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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Voodoo_Clerk on 2024-12-12 22:06:54+00:00.

Part 1 Part 2

Both Todd and I finally crawled out from behind the bushes. There was nothing left at all of the woman we had heard screaming with Mr. Sinclair. Nothing except a small little drop of blood on the brick path that led back to the door to Sombra. I reached up and pulled on my hair, just needing something to hang on to so I didn’t scream my head off over what I had just seen. I looked over at Todd and saw that he had another cigarette in his mouth. 

“Your first time is always the worst.” He sighed out a cloud of smoke as his cigarette barely clung to his mouth. “I remember the first time I saw him do that…was with my best friend Vincent. We came into rehab together.” He sat back down on the bench we had been sitting on and leaned back on it. “One day we ran into Mr. Gloomy over there,” He motioned toward the direction of the door and presumably, Sinclair. “Vincent…being the dumbass he was, punched Sinclair in the face.” 

I had moved over to sit next to Todd and couldn’t help but laugh while imagining the scene. But I quickly quieted down to continue listening to him. Todd didn’t seem to mind the snort I had given him. He smiled but it quickly vanished and he looked over at me. 

“Well…Sinclair didn’t like that at all. This…thing emerged from his umbrella. It looked like…a skeleton dripping with tar. With these…bright white eyes and…well.” He let out a dry chuckle and took a long drag of his cigarette. “Needless to say, Vince isn’t here anymore.” He sighed and exhaled the smoke from his cigarette out through his nostrils. As I took in the story he had just told me, something he said began to jog a memory. 

“Those drawings, the ones on the sticky notes. I'm pretty sure one of them was of Sinclair with that…thing he has.” The doodle of the tired man with the black being behind him with piercing white eyes. It was exactly what Todd had described and what we had seen eat the woman. “You’re sure you don’t know who this ‘doodler’ is?” I asked, hopeful for any information. 

“No, I don’t. I barely get any drawings from them. I know a couple of patients who get a lot. Some are cute and sweet, others are fucking terrifying. I think it depends on who you are or what your situation is, I guess.” Todd shrugged, finishing off his cigarette dropping it to the floor, and crushing it with his foot. 

I looked at Todd and my concern quickly grew for him. He was the first person I’d met in this hell that I could get along with. None of the Nurses seemed keen to know me, and almost every patient I’d met besides Todd had been lifeless husks. I didn’t want anything to happen to him, and seeing him so thin, turned my worry up to 11.

“I’m going to see if I can be the one to deliver you food. That way you’ll know that you can eat whatever I bring you.” I told him, reaching out and touching his shoulder. He looked over at me with a bright shine in his eye.

“For real?!” He suddenly was like an excited puppy as he turned to look at me, quickly wrapped his arms around me, and gave me a hug that I hadn’t expected to be so strong from someone as malnourished as him. I couldn’t help but smile and pat him on the back. We finally released each other and I led Todd back to his room, and I started the journey back to my room. 

As I passed a group of nurses I heard their murmuring voices. They were all in the hallway just outside the employees-only section. As I passed them, I was about to scan my ID when one of them reached out and quickly shook her head at me. 

“Are you crazy?!” She quickly noticed that I was a new nurse, and quickly pulled me away from the metal door. “Mr. Sinclair is very upset right now. It's better to stay away from him when he’s in one of those moods.” She told me quickly. I looked back at the metal door and felt that same incredible pressure pushing down on me that I had felt on the first day when I came across Sinclair’s office. 

“Okay, thank you,” I told this nurse. She quickly nodded and turned to continue talking to the other nurses, who were all standing outside the employee-only section of Sombra. I walked away down the hall, not sure exactly where I was going. I had just wanted to collapse into my bed and melt away completely, but I didn’t have that option at that moment, so instead, I just walked around the halls of Sombra. 

As I did so, I looked at the map of Sombra on the wall. It was there that I noticed that I was close to the kitchen where the patients’ food was prepared. Without much else to do, I started walking over to it. Arriving there, I saw that it also had a metal door that required our ID badge to open. I unclipped mine from my chest and used it to open the door. I was suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of steak and potatoes.

