Advertisement
Please wait...

Panic Button



Estimated reading time — 7 minutes

Before I start, I have to admit something. I’m only telling you this because I think that it is important. But I swear, what happened was real. I just hope that you don’t judge me based on what I’m about to share.

The thing is, I live in a mental institution. I am clinically insane. 10 years ago I was diagnosed with severe paranoia, hallucinations and multiple other disorders, and I was locked up in here because my parents couldn’t cope. I don’t hold anything against them. I mean, it’s not their fault that their daughter is crazy! They tried their best, bless them, but sometimes people need specialist help, and I was one of those people. Looking back, I was a lot worse then than I am now, but I’m starting to stray away from the point.

I’ve moved from institution to institution over the years. Some of were burnt down by inmates, some were shut by the government but there was one place, the last one that I stayed in, that shut for a much more horrifying reason.

It was called the Oaktree Institute, but we patients called it OTI. It was situated in a secluded part of the countryside near a dense stretch of woodland. The building itself built in the 19th century and was originally a fancy mansion for some rich family, but after the last heir died without a will, it was seized by the government and converted to an asylum; but they don’t call them that nowadays. Back in the day, it probably would have been a nice place to live, but now it’s once pristine appearance had slowly deteriorated over time.

The ornate gargoyles that once stood on the roof had been weathered by wind and rain but most of them had chipped and fallen apart anyway.
Green ivy twisted up and inside the cracks in the yellowing stone walls that once would have been marble white. It was in desperate need of restoration, but a global recession meant that any scheduled work had to be cancelled due to lack of funding.

Inside, the furnishings and decor were very dated, but clean at least. The wall paper was that horrible 70s yellow stuff and the carpets were faded and worn. The canteen was a bit better at least; it was originally the nursery room for the children that had lived there. Polished oak covered the floor but the walls were ornately decorated with beautiful frescos of stories from The Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales. Delicately painted on the ceiling were pictures of cherubs and angels holding flowers and hearts. It was a peculiar room, for in old houses such as Oak Tree Manor, nurseries were usually upstairs or in the attic, but here they’d built it on the ground floor. It was right next to the kitchen, and when it’d been converted to a mental institute builders had knocked through the wall to the small kitchen. I’d never been in the kitchen – only staff were allowed there – but I often ate in the canteen. Only a few of us ‘inmates’, as we were sometimes called, were allowed to eat in there as many of my fellow ‘inmates’ were too dangerous to have contact with others, but fortunately I wasn’t one of those people.

Also on the ground floor was the staff quarters and a visiting hall; no one ever came to visit me though. On the first floor were two wings; the Williams wing and the Mattenson wing. They were both for male patients and were named after two of the previous benefactors to the institute. There were another two wings on the second floor which were for female patients. They were called the Victoria wing and the Golding wing. I was in the Victoria wing, which was patriotically named after the monarch at the time, Queen Victoria. My room was right by the stairs to the attic. The attic was where the dangerous patients were held. I could often hear them wailing and banging through the ceiling above me at night. I had asked to move rooms but there were no others spare apparently.

Other than the psychos making noise above me, it was a nice room. I had my bed in the corner of the room opposite the door and a TV on the wall facing my bed. In the other corner was a bookshelf full of numerous novels and other such things. It probably just sounds like a normal bedroom room to you, but trust me, it wasn’t. The door was made of iron and every night the nurses would bolt it shut to lock us in. Next to the door was one of those two way mirror things. From inside the room it just looked like a normal mirror but on the outside it was a window that the doctors and nurses could see through. I didn’t like it at all, but at least they covered it up at night so no one could spy on us. It was sort of like a prison really, except for one thing;

If we needed to get out, there was a button above the bed that called the nurses to our rooms. We were only supposed to use it if we were having a panic attack or hallucinating or something like that. It was a panic button. I’d always thought it kind of useless for me as I’ve never had the need to use it before – I’ve never been particular scared of my hallucinations or had any bad panic attacks – but there was one night that changed my opinion of that button forever.

