THE WILL TO SURVIVE

POV- MIA CARTER

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Black Hollow Asylum wasn’t a hospital.

It was a tomb.

The walls weren’t sterile or white like in the brochures.

They were yellowed like old teeth, cracked like broken memories, and always—always—sweating.

As if the building itself was breathing.

Like it was alive.

And watching.

The guards didn’t hide what they thought of me.

“Spared the rope,” one of them sneered as he slid my food tray in with a foot. “But don’t worry, sweetheart… you’ll still swing. Just slower. Bit by bit.”

They laughed like hyenas behind steel doors.

I didn’t respond.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I couldn’t.

Because I’d heard the nooses swaying again.

The first few nights were silent.

Too silent.

The kind of silence that settles over graveyards right before a scream.

Then the whispers started.

At first I thought they were in my head.

But no—they came from the vents.

From the cracks in the ceiling.

From the tiny mirror bolted to the wall like a window into another hell.

“Round Ten…”

Always the same phrase.

Soft. Repeating.

Like it was waiting for me to answer.

I begged the doctors to take the mirror down.

They just nodded and smiled that empty smile—the kind that doesn’t reach the eyes.

They upped my meds.

But that night, the mirror bled.

Not figuratively.

Not in my dreams.

It. Bled.

Thick, red lines trickled down the silvered surface.

No wound. No source.

Just fresh blood, oozing into familiar letters.

“Round Ten – ESCAPE”

My blood went cold.

The air turned metallic, thick, sharp—like I was breathing in knives.

Then—the door creaked.

It opened.

Unlatched.

Unattended.

As if…inviting me.

I froze.

What was this?

A test?

A trick?

Another hallucination?

Then I heard it.

Jason’s voice.

Close. Too close.

Not in my ears. In my bones.

“Finish what you started.”

My hands trembled.

But I stepped forward.

Because I knew—this wasn’t over.

The game had followed me.

The hallway was a strobe-lit nightmare.

Lights blinked like dying stars.

Shadows stretched and twisted like fingers reaching from the dark.

And the screams—

They weren’t real.

Not anymore.

They were echoes.

Memories.

Mine. Jason’s. Claire’s. Ethan’s.

Playing on a loop, warping the air, overlapping in an orchestra of agony.

Each door I passed—a memory made flesh.

One opened to the attic.

Nooses swayed like metronomes, keeping time with my heartbeat.

Another showed Claire’s pale, still face, eyes glassy and accusing.

A third—Ethan, eyes blackened with rage, whispering promises he never meant to keep.

“You left us,” his ghost spat.

“You lived,” Claire’s lips mouthed.

“You made me do it,” Jason cried.

I wanted to run.

But there was nowhere to go.

Because this wasn’t an asylum anymore.

It was the house.

And then I found it.

A new room.

A place I hadn’t seen before.

The walls were lined floor to ceiling with files.

Every folder marked with a name.

But most had been torn, burned, blotted out.

All except one.

MIA CARTER.

Dozens of files.

Stacked. Scattered. Hanging from clips.

Photos of the house—before and after.

Crime scene stills.

Courtroom sketches.

X-rays of my brain.

Notes in red ink:

“Unstable”

“Unreliable narrator”

“Possibly orchestrated events”

“No memory of initial trauma?”

“Delusion or design?”

And then, in the corner—

The chalkboard.

Black. Fresh.

As if someone had just wiped it clean.

But not entirely.

Six blank spaces.

Underscores staring back at me like empty graves.

And below them—

A hangman.

Half-drawn.

No mistakes yet.

The chalk floated in the air.

Turning slowly.

Waiting.

Like it remembered my hand.

“This is your punishment,” the voice whispered again. Not from behind me.

From inside me.

“You survived when you shouldn’t have.” “Let’s see if you’re lucky one more time…”

I stared at the board.

The silence pressed against my chest like a weight.

I took one step forward.

The chalk bobbed—beckoning.

Because the game hadn’t ended in that house.

It had only evolved.

And now?

I was the final level.

# To be continued

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