Institution

News 1/23/012: We appreciate all of the support we’ve been getting for institution, we’d like to give back to those who wanted to participate. As of now, the written storyline for Institution seems to be approaching its climax. Sadly there is no room for extra characters or plots in the main storyline, but those who still want to participate in a small way can write up a short story that will augment the experience of Institution. If accepted, Kozz will do an illustration for your story(s), no questions asked.
The scenario: Your character is a patient or perhaps a staff who works at the Schmerzen asylum. They have a dream, or hallucination, or witness a circumstance that seems to correlate with the ongoing events in the story. They might have a central figure that embodies their worst fear. The central fear does not necessarily need to be present in your story, it doesn’t even need to be eluded to outright, perhaps there is just a unsettling atmosphere that may seem unexplainable.
If your character knows the existing characters in the plot, then they do not have to be in the asylum to have this dark experience.
Some requirements are a literate writing style (correct grammar use, proper spelling etc). The goal here is to give you as much creative freedom as possible, the main reason why it might not be accepted is if it doesn’t appear to have ANYTHING in common with the existing storyline. Other than that, its open season. Your story will be posted in the dream section before Chapter 8 along with other submissions. This event will take place during an entire month of April- yes… we shall call it DREAM MONTH. Be sure to get your stories in before then! 4/1/2012 You can certainly submit more than one story at a time. All of them will be illustrated individually.
Submit your wonderful writing to ghostlingcub@yahoo.com, or submit a comment if you have any questions.
Happy writing!

In a not-so-well known corner of Germany, there is a highway that runs through a pine forest and twines through gentle, undulating hills. There are surrounding cities and small, provincial towns that are easily accessible at any turn off from the road. Yet, if one takes a twisting route further up into the incline, to where the blue spruces grow more erratic, they would meet an iron gate. Expansive gardens roll up to the iron barriers like skeletal waves, tamed by patient hands.

A hidden building looms here, it’s expanse laid out like an ancient dragon, secluded in its forgotten fortress. Its many peaked windows stare out onto its domain, filled with an imperceptible personality. They light up with orange light at night like gleaming fires, where mysterious pagan rituals take place behind those secretive walls… at least for the children who have listened to the old wives tales, and peer with wide eyes into the house of the mentally insane.

People call it the Schmerzen Asylum. The name itself seems ominous, but no one ever bothered to change it after decades of it being that way. Animals on two legs covert this place, wrapped in lab coats, jeans or straitjackets, the good doctors oversee that nothing becomes “too out of hand,” and that the disturbed do not overrun their ranks. Despite its new additions, one can’t deny that the place is whispering old secrets. The patients will sense the walls trying to communicate at some point during their stay. Behind those whispering walls are tales, but for now, Schmerzen and its residents wait for someone to expose them.