Victim Eyes

Victim Eyes

“Huh? That's strange… the map didn’t say there was an upcoming rest cabin for another 2 miles?” groaned Janos.

There was a faint mist of smoke that was hiding behind the trees. Already halfway into his 5 day journey, Janos was exhausted and happy to know he found a shortcut to camp out for the night. As the sun began to wear away, Janos turned on his headlamp and started squeezing his way through nature to reach his destination and find the source of the smoking mist.

“WHAT THE-” he says, coming to an abrupt stop. He takes in the grim view of what seems to be wreckage of an airplane, ripped apart and still smoking.

“This must have just happened, but why did I not hear anything?”, he asks himself, frantically digging into his pockets.

He reaches for his cellphone and quickly realizes there is no signal, and he has no minutes left to call out. As he starts searching around for any sign of life, he is not successful, but does find rather strange belongings. He directs the headlamp to a piece of metal he stepped on, and there he finds a small book. He starts dusting it off, realizing how eerie it is to find out that the book is in perfect condition, unharmed from the recent accident.

Janos rests on one of the detached plane chairs and slowly opens it. He quickly realizes that it is in a completely different language with what seems to be information about patients in some medical facility. He could tell by the multiple prescription copies and some ⅔ of the patients had ID’s attached. As he kept flicking through the pages, he noted someone was also translating the information to English at the bottom of the pages, but it was not done for one patient, unfortunately.

Suddenly, the black book starts rifling through the pages violently, to which Janos began to feel his body going numb, his mind being manipulated by some force coming from the book. He starts going through a mind trip of seeing, what seems to be the patients he read about, being neglected by a doctor all while watching it through the victim's point of view.

- Budapest Hospital 1979, Patient Zoltar (Bipolar Personality disorder with Mania Episodes) -

As Janos was watching through the eyes of the victim, he experienced that this patient was going through electrotherapy, begging for the cruelty to stop.

“I am innocent, please, unhand me and let me see my children!” he exclaimed.

Another sub mind trip showed Zoltar being accused of BPD by a doctor because the doctor was falsely accusing him of wanting a refill on narcotics, claiming the patient was insane and showed signs of severe mood swings. Thus, the authorities forced the patient into the Doctor’s Rehabilitation center for the Mentally Ill.

The black book again starts to zip thru the pages violently to the next passenger on the plane.

- Doctor Rastager’s Rehab for the Mentally Ill 1980, Patient Adanos (Unknown Type of Depression with Severe Anxiety) -

Janos watches, as the negligence is unfolding once again, he begs the black book to put an end to this, and explain the meaning behind all of these realistic illusions -- Peering from the exam room door, Patient Adanos was being thrown down on the dirty, bloodied floor of the ward by security and employees. A cold shiver went down Janos’ back from the blood, curdling screaming and begging for it all to end. Eventually, the vision starts shifting and hides behind a statue of the rehab center, pointing to a cruel Dr. Rastager, watching the beating happening and chuckling under his breath while he puts out his cigarette. He later enters the room and has his personnel leave him and Adanos alone. The POV slowly creeps back up to the ward door and peeps through the small opening and eavesdrops.

“Patient A687, why do you keep trying to escape when you know that is not possible? The rooms are air shut, and I have the best security money can buy! Who is going to believe you, a ‘sick, incompetent patient’, or a world class doctor of behavior therapy?” doctor exclaims mockingly.

As Doctor Rastager finishes his sentence, he notices the POV, Janos, and quickly storms at the door after restraining Adanos to the hospital bed.

The black book now returns Janos back to reality back to the forest. The time it now 3 AM, and the headlamp’s battery seems to have given out while Janos was out cold. He whips out a small flashlight and starts searching frantically around the plane rubble. He quickly finds a sizable brown envelope, so tightly packed that it seemed like it was going to pop. Janos, with shaky hands, undoes the clip and a sizable amount of American money drops with a receipt from a Hungarian bank.

“The person that traveled with it must have just changed the currency before boarding the plane…” he ponders to himself.

Later, a pocket-sized picture falls out, Janos bends over and reaches for the sepia-colored photo, perplexed to see that he has seen this exact image in his life before. He once again frantically reaches into his wallet and pulls out the only picture he has from his birth; the one the orphanage offered him before he left. In that moment, Janos realized the picture was an uncropped version of the photo he was given at the orphanage. In the full photo, he noticed a pummeled-face mother holding her child. He starts feeling weak-kneed, and visions of the POV start ambushing his visions again. As he lets out one last scream of again, the POV wins over his mind, and shows another vision but from another standpoint and it shows a young nurse arguing with the familiar Doctor Rastager.

However, the voices just sound like a quartet of muttering and high pitched screams that sound so far, yet so near. The POV then gives Janos a clearier moment, when the familiar nurse speaks to Dr. Rastager in his office.

“Well if you want to move up into the medical ladder, you can do some specific favors for me and we can be powerful worldwide”.

The young nurse shrugs off his hand off her shoulder then starts backing up. He reaches back to her and tells her to shut her mouth subsequently pushing her over his desk then starts mounting on top of her.

The POV stops, leaving a repulsed Janos in tears but ready to see who this mysterious nurse is and what she has to do with him. The POV, now back to seeing through the eyes of the victim, shows him once more, the vision time traveling 9 months after the incident, with Dr. Rastager and the Jane Doe nurse arguing that she is to abort this child, or he will get rid of it himself. The panic-stricken nurse falls to her knees, begging for the awful doctor to rethink his decisions and empathizes her for a minute. He threatens her that he is not going to be screwed over by some student nurse with an unwanted child.

An enraged Janos wanted to pounce through the view to brawl the dead beat father thus protecting the still Jane doe nurse. A transition passes by the POV, the Jane doe nurse has her just born child taken away from her arms then injected by a sedative that knocks her out then Rastager falsely diagnosed the nurse as suffering from neurosis and claiming that she falsely had a child. Who would believe in a deranged minded nursing student over a world class doctor. Afterwards, another male doctor takes the child away and tucks a photograph in the child’s blanket. Afterwards, another male doctor takes the child away and tucks a photograph in the child’s blanket. But Janos, frantically, screams at the male doctor asking if she is okay? Where are they taking the child? Who is the child ? Who is the doctor? All these questions left unanswered and lastly the POV ends and Janos falls back again on the forest floor, flushed and confused he searches the rubble again to find the black book to see that everything written was now translated to english and a letter falls out. Janos picks it up and reminds it out loud, “My “Dearest Zsofia, I apologize for being absent in your cell after Ratasger was examining you, I found a way for us to escape, I have registered you for the Study retreat in the states, Ratasger assigned me last min to fly with you and the other patients. What a fool! Little does he know I am freeing you all, be with you and find your baby boy to live happily together. I know medically you are no deranged women, that the claims you scream every night about being taken advantage of and having bore a child is not nonsense. You’ve just sadly fallen into rastager’s group of false diagnosed mental patients. I have the currency changed to American currency, your paperwork and the picture of your child. I will see you at 9AM, very soon we will taste freedom at last”. P.S. Attached is the only picture I have of you and Yanos.

Janos fell to his knees, weeping with anger and feeling all the same feelings when he was still trapped at the orphanage without the touch of anyone motherly in his life. He stood up, piled all the paperwork at hand, the black book , looked at the photo one last time and thought to himself that he will find this derangeled criminal and stop the madness of Doctor Rastager’s Rehab for the Mentally Ill.