The Cell

The dark enclosed me, wrapped around me like a blanket, telling me everything would be alright. I could hear my own breathing, ricocheting off the Walls of my cell. I looked to the clock in the matron's office through the bars. 12:27. It was barely even dark.
I surveyed my confinement for a small while. A small room, not more than two metres by three, with my bed nailed firmly to the corner, and all my bluntest possessions in the small cream-cracker coloured cabinet standing guard beside me.
All the objects that the surveyors thought I could potentially harm myself with were in a locked safe in mister Crayton's room. This included my pens.

The Walls were painted a matching calm blue, stopping half-way up, and barely cracked at all, with only a tiny mouse hole in the corner of the room to be seen. The place itself was lovely, but horrible. It smelt smoothly of disinfectant, but with just enough of a stench of urine and vomit to be worrying. The whole atmosphere was supposed to be calming, with televisions, soothing music, and enough soundproofing in the ECT room that the screams were decently muffled.

I toyed with a piece of fallen plaster from the roof, feeling the grooves and indentations with my fingers. It was almost light enough to see them.

I knew why they put me in here. I'm not stupid. It was my thirteenth night under this roof, and Mum and Dad and Gran and Tommy and Uncle Pete and Aunt Rachel had all taken turns trying to sympathise with me, and bringing me books, and occasionally the odd chocolate bar, but I knew that they all thought I was apeshit crazy. The kind of looks they cast when they thought I wasn't looking: like they're trying to figure out how something like this could happen to someone my age. I still had to be assessed, of course, so Dr Reynolds and the rest can find the cause of it.
I started to doubt my mind myself when I first saw them, but then they kept coming back to see me. They kept visiting me. Every day. Every day I would see one scurrying behind a bush or under a car. Idly stepping through the drive when my back turned. I knew they couldn't be real, but I found it hard to believe I'd never noticed them all before. Darting from shadow to shadow like ghosts, scurrying through the bins at night, never long enough for me to get a proper look. They seemed to be everywhere I went, as if they were following me. Until I came here. Not one had made it's way inside THIS little seventies-built brain-fortress.

I turned in my bed, facing away from the glossy paint. The colour made me sick, like I was drowning under it. I could feel My eyes becoming weaker: powerless to the strength of sleep, and the pull of deep blue relaxation filled my mind,
But then I saw something. Something red. I bolted upright in bed, sending sheets shuffling to the floor, and forcing the frame to wobble in it's legs.
Again. A flash of noise from the floor.

I peered over the edge of the bedside table, trying to find the mouse that had disturbed my ascension into sleep.
The spine of the mattress squeaked in anticipation with my shifting weight.

A tiny man was standing before me. About seven inches tall and bright translucent red. I could see his eyes glinting in the half-darkness, and running to catch up with him was a woman of equal size, her hair flying wildly in strings of crimson, clutching a White box the size of a dice.
She looked up at me, and I instantly recognised her as the melted one in the road. I could see her clearly, now, and she gave a quick smile, before dropping the box at her feet.
"hello, mate," said she,
"we meet again."