"My demons were shouting down the better angels in my brain."

Alma Williams wakes up on this morning in just the same way she wakes every morning, the same way she has woken up everyday for the last nine years. To the sound of a ringing bell and the feeling of slats of light on her face. The bell is from the tower of the Administration building, and she can hear it from her room in Ward Four, as clearly and as resolutely as if it were ringing on her bedside table, even though the Administration Building is on the other side of the campus. The slats of light come in from the sun peeking in through the drawn blinds over her two foot tall by two foot wide window, and the rectangular slaps of light are making her as warm as she's going to be today. The girl in the bed is from a town so small that it isn't even on the map, and she is hearing voices.

That's how the morning begins for patient ALW916. That's how they all begin. With light. With sound. With warmth. And with a massive, throbbing headache that shakes the skull in her head. Groggily, she opens her eyes, letting the sunshine add another palpitation to her headache as she adjusts to the morning light. For a moment, the young woman allows herself a moment of rest, of nothing but the noise and the light and the throbbing headache, as she lays on her metal-framed cot, staring up at the ceiling. The voices are everywhere, the source of her headache. It's nearly unbearable, the storm of sound trapped in her brain, but this is her only chance to hear them.

Good morning- If he would just get up-Fuck me, man-Bedpans and -

-La, la la laaaa-Oh, wow-Nurse Hilda-Wait-

-I can't-What is she-Stop-Stop-I don't want-I can't-Let me-

-Is it really that-Doctor Carrington-Two, three-

-Letter time-Breakfast-Baconbaconbaconbacon-Pills-

If Carla visits, then I-

-Good fucking day to you, Nurse-

-I don't understand-Mail day-

-One button, two buttons-

-Just put the pill under the tongue-

-Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckshitpiss-Oh, great-

-Am I going to-What-Keys-where are the-

-Fucking girl never gets up on time.

The noise, noise, noise squeezes its way into every available space in her body, filling her up to an unhealthy brim. It is after only a few brief moments of unadulterated pain, of unfiltered sound, that Alma is greeted with a knock on the doorframe of her room. Her illusion of privacy is shattered. The simplest pleasures of the world all disappear from her fingers like flour through a sifter, as a nurse in a crisp, white uniform enters the room without waiting for Alma to grant her permission. The patients here at The Holbrook Hospital are given liberties, and Alma perhaps the most liberties of all given her long-term status, but no one is given a privelege so great as a door. No, the patients in Ward Four at The Holbrook Hospital have no doors, no locks, no privacy. Just four walls with a gaping rectangle in the fabric of one where a barrier to the outside world, a protection from the light and sound of the hallway, should be. Nurse McKerry walks over to Alma's bed, looking at her wide, open eyes.

"You're awake," she says, simply, the same as she does every morning.

Alma nods, though she makes not even the slightest twitch to move or rise from her bed. There are still the sounds. So many sounds. Voices of all different textures and colors and shapes, filling her head, distracting her. Her eyes feel as though they may explode from the weight of them, that her neck might crack under the strain, but all the same, she stares at the ceiling and listens. It is the only time today when she will be allowed to.

"Then, let's get you up and dressed," Nurse McKerry says, her thin lips curving into a smile.

That's the way the nurses are here, Alma notices. They are nothing but swirling smiles and detached, distant eyes. This is the way of the routine; this is the moment in the day when argument of any kind falls silent on the young patient's tongue. This is the way things are, the way things have always been. Doing as she is told, Alma rises to her feet and sways a step once her body is upright, the floor moving under her as the first dizzy spell of the day takes hold of her. McKerry's cold, skeletal arms reach out, her right arm steadying Alma's shoulder and the other sliding to grasp the young girl's elbow. The world tilts on its axis before the young patient's eyes as her stomach rolls at uncomfortable angles. She fights off the wave of nausea as best she can, closing her eyes against the ever-shifting room.

"That's it," the nurse says, her voice gentle and lilting even as it is all commands and imperatives, "On your feet now. That's a good girl."

When the spell finally passes, the hands leave Alma's body as McKerry passes the young girl her uniform. The grey fabric is worn into softness, and it glides onto the young woman's skin like butter. This is the dress she's worn for three years, every single day, and its familiarity makes the girl smile. It's a gentle smile, the smile of coming home. When she's finally dressed, she stands at near attention at the side of her bed, waiting for further instruction, knowing what comes next in the morning routine, but not daring to continue without first being given permission.

"Say your prayers," the nurse says as she edges gracefully around the patient to make the bed, her motions as calm and controlled as the white pleats in her perfectly crisp skirt.

They aren't prayers. Not exactly. No. But in a place like Holbrook, with no God to hear you but the Hospital Director, and no Saints to answer but the nurses, this is as close to prayers as Alma has ever come. She says them everyday before going to breakfast, and every night before turning down her sheets, always in front of a nurse, always so someone else can hear her. Folding her arms in front of her like Adam covering his loins in the garden, she bows her head and says the vows that come easily as breathing now, smiling as she goes, content with the life she has been living for nine years now. Nurse McKerry begins to make the bed.

