The decorations, or lack thereof rather, were pallid. Even though the curtains tried to be blue, they would never be seen as anything but white to those that lived between the walls.

Everything seemed white. In fact, despite the muted blue curtains, runny yellow bedspreads, pale purple plaster, and sickly green flooring, when you woke up in the morning the very first thing you saw when you fought your eyelids open was white.

Nothing more—nothing less. Even if your eyes did recognize the colors, all you would notice is a hideously decorated room… But you didn’t need to see more than the white to remember where you were.

But incase you did forget, there were plenty of other stimulating visuals like the beds pushed against the walls. A few had safety guards on the sides, but those were only necessary if you ever had to be tied down.

The on/off switches for everything looked the same—just like a light switch. But you couldn’t get confused because they were all labeled. The lights were cased in by unbreakable glass. This wasn’t really unbreakable, but everyone liked to think that it was.

The main source of light wasn’t the overhead light or even any of the lamps—all of which were operated by the identical looking switches—it was the window. Each room had a nice sized window at the end, and when the sun came in, a striped pattern fell to the floor as the light glared past the bars.

When they unlocked your door, you could wander into the lounge if you felt like it, but the lounge was really just an ill-furnished attempt at a family room. The furniture didn’t match, not like anyone really cared… The overstuffed couch was plaid. All the armchairs were this terrible green and were so beaten that you could have added eggs and flour and called it cake batter. The whole room made you want to cry just because someone had set these ugly green chairs next to this disgusting red and black plaid sofa.

The television didn’t have the nice plastic casing around it. No one knew why. Sometimes if the program you were watching was particularly bad it was more entertaining to watch the mechanical processes of the TV.

They told her she slept too much and that she didn’t eat enough. She argued that she was most nearly an insomniac and that food merely repulsed her.

So they brought her here.

She didn’t need to be here. As far as she could explain, there was nothing wrong with her. Everyone just wanted something to be wrong so that there was a reason behind the way she acted. But there wasn’t anything wrong, and there wasn’t going to be anything wrong. As a matter of fact, nothing had ever been wrong—it was all so fantastically right.

Everything she noticed about the place made her think she really was sick, though. Waking to white pouring into her eyes made her think each dawn that she was moving in to the next life. No such luck.