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Weekly Drabble #400: Red Dreams
🕑 Added 2025-10-26 15:57:54 +0000 UTCThis week's prompt comes from AS900 with 'sweet and sour dreams', taking us back to a psychiatric institute and the one person within its walls who doesn't dream. Enjoy!
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Red Dreams:
“Welcome back, Detective Berring,” Cassandra Samuels said.
The pretty young murderess was laying on her cot, left leg resting on her right knee and hands behind her head. She hadn’t even looked up to see who was outside her cell.
“Does that act unnerve your other guests?” The institute’s staff would have told Cassandra she was getting a visitor.
“I’ll let you know if I ever get any.” She tilted her head towards the plexiglass wall. “But how’s this for unnerving: I know why you’re here.”
Dana hadn’t shared her reason for visiting with the staff, but Cassandra wasn’t stupid. “Not that good,” the police officer pointed out. “You told me already they let you watch the news.” It had been two weeks since her visit. Four days ago, there’d been another killing. It was still making headlines, so even here in Wilkins Psychiatric Hospital, Cassandra would have heard about it.
“You sure? Then how about a riddle: what do a red sun and a priest’s heart have in common?”
The officer’s head snapped up. The ‘Black Alley Murders’ were already some of the most gruesome crimes the city had ever experienced, but this last one went beyond the pale. Father Jacob Mallory, an Irish Protestant priest in a moderately affluent and predominantly white neighbourhood, had been found dead. That was the nice way of putting it. He’d been found butchered with methodical and precise cruelty. His torso had cut open. He’d been alive as he’d been taken apart. His tongue had been cut out and his eyelids had been stapled open. They’d made him watch what they did to him.
On the wall behind his body, the same runic language seen at the other crime scenes had been painted in the priest’s blood, while in front of him, his entrails used to make the circles, his bones used to form the jagged lines and his heart placed at the center of it, his killer or killers had drawn what the city PD insisted was the Nazi black sun, but Cassandra had told Dana was something called the breaking light.
Given the particular brutality of his death, that Father Mallory had been white himself and there were no relationships, positive or negative between him and any far-right individuals or organizations, the department’s primary theory had taken a severe blow. Cassandra’s information had at first been dismissed by Dana’s superiors and she’d almost convinced herself that it was nothing but nonsense, but Mallory’s murder had pulled her back to H. Wilkins Psychiatric Hospital and its youngest resident mass murderer.
The department was trying to keep some of the more gruesome details of the killings back. One of those details was how the breaking light symbol had been constructed from Mallory’s own flesh. “How did you learn that?” Dana demanded.
The imprisoned girl turned her head towards the detective. “I told you,” she reminded the other woman. “In the dreams I don’t dream, I can see pieces of what happens. This one was clearer than most.” She sat up, legs hanging off the side of the bed. She moved with an unnatural smoothness, like an image running at more than 60 fps. “I heard the words. I saw the blood. I felt the warmth of his heart as they held it up and its final, frantic beats of terror as they lowered it to the center of their blood prayer.”
“You couldn’t have seen any of that. Someone told you-”
“Then chase that dragon, detective. Go through every orderly, nurse and doctor here. Find out how they know intimate details of your case and why they would have told me, a psychotic murderess with a history of excessive violence, about killings that mimicked her own bloody spree. Or you can believe me.” She shrugged. “No one ever believes me, so I’m not holding my breath.”
“Last time we talked, you said you’d help.”
“I also said you’d have to pay. I gave a lot away for free before and look where that got me.”
“How much?”
“What you get is equal to what you give,” Cassandra told her, examining her fingernails. The staff kept them short so that she couldn’t scratch someone with them. You put out one little eye...
“Could you stop the killings?”
“Probably. But that means I get to go free, and we both know you can’t give me that. Second option is instead of me walking out of this cell, you walk in, but,” Samuels sighed in disappointment, “you won’t do that, either.”
Dana raised an eyebrow. “Moving a little fast aren’t we?”
Cassandra shrugged again. “You already know I like boys and girls, detective. You’re pretty and believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of dating opportunities in an institute for the criminally insane. Some of the staff like to think there are, though.” She grinned and this time there was nothing innocent about it.
There were claims that the orderly she’d put into hospital had been taking advantage of female patients and tried to do the same with the pretty new arrival. Nothing had been proven and the administration here at Wilkins had quietly dropped their investigation. Whether the accusation was valid or simply Cassandra’s excuse to avoid punishment, Dana couldn’t say. The department hadn’t been interested in probing further without the institute’s support. What was clear was that the man Cassandra had mauled – and there was no other word for it – had been more than twice her size, but somehow he’d ended up looking like a dog’s favourite chew toy.
“As tempting as a conjugal visit with a mass murderer is, I think I’ll have to pass,” Dana said. “But I didn’t come here empty handed. I did a little more research into you.” She reached into her coat and pulled out a can of pop from the inside jacket pocket. “This is your favourite, isn’t it?”
Cassandra put a hand on the plexiglass like a hungry cat that had just caught sight of a chunk of turkey. She nodded.
Dana had been told that under no circumstances was Cassandra allowed to have to have the can, but they’d given her a small plastic cup. She set it on the tray and opened the can. The cup was small, just enough for about a third of the can, but that meant it was small enough to fit through the slot to be passed into Cassandra’s cell.
The girl picked it up in both hands and took a small sip, her eyes closing like she’d just tasted ambrosia and not a mass-market soft drink you could find in any corner store. “Being in here, you forget little things,” she said. “Little bits of happiness that you took for granted outside, things that you don’t notice until you don’t have them for five years. Even prisoners get a commissary. Patients get what they’re allowed to have.” She finally opened her eyes, looking back at Dana. “All right,” she said. “Payment accepted. Because you came back, I’ll give you something else, too. The other killings were tiny ripples. This last one...” her gaze locked onto Dana’s, the dark blue of the mad girl’s eyes like ocean waters. “This one got noticed.”
