The wind howled through the windows as I clutched the woolen blanket around my body. I lay in a creepy, dimly lit room, I could smell the antiseptic in the air. Muttering voices groan and cry in the sanatorium corridors as Dr. Schreber's cane taps on the ground, along with the sharp clinking of his keys.
The night nurse, a beautiful woman with dark eyes and a creepy smile, gracefully entered my room. Her uniform hugged her form in a manner that most would have considered inappropriate, and tension filled my room as she entered. She held a syringe filled with a red liquid that reflected the crimson light on the sterile white walls.
"Mr. ${Last Name}," she purred with a melodic tone of voice that to me sounded more menacing than comforting, "it's time for your treatment. This will make you feel ever so much better."
Far from being comforting, her words made my stomach churn. The rumors I had heard from other patients, of sinister experiments and treatments that resemble a level of witchcraft or sorcery that the Inquisition would have condemned with flames, rushed through my mind. Just the night before, I could have sworn I heard screams, and the patient next door mysteriously disappeared. How could I believe in the doctor's futile attempts to reassure me that I would recover when all evidence pointed to the contrary?
As the nurse approached, the syringe in her hand looked more like an instrument of nightmares than a tool of healing. Her smile never faded as a drop of the blood-colored liquid hung from the needle's tip.