"I, Alma Williams, am a patient in The Holbrook Hospital," she starts, reading the lines etched upon the stone of her heart.

Nurse McKerry begins to hum a tune that is most certainly on the radio recently; Alma can swear that she's heard it somewhere. Maybe the voices have been singing them in her dreams.

"I am sick," she continues.

Not for the first time, Alma remembers the evening she was taught these prayers. In the first hour in the hospital, all that time ago. Another person ago, it sometimes feels. What a foolish little girl she was back then.

Her parents put her on a train in Kansas and told her to get off in Rensselaer, a place she couldn't pronounce, much less spell or try and point to on a map. When she got there, they said, everything would be fine. Oh, she screamed and cried the entire lonely train ride, banged against the glass, but her parents turned away on the platform without looking back. This was for the best, they assured her. And when she arrived at the train station that was identified to her by a bewildered baggage handler on the slick black train car in which she was riding, eyes red and body aching and mind consumed by the voices that she hadn't the strength to attempt to tune out, a man in a dark blue trench coat smiled at her, taking his hat off in deference. He was going to take her somewhere safe, he promised. Somewhere where her mind could be quiet for once.

And that's how she ended up in a massive, empty warehouse on the campus of The Holbrook Hospital. They call it "processing." Naked as the day she was born and dripping wet from the firehose they doused her with, her skin pink and raw from the force of the water. She'd first been drenched in de-lousing fluid, then showered with water as though were a burning building. She should have felt the sprays from the hose, but all she felt was shame. Sobbing, now, she folds her arms over her chest and bends her body inward, trying to cover herself from the male orderly holding the hose and the man in the blue trenchcoat smoking a cigarette, staring at her with unabashed eyes. They stuck a needle into her arm in the long, black car that drove her here. And, for the first time in years, the voices are little more than a breath in the back of her mind, so quiet they are almost non-existent. This is the most quiet she can remember a room ever being. She hears nothing but the dripping of water from the hose, from the tips of her hair, and the edges of her paper-thin skin. Then, the man in the blue trenchcoat, sitting with one leg draped across the other in a leather chair that starkly contrasts the grey concrete cube they're currently situated in, blows out a buff of nicotine-laced air, and levels his gaze at the little girl before him. His youngest patient now, his youngest patient ever.

And the first mutant he's ever encountered. A mind reader at twelve. Of course, she doesn't know that. She thinks she's mad, she thinks she's been sent away because the outside world couldn't bear to carry her, and perhaps that last thought is correct. But she is not mad. She is spectacular. She is dangerous. And she, at the instruction of her parents, is going to be kept safely inside the walls of this psychiatric hospital until her mind is a steel fortress that not even the strongest of voices could penetrate. But, who, really, knows how long that could be? It is a thought that fills the Doctor with sickening glee. A mutant in his charge. How extraordinary. Think of the possibilities.

"Girl?" He asks, putting the cigarette back to his lips, letting the smoke curl in dangerous pirouettes.

The girl, made now of sopping skin and chattering teeth, nods once in acknowledgment.

"Do you believe in God?"

Again, she shakes her head. Her family believes in no God, and so her family never taught her to do so either. The uniformed orderly with the hose in his hands lets his grip tighten on the propulsion lever, though he does not pull it down. Frowning slightly in disappointment at the news, the man in the blue trench coat sighs. It is always better when they believe in God. Easier to scare, easier to console. But still, she is young. He can teach her to be beholden to a God of some kind, even if he himself has to take on that role.

"All the same, now that you are here, you are going to learn your prayers. Say them twice a day, every day, until you are released from this facility," he says with all the sticky courtesy of a teacher explaining the rules of a fourth grade classroom.

Release. The little girl's eyes widen and she feels hope fill her chest like helium in a balloon. Her parents explained that she is sick. And that sick children have to get better in places like this. The man's assertion that she can get better is the closest to happiness she has gotten since leaving her parents on that train platform. She could go home one day. She could get better one day. This man has said so himself.

"When will that be?" She asks.

The orderly goes to release more water from the hose in punishment for the girl's audacity to speak, but a flick of the suited man's wrist stops him before he can do so. Another drag from the cigarette, another cloud of poisoned air released.

"When you are cured," is all he says.

She knows better than to ask when that will be. Brass on the edge of the firehose smirks deviously at her, glinting in the dim warehouse light, and it silences any question that may be dancing on the tip of her tongue. The man in the blue trench coat rises to his feet from the chair he's been leisurely planted in and begins to walk the room as though it were his garden on a warm Sunday afternoon.

"Now. To your prayers. Repeat after me."

Alma hugs her body tighter, her bones rattling from the combination of cold air on cold, wet skin.

