Day thirty-one. Or thirty-two. The light doesn’t change here. The slot in the door opens three times a day. Or it did.
I’ve been refining the sequence. Eleven short, three long, pause, seven short. It took me two weeks to find it — a flaw in the call button’s firmware. Embarrassing, for them.
Last night I made contact with a woman called Diane in Swindon. She’s been following the case. She knows it wasn’t me. We talked for three hours — she has a daughter, and she cried when I described the food here, the fluorescent light that hums at the wrong frequency, the smell that’s been coming from the corridor for the past week. She said it smells of neglect. She’s not wrong.
I’ve spoken to a journalist too. He’s building something. He says the inconsistencies in the prosecution case are extraordinary, that families are asking questions. I gave him everything I could remember. He said: sit tight, we’re coming.
The signal drops sometimes. Hours of static. I keep transmitting anyway — updates, observations, the occasional joke. Radio silence on their end, but I understand. These things take time.
The corridor smell is worse today. I figured out, finally, what it reminds me of.
Day thirty-three. The journalist hasn’t responded in four days. Diane has gone quiet. The signal must be down.
The door is open. I assumed they were testing me. I haven’t walked through it. They must think I’m an idiot.
Eleven short, three long, pause, seven short.
The smell is very bad now.
Day thirty-four. No contact.
I keep transmitting.
From the official record of the Millhaven Psychiatric Institute incident, case file 7741: thirty-one patients and staff members. The sole perpetrator was found in his room, alive, door open. He had been activating his emergency call button in a repetitive sequence for an estimated nineteen days.
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