Chapter 1 Paradise Bay

(A/N: So, this is my idea for a new story. I may not update this one for a while, but at least tell me what you think. I might begin with this as a fan-fiction, but will probably turn it into my own story after, and put it on Wattpad, so if you like it, you'll have to read it there.)

FANG POV

DAY ONE

I turn around seconds after the door shuts and look around, bewildered. How did I get here? I shouldn't be here at all. Of course, I suppose that everyone here thinks that they shouldn't be in this place.

I stand awkwardly for a few minutes, hands limply at my sides. My bag sits beside me, fastened by button clasps. Inside are the only possessions that I am allowed to bring from home, and technically, more half of isn't really MINE. Inside I have three pairs of pants and jeans and five shirts, along with socks and underwear that I had chosen from the catalogue that this place had sent me. They are all black of course. I don't know why I had to pick them out of the certain catalogue, maybe they were regulation. There was also my sketchbook and a pack of felt pens and my eReader, because I didn't want to bring only two paper books.

I look around. The room is fairly nice, for a Ward. The rec room is the size half a regulation gym, with light blue-green walls. There are also several windows, large and white rimmed, looking out over the ocean and rocky shore, and I can tell that the glass is strong, with wire mesh embedded inside, because of the type of place this is. The floors are white tiles, with little flecks of black and grey. Scattered around are several metal framed cream couches, separated into two groups on opposite sides of the room, one around a television on a table with a DVD player and movies near the wall, all behind a locked Plexiglas box. In the far corner, near two of the windows that looked out to a grey sky there is a white picnic table, a strange looking thing for a strange place.

There are also about a dozen people milling around, but I am aware that there are more, somewhere in this big white building. On the table, five people catch my attention. Most of the people in this room are alone or with one other person, but these five sit together. They are all sitting around the picnic table. There seem to be three girls of varying ages and two guys. I can see their heads and bodies and hands moving as they chat and laugh amongst themselves.

The entire atmosphere seems white and grey, from the cloudy skies streaming in to the furnishings.

One of them, a girl with wavy hair and I can't tell if it's brown of blonde looks over at me. She looks about my age, 14 or fifteen. I can't tell in this light. Slowly, she places her hands on the table and pushes herself up. The girl walks over to me and I notice that she is really pretty, though somewhat sullen looking. She stands in front of me.

"So, you're the new kid?" She asks staring at me, her brown eyes seeming to turn grey as her intense gaze bores into me.

I nod.

"Well, I'm Max." She says. "Welcome to paradise." We both turn to see a young girl with waist length white hair rocking back and forth, crouching and singing. It's funny, in a messed up way.

"Paradise Bay Youth Ward, part of the one big Paradise." Adds a little girl with golden curls who comes up to Max and grabs her hand, huddling close to her side. "Why are you here?" the little girl asks, her voice seeming to echo inside of itself. "People call me schizophrenic because I see ghosts. But they're real. They try to hurt me." Her voice is emotionless, stone cold, not just echoing.

If I had been another person, I would have thought of her as crazy or a victim of abuse, I would have thought she was very, very open but I am not. Instead, I think back to the beasts the climb my walls at night, the ones with the glowing orange eyes, the ones that wrapped their long, acid fingers around my throat, and holding until I get tunnel vision and pressure behind my eyes. The ones that whisper in my ear, the ones that tear out my hair, pulled at my fingernails, paint bloody handprints on my walls. The ones that-

I shake my head. Even if it happens again soon, I'm not going back there.

"Hey?" The girl- Max says, tilting her head a bit, looking at me. She speaks softer this time. "Do you talk?"

Why would she be asking that?

I nod.

"Some people here don't talk." The little girl clutching Max's hand explains, as if she can read my mind. She begins to rock back and forth on the balls of her feet and begins to suck her thumb. I notice that she has a stuffed bear in the crook of her arm.

"So are you going to sit with us or not?" Max ask/ after a moment of silence.

"I don't recall getting an invitation." I reply coolly. Damn it! I curse myself for saying that. I'm not supposed to be rude as the new kid. I don't want anyone slapping me with an antisocial label too.

