Looking around, I noticed there was another bed against the wall opposite of mine, and that it was the only other piece of furniture in the dark and otherwise desolate cell I was in. On the bed, which looked like nothing more than a cot, much like mine, was a man who looked normal, aside from a large scar that started in the middle of his forehead, wound around the right side of his face, and ended in the middle of his chin. His hair was scraggily, and he looked unshaven, so I assumed he had been here for a while. I quickly threw back my blanket to realize I was fully dressed, and stood up to stretch and look out the tiny window on the door of the cell. It had bars covering it, and all I could see was the cell across from me in the hallway.

I turned back to the man, and he had moved closer to the foot of his bed, never taking his gaze from me.

"Hello, what's your name?" I questioned, taking note of the fact that he seemed very intent on watching me.

"My name's Gregory, and now you're stuck with me," he said, chuckling at his rhyme.

"Where is this place?" I asked, noting that the window was too high to see out of, but that the sunlight had notably diminished.

"This is Blackwood Grove Asylum, the worst place around," he remarked, standing up suddenly and pacing back and forth between our beds.

"But I'm not crazy, and you don't seem to be, and why is this place so bad?"

"Well, I'm not, but you are, and you'll see right now, as a matter of fact," he stated, suddenly backing up to his bed as I heard the lock on the door being undone.

I stepped back, just in time as the door swung open and a large, bald man entered the room, swinging a stick with a large round end, and handle sharpened to a point. "Time for breakfast, filth!" he grunted. With that, he stepped in and walked towards Gregory, slamming him down against the bed and securing his hands behind his back. Another orderly stepped in, this one a bit thinner, but with sunken eyes and a head of black stringy hair, and he struck me with his club across the back of my neck, bringing me down before he secured me, and we were both led out.

The corridor had minimal lighting, just two rows of lights in the ceiling, one against each wall, but from what I could see, the place looked very old. Most of the wall was made out of large bricks, which were dank and moldy, and some even had bits of moss gathering. I could hear water dripping somewhere, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. As we turned a corner that evidently led toward the meal hall, I noticed pictures of frightening looking clowns on the walls, though most of the paint had warn off, giving them an even more terrifying appearance. We approached the door to the meal hall, which was metal and looked like it had been built in the 1920s, and were buzzed in, as indicated by a red flashing bulb in the ceiling, protected by a metal cage.

Once inside, our hands were unbound, metal belts were tied around our waists, and then fastened to a giant chain that wound around the room, evidently meant to enforce a line. Once we received our food, which was merely a watery red substance filled with lumps of unknown origin, orderlies unfastened us and connected us to one of several chains running along the lengths of the meal tables. The chains were attached to a gear system similar to the meal line, and we were half-dragged to our positions, where we immediately sat down.

I watched the other patients around me, all of whom seemed generally disturbed. One man was carefully shoveling his red gruel onto the table, then grinding his palm into it, and smearing it on his shirt. A woman a few seats down was laughing to herself and occasionally banging her head into her bowl. Gregory and I were seated across the table from each other, so I decided to ask him more about our situation.

"So Gregory, when did you arrive here?"

"A year ago. They dragged me from the store as I was buying eggs, and locked me up in here, saying I was unfit for society. I told them I'd never done anything in my life, but they said I belonged here, with the other criminally insane."

"Criminally insane?! Then why am I here?"

"I don't know. Until this morning, I'd never seen you before. Guess they got you in the middle of the night."

"But Gregory, I came here from some strange world with giant onion creatures and fake forests."

"Let me guess...you were with a thin guy with white hair right?"

"Yeah! How'd you know?"

"I was there once too. When I escaped and came back, they made me see a doctor. He gave me pills that made me realize my place in the world. It was my job to tend to the harvest, weeding out the bad plants so the good ones will grow. After I'd been culling for a while, though, people finally decided that I was some kind of 'bad guy', and kidnapped me at the store."

"Wait...Gregory, what's your last name?"

"Kane. Why?"

At that moment, the haze in my head started to lift, and I remembered something. A notorious serial killer named Gregory Kane had been terrorizing much of the midwest a year or two ago, mostly finding random people on the street and doing away with them in a variety of horrific, but creative, ways. They finally caught him, and sent him to be locked away forever. And somehow, I had ended up as his cellmate.

"Uh, no reason. So how do you deal with life in here?" I asked, being very careful how to phrase my words.

"Not so well. I've hated it here ever since I got here. But I got a plan. I've started encouraging everyone here to join with me in an uprising to dethrone the guards. They're too brutal, and it's about time we got even. Most of the prisoners here are with me, aside from the special ones like the woman over there, who can't comprehend anything anyway, " he said, gesturing to the woman who had by now broken the bowl and caused a minor wound in her forehead, causing the guards to unchain her and drag her off somewhere.

"So tonight, I'm going to lead the revolution. Lucky for you, you're just in time. Now, are you with me, or will you need to be culled?"

Realizing this was my chance to escape, I said "Yeah, I'm with you. What do we do?"

"Nothing, it's all taken care of. Just wait until tonight."