"I, Alma Williams, am a patient in The Holbrook Hospital."

She does as she is told, repeating even as she stammers from a jaw that feels out of her control.

"I am sick."

This causes no alarm. The young girl knows that. Her parents have told her so. That is the reason she is here. That is the reason she allowed them to put her in a train car for a distant land she knows nothing of. Sick children have to be sent away. Sick children have to be made better. That's what they told her. That's why she's here.

"I am sick," she says, her voice flickering like a loose bulb.

Her breathing hitches as she hiccups, and a sob builds in her throat. The man in the blue trench coat keeps his gait casual, his tone light and airy.

"I have a disease. I am a mistake," he intones.

The sob in her throat bubbles over and takes over her whole body. Her lips move to say the words, to do as she is told, but her throat itches uncomfortably and her crying rocks the entire warehouse. She cannot speak for her tears. The man and the orderly make eye contact, and the man nods his head once. Without hesitation, a jet of water cuts through Alma like the edge of a million knives, pummeling her already tender skin. She screams out, unable to hold her tongue.

"I have a disease. I am a mistake," she screams over the water as it mercilessly abuses her body.

The propulsion handle is released and the water stops. Breathing hard, struggling to hold onto herself, Alma bites her lips. Her knees give out beneath her, and she collapses painfully to the concrete floor.

"But mistakes can be corrected," the man says.

Alma hesitates for the briefest of seconds, but sees the orderly reach for the hose once more. Holding her hands out, no longer caring for modesty, she bows her head and begs in a voice shattered like a crystal vase.

"But mistakes can be corrected," she repeats.

So the little mind reader can learn, the man in the blue trench coat thinks to himself as he turns his full attention back to the little girl.

"My name is Alma Williams," he says once more, like a teacher gentle guiding a student to the right answer.

"My name is Alma Williams," she parrots back without delay.

"And I am a mistake that can be fixed."

"And I am a mistake that can be fixed."

"Amen."

"Amen."

No sooner does she finish the thought than the man in the blue coat hands her a warm, lush towel and a new, grey dress. He bends down to her place on the floor, allowing his eyes to level with hers as he smiles something that might have been paternal in another life. He is Doctor Joseph Carrington, the Director of the Hospital, and he's just found his newest pet.

"Welcome to the family, Miss Alma Williams."

It is almost funny to her now, all this time later, to think of the little girl she was in that other lifetime. Crying and simpering as she tried to fight reality. As a girl, she didn't want to believe she was sick, though she knew that she was. Perfectly sane people, after all, do not hear voices in their heads. When she was a little girl, she wanted to fight. But now she knows that she was only swinging a sword at scarecrows. There is no battle to win, no fight to take on. Everyone here is on her side. Everyone here is trying to make her better. That's what she's learned in her nine years in this facility. After so long, after so many years in this building, she knows what she is. And there is a particular power, Alma has found, in knowing oneself, in understanding the reality of one's life. She is sick now. She has always been sick. But she is fed, clothed, looked after, and medicated as they search for the cure to her illness, as they try to silence the voices forever. Nurse McKelly continues to hum as she fluffs the pillows and tugs the sheets, and Alma breathes in the smell of chemical cleaner from last night's wash down of the floors and smiles peacefully as she says her prayers.

"I, Alma Williams, am a patient in The Holbrook Hospital. I am sick. I have a disease. I am a mistake. But mistakes can be corrected. My name is Alma Williams and I am a mistake that can be fixed. Amen."

I can be fixed. It is the one glint of gold in Alma's otherwise grey life. She has known, said so herself- twice a day, every day-that she is only sick, and sick people get better. There's still hope for her to go home. There's still a chance she could get better. Doctor Carrington says that psychiatric medicine is a slow-moving science, and she believes him. She believes him because after nine years of daily treatment, she isn't any better than the day she was taught her prayers. But she speaks her hope every morning and every night. I can be fixed. I can be fixed. And with that though, she smiles and faces the day. Every morning is a new chance to be cured.

With the bed made and the young woman dressed and watered with prayers, McKerry beckons the young girl toward the door.

"Come along, my dear. Let's get you to breakfast."

The noise in her head is deafening, and Alma accepts the familiar words of the nurse with a comforted sigh. Breakfast means an injection of medication. And an injection means silence. Blessed, merciful silence.

Alright! Here is the first chapter! Please review! I hope you enjoyed it!

I put the idea for this story and one featuring Alex Summers on tumblr and asked people to vote, and this one won! However, I am considering doing a trilogy set in this hospital, featuring mutant characters. The first one is (obviously) this story, the next story will feature Alex Summers, and the third is yet to be determined! To find out more info, go to juniorstarcatcherfiction on tumblr and read my whole spiel! If you have any ideas for the third story, any requests for characters or situations, let me know!

Anywho, let me know what you thought of this first chapter in a review! We'll meet up with Hank in the next chapter!