Day 53: Intercom, Dawn
Although the day was sunny and warm, there seemed to be a strange tension within the walls of Landel's Institute. The nurses seemed a little more on-edge than usual, and they were already bustling to-and-fro in the hallways before the Head Doctor even made his announcement. It seemed that they'd all been roused early today by Nurse Lydia - but for
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Maybe it was Becky. Still, Chuck was resisting, any guilt he might have had about cheating on Becky in his dreams destroyed both by his unconscious state and the pleasure he felt at actually having a good dream for once. Who knew when it would happen again? Maybe never. Maybe he'd just dream of THE APOCALYPSE and then, POOF. Like it never was.
Still, the shaking made it difficult to remain unconscious, and with twin smiles, the two gorgeous ladies disappeared, leaving Chuck cold, wet, and unsatisfied. With a disgruntled noise, he rolled over in bed, wrapping the blankets tightly around himself, covering his head with a pillow, and screwing his eyes shut, distantly hoping that Becky would get the message. Prophets needed their sleep, damnit. It didn't matter what time it was, sleeping all day was a prophet thing. Historically a prophet thing, and Becky needed to show a little more understanding for his process if she wanted him to get any work done.
It didn't work. Before Chuck even had a chance to start dozing off, the pillow was yanked out from under his head and the voice interrupted again, louder this time and even more annoyed. "Mr. Riordan. You're late for breakfast! If you don't get up right now... well, there's going to be trouble!"
Chuck shifted in bed and cracked one eye open enough so that he could try and squint angrily at her.
Blinked. That wasn't...
Felt someone touch him on the shoulder with a cold hand, blinked again--
--and promptly jerked up in bed fast enough to knock his blankets to the floor, plastering himself against the wall and staring down in bewildered terror at the room around him. Not his room. Not anything like his room, in fact it looked like a hospital room or a room in one of those creepy asylums that Chuck had read about until he'd had to quit out of sheer, unreasonable terror, because demons? Monsters? Apocalypse? Sucked, but he could deal.
But asylums?
Not okay. Not remotely okay, and this wasn't funny, and he needed to wake up now--especially since, not only was Chuck not in his room, but the woman standing by his bed was not Becky. She was wearing a white nurse's uniform, had her hands on her ample hips, and if there was ever a woman who looked like Nurse Ratched in the flesh--she would be it.
Not funny at all. But there was an explanation for this. Had to be. This wasn't angel work--he would've seen it, right? Right? And demons couldn't touch him without getting vaporized, and there was no one else who--
--his unconscious was punishing him for cheating on Becky in his dream. Yeah. (Not that he'd meant to! He couldn't control what he dreamt about, he would never hurt Becky that way.) That made sense. His unconscious knew that asylums were his least favorite place in the entire universe (except maybe Lucifer's cage, or sitting in a diner booth with Sam and Dean on either side of him and Bobby across the table), and so it made sense. Right. But okay, he was sorry, and so it could definitely end now. Nurse Ratched could... go back to whatever hell she crawled out of, and he could get to work. He didn't need any more sleep, he was good.
In fact, he'd wake up and get to writing right now, just for Becky. No problem. Anything for Becky.
Okay... um. Wake up. Still plastered against the wall and breathing heavily, Chuck mouthed 'sorry' to his unconscious to see if it would do any good, and then screwed his eyes shut again and pinched himself, hard. Once. Twice. Three times. With the nails, almost hard enough to break skin. That should do it.
Chuck slowly opened his eyes--and twitched again, violently.
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Her smiled widened.
Toothily.
That was never good.
Not good at all.
Chuck swallowed. His hand reached up and started nervously scratching at the juncture between neck and shoulder. "Um... I think there's been some mistake. My name's not Riordan, okay, I have no idea what I'm doing here, and honestly?" He paused for a second, seeing her smile widen even further, and swallowed again. "This isn't funny. Can we just... skip to the end? I'll pay you whatever they did." If it wasn't a dream, it had to be a joke.
A really elaborate, expensive joke, complete with a trained, really convincing Nurse Ratched and a room that... really, really looked like a white room. That made perfect sense. They'd probably chipped in together to do this for... his birthday.
Even though it wasn't for another seven months.
The nurse clucked, forcing another twitch from Chuck. "Now now, what have I told you about bribes? I'm not some sort of prison guard, I'm here to help you get control of that imagination of yours! Now let's take you to breakfast. You know you'll feel much better once you've eaten." With that, she took a step toward him. It was an obvious threat. Come down or be taken down.
Chuck began to wonder what his characters--what Sam and Dean--would do in this situation.
Attack the nurse and roll out the bravado, probably. Act cool and be cool. Nurse Ratched wouldn't bother them.
His throat was really dry.
But if it was a joke (And please, please, please let it be a joke), he had to play along or it would never be over. Very slowly, Chuck climbed down from the bed and hesitantly approached the nurse, stopping as far away from her as possible while maintaining the appearance of compliance. "Okay." He forced a smile. "I'm sure breakfast is... delicious."
That got him an even wider, toothier grin and a cold hand on his elbow, guiding him out the door.
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