Roy

Roy walked the corridors of the asylum which had been his home since his twelfth birthday. He had faint memories of another home with father and mother but doctors, nurses and other patients had replaced them.

Sometimes, he heard the other patients in the distance as they screamed and shouted. In one room the cry for a nurse often echoed. Running footsteps of the staff would send Roy in the opposite direction and sometimes he would see the white tails of a doctor’s jacket as they rushed by.

Roy wondered in and out rooms. Sometimes, he found someone to talk to but most of the time that other person was trapped in crying or beating the walls. Two people he could talk to were Hattie and Alice, they were nice old ladies. He could also play with the children, even though they teased him about his height. ‘Giant,’ they called him even though he told them his name was Roy.

Sometimes strangers would come and they would bring new medical equipment with them. Roy didn’t mind them as long as they were quiet and didn’t insult the more angry patients who then went on a rampage. He would watch shyly from around corners and when he felt brave, try to talk to them but the strangers didn’t seem to hear him.

Though sometimes they would look at their cameras and get excited over shadow shapes or they would play back his voice on their recorders and act like that was the first time they had heard him.

What he didn’t like were those strangers that came to vandal the asylum. Roy would make a lot of noise, show his massive form and scare them away. He didn’t understand why those people were allowed here, they weren’t new inmates because they seemed able to leave. Perhaps, they enjoyed mocking and upsetting the patients and that’s why they came?

Roy had long taken it upon himself to defend his home and those with in it. There were people with physical and/or mental problems, children, elders who couldn’t look after themselves. The angry patients helped too and Roy didn’t get in their way when they decided to start howling and throwing things about.

It wasn’t in his nature to be like that and beside from the one embarrassing deformity which was his towering height, Roy was a normal, quiet man who enjoyed walking the corridors of the asylum and keeping an eye on things.

(Photo of Roy the giant from a google search)

Partly based on a real story and inspired by Ghost Adventures season 4, episode 2,  Rolling Hills Sanitarium. 

 

Further Information;

https://www.rollinghillsasylum.com/

https://weirdnj.com/stories/rolling-hills-asylum/

https://articles.ghostwalks.com/rolling-hills-asylum/

Advertisement

The Giant’s Pocket Watch #fridayfictoneers

The wooden back of a huge pocket watch had stood in the corner of the town’s park for hundreds of years. The origins of it had long been lost, but the myth was that the pocket watch had once belonged to a giant.

The giant Haldor was running late for the yearly Giants Together meeting. As he trod over a village, ignoring the fleeing of little people far below him, he drew out his pocket watch and checked the time. Seeing, he was going to be very late indeed, he hurriedly put the watch back into his pocket.

However, he missed and the watch hit the floor. Angrily, he bent to pick it up and swiped down two cottages as he did so. Hurrying on, he didn’t notice that his pocket watch had broken in the fall.

Years later, a shepherd lad was searching for a lost lamb when he came across the back of the pocket watch. He stared up in awe at the huge wooden circle then spotting his lamb nearby, he hurried to collect her. When he returned home, he told his father about what he had seen, for the lad was too young to remember the giant Haldor. His father clearly recalled the day though.

And that was how the myth of the giant’s pocket watch began.

 

(Inspired from a prompt from; https://rochellewisoff.com/2017/03/15/17-march-2017/ with thanks. PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast)