You're trying to make it out alive
in a world we're meant to die in.

Myungsoo’s life begins in a twelve by ten foot box.

And he first awakens with blood on his hands.

The lamp in the cramped corner casts a dim and dying light throughout the room, and he can see how his skin is ripped, red, and raw underneath his torn fingernails, filthy with bits of dirt and grime. Angry, bloody crescents decorate the palms of his hands, distant memories of when nail dug into flesh (he honestly can’t remember).

He’s lying limply on a small cot, its yellowing, starchy sheets chafing against his skin and when he strains his neck to look outside, he’s met with four bleak walls, hewn from rock. The soft plip-plop in the corner of his room slowly drills its way into his mind amidst the maddening silence until it occupies every crevice of his head, drowning out all of his thoughts, all of his sanity, all of himself, and his head begins to throb.

(It wakes up the person living in the back of his mind.)

 ...........

When he awakens the next day, he finds that he is not alone.

It starts as a chill down his spine when a man in scrubs walks in, clipboard in hand. But then there’s a quick intake of breath as Myungsoo’s eyes take in the weary tilt of his head, the paleness of his skin.

Because in that instant, he’s filled with a nauseating churning of fear and hatred as the man looks up from his clipboard and transforms in Myungsoo’s eyes.

(He sees a monster.)

Then he blinks, and it all disappears, only to be replaced by the numbing emptiness in his mind and the dull ringing in his ears. Myungsoo squints, unsure of where he is. (Where is he again?)

Oh, yes. That’s right. The man in white scrubs is talking to him, but Myungsoo can't hear him over the dull ringing in his ears. He notes to himself that the man’s clothes are much cleaner than his own. A similar shade of white, but not quite. The man’s are much cleaner and pristine, compared to—

Myungsoo blinks, unsure. (What was he thinking about just now?)

The ringing in his ears becomes incessantly louder as the man calmly takes a syringe full of a clear, viscous liquid and holds it up to Myungsoo’s right eye, the needle poised right over his eyeball.

Myungsoo’s eyes flick back and forth in terror, and he scrambles away from the man. His breaths come out in short, choked gasps as he finds himself stuck in a corner.

It screams in his ears now.

get away get away away getawaygetawaygetawaygetawayGETAWAY

The man grabs his shoulders, and Myungsoo braces himself for the sharp stab of metal. Instead, the man sits down on the cot and takes Myungsoo’s gaunt wrist in his own hand. He speaks in a hushed tone, “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t worry. This is just an intraocular injection. You’ve had this before.”

Myungsoo can’t remember. He has? He blinks slowly at the man.

“It won’t hurt at all. It’s just a little needle. You won’t feel a thing, I promise.”

Sharp pain pierces his skull, and he cries out, holding his head in his hands. The ringing is all he can hear now.

shut up shut up shut up shutupshutupdon’tinglieshutupshutup

Myungsoo gasps for air, clutching at his eyes. Stop, stop, he has to stop. They’re bleeding, his eyes are bleeding, the red won’t stop. It’s everywhere, someone make the bleeding stop there’s blood on his hands again his eyes will fall out someone there's a hole in his head a hole–

And then he sits rigidly in place, staring glassy-eyed at the wall. (What was he seeing again?)

The stranger speaks soothingly, his words gently sweeping over the pain reverberating throughout his skull, “Are you okay now? It’s okay. This shot will make the pain go away.”

Myungsoo nods. Please, anything to make the pain go away. He wants this shot, and he digs his nails into his palms as he tries to drown out the cries in his head. Go away, go away, this is my head (is it really?), go away, go away.

It goes away (for now).

It’s just like the man had promised. Short and painless. Myungsoo breathes a sigh of relief as he slumps against the wall. The ringing inside his head dies down to a soft hum (i hate you), and he smiles weakly at the brief respite before he fades into black.

The man scratches his head and laughs nervously, “Well, I’m glad that I was able to help. The name’s Sungyeol. I’m your assigned caretaker.” As he exits, he grins, hand on the doorknob, “You’ll be seeing a lot more of me from now on.” He leaves the room, the huge metal bars locking into place behind him.

 ...........

True to his word, Sungyeol comes by every day to give Myungsoo his intraocular injections. And while he checks on Myungsoo, Sungyeol chatters away with the other simply nodding in response.

He learns that his name is officially Patient #L12030. “Myungsoo” is just a name given to him by the staff in the asylum. Sungyeol says that he's been in the asylum for a long time due to his general paresis.

