Chapter Text
“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.” - H.P. Lovecraft
Tyler Galpin was confused. He was being led to the visiting room. Obviously, that meant he had a visitor, yet other than his father, no one ever came to visit and his father always came on Thursdays. So getting an unannounced visit on a Tuesday was surprising.
The Outcast Correctional Center resembled Fort Knox far more than the Jericho Jail that his father used to run when he was Sheriff. The staff were primarily normies, or at least the guards were, yet a surprising number of the doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, cooks and even the janitors were themselves outcasts. As a hyde, Tyler was always followed by two guards with loaded rifles while among the general population. His feet chained together with shackles, his hands cuffed. This is policy when dealing with hydes. The visitor center was not an exception to this rule. As Tyler turned the corner he saw the surprise visitor.
Sitting across the glass divider was the sickly tech nerd from his school. He could not remember his name, though the boy’s name tag read J.Glicker.
Sitting down in the chair, Tyler picked up the phone. Somewhat nervously, he spoke first. “Hello?”
The boy smiled. “Hello Tyler, I wasn’t sure you would remember me. I’m Joel. We shared third period math.”
That still didn’t explain why he had come here.
“I remember… Why are you here?” Joel seemed to get nervous at that, looking around himself and past Tyler, to the guards behind him. Joel’s face went scarlet for just a moment, before the blush faded away. He leaned forward, as though he could whisper into Tyler’s ear, his glasses nearly pressed against the glass.
“I wanted to make sure you were ok.”
What? Ohh…
Even before his arrest, even if Laurel had never given him everything that he hadn’t known he wanted, he could never give Joel what he wanted. Yet Tyler didn’t say any of that.
“After everything I’ve done?”
Joel merely nodded. Tyler was about to speak when Joel beat him to it.
“Your father told me that none of your friends visit you anymore. I know that we don’t share… tastes but I could be your friend. Everyone needs a friend.”
That would be nice. Everyone needs a friend.
“Sure. I could do that.”
The silence that followed was awkward. This time, Tyler was the one to break it.
“So, next Tuesday?”
Joel nodded with a goofy smile on his face. He quickly sobered again.
“Yes, certainly. However, our time is almost up so I need to tell you this.” His voice lowered significantly.
“Don’t trust your psychologist.”
Afterwards, as he was being escorted away, he noticed that the walls he was passing by were not the ones that led to his cell, nor were they the ones that led to any of the other rooms that he regularly visited. They went down a set of stairs, turned a corner and reached an elevator.
The sign above the elevator read INTENSIVE CARE. Tyler was starting to get nervous.
“He’s been rehomed?” The guard standing by the elevator with an m16 asked.
His bodyguards chuckled. “Yep. Warden’s orders.”
Tyler was pushed into the elevator and followed by his guards as always.
When he asked why he hadn’t been told he was being moved, he was hit in the back of his head with a rifle stock.
“The fuck was that for?!”
“To shut you up!”
As they walked through the corridors at the bottom of the facility, Tyler found himself surrounded by outcasts who had been forgotten by everyone. The psychic cries of the imprisoned echoed through his head. All the agony, misery, pain, despair, loneliness and horror of the occupants of this ward.
Opening a door, Tyler was confronted with an orgy. A goddamn Orgy!! Men and women, wearing headdresses that resembled Rams and Ewes, Nannies and Billies, Stags and Does, Bulls and Cows. Naked and painted, these people danced and drank, chanted and fornicated.
Chanting in some language Tyler didn’t understand, in the middle of the crowd, stood his psychologist, Dr Amanda Fraser. She was topless and wore a laurel crown, her blonde hair cascading past her shoulders, a knife in her right hand.
Tyler was stripped down in front of a table, across from Dr. Fraser. The table bore a symbol, a pinecone surrounded by grapes and their vines. His guards secured him to the table as the orgy died out around them.
Once a sense of order had been established, Dr Fraser spoke.
“Sanity is a Curse!!! Madness is Freedom!!!”
With that, she plunged the knife down into Tyler’s chest and through his beating heart before he could transform.
He died a human.