The Renfield Syndrome by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 1

She was a whisper of a girl who walked through the hallways on tiptoes as she had since the onset of her illness. The cold linoleum floor didn’t seem to bother her as she made her way towards a heavy wooden door where a light shone through a small window. Short and thin, she stopped at the door and curiously stretched up to get a look inside. But as her eyes rose above the edge of the window, she heard a roar echo within the room as the face of rage stormed against the glass. Terror struck her faster than her unstable mind could process it, robbing her of the ability to scream, but between her feet there collected a pool of urine—the product of fear. But the moment produced something far more dramatic as her body stiffened into catatonia, and losing consciousness, the young girl toppled like a tree.

With time having escaped her, she woke to the gentle sound of a nurse's voice prompting her into wakefulness. The urine had been cleaned up, and with the help of a technician, she was helped into a wheelchair and taken to her room, where she was given a 1 mg dose of Lorazepam. Thirty minutes later, she hovered somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. All this transpired as laughter bellowed from behind the locked door that had proved too much for the curiosity of the spindly fifteen-year-old girl. She would never clearly see their face but occasionally would hear loud laughter or growling penetrating the door of what was referred to as the quiet room.