Myungsoo isn't quite sure what it means, but Sungyeol informs him that it's a mental disorder. “But we fixed it with surgery,” Sungyeol says, “So you'll be fine now.”

He’s insane. And Sungyeol is wrong, he thinks to himself. He knows he’s not fine now because the other person living in the back of his mind keeps reminding him so. But he just nods dumbly as Sungyeol cleans up and prepares to move to the next room.
 

On another day, Sungyeol checks the top of his forehead, dabbing it with alcohol. Myungsoo’s head begins to throb crazily and suddenly woozy, he reaches up to touch the spot.

There's nothing there.

He starts to shriek.

There's a hole in his head, there's a hole in his head. He remembers lying on the cold metal of the operating table, the haze of anesthesia broken by the sharp tip of the ice pick hacking into his skull, carving away at his brain, and the blood pouring into his eyes.

Sungyeol grabs his wrist. “Whoa, it's okay; it's okay. The surgery is over. I'm just making sure the entry site doesn't get infected. Sorry about that.”

Myungsoo’s body is wracked with sobs, and he tears at his hair, rocking back and forth as he gasps uncontrollably. Sungyeol runs to the door and yells out for something before hurrying back to his side. Myungsoo resists him, flailing his arms and kicking his legs in a frenzy as he shrieks. Sungyeol jabs something sharp into the skin of his arm, and Myungsoo stills. The cot dips down as Sungyeol sits down next to him, rubbing his back in a soothing manner. Myungsoo doesn’t remember how long Sungyeol stays before he’s swept away into oblivion, but he hears Sungyeol’s last words before sleep washes over him.

“Take a rest for a while.”

 ...........

When Myungsoo opens his eyes, he’s surrounded by darkness that stretches out before him for eternity. He whirls around, met with black on all sides. He wades through it, wiping ink from his eyes. There’s no end to it, and he wanders around, lost for ages.

Then he stumbles as a hand shoots out of the ground and latches onto his ankle. He catches himself with his palms and finds himself face-to-face with another set of eyes, blinking at him from the darkness. White teeth flash in a vicious little grin, and a face arises from the sea of black.

Myungsoo’s heart stops and stutters as he stares at a carbon copy of himself, a gaping hole in the center of his forehead, still dripping blood. His mirror self greets him with a crimson smile of poison.

“Hello, Myungsoo.”

Then he digs his nails into Myungsoo’s eyes, and Myungsoo slowly begins fading into nothing. 

 ...........

Myungsoo barely notices when Sungyeol walks into his room the next day. He can feel himself shriveling like an empty, dry husk, and his hollow eyes see nothing.

Sungyeol rambles on about some new doctor in charge, but Myungsoo just listens silently, his face showing no reaction, even as Sungyeol inserts the needle into his eye and presses down on the syringe. Sungyeol finally stops talking long enough to notice Myungsoo’s unresponsiveness and frowns, “You’re looking awfully pale today. Did you not sleep well last night?”

Myungsoo’s not sure whether or not he should tell Sungyeol about the person living inside his head. He thinks Sungyeol might be able to help him get rid of the voice, but the words die on his tongue when he remembers Sungyeol’s cheerfulness when he told Myungsoo that “I’m glad that you’re not ill anymore.”

So Myungsoo keeps quiet for now and resolves to find a way to get rid of person inside his head on his own.

And inside Myungsoo’s head, L smiles a little more triumphantly.

 ...........

give it back. 
give it back.

It starts again one day when he’s alone in his room, the tiny, flickering candle casting shadowy monsters on the walls of his room in the dead hours of the night. A small whisper in his mind, a dull ringing in his ears. Claws tug on his mind, and Myungsoo shivers, trying to shake away his anxiety.

it’s mine.
mine.

No, Myungsoo thinks to himself, his hands trembling, it’s mine. He wraps himself tighter in his threadbare blanket, clinging to his small sliver of resistance. Go away, he tells the voice inside his head. It’s cold tonight, and he can hear the howling wind outside.

But the voice inside his head grows louder (and Myungsoo can no longer resist).

no it's mine. minemineminemineminemineMINE.

(Pain pierces his eyes, and the world goes black).

This is the first incident.

(That night, the howling seems to become even louder.)

 ...........

Myungsoo wakes up on sweat-dampened sheets, choking and gasping for breath. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, why can’t he breathe? Then he realizes his hands are clenched around his neck in a vise-like grip, constricting his throat with each squeeze. He sputters, hoarsely crying out. He can’t move his hands no matter how hard his arms strain, and the effort shakes his whole body.

