All of them stand in a room while I look on at them through a pane of one-way glass. They don’t know I’m watching, and they would never know I was watching. The looks on their faces were that of pure horror and estrangement. They had all been plucked from the streets, their homes, or from their schools. The two children sat in the corners of the room, weeping, while the elders, ranging from the ages of fifteen to seventy-five sat on the ground, looking dumbfounded.
Soon, their panic will set in , and I’ll be doing my job, just like I know I was meant to do, and just like they know I was meant to do. When I turn back around, the teenagers are spasming, giving the effect that they are seizuring. Though I know they are just crying profusely. Soon, one of the men stands up. One I hand-picked for my project. His name is Josh Iverson, he’s from Maine, and has two kids and a wife.
As he stands, he begins to speak. Words tumble out of his mouth as he begins to point at various people in the red room. And I don’t hear him, because I don’t want to hear him. I am here to study physical behavior. I could care less about their emotions or any of their feelings. I simply do not care about them.
As he speaks, the other men and women begin to stand, listening carefully to Josh’s words. He begins to yell, his face tightening with the rapid movement of his speech, and the other subject’s faces begin to wrinkle with anger. They think they can formulate a plan to escape the facility, or that people will be coming for them some time. But they won’t, because no one really cares about anyone, and no one cares about them.
Eventually they begin to scout out the room, looking for a way out. So I just sit patiently, waiting for them to realize that there is no way out for them. They are trapped, it is at this point that I decide that they should hear me. I press the button next to my station, and begin to speak clearly.

You are all probably wondering why you are here…

At this point they begin to look confusedly around the room, and some of them start banging on the walls, yelling.

I am here to observe you.

At this point, I shut the speaker off, and wait for their reaction.

And it isn’t a very good one.

They began throwing chairs around the room, some of them screaming, some of them crying. I pull out my book and begin to take notes, this may be one of the best things I’ve done since prison. I haven’t gotten this good of research since then.
Once again, they begin searching around the room, looking for a way out, eyeing the loose ceiling tiles that lead to the attic space. I mean, if they could figure a way to get up there, then they may be able to escape. Though I highly doubt it, I chose some of the most unintelligent people I could locate. They all have upwards of $50,000 in debt, have no job, and didn’t graduate from college. Excluding the children, the teenagers, and Josh. I chose him because I wanted a challenge.
Soon he approaches my window into their world, and he hits it. Over and over again he bangs on my window, yelling obscenities though I don’t hear him, I’ll never hear him. I, once again, flip on the speaker.

Don’t even try it, you ignorant moron.

Once again, I flip it off. As I look back up, his face is right in front of the glass. His veins are bulging and his face is the color of blood. He takes his fist and punches the window, and, very slowly, a small crack emerges from the corner of the window. As he hits it again, and again, the crack grows and the window starts to break. There are cracks emerging from all corners of the window, they connect and they resemble thousands of lightning bolts.
Soon, his fist pushes through the window, and the other begins to help him. They get a good look at my face and many of them back away, but not Josh. He stays to finish his job. He kicks his foot through the window and then proceeds to climb through. I sit just inside the window, so he’s on me in seconds. I feel white heat pulsing through me as his fist collides with my face again and again. As he hits me the last time, I feel a dullness and collapse.

