a Night to Remember

Nimdok’s dreams didn’t come softly, didn’t soothe or cradle him in forgetfulness. They tore at him, dragged him back to the stark white walls of the asylum. He could still hear the hum of the overhead lights, always too bright, always buzzing like angry wasps. The cold metal table beneath his back was the only constant, the one unyielding thing in a world that spun out of control.

Pain was his only companion. It came in waves, sharp and unrelenting, crashing into him again and again. They strapped him down, tightened leather restraints around his wrists and ankles until his skin was raw and bleeding. And when he screamed, they stuffed his mouth with cloth, muting his agony to nothing more than muffled sobs.

Shock therapy was their favorite. Nimdok could still feel the burn of electricity coursing through him, jolting his body like a marionette on tangled strings. His limbs jerked, his teeth clamped down so hard he thought his jaw might shatter. The world blurred into bright flashes, his mind scattering into fragments like glass dropped from a great height.

At first, he fought it. He bit through the cloth, spat blood, and begged for mercy. But mercy was not part of their repertoire. When his pleas turned to laughter, the doctors paused.

Not the kind of laughter that bubbled up from joy. This was something else—ragged, hysterical, broken. The sound of a mind unraveling thread by thread. Nimdok laughed until his ribs ached, until tears streamed down his face, until the doctors exchanged uneasy glances.

And then they shocked him again.

There were needles too, thin and sharp, sliding into his veins with clinical precision. They whispered of progress, of science, of healing, but Nimdok knew better. The chemicals they pumped into him burned, their poison eating away at what little strength he had left.

They told him it was for his own good. That he was sick, twisted, wrong. That they were fixing him.

His mother came often, her presence a shadow that loomed larger than the doctors. She would sit by his bedside, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her voice dripping with sweetness.

“My poor boy,” she would coo, her words laced with venom. “Do you see now how weak you are? How pathetic? If only you were stronger, smarter, more charming... If only you weren’t such a burden on everyone around you.”

Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction as she watched the procedures. She leaned in close, her perfume cloying, suffocating.

“Do you think your sister would love you if she saw you like this?” she whispered one day, her lips curling into a cruel smile. “Do you think she doesn’t know how disgusting you are? How much of a burden you’ve always been to her? A sick little boy clinging to her skirts like a parasite.”

Her words were blades, cutting deeper than the doctors’ scalpels ever could.

And yet, in some twisted way, Nimdok understood her pleasure. He saw it in the way her eyes glimmered as the current surged through him, as he convulsed and choked on his own screams. She enjoyed this because she had lived it too. She had once been the one strapped to the table, the one reduced to nothing, and now she wielded the power.

“It’s for your own good,” she would say as she left, her voice dripping with mockery. “You’ll thank me someday.”
------------------------

The words echoed. No, they rattled—clanging around the hollow chambers of his skull like loose change. Nimdok’s breathing was ragged, his chest heaving against the suffocating weight of memory.

Rain.

But there couldn’t have been rain. Not there, not in the asylum. Yet he felt it, cold and relentless, dripping through cracks in the ceiling. Was it the ceiling? Maybe the walls. Maybe the floor was sinking, swallowing him whole.

Soft murmurs tickled his ears. Not words, not fully—just the cadence of voices, distant and meaningless. Doctors behind walls, their whispers slipping through like smoke, curling into his brain. "Progress," they might’ve said. Or was it "failure"? His lips moved soundlessly, mimicking their rhythm, their false assurance.

The rain mixed with the crying. Was it someone else? Was it him?

He turned his head, slowly, too slowly, the motion dragging like molasses. Shadows danced in the corners, flickering like candlelight. No candles, though. No light. Just dark, dark, dark.

And yet he sang.

A bird’s tune, lilting and delicate, spilling from his lips as though he were perched on a sunlit branch instead of a sodden mattress in a cell. His voice cracked on the higher notes, faltered, twisted into something unholy. But he kept singing, his body swaying to a rhythm no one else could hear.

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

The crying grew louder. Louder than the rain. Louder than the whispers. It built and built until it filled every inch of the room, of his head.

“Stop,” he mumbled, his voice a thread unraveling. “Stop it. Stop it, stop it—”

But he was singing again, the words tangling together, becoming a dissonant harmony of song and plea. His hands clawed at the air, grasping for purchase in a world that kept slipping away.

"Birds don’t cry," he muttered. Or maybe he sang it. "Birds don’t cry, but...but they do. They do now."

The rain pooled around him, soaking into the thin mattress, icy fingers creeping up his spine. He could feel the bars of the bed frame beneath him, their ridges pressing against his back, against his wings.

Wait.

Wings?

A laugh bubbled up, sharp and manic, spilling over the edges of his control. He was flying, wasn’t he? Soaring through the rain, through the crying, through the whispers of doctors who weren’t there.

Or was he falling?

The fractured moments spun faster, shards of memory cutting deep, slicing him open from the inside. His mother’s voice slithered through the chaos, sweet and poisonous.

“You’ll thank me someday,” she said again, softer this time, a lullaby to guide him deeper into the storm.

The rain poured harder. The crying reached a crescendo. And Nimdok sang louder, his voice breaking into a million tiny pieces, scattering like shattered glass across a floor he couldn’t see.

"Thank you," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the din. "Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

And somewhere in the dark, the bird finally stopped singing.