Advertisements

It was particularly stormy that night and the howling winds and battering rain made the old house creak and sway. I decided to stay in my room and read a little; that night I’d chosen “Alice in Wonderland”. It’s not a particularly difficult to read book, but rumbles of thunder and cracks of lightning hindered me from becoming fully immersed to the point where I eventually gave up and I settled down in bed. As I was tired, I drifted off almost immediately though, since I’m a light sleeper, I kept being awoken by random noises and the wails of the crazies upstairs. I know it may seem a bit off for me of all people to mock others and their mental health ailments, but if you’ve been locked away for as long as I have, you’d become mean too. But I digress; allow me to continue to bore with the seemingly unnecessary details of that night. After the wails of the criminally insane above me finally desisted, I managed to sleep for another two hours before I was next woken up; this time it was the night nurse locking and bolting the door. An uneasy feeling arose in my stomach from anxiety and paranoia that prevented me from returning to the world of sleep.

I lay awake for several hours, left alone to my empty thoughts and the storm raging outside. I found the echoes of raindrops vaguely comforting for some reason. The noises were consistent unlike the other noises that I heard in the night. The monotony of the pitter pattering sent me into an almost hypnotised state. They’ve done studies on that you know. Volunteers were strapped to chairs and were blasted with sequenced lights and radio static. These stimulants seemed to induce a sleep like phase on the subjects and I suppose that was what happened to me that night.

It didn’t feel like normal sleep; it was almost as if I was semi-conscious yet the telltale dreamlike elements were still there. I could hear the storm outside, but I could also hear alarms and eerie chanting that sounded distant and muffled. Naturally at the time, I assumed that I’d dreamt these noises or that I’d at least hallucinated them. But then I heard another noise. It was a sharp, loud noise that drew me to wakeness. There was an urgency in the noise that set off warning bells in my head. When I was finally fully conscious, I managed to decipher the sound.

It was tapping. It was fingers tapping in glass. Suddenly, I was blinded by a dim light that lit up my room that was once blanketed in darkness. On the wall next to my bed I could see a looming shadow with long bony tendril like fingers dancing up and down. Involuntarily, I shuddered, and the tapped stopped. I thought that it was all over, and that I’d just hallucinated a little;

But I was wrong.

Advertisements

The absence of sound was replaced by earpiercingly painful screeches. I groaned a little as the daggers of sound shredded my eardrums. My mind started to wander and I involuntarily began to imagine horrifying things. They were huge, dark shadowy things with pale faces and knives for hands slowly creeping towards me. Fear started to grip me as my thoughts felt more and more real. I didn’t know what to do. It was like when you’re a little kid, and you hear a strange sound so you automatically assume its a monster. That’s how I felt. Like a small, helpless child cowering under her duvet covers. The screeching grew louder and louder and I almost let out a wail of desperation. “Why was this thing taunting me?” my mind sobbed. I curled up into a foetal position and started to cry. I felt utterly hysterical.

But then something snapped inside of me. A voice of reason whispered amongst the swelling masses of terrible thoughts. “You’re hallucinating,” I thought to myself. Then it didn’t seem so bad. As the panicked part of me slowly drifted away, I felt a slight pride as a rolled over in bed, no longer afraid of the hallucinations that had haunted me.

Something was still troubling me though. It was the light. The light that had casted shadows in my walls. Now, I’m not afraid of light of course, but it was where the light was coming from that made my blood run cold.

The mirror. The two-way mirror. It’d been tampered with so that I could see the other side. Pressed up against the glass, was a sickly grey face on a bald, misshapen head. It’s eyes we’re bulbous and bloodshot and had a terrifying gleam to them. Below that was its mouth with triangle shaped teeth stained a worrying shade of red. The thing snarled at me with a smile. It was enjoying watching me suffer. It slowly lifted a hand and started to tap its long, yellowing fingernails against the glass.

I couldn’t breathe. I literally froze. I was panic stricken and the only way to cope with the emotions I felt was to wail loudly in the hope the someone would come and help me. I wanted to hide, to get away from it, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I thought that if I even blinked for a second, it would get me.