Max doesn't seem to care about my remark and brushes it off. "Well, you just did." She says, starting to walk back toward the table. The little girl lets go of Max's hand and runs across the room to the table, curls bouncing.

I follow behind her, my long strides covering a slightly longer distance than hers, and I catch up quickly. A tall and muscular guy with slightly childish features and very unkempt brown hair that flies around in locks glares at me as I walk by.

"Fresh meat." He growls quietly. I stare at him as I pass and I notice several long and puffy pink scars all over him, on his face and neck and disappearing into his collar.

When we reach the table, everyone on the side Max was sitting on shifts over. Well basically, the little girl and a boy that looks like the kind-of older, male equivalent of her. Max gestures for me to sit for her.

"Don't worry. I won't let the crazy bunny be alone to get killed. I'll protect you, like a unwanted guardian angel." Max laughs as she says this, wrapping her arm around my shoulder.

"Last time I checked, angels weren't in the loony bin." I retort, shaking her arm off.

The little girl stares at me funny and the guy beside her, I suppose he is her brother, seems to be suppressing laughter. I wonder why.

"Maybe that's why I'm here." Max says, and then grins at the little girl. "No, there's Angels in the Ward."

"Somehow, I don't think you're THAT delusional." I snap, putting emphasis on 'that'.

"Ouch..." She whines sarcastically. "Bunny has fangs" She pauses. "So, that's you're new name. Fang, what was your old name?"

I am confused for a second. What does she mean my old name? Then I catch up.

"Dude, you just got named." Says another dude, this one the polar opposite of me, with pale strawberry blonde hair and ice blue eyes, wearing all white.

"It's okay." The brother of the little girl tells me. "Max does that to everyone at some point. Almost everyone has one except for her and that's only because she has a weird name."

Max glares at him. "Shut up." She looks at me. "My real name is Maximum. Max is easier. What was your old name, Fang?"

"Nick." I say.

"Thanks for being so sharing... I mean now all I know is your name." The kid in white says. "I don't even know how you look."

"Pretty much the opposite of you, Iggy." An African American girl with wavy/curly hair sitting beside him says.

"I don't even know what I look like right now." The dude- Iggy- points out. I guess he's blind. I'm not going to ask, because it probably doesn't matter.

"Well, I should formally introduce you now." Max tells me. She points to Iggy. "That's Iggy. He's blind and few months younger than me, 14. His name used to James. He's been here eighteen months". She points to the black girl. "Nudge. Originally Monique. She's a chatter box. We called her nudge because that was a really annoying habit she had when she first came here. Nudging people. She's eleven and has been here maybe 13 months. The blond boy is Gazzy, formerly Zeypher. I don't feel the need to explain that. He's eight, and the girl beside him is his little sister. They're the only people in the Ward, or even the entire Paradise Bay Loony Bin. His little sister is Angel, used to be Ariel. She's called Angel for the irony, because she's not. She's a genius, but a fairly diabolical one... Be careful, because if you're not her friend, you're in trouble. She's manipulative too. She's six and she and Gazzy have been here just under six months." Max explains.

"Max has been here the longest." Iggy tells me, looking at me flat in the eyes, which is just plain creepy. "She's been here almost three years."

"That must suck." I say empathetically.

"You get used to it." She tells me, but somehow I think she is lying. "Why are you here?"

I shrug. I don't want to get into this at all.

"If you don't want to share, we will first." Nudge offers. I nod noncommittally. "We are all her for the same reason. We're plagued by monsters. Everyone thinks we're crazy, that is why we are here, but they're real. We have proof." My jaw drops, in a figurative sense. I'm not alone? I'm not the only one who has the beasts? But maybe they really are crazy... I think to myself.

"You need proof?" Nudge asks. Before I can answer, Nudge undoes the bottom button on her pink blouse and pulls the part open. I can see the bottom trails of three faint scars that look jagged, as if made by claws. "This happened last year, just before I came here. They came to my room and I was fighting them, and one of them clawed me there. This tipped my parents over the edge. They figured 'okay. It's serious now, not just for attention. She is hurting herself now and doesn't even know it. Let's go make her miserable.'."

