Ernest slowly woke up, getting out of bed today went against his basic, primal instincts, but he did nevertheless, it felt like he had slept too long already.<br/>His body felt like a glob of honey that had been poured onto the sheets, viscuous and clumsy.<br/>As he put his feet down and heaved the rest of his frame onto them he sunk towards the floor as his legs for a moment melted and gave way.<br/><br/>Ernest concluded that he must have managed to get into bed the wrong way last night. He didn't know there was a right way to sleep but obviously this was not it.<br/>Pants and shirt were applied, it took much longer than it should have. Fingers ran through the short, dark brown hair, making it as elegant as possible.<br/><br/>He yawned long and hard, threw a gaze through the little window with thin iron bars. It was raining again, or it still was.<br/>He shambled out of his little room, via the narrow main hallway into the social area, where the inmates would gather, except the especially reclusive ones.<br/><br/>The many windows would give the room a pleasant airiness, only now the dull light from behind the clouds suspended it in a sort of uneasy limbo. It was in a quaint style, elegant wooden surfaces, bookshelves, wooden tables that looked like they came from some English manor, no clinical, plasticy, pale hospital walls.<br/>A palpable calm permeated the space that usually would be filled with voices, footsteps and the occasional soft laughter.<br/>A palpable calm, but one that to Ernest felt more like a prowling wrongness rather than of soothing respite.<br/><br/>No one was walking around in the hallways, in the open room, no one sat in the couches and read a book while having their breakfast. No one but Henry, who sat, limp and with closed eyes in the couch in front of the windows. None of the staff had managed to wake up before him it seemed, a rare and grave example of negligence. Yesterday's plates on the tables, with their crumbs and spoons.<br/><br/>Ernest noticed the medicine cabinet across the room, half ajar, not locked like it always used to be.<br/>Driven by idle curiosity he opened it, something he had never had the opportunity to do before, revealing only shelves,<br/>no bottles with strange, long, made up names.<br/><br/>Through the big section of windows he looked out at the glistening, well kept lawn, the dark, foreboding line of pine trees that surrounded the building, there was no trace of them outside, in fact their cars weren't there anymore. As his eyes swept across the scene they fell on what appeared to be a chain wrapped around the handles of the main door.<br/><br/>At this point a faint siren of distress awakened in his still weary mind, a growing embryo of panic.<br/><br/>"Uh, Henry?"<br/>He walked back, gently shook the man's shoulder.<br/>"Hey, Henry?"<br/>He looked at Henry's chest, held his gaze on it for about half a minute, was he imagining?<br/>He grabbed Henry's neck and shook him vigorously,<br/>put two fingers against his throat.<br/>"Whatafuck is this?" he whispered to himself.