As I slowly moved my hand from out of the covers, the creature bared it’s teeth at me and hissed causing me to recoil in terror. I wanted the voice of reason to come back. Just to have been told that none of this was real would have made the whole situation more bearable. But the problem was that it felt so real . I lifted my arm out again and slowly reached up to the panic button. I was sure that the moment I pressed it, everything would be ok. As I poised my arm to push it, I noticed the creature grin. Not the evil grin that it had smiled before, but a more “genuine” as such grin. It was as if it wanted me to press the button. My mind was so jumbled that I didn’t realise it in time. I pressed the button, and heard it click. Breathing a sigh of relief, I expected a nurse to come rushing into me with my medication.

Advertisements

But then it clicked.

Something clicked in my mind.

I remembered something that I was told by the head medical practitioner here when I first arrived. “For ease of access,” I remember him saying, “upon pressing the panic button, the door to a patients cell will automatically unlock.”

And then it clicked.

The door clicked open.

Credit To – Skylaria

Please wait...

Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.

40 thoughts on “Panic Button”

  1. One minor hole…why do they lock the door if it can be opened from inside the cell with the push of a button?
    Otherwise, it was interesting. The intro was misleading in that there would be a conspiracy or huge event that would end up being hushed up and with the asylum shut down, but the monster was a minor, possibly life-ending appearance. 8/10 for those holes.

  2. I really enjoyed this story. There were some sentences in need of rewriting and a few grammatical errors, but nothing so obstinate that it interfered with the story. And also, while a conclusive ending is nice, I appreciate an open one. From what I personally have gathered using context clues, the “horrifying reason” the institution shut down was that all the psychos escaped(Hence, the panic button opening the doors, which implies that any patient could leave their room should they press it). And, wether I am correct or not about the ending, I find the possible events spawning from the release of the psychos intriguing as well as slightly terrifying.

  3. I loved this story easy 8.9 maybe 9 truly one of my favs. only thing is i feel like the ending is incomplete. Felt like a cliff hanger maybe? Just got question thats all but Truly awesome story! love it. Write more please

  4. Why does the bad thing that happens to the person always have to end in death, perhaps the creature harmed her or simply taunted her in a way that her mind, in its delicate state, couldn’t grasp so it terrified her. There are worse things than death you know

  5. I thought it was great! If you wrote it from a third person point of view, it would have made more sense, though.
    9.5/10

  6. I hate to be “that guy” but as someone with legitimate mental health problems and someone that actually has been institutionalized, I found the narrative in this story extremely offensive. I really enjoyed the concept of the story but the offensive language used to describe the PATIENTS (not inmates) detracted from that, as well as the narrator’s seemingly rational mind. Other than the occasional “oh yeah, I hallucinate,” she is perfectly mentally stable. Although the author’s attempt at mentally unstable probably would have been worse. The author clearly has no experience with and failed to research both mental disorders, and what it’s like to be institutionalized.

    I won’t repeat what others have already stated about plot inconsistencies. Creative idea, but poor execution and frankly insensitive storytelling. I hope the author continues to flesh out their imagination and write more, as I believe they could really write some cool stuff, I just hope they stay away from further trivializing society’s views on mental illness in the process.

    xx Coley

    1. While I originally intended to refrain from replying to comments on this site I felt like I had to clear up a few things in this situation.
      Firstly I would like to apologise for any offence that may have been caused and this was certainly not intended.
      However regarding your comments questioning the research that went into this piece I have several points of my own to make.

      The protagonist of the story was inspired by my sister who is schizophrenic. I wrote the character around her and how she told me she would react in situations. The character is not the embodiment of all metal illnesses and therefore should not be treated as such. In my sisters own words “every schizophrenic is different, just as every sane person is different” and after reading numerous comments she herself was insulted by the fact that for many people “mental illness” is synonymous with “inability to construct a sentence eloquently”. In other words, and this relates to many comments, having a mental illness doesn’t mean you cannot sound intelligent and sane.