"Wow... You're very... Open." I tell her.

Max rolls her eyes. "Because this is such an important crowd to impress."

"Yeah," Angel says. "Were the only sane ones here. Ari over there," She points to the guy who glared at me on my way here. "He is weird. He thinks that every full moon he becomes a wolf. That's where he got all the scars from. He grew put his nails for months and sharpened them. And then all the time, he would claw at his face and howl and stuff. It wad really scary."

"Now he wears a straight jacket whenever the moon gets full, and he, like, knows when every moon is because he watches the skies." Gazzy pipes in.

Max points to the girl with the long, almost white hair and pale skin. "That's Laura. She saw her dad kill six of her friends at her school -the Havenbrook Hills massacre? Ring a bell?-and now she's beyond traumatized. Poor thing."

I know about the Havenbrook Hills Massacre. It was two and a half years ago, and was incredibly tragic. I can barely get my mind around the fact that the poor girl involved was here. It was one of the most horrific things that i had ever heard happen. I never knew what happened to her, though I ha often wondered. The story was that one morning, a girl had gotten into a fight with her alcoholic father, who snapped then and proceeded to come to her school later that day- with his rifle and revolver. He walked in one of the doors and found his daughters classroom. He burst in and told her that she was going to be punished for being a 'bad girl, a very bad girl'. He cocked his rifle and pow, He shot her best friend, sitting right beside her in the head she died instantly. When the students panicked, he slammed the door shut and shot the teacher twice, reloaded, then shot Laura's boyfriend. The sad thing was pressing on her boyfriends wound, trying to help him, and she had to watch the light fade from his eyes as he died. Then her dad shot a kid trying to escape in the leg, but he survived, along with two other girls who also survived, and reloaded the rifle and grabbed the revolver. It was a lunch period, and the dad dragged Laura to the cafeteria, shooting at anyone in the crush of fleeing students in the halls, wounding six, killing two before finding her best friend's table, and shooting all four, killing them. They died oblivious to what had happened because the cafeteria was in a separate building. The father shot around the lunchroom again, luckily getting no one. Finally, the dad put the gun to his head, and forced, literally forced, his daughter to pull the trigger.

I could never imagine such a thing.

"That's terrible." I say. "How does she live?"

"I don't know. I guess she is just so disassociated, so regressed, that she's not even here. If it was me, my life would have been just one long suicide attempt." Max replies seriously.

I notice that Nudge has teared up, and the conversation dies down after that.

A few moments later, I feel that it is only right that I tell them. "I... I see those things too. Some nights. It's terrible."

Everyone looks at me, but they're already gone.

...

Later today, my first day as a patient here, I still don't know anything other than to do what the doctors tell me, and to be in bed by ten. I do not look forward to going to bed at all. No matter how tired I may be.

The dining room is all cool, silver, stainless steel. There is a steel serving area, like what you would find in a buffet, and matching tables and chairs, bolted to the ground. I have never seen steel tables and chairs before, even when there are light blue cushions on them. I don't know where the kitchen is, but I am grateful that this isn't one of those places where people 'share responsibilities'. I don't want hair or blood or teeth mixed into my food or skin from suicidal people who might make hot oil and shove their heads in it or decapitate themselves with knives.

I don't know what is sadder, that any of this could easily be true, or that I can think of such twisted ways to die.

Again, at one table, Max, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy and Angel are eating together at one table. One chair is empty, so I go over and sit with them.

"Hey," Grins Angel. "Hi, Fang! How do you like the food?"

I looked down at the plate that one of the serving ladies gave me. Mashed potatoes, chicken, peas and a cookie. Seems fairly normal, but what do I expect? Blue pills and red pills for a main course with green and yellow pill tea for dessert? Fried psycho fingers?