Entering the kitchen, I was completely floored by the amount of food out and ready for delivery on long metal benches. There isn’t a mess hall at Sombra. The patients are allowed to eat in their rooms and get three full-course meals a day. I looked around at all the plates with steak, vegetables, and mashed potatoes all ready to serve. They seemed endless and were all laid out on the benches that felt like they went on for miles. 

“Nurse Cassie?” Nurse Taylor’s voice asked me, catching me completely by surprise and nearly giving me a heart attack. I spun around to see that she had just entered the kitchen behind me. “What are you doing here? I don’t believe you’re scheduled to work in the kitchen.” She looked puzzled. 

“Oh…well…” My brain worked overtime to try and think of an excuse to tell her. “Mr. Sinclair is upset and in the employees-only section. And I wanted to eat something, so I thought it would be okay if I came here to eat something.” I told her, hoping that my lie was enough to convince her. 

“Oh! Yes of course, dear!” Taylor nodded and motioned for me to follow her. “It’s best for you that you don’t interrupt Mr. Sinclair when he’s in a mood such as this.” She explained to me, leading me past all the prepared food and into the kitchen proper. “Pick whatever you’d like from back here. All the food on those tables has already had the patient’s medicine applied to them.” She explained to me, I stared back from over the counter of the kitchen and swallowed a lump in my throat. 

All that food for all the patients here. And it was all drugged. I was so glad that I hadn’t just picked up some food from the table and given it to Todd. Nurse Taylor walked over to the dishes that were piled high in the sink and pulled out a plate for me. I took it with a small thanks and quickly began to fill the plate with some steak and veggies. 

“Thank you, Nurse Taylor. Would you mind putting some saran rap on this? I wanted to eat this in the garden.” I handed her the plate with all the food I had added to it. Taylor stared at my filled plate with a raised brow at first. But she simply shrugged and took it from me. 

“Of course dear! Here, I’ll show you where it is.” She walked over to it and showed me where several rolls were in a cabinet above the hood of the stoves and ovens of the kitchen. I thanked her quickly took my plate back and started to wrap Todd’s food up. I thanked Nurse Taylor again and after grabbing a fork and knife from the benches, I quickly left the kitchen. 

I sighed in relief as I held the plate close to me and quickly made my way back toward Todd’s room. This time I made sure to knock on his door before I just entered it before alerting him to my presence. His door opened and he peered out from inside it a little, before quickly flinging it open. 

“Oh, hey. I didn’t think you’d be back so…is that food?!” He flung his door open and quickly took the plate from me. He scurried over to his bed like some sort of creature, and I couldn’t help but let out a little giggle as I watched him rip into the plate of food, struggling slightly with the saran wrap. 

“I made sure that this food wasn’t contaminated with medicine,” I told Todd as I watched him rip into the plate like a wild animal. He grabbed at the food with such force that everything but the steak turned into mush with the force that he was grabbing and squeezing it into his mouth.

“You’re the best, Red!” He mumbled through mouthfuls of food. Seeing him with so much food smeared across his face grossed me out and made me smile. I walked over and sat with him in his bed, licking my thumb and starting to wipe some of the schmutz off of his face. He flinched away and kicked up a fuss about me cleaning his face. 

“Oh hold still,” I scolded him, sounding exactly like my mom when she babysits the neighborhood kids. Todd grunted in annoyance but finally relented and let me clean up his face. “What do you do with the actual food you get served?” I asked, handing him his fork and knife so he didn’t have to eat with his bare hands.

“Oh, I flush it down the toilet. It’s got a super powerful flush since a couple of patients have clogged them in the past. Me included,” He snickered as he struggled to cut his steak with the crappy plastic knife. “I drink water from the sink and steal food from the nurses.” He grunted as he kept cutting into the steak. 

“I’m sorry Todd…” I told him, feeling immense regret that he was in the situation and I just couldn’t believe that nothing about w...

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