      Furthermore, you picked up on the fact that the protagonist doesn’t emphasis too much on her illness.
      This was intentional.
      The character, once again, is inspired by my sister and she told me it was important for them to not focus too much on their illness and, sorry to quote my sister again, but she has often told me that “mental illness should only be defining of a situation, not to the person”.
      What she was saying was that she quite frankly doesn’t care about her illness and just considers it “something that is” but that she only considers it important if it is relevant to the situation.

      Regarding “what it is like to be institutionalized” I did in fact research this, as my sister didn’t want to talk about her time in hospital in much depth, but I found that individual experiences of institutionalisation varied so greatly in different countries and were varied still in different areas of those countries that I decided that my protagonists experience should feature elements of my research but also be partially fictional to fit the plot and for ease.

      Also the “offensive language” you mention i.e. “inmates” was either used in quote of the hospital staff or to add a layer or subplot to the story i.e. “Burnt down by inmates”; I wonder where people may be called “inmate” non offensively that could perhaps add mystery or understanding to the story? (I’m trying to be subtle so as not to ruin any future plot line completely).

      I hope this clears up some things.

      1. So I know this is an old post/comment, but I wanted to say I appreciate the research you put into this and agree about the narrator’s ability to form a sentence.

        The one thing that threw me a little was that she describes herself as paranoid, and then goes on to say she has never been afraid of her hallucinations. Perhaps it would make more sense if she had always been able to deal with them on her own before, or something? Or maybe the medication dulled them and made them more tolerable? I don’t know.

        I’ve studied a lot about schizophrenia, been to Hearing Voices Network meetings, and been in hospitals myself. Most of the people I’ve met there don’t sound especially crazy — actually, I’ve been the most overtly crazy one many a time. Ha. But yeah, I agree that sounding lucid isn’t an issue.

        As for the word “inmates,” doesn’t time period factor into that? I feel like nowadays it’s “patients” but the standard term was “inmates” not too long ago.

        Anyway, I liked the story in spite of the paranoia issue. Keep on writing! :)

      2. So I know this is an old post/comment, but I wanted to say I appreciate the research you put into this and agree about the narrator’s ability to form a sentence.

        The one thing that threw me a little was that she describes herself as paranoid, and then goes on to say she has never been afraid of her hallucinations. Perhaps it would make more sense if she had always been able to deal with them on her own before, or something? Or maybe the medication dulled them and made them more tolerable? I don’t know.

        As far as showing her craziness goes, it’s partly about what’s plausible IRL and partly what’s believable to the reader — she doesn’t have to be overtly insane / not lucid, but it would make sense as a story to have the insanity leak into the story a little more. Just a titch, like maybe a sentence to show what her parents couldn’t cope with, or a tiny detail here or there. You tell the reader she is crazy, but don’t show it, which is more a literary thing than anything else.

        I’ve studied a lot about schizophrenia, been to Hearing Voices Network meetings, and been in hospitals myself. Most of the people I’ve met there don’t sound especially crazy — actually, I’ve been the most overtly crazy one a number of times. Ha. But yeah, I agree that sounding lucid isn’t an issue. Also, I’m pretty sure paranoid schizophrenics tend to be more lucid on average than the other types.

        As for the word “inmates,” doesn’t time period factor into that? I feel like nowadays it’s “patients” but the standard term was “inmates” not too long ago.

        Anyway, sorry this comment is so insanely long, and I liked the story in spite of the issues I mentioned. I liked the repetition of “clicked” at the end — using several different meanings of the word was a nice touch. Keep on writing! :)

      3. Eep, sorry about the double post. My internet was being a bag of dicks earlier and I didn’t realize the first version posted.

  7. 7/10

    Two way mirror part is brilliant with the light – a two way mirror is made of a kind of glass that you can see through from the darker side. Everything from “they cover it up at night” to “it had been tampered with” (and was a source of light) is exactly how someone in that situation would describe this

    My only issue – but a really big issue – is that it’s clear the person lived, but the ending is supposed to be a cliffhanger. One or the other works, but not both.

