“But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! -and now -and again! Hark! Louder! Louder! Louder! Louder!” 

I peered at the patients over the story I was reading, all of them waiting in anticipation. 

“‘Villains!’ I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -tear up the planks! -here, here! -it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

As I finished the last sentence of The Tell-Tale Heart, I slammed the book shut in front of everyone’s faces and laughed as they all jumped back in horror. It is Halloween night, and instead of partying my youth away like a normal teenager, I am held up at Clinton’s Psychiatric Studies and Services where my mother works. A bad storm is brewing outside, so while she is making arrangements for someone to help us get home, I am reading Edgar Allen Poe to the patients. This might not be my brightest idea considering some of them are locked up for assumed violence and mental health risk.

“I haven’t heard that story in about thirty years. I think it was around 1941.” said old Miss June.

“Can you read us another, Emory?” 

I looked towards the clock on the wall and noticed that it was half past 11. 

“Maybe just one mor-” “Emory! Lights out. I’m sorry but all of the phone lines are down from the storm. It looks like we will be sleeping here tonight.” 

With my mothers interruption, everyone stood up and headed towards their bedrooms. She opened a small dark room with a creaky door and little to no light in it, “Here you go sweety, I’ll be down the hall.”

I’ve stayed the night at this hospital before, but with the eerie winds blowing and the thoughts of an amputated man buried underneath my floorboards, actually falling asleep is an entirely different story. My eyes soon begin to close and the darkness of the room takes over.

Reading spooky stories before bedtime is my second worst idea of the night as nightmares plague my mind. Currently in my dream state I am lying in the same bed, looking at the same walls, with the same storm raging outside; however, it appears to me that the door is slightly ajar. My body is completely stiff, so the chances of getting up to go shut it are slim to none. Similar to The Tell-Tale Heart, a head peers into my doorway. A person slowly opens the door, taking time to not awaken me, but in this dream I am. I notice that the person is a fellow patient, and as she draws closer I realize it’s Miss June! She is holding a knife and murmuring words I cannot understand. Please, I know you said you love Poe, but do not kill me!  If only she could hear my thoughts. As she comes to my bedside, there is clarity in her words, “Evil Eye!” 

She plunges the knife into my eye, and these dreams start to feel like reality as I scream and blood splatters my clothes. The screams fill my ears, and I slowly realize they are not my own. My eyes open completely now, and as I look down at the scene before me I see Miss June writhing in pain. I stand before her, in my hospital gown, blood splattered over me while I stab her eye out. I smile as I realize my dreams were in a twisted form of my own reality.