Through the upstairs door, a meandering hall ran the full length of the asylum from east to west, and nearly north to south. At each terminus, a window looked out into the yard cloaked in fog, still but for flashes of lightning in the night sky.<br/><br/>Six doors- two in the east wing, two in the west, and two in the north- were locked by a key.<br/><br/>But two doors were clearly unlocked. A weak reading light shone feebly through an ajar door to the south.<br/><br/>Beside it was a bathing chamber, dark, the air still humid from recent use. An iron pump, worn down with use, dripped nothing wholesome at all into the empty grave of a tub stained dark- though if it be blood, it could only proof a crime too horrid to contemplate. There was a waist-high shelf, and a rinse basin of polluted water, and a drip, drip, drip of clear droplets heading south, through the ajar door, from whence the reading light flickered.<br/><br/>It was an elegant sitting room, to the very south. Carpets of cream and rose, paneled walls in feminine floral, gold-trimmed drapes and fine furnishings upholstered in calming robin's egg. It was an exclusive club for the privileged ladies of the house, a retreat spared the ravages of lunatics, and the candlelight there at one of the lovely tables revealed one of them here alone.<br/><br/>She wore a mask, like the lunatics and orderlies, though the attire was that of Doctor Noire. The table where she worked was set in anticipation of six guests, and she at the window, hands working, shuffling a stiff deck of tarokka cards. Her fingers hovered, in attempt to glean some meaning through the backs of the cards.<br/><br/>One, two, three, four, five cards she dealt into a cross, the center card face up and pale in the flickering light. What this superstitious fortune-telling revealed so distressed her that she deflated into her seat, struck by hopelessness.<br/><br/>Second floor:<br/>(https://i.imgur.com/7t8Xt8D.png)