    If you do a rewrite, I prefer the cliffhanger

  8. Okay… So, I have a number of issues with this story.
    #1: The person is obviously still alive, which makes me wonder how big and bad the monster really is (or in this case, WAS…).
    #2: The ending said nothing about WHY the institution closed down (The person is obviously still alive, so it wouldn’t be her death…).
    #3: Why would the doors unlock (allowing easy access out)?
    #4: The ending. (That statement pretty much explains itself.)
    Just a couple problems.

  9. I loved it sooo much! Keep it up, this pasta is in my bookmarks bar, and is my favorite.

    I don’t care what other people say, this is my favorite and it made me jump!

  10. I usually prefer pastas where the monster is left up to the reader’s imagination, but this one is an exception. There’s just something about the thought of having nothing but a pane of glass protecting you from something intelligent and sinister, and it can see you and it knows that you’re scared of it… *shudder* I’m getting chills down my spine just thinking about it.

    Unfortunately, there’s one detail that ruined it for me. As Jason mentioned above, having a panic button that unlocks the door makes no sense. It would take an inmate all of two seconds to figure out that they could use it to get out whenever they want, completely defeating the purpose of locking them in in the first place. Perhaps the door can only be opened from the outside in any event? If that’s the case, it could have been made a bit clearer.

    Bravo on making me keep a constant eye on the sliding glass door that I’m currently sitting about 50 feet away from, though. :)

  11. I know this isn’t important but for some reason this thought has been pestering me. I get that the panic button would unlock the door for easy access but why? If they went threw all the trouble to lock the doors at night why would the inmates be able to freely unlock it? couldn’t they just press it to escape?

    1. My thoughts exactly. I was able to overlook some of the other stuff that the other comments mention, and the monster had me genuinely creeped out, but that’s one thing that just makes no sense.

    2. Well, the nurse is signaled every time they press the button. So when they try to escape, the nurse will be there, along with the fact there are probably guards near the doors.

  12. Uhm, this one has an opening that clearly shows the storyteller is alive so….

    What did blade-hands do? Take the Alice in Wonderland maybe?
    Sorry I was a little sarcastic there but it’s kinda important.

  13. I’d say that this story needs a good rewrite, there are awkward sentences and weird wording troughout. But the worst thing is the ending. The door clicked open, and then? Apparently, then nothing happened, because the narrator is telling the story afterward, so she is alive and well as well can be. In the beginning she even goes out of her way to make it clear that the events happened in the past (“what happened WAS real”). So, she survived whatever happened after the door opened, which brings to the question: why doesn’t she say what happened?

  14. I LOVE HOW CRITICISMS ARE THUMBED DOWN LMFAOOO You all are expecting candy and fluff. “IT WAS GREAT! I LOVED IT! NOTHING WAS WRONG!” Real world people…sugar coating anything doesn’t help this person grow at all as a writer.

    I liked the story. Well put together and cohesive. The ending was creepy, the monster very creepy. The two way mirror was an interesting fact. I would have liked her to see the creature but be frozen with fear and could only watch in horror as blood splattered on it from the other side. In the morning, her door mysteriously unlocks, as she finds out, and as she walks out, she sees…nothing. No employees, patients, she hears no screams, leaving her to wonder: has this whole thing been a dream?…

  15. Well written and a fun read but its incomplete. Endings are hard I know but an attempt at one would have benefitted this story greatly. Still pretty good tho. 6/10
    Keep reading and writing

  16. Wow, that made my heart pound! That was genuinely scary, and I’m reading it in a lit room during school, this is, so far, my favorite pasta!

  17. Not bad. Just two points that seemed to weaken the creepyness of the story. Firstly, judging by the fact that the protagonist told us the story, the creature did not harm her. Secondly, the character warned readers about being prone to hallucinations, so, again, the whole event may be interpreted as some paranoid imagination provoked by heavy rain and lightning or some other reasons.

  18. Very lucid for a mental patient. I was also amazed that she was “blinded” by a “dim light”. Honestly it just felt wordy and I felt more bored by the descriptions than creeped out. Just my opinion, definitely there is potential there.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top