I don't really know what I expected, just not this. I look around to see everyone eating eagerly, as if it was their last meal. I realize that I am starving, since I haven't eaten since the flight I took last night from Michigan, home, to here, Maine. Man, all the looks I got that flight, with me and my nurse chaperone, wearing a cautionary, but completely unneeded straightjacket. Gingerly, I put my fork in the potatoes and put them in my mouth, tasting. Bland, but not horrible. They need salt and herbs and butter to make them good, like my mom used to. Well, she probably still does, just not with me anymore. I wonder, all of a sudden, if I will ever get out of here.

"How's the food?" Angel asks again.

"It's not acrid or fingers or pills like I expected, so fine, I guess." I reply.

Everyone gives me a look, except for Max, who gives me an understanding glance. "I expected that too, when I first came here." She grins.

"Sometimes they have Pizza night, once a month," Iggy tells me. "And then it's like heaven. You had completely forgotten that the element of flavor existed until then."

I give a small laugh, I'm not much of one for laughing and talking, or even smiling. It can cause trouble.

"Ewww. Look," Nudge moans, pointing her plastic spork (they make those?) at a couple in the far side of the room, much more engrossed in ferociously sharing saliva in their intense make out session rather than eating.

"Ana Annie and her boyfriend, Manic Mike." Nudge sneers, looking disgusted. "Mike isn't even Annie's type, she told me when she first came here a few months ago, but I guess when you're stuck here so long, you get desperate."

I don't pay much attention to them. I mostly gaze at an oblivious Max and wonder what it would be like to have her as a girlfriend. Before I can shake off the thoughts, I notice just how pretty she really is. Her eyes are an even brown colour, one shade all the way through, except darker around the rims and her hair is actually wavy brown with natural dark blond highlights. It frames her face, as she gazes out the skylight to the rain spattering on the pane of glass.

"I'm done eating." Max says, sitting up abruptly and grabbing her plate. Angel does the same thing. "I'll be in my room if you need me."

I stand up too, following her to where Angel and she are dispensing their dirty plates. I'm only half done, but I don't really care. "Can you help me out and explain some stuff for me?" I ask. "I still don't know anything about this place."

"Sure," Max says. "Do you know your way around?"

I shake my head, and Angel grabs my hand along with Max's, so she is walking between us. Now we're in a long, light grey- and blue hallway with white baseboards. There are several grey sliding doors along both sides of the corridor, and a black chalkboard beside each door, with names written on them in white. 'Maximum' reads the first one, I guess that is Max's room. It looks the same as mine. A window, her being lucky and having a view of the rocky cliff that this place overlooks and the cove. She also has a metal frame bed, with white and blue sheets and a white pillow, a simple, white painted wooden desk with a matching chair and a chest of drawers, also painted white. Apparently, since some of the inpatients here at the Paradise Bay Institution, as this place is called, are suicidal people or people who can go ballistic and will hurt themselves with them. I wonder if there are any here in the youth ward, which is the west building. The adults are in the other building.

"This is one of the girl's halls. There's two girl halls here, two guy halls. Each hall holds seven people, but right now, there are two extra rooms in this hall. There are also three extra rooms for the guys." Max explains. We walk down the short corridor, and besides Max, it seems that Angel, Nudge and Laura, along with someone named Wish.

"Millicent," Angel begins. "She's scary. But her real name is Wish. Max named her Millicent because that sounds like the name of a dark sorceress."

We reach the end of the corridor, into the place I recognize as the main hall. There are five halls coming from it, the one we came from, another one beside it, which is the guy's hall that I'm in and the two across, which is the other guys hall and girls hall. The other hall is the one leading to the girl's bathrooms and showers and the guys bathrooms and showers. There's stairs at the far end, and a door, where the wardens sleep, and at the opposite end, the door less doorway to the rec room. Meal hall is downstairs, along with the therapy rooms, the doctors' offices, and the visiting room. Max explains all this, and lets me know that there is a yard that sometimes we can hang out in with supervision.

"Basically, that's all there is to know. They already told you about group therapy and classes' right? And meal and med time?" Max asks. I nod. "Well, that's all you need to know. You can hang out in any of the other patients rooms, if you want, but the door has to stay open at all times. You should hang out with us at some point. You want friends here, because without them, if you're not already insane, you will be soon."