, this sounded like some "Leave It to Beaver" shit. Clearly, this was yet another lie. It was time for Kasha to get a little tougher on this guy. She wasn't afraid of him... Not like everyone else seemed to be. She then grabbed the dreaded pictures that exposed the true nature of his childhood.

Suddenly, Gluskin's face dropped the moment he laid eyes on the pictures.

Kasha felt anxiety bubble up within her.

Suddenly, a maniacal fit of laughter began pouring out from Gluskin's mouth. His whole body moved with his laughter as he hung his head down. However, once he'd lifted his head back up, he'd shifted into a completely different person. He looked directly into Kasha's eyes, and his gaze had been filled with nothing but sheer, raw rage and bitter contempt. "FUCKING PRICKS! FUCKING... FUCKING FILTHY, FILTHY PIGS!" He roared, violently jerking against his restraints. He began incoherently screaming, and Kasha simply silently observed him as he had his little episode.

This man was a victim of trauma.

The horrible, homicidal acts that he'd committed would never have been committed if the trauma hadn't been instilled into him in the first place. That much was clear to Kasha.

In her years of studying psychology, she knew when someone had been made into a bad person. Eddie Gluskin was one of those people. And, truly, she felt sympathy towards him.

"Gluskin remains a frustrating interview subject; he's still trying to tell us what he thinks we want to hear, while studiously avoiding certain elements of the truth. The childhood that he claims to have remains an obvious fiction, he's claiming to have up in some kind of "Leave It to Beaver" shit, despite a traumatically violent ongoing sexual experience that is a matter of public and medical record. When I confronted him with the photographs his ffather and uncle took, he responded with a mixture of laughter and anger..." Kasha wrote, hearing Gluskin's vicious shouting the entire time that she'd been writing and adding information to his official patient file.

"The things... That those men made me do..." He muttered, finally calming down.

Kasha looked up and eyed him sympathetically. "What those filthy pieces of shit did to you shouldn't shape who you are, Eddie. You are not your childhood traumas. I mean that. " Whether Eddie actually processed that advice or not didn't matter to Kasha.

Kasha looked at the time, and realized that their time had been up for the session. "Alright, boys. Time's up. If you guys want to book another session with Eddie for me, that's up to you." The security guards nodded, and moved to release Eddie from the chair and prepared to move him back to his cell.

Kasha, additionally, wrote a letter of advice attached to Gluskin's patient file. It read: "I highly recommend that Eddie Gluskin's exposure to the Morphogenic Engine ceases. If he continues to be exposed, his mental health will rapidly decline. I suspect that the exposure to the engine is doing nothing but harm for his mental health. This man needs proper therapy and treatment for his illnesses, and I'm willing to provide some of that help." She then gave the documents to one of the guards, and he nodded. He knew that he'd need to give that letter of advice to one of the superiors.

Just as the three of them exited Kasha's office, Kasha heard someone say something. It was a soft "... Thank you."

But she couldn't tell who'd said it.

Fuck, how did she even keep her own sanity while working here?