His eyes start to tear, and he’s panicking, panicking, panicking. Black spots dance all around him, and he thinks he sees Sungyeol through the haze, dropping his clipboard, pulling his hands away from himself, shouting frantically.

Myungsoo collapses like a rag doll, coughing with rattling gasps of air. His throat burns with the red imprints left behind by his fingers. Sungyeol hovers over Myungsoo, biting his lip worriedly as he writes notes rapidly on his clipboard. Myungsoo closes his eyes, still reeling from the shock, and his heartbeat feels like it might explode from his rib cage.

Sungyeol picks up all of the syringes that have fallen on the floor along with his clipboard, allowing Myungsoo some time to stabilize himself before bending down to his eye level as Myungsoo struggles into an upright position.

Sungyeol grips him by the shoulders, “It’s okay now; you’re okay.” Myungsoo can't respond; there's something wrong with his tongue. It won't form words, and he can't move. So he sits there, an unresponsive, empty shell, willing Sungyeol’s words to be true, trying to forget the burning ring of fire around his throat. He looks down, vacantly staring at his hands that stole the breath from his lungs, only moments before. Then he notices Sungyeol’s worried frown as it finally dawns on him that nothing is fine and something is terribly, terribly wrong.

And L flexes his fingers in anticipation.

 ...........

Soon, the throbbing in his head becomes almost unbearable, and Myungsoo slowly begins losing himself. He wakes up in odd places, in the corners and on the floor, with no recollection of what he has just done. There are gaps in his memory, blanks in his mind, and he can never remember a single thing.

When Sungyeol enters his room now, he peeks in with the door slightly cracked open before stepping in. Relief colors his face when he peers into Myungsoo’s eyes. “How are you feeling?” He asks, setting down Myungsoo’s tray of breakfast.

Numb. He feels so, so numb, stuck in an endless cycle of vicious sleep and fearful wakefulness. He drifts in and out of the days in a black haze that sickens him until he is nothing more than a walking cadaver. The walls have becoming more suffocating, pressing in on him tighter and tighter until he can’t breathe, and he thinks that he’s still choking.

But he doesn’t tell Sungyeol that. He just picks up his spoon and replies, “I’m feeling better today.” Sungyeol sits down alongside him on the cot and plays with the corner of his blanket. “That’s good to hear,” he says, but he doesn’t meet Myungsoo’s eyes. Sungyeol’s stares off into the distance, focusing on something Myungsoo can’t see. Then he shakes his head fiercely and jumps up, “Of course! Of course you’ll get better. You’re feeling better already!” He seems to be talking more to himself than to Myungsoo. “I’ll tell them the surgery won’t be necessary. Of course it won’t!” Absorbed in his thoughts, he briskly leaves the room, scribbling furiously on his clipboard.

Myungsoo watches him go with a sinking heart.

As Sungyeol closes the door behind him, the locks falling into place with a resounding boom, Myungsoo stands up on unsteady, swaying feet and walks in the direction that Sungyeol was staring in. There’s something on the wall, and he has to squint to make out what it is.

Long, bloody scores of frenzied scratches decorate the stone wall, and Myungsoo looks down at his hands with skin and fingernail ripped off, encrusted with blood. Streaks of his blood are splashed on the wall, but when Myungsoo looks more closely, he realizes that the are words painted in red.

He struggles to put the letters together, and pain lances through his head, making him stagger and his vision blur.

“Gi...ve...it..back…”

yes, give it to me.

 ...........

That night, there’s a chill down his spine again, and he shudders as he hears the vicious little voice in the back of his head, feels roughened hands tug greedily at his brain. He scrambles backwards in fear, but there's no escape for him.

Because the monster is in his head.

And it rips into his brain, his head, his eyes, his eyes (his soul).

When he wakes up the next morning, he’s wracked with shrieks that come from his brain, not his mouth, and he can’t stop the blood oozing from his eyes, can’t hear anything but the ringing in his head. Bits and pieces of him are being ripped away, and Myungsoo is disappearing. Help, help, he needs some help, somebody.

(He screams and screams and screams.)

And L comes alive a little more.

 ...........

Myungsoo is staring at the iron cross-bars in front of the room’s only window when Sungyeol flings open the door to Myungsoo’s room. “Good morning! How are you feeling?” He’s desperate to prove the asylum doctors wrong - that Myungsoo really is on the mend after his lobotomy and that another surgery is unnecessary.