I begin to pull the rest of the people through the window, shielding the eyes of the younger kids from seeing the limp body of a monster laying on the floor. I rush them through the door of the small room, eager to get out of here. Running down narrow hallways, we finally come to a room that’s more like a pit. It lays lower than than the other hallways, much lower. But I can see the other hall running on the other side.
I cringe as I hear a cranking sound behind us, and large door is sliding across the hall to seal us in. If we don’t move soon it’ll crush me and everyone else. So I sprint and fall down into the pit. As my feet touch, and my hands press down on the floor to steady myself, blinding, white, hot pain goes through my hands and feet, I feel glass going through my feet and hands. Glass is in every single part of my hands and my bare feet, shards of it poking through the skin and stabbing into my nerves.
Only some of them jumped in behind me, I can hear the crunching noises coming from the closing door above me. It’s a purely horrifying sound, the crunch of bone. I try to stand up, but I can’t do so without the glass digging further into the bottom of my feet. Only two people followed me, the younger teenage girl and one of the older guys. The girl is weeping, and the old man is crouching on the floor. I’m finally able to stand, and as I do, I feel the glass shards dig even deeper into my feet.
I noticed there’s a ladder on the other side of the room, but that means walking ten more yards over the beds of glass, even more pain. I finally usher the other two on, and we take steps over the glass to make our way to the other side of the pit. Though, with each step, more and more glass digs its sharp points into the soft tissue on the underside of my food. I see the elderly man helping the young girl across the floor, so I stop back to help them along. I take her by one of her shoulder and we carry her across the pit, both me and the old man holding back tears as we do so.
Finally making it to the other side, we pull ourselves up the nails that had been hammered into the concrete side of the wall. The glass furthers itself into the soft skin of the bottom of my feet as they rest of the rusty nails that stick on the outside of the rusty wall. As soon as I scale the wall after the others, we collapse and try to pick the pieces of glass out of the bottoms of our feet. My eyes are welling up with the pain coming from digging the miniscule pieces out.
  After digging for about fifteen minutes, I stand up knowing I didn’t get all the pieces out. I still feel the sharp points pressing into my feet, so I help the other up and we begin to trudge down other long, dark hallways. All of them are almost pitch black, so we we hug the walls as we walk along, going slowly until we hear shuffling behind us. We would hear it every ten minutes or so, and as soon as we did, we would start sprinting.

We hadn’t really had a case like this in a long time, actually, we’ve never, ever had a case like this at all. The calls had started coming in last night, husbands not returning home, children not returning home from school, or showing up to school at all. Though we were sure of who had done it, we were not sure of where. As soon as I heard the details of the case, I pulled the files of the Crimson case from 1996, in the next town over, as they sounded similar. Surely enough, they were exactly the same. Though we can not prove it was him yet, as it might be an imitator, we were sure it was him.
I had the best of the best working on the case, the best of the best being the only three cops we had at our small station. Someone had to know, there had to be a witness, there had to be information about this somewhere. All we can do is pray that someone comes forward, or pray that we find them in time.
And as soon as I hear the phones ring, I jump out of my chair.

As soon as we round the next corner, we’re able to see a small speck of light at the end of the hall, and then shuffling starts again. So we start running, and running, and running. The light seems to get bigger with every step we take, but the shuffling behind us gets faster, and faster, and faster. Until, finally, it stops, and then we stop.

As soon as the squad cars start, they’re already moving. The sirens are blaring, and the lights are flashing. We all floor it, speeding through every street as cars pull to the side of the road to let us through. I hope we get there fast enough.

