THE CUBICLE

CHAPTER FOUR

Ten years ago

"Wake up Michael time for school,” said Lisa Murdock

Michael was groggy and in distress he didn't get enough sleep and his eyelids were lazy as his mother pulled back his curtains of his bedroom window. The morning sun spilled into the room like molten gold, chasing away the shadows that had comforted him through the night.

Michael winced. The light was too bright—blinding, unnatural. He turned away, covering his face with the blanket like a child.

"Okay mom" he conceded and went back to sleep for a couple of minutes.

"Michael! Wake up!" she commanded.

Reluctantly Michael woke up.

The house smelled like a Saturday morning: pancakes sizzling in butter, coffee percolating, cinnamon rolls baking in the oven. A beautiful scent thought Michael as he sat but didn’t touch the food. He stared at the plate as if it might melt.

He walked to the kitchen like a ghost, his feet dragging. His eyes were swollen and glassy. Lisa looked up from the stove and frowned.

“You okay, sweetie?”

Michael had a deep and dark secret. He had been hearing voices for weeks now and did not tell anyone not even his mother which were fatal and haunting. Michael slowly deciphered the question…overthinking again.

“I am okay mom.” He said staring at her like he had seen a ghost.

His mind was in a constant turmoil as if a hurricane was in his head, he would get confused and angry all at once and then come back to his senses. His eyes would turn pale and hollow. There was a time his mother would take him from a medical checkup and the doctors came back with no results.

“Just school stress.”

“He's a teenager. Hormones.”

“He’ll grow out of it”

They all said.

He had also started seeing things move from the corner of his eye like paranormal activity. He shrugged of the idea that he was sick but sometimes it got so bad he could see a black figure every time he slept dressed in a black robe holding an axe, ominous and evil. He turned to prayer but they we're dead prayers. It left him estranged and hopeless. 

On this particular day. He was aggressive and going crazier than usual.

That day at school, everything felt wrong.

His classmates’ laughter stabbed his ears. The buzzing of fluorescent lights crawled under his skin. Every ticking second was another beat toward a scream, a torture he could not bare anymore.

Relief spread across his chest as the school bus dropped him at his house. His heart was boiling in anger as it grew in multitudes like spams of a dying sun.

In the kitchen, Sharon was scrolling through her phone, perched on a stool like it was just any other day.

“So, are we ordering pizza or what?” she asked casually.

Michael didn't answer.

She looked up. “Hello? Earth to Michael.”

“Pasta’s fine,” he said, though his voice was hoarse and distant.

“Pasta’s boring. Let’s just get pizza. You always pick lame stuff.”

“I said pasta!” he muttered, louder this time.

Sharon rolled her eyes. “Okay, psycho.”

The world tilted.

Michael's heart jackhammered in his chest. The kitchen light flickered once—then again. A cold draft crept across his back like fingers. His heart pounded with an enormous heartbeat, beads of sweat trickled down on his head and he couldn't breathe.

"Michael? Are you okay?!" asked his sister as he went into a fit.

Suddenly, his face turned red and the figure with the black robe that haunted him in his sleep appeared in front of him looking ominously at him.

The kitchen turned black all around him and this demon like figure appeared to be holding an axe charging at him with great might and velour.

In order to protect himself, he grabbed the kitchen knife and lunged at this dark grotesque figure laughing as it ran at him. Luckily, his mother just came home from work. As she pulled in from the driveway she would hear the scream of Sharon, she rushed impetuously inside the house.

But it was already too late. The damage was already done.

There she found Sharon on the floor bleeding.

"Oh My God! Michael?!" screamed Lisa Murdock her heart in her mouth.

She quickly tried to restrain Michael.

She reached for the pan and stricked him on his head making him fall to the ground, unconscious.

Lisa knelt beside her daughter, hands shaking. Blood was everywhere—sticky, warm, horrifying. She screamed until her throat went raw and dialed 911 with slippery fingers dripping with blood.

The police arrived in a split second with an ambulance. Sharon had been stabbed on her torso and was bleeding profusely, a pool of blood formed on the kitchen floor. Her body lay desolate and languid as she gasped for air. 

The sirens were a blur. Red and blue lights painted the walls like war banners.

Michael stirred, slowly, groaning. His eyes fluttered open—and he saw her. Sharon. Bleeding. Barely conscious. His own hands drenched in crimson. The figure in the black robe stood in the distance… then dissolved into the shadows like mist.

“No… no, no, no,” he whimpered, falling to his knees.

“Put the knife down! Hands on your head—now!” an officer barked.

Michael looked at the blade in his hand, as if seeing it for the first time. He let it clatter to the floor. A second later, he was tackled, restrained, and dragged into the back of a squad car, where he sat dazed and silent, head hung low.

Completely gob smacked.

New Haven General Hospital

Intensive Care Unit

Lisa stood outside the operating room; her hands red with her daughter’s blood.

“Will she survive, Doctor?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

The surgeon—tall, grim-faced, and exhausted—hesitated.

“We’re doing everything we can. She needs immediate surgery. But she’s lost a lot of blood. It’s critical.”

Lisa sank into the nearest chair and wept. Her world had shattered in a single evening.

Belle Reve Asylum

The Next Day

Lisa sat across from Dr. Thomas Strange, whose eyes were dark with concern.

“Your son is suffering from a rare and acute form of schizophrenia,” he explained. “With obsessive-compulsive episodes and possible hallucinations. Visual. Auditory. Violent tendencies. We believe the condition has been progressing for months… maybe years.”

“Is it curable?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“I’m afraid not. We’ll keep him under psychiatric care here for now… but his recovery—if any—will be long. Complex.”

Behind the glass, Michael sat in a white room, barely blinking. Drugged. Drooling. Speaking in fragments of nonsense—some ancient-sounding language, rhythmic and chilling.

Lisa placed her hand on the glass and whispered his name.

He didn’t hear her.