Myungsoo doesn’t respond, so Sungyeol looks down at his clipboard, filled with observations and notes by Myungsoo’s other caretakers about Myungsoo’s behavior for the past couple of days. The more he reads them, the more anxious he becomes. He leafs through reports of him repeatedly bashing his head against the wall, tearing at his eyes, attacking the attendants, throwing himself at the walls and the door, and shrieking at something unseen. Sungyeol’s hands shake as he struggles to come to terms with what this may mean for Myungsoo once the asylum doctors see this.

He gradually approaches Myungsoo’s cot, tucking away the papers in his lab coat. “How are you feeling?”

Myungsoo starts to turn around and open his mouth, but he freezes halfway, gagging, his fingers going rigid, his eyes rolling back into his head. Sungyeol runs forward, dropping his clipboard, but he’s halted in his tracks as Myungsoo unfreezes and clutches his head, screaming. His screams sound like he’s being torn in two, and Sungyeol timidly takes a step forward, venturing, “Myungsoo?”

There’s a heavy silence, and Sungyeol thinks that perhaps the episode is over and that Myungsoo has regained his senses. Then Myungsoo’s shoulders begin to shake, and he starts to chuckle softly. Sungyeol feels a chill creep up his neck when Myungsoo bends his head back.

And someone else smiles at him, “Hello, Sungyeol.”

 ...........

He awakens with blood on his hands a second time and red spotting his vision.

And Sungyeol does not come by that morning.

Or the morning after.

 ...........

The men in surgical masks come to get him the next day. They bring clipboards and more and more metal trays with needles and scalpels that they prod and slice him open with. (He’s bleeding so, so much.)

They all address a stern-faced man in the back as “Dr. Kim” while placing Myungsoo, glassy-eyed, on a cold metal table, stuck in drug-induced stupor, frozen in place as his mind turns on him, whittling bits and pieces of him away until Myungsoo remains as nothing more than a thought.

“Dr. Kim, the dosage doesn’t seem to be desensitizing him yet.”

“Dr. Kim, the deep sleep therapy plan isn’t working as planned.”

“Sir, he’s mentally disturbed still; I don’t think the first surgery was effective.”

“Sir, I secured him with the restraints as you commanded.”

(Metal chains encircle his neck, his wrists, his ankles. The rust bites into his skin.)

“Sir, even after the injection, he won’t calm down. The screaming won’t cease.”

(The chains go clank, clank, clank.)

“At this rate, the patient poses more harm to himself.”

(And the needles jab, jab, jab.)

“With all due respect sir, the only possible solution now is to perform another lobotomy, however slim the chances of success might be.”

Dr. Kim nods his head, “Bring out the ice pick.”

no no no no nonononononottheicepicknononononot againNOTAGAIN

Myungsoo shrieks as the sharp tip cleaves his head in two. Even through the anesthesia, he can feel them scrape away the last bits of his frontal lobe.

(And Myungsoo is carved away little by little.)

 ...........

it’s mine, mine, mine. no, no, no, nonononononoooonoonoo. get out of my head, it’s mine. get out, get out, get out. my eyeballs are bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. hee hee it’s the same color as that caretaker’s. the blood is so red, crimson roses, crimson skies, skies, skies, i want to get out. let me out, let me out, let me go, let me out. i’m blind, i’m blind, i can’t see, where are my eyes, give them back to me, they’re mine, my eyes. my body, minemineminemine. my brain is splitting and blood, why is there blood everywhere? die die die die die. i’m dying, dying, dying. get out of my head, this is my head, getoutgetoutgetoutgetout. why am i the loser, why are you locking me up, why me, why why why there’s something in my head, it’s buzzing, it wants to come out, he wants to come out. i don't want to let him out, this is my time, ah i’m ed up ed ed ed. there’s something in my head and it won't come out. ice pick, ice pick, i can feel it through the anesthesia, they’re tearing apart my mind. there are holes in my skull and my brain is oozing out. leaking here and there, so, so many holes. i’m tearing at my brain, my brain, it’s in pieces. they slice through it like warm butter, taking it out piece by piece. occipital lobe temporal lobe parietal lobe frontal wait where's my frontal lobe it’s gone it’s gone they took it they took it they took me they took my brain, give it back give it back give me back my brain, my brain, give it b— 

(There’s nothing left.)