We move, and the shuffling starts again, we run, and the shuffling gets faster. Finally we stop and hide in a small dip in the wall, just big enough for the older man and younger girl to fit in will I stand in front of it. But, this time, even though we stopped, the shuffling did not. It continued until it stopped a few paces away from us. All of us stood quietly, not making a sound until it shuffled closer, and closer, and closer. Finally, all of us took off at a sprint, heading for the small light at the end of the hallway. Our feet hitting the concrete floor as another’s hit it behind us. We’re running, and the glass keeps digging in further and further as we do so.
This time when we stop, the shuffler does with us. So, we just keep walking towards the light, even though we hear the pacing behind us. The light does get bigger, but not much. It feels as though we’re miles away from it. Not a couple hundred yards. Just as we’re passing another opening, the walking behind us quickens, and then gets even faster. As soon as I hear it speed up, I take off sprinting towards the speck of light. The older man keeps pace with me, and the girl runs ahead. The light gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Soon the small speck of light turns into a giant circle of brightness.
Suddenly I realize it, that’s a window, that’s a way out, that’s a way home. So I’m running even faster towards the window when something latches onto my leg. It wraps itself around my ankle and begins to slow me down. When I look down to see, I see a person. A person wearing a mask and all black clothes. It’s hanging to my leg with its arms wrapped around my left ankle while its feet are digging into the ground to slow me. As soon as I look down, it lifts its head and sinks its teeth onto my leg. Human teeth digging into the boniness of my ankle. As soon as I feel his teeth I use my other leg to kick it in the face.
I’m basically hopping down this hallway while trying to kick this thing off my leg. I was enevernating from all the jumping and kicking, but finally, I kick him in the throat and his teeth let go of their hold on my ankle. As soon as it does, I take off sprinting again. When I glance back around my shoulder, I see it scurrying off on all fours back into the pitch black of the hallway. We keep running, and we don’t stop, not for anything. We keep running until the small light at the end of the hallway gets bigger and bigger.
When we finally reach the window at the end of the hall, we all feel kind of lost. Mainly because it’s a skylight reaching about seven feet above our heads. While I’m looking at it, I’m trying to formulate a plan to where all of us will be able to get out of here. As I’m doing so, I spot the small bottom hook on the bottom rung of the ladder sticking out from the ceiling. At the same time I do, the girl sees it too.
Soon, I’m lifting her up onto my shoulders to see if she can get a hold of the small hook welded on the bottom rung. Lifting her up, we’re about a foot or so short of reaching it. So, we come up with a plan. We decide that me and the old man will hook our wrists and toss her up into the air, where she’ll hopefully grab a hold of the small hook.
Soon, me and the old man are locking wrists, and we squat so the girl can step on. She’s going to jump as we lift so that she’ll get more air. Finally, on the count of one, two, three, we toss her around seven feet into the air, and her small hand wraps around the bottom rung of ladder, and it comes clanging down out of the ceiling. We have a way out, we can leave, we can go home to our families. We can go home.
The young girl is putting her first foot onto the ladder when I hear it. The shuffling. It’s louder and it’s closer. A lot closer. When I turn around, I can see the glare coming off its eyes several yards away, so I begin rushing. I’m screaming, yelling at the girl to get up the ladder, yelling at the old man to get up the ladder. We’re all running towards the ladder, crawling up it as fast as we can, when the old man slips. His foot slips just as we’re halfway up the ladder. And he falls, he falls the five feet we’ve come up so far. I usher the younger girl to keep going, and I hop back down to help the old man.
As I’m helping him to his feet, I hear it again. The slow drag of feet on the concrete floor is getting closer, and closer. Finally, he emerges from the darkness, dressed in black, tattered bandages, which wrap all the war around his head. The bandages exposed on bloodshot eye, that is continuously watering. It has no eyebrows or eyelashes. It is a thing of nightmares, and it stands ten feet away from me. I keep my eye on it as I bend down the help the old man up, and slowly back away towards the ladder.
I point up the ladder and nod to the elderly man, and he begins his slow descent upwards, and I wait a few seconds at the bottom of the latter. I stay turned around, so I can watch it. It is barefoot, only having toenails on some of his toes, not all of them, and his feet look rotted. They are so infected that they’ve turned black. Just as I’m about to turn around and put my first foot on the first rung, I see it dart out of my eyesight. Though I don’t have to worry, he soon reappears a few feet from me. I tear up the ladder, rungs only taking seconds for me to scale, but I hear it coming behind me. It’s coming just as quickly.
I’m going so fast I can hear the air rush around me and I climb, but he is gaining on me, rung by rung, second by second. He gets closer. Until finally, I feel his hand brush onto my heels, and then I feel his hands grazing my shin. He’s teasing me, he knows he can take me out, but yet he doesn’t. At least not now, not yet.
All at once the world comes crashing down, I feel a pressure around my ankles, and I feel everything moving past me. As I’m looking up, the door closes, and the space around me turns pitch black. It feels like I fall forever, when I know I’m only falling several feet, and I know that it ends at the concrete floor. All I can think about is its rotten hands wrapped around my ankles, and how I’m stuck here… in the asylum.