Michael smiled at Gina as he left to bring her a juice box. She was awfully paranoid, wasn't she? Always darting her eyes this way and that. He wondered what made her so worried about everything.<br/><br/>As he approached the serving line, Michael's own paranoia kicked in. He had never trusted the food staff here. They seemed to enjoy tormenting the patients more than most of the other staff members, yet they were rarely punished for it because of their status as menial workers. Their jobs just weren't important enough to bother chastising them repeatedly. If they presented too much of a problem, then they would simply be fired. He wondered if their cruelty was just the darkness of the Asylum manifesting in them. Given enough time, it tainted everyone here in it's own special way. One serving woman had actually gone so far as to put live spiders into a bowl full of salad. She knew that the bowl was going to a young man who was deathly afraid of spiders. He had acute arachnophobia, among a number of other mental hangups. When he had fallen onto the ground in fear-induced convulsions, the woman had taken a tarantula and stuffed it into his mouth. Needless to say, she was one of the workers who was fired.<br/><br/>Jenine, one of the younger members of the kitchen crew gave him the juice box without a hassle. He thanked her for it and thanked God for the fact that no trouble had happened this time.<br/><br/>Michael returned to the table and sat down across from Regina and poked the small plastic straw through the foil hole for her. There was a soft crinkling noise as the thin metal parted and the straw pushed through into the ocean of purple sugar within.. The juice was held in a plain white cardboard box with the letters "G   RAPE" printed in black underneath another black picture of two cherries. He shook his head at how cheap the Asylum could be sometimes. Generic brands were one thing, but this was just ridiculous.<br/><br/>Handing the box to her, he noticed that the storm's speed had increased. Almost as if on cue, the lights in the social room/dining hall flickered. After a few more flickers, they grew steadily weaker before going out entirely, plunging the entire top three floors into darkness, as well parts of the lower floors. Only the dim light from the windows filtered in, sometimes augmented by a sudden flash of crisp blue lightning. The roll and clap of thunder added a foreboding sense of danger to the already darkened Asylum.<br/><br/>"Well, that can't be good" he muttered to Regina.