Arkham: Cure for Wellness

A Story by Abishai100

Dr. Leonard Shattling reveals his Arkham/India asylum social experiment for dream-play but confronts the outstanding limits of daylight.

An iconic fanfiction nod to a modern psyche-noir masterpiece, A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski). Hope you like it (and stay safe!),

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A special psychiatric asylum was erected in the mountains of India, and many prominent figures, including doctors and patients and even celebrities, wanted to take part in this modern Utopian social experiment. The asylum was named Arkham and was conceived by Dr. Leonard Shattling of Dartmouth, and he wanted himself to be one of the patients as well as one of the doctors at Arkham. Let the adventure begin.

DR. SHATTLING (Leonard): India is the ideal environmental atmosphere to host an asylum comfy for both men and women.

One of the patients (non-doctors) was a former Interpol-relations blood-diamond infiltration-agent/officer and 'ninja-thief' named Amlan Satan (code-name: Storm-Shadow) who'd gone insane with Affective Disorder (a hybridized form of schizophrenia and depression) and believed he was actually a real-life modern-day pirate named Scruffs.

SCRUFFS: Dr. Shattling's shown me photos in Arkham of historic female patients in looney-bins who fight insanity with valor.

LEONARD (Dr. Shattling): Amlan's a unique case and prefers being called 'Scruffs' and stirs in me past studies at Dartmouth.

Leonard gave a special press-release and American psychiatry-report for the Journal of Neuropsychiatry in North America (JNNA) in which he described the treatment at Arkham/India to be a 'cure for wellness' to approach serious patients looking to either treat or 'indulge' their borderline hypnosis with 'self-imposed' insanity or even hypochondria. This would be the first time that hypochondria would be addresses as a mental construct, capable of being treated with modern sophisticated medicines, especially Klonopin, easing people's ability to relax their mental muscles and think with solace for themselves. Leonard announced he himself would take part in this social experiment at Arkham as a patient as well as a doctor!

The concept for Leonard's Nobel Peace Prize winning social experiment was the inspiration for an audacious new psychological noir film called A Cure for Wellness starring Dane Dehaan and Angelina Jolie.

LEONARD: Some of our female patients who're not actually ill bring with them special documents symbolic of insanity-IQ.

DOCTOR AT ARKHAM: We administer Klonopin meds like water at Arkham and take part in 'lifestyle sensuality' with patients.

An American mother concerned her murderous son who'd killed a policeman in Haddonfield enrolled him (Damian) into Arkham to see if he'd like to engage with other pretty young women who'd been already enrolled/admitted into Dr. Leonard Shattling's incredible social experiment center in India.

LEONARD: The history of psychiatric asylums around the world have offered us incredible images of socialized concerns.

During Leonard's personal stay at Arkham, he began noticing strange goings-on at the asylum in India. For example, he noticed that the drinking water-glasses administered to Klonopin-patients may've been dosed with some foreign mild hallucinogen and began wondering if some of the volunteer doctors were taking liberal liberties in inducing fantastic delusions to 'complement' the volunteer patients' goals to 'induce' their own sense of mental adventure and self-exploration and controls.

SCRUFFS: I remember my life on the outside as a dashing post-graduate Interpol-relations ninja, but now I'm an Arkham doll!

'Scruffs' had fallen in love with the new Arkham patient Angie who'd been a struggling movie-star in Hollywood after scandals emerged regarding her being a distributor of Valium and Lithium to movie-stars in nightclubs. This scandal was followed by revelations that she'd been suffering from acute depression and volunteered herself into Arkham under Leonard's care. She quickly learned that part of the 'social experiment' of Arkham was to engage sensually with the other patients/doctors in what was really a life sanitarium resembling some kind of mild erotic ashram, and she felt like she'd fit in well there. However, Angie started to see she'd not get on in this arena of mind-arrows without her newfound lover Scruffs.

Leonard meanwhile kept exploring some of the more stranger goings-on inside Arkham and found even further evidence that some of the volunteer doctors had been liberally engaging in secret experiments with the volunteer patients/doctors, sometimes immersing them in oxygen-tube water-tanks for them to float around while on Klonopin and hallucinogens to entreat fantasies about cryogenics-like immortality.

LEONARD: I get the eerie feeling that a number of the volunteer patients/doctors are growing more insane at Arkham.

Leonard now did his hardest to make his exploration rounds in Arkham claiming to just be exercising, even on crutches after he fell down some stairs, while actually 'snooping around' for clues about this sideshow at Arkham carried on by some of the rogue/rebellious volunteer patients/doctors. Leonard wondered if Arkham was a disaster after all rather than his envisioned final cure for hypochondria.

LEONARD: As a member of the neuropsychiatry profession, I'd remained proud of historic images of great socialized cares.

Leonard grabbed one of his newfound girlfriends at Arkham and made a break for escape, hopping onto her Asylum bicycle and attempting to ride past the front-gate guardsmen. This was an ill-fated dream, as it resulted in some solitary time inside Arkham for Dr. Shattling. He never saw his girlfriend again who's kept in a separate wing forever.

LEONARD: Recruiting these volunteer patients who are equally sensual and experimental may lead to concrete anarchy.

SCRUFFS: By heavens, this experience at Arkham has inspired in me to do some future photo-imagery art about insanity!

Leonard himself meanwhile began making paintings of himself making love to his now separated girlfriend at Arkham, and the paintings became very very popular among the patients/doctors ironically!

“When it comes to sex, the most important six inches are the ones between the ears" (Dr. Ruth).

LEONARD: If I ever find my girlfriend at Arkham again, I yearn to discover she's in a comfy bathtub dreaming of organics.

SCRUFFS: So they tell me they're recruiting a hot new Bollywood celebrity into Arkham and want me to be her new beau!

Dr. Leonard Shattling ultimately decided to leave Arkham on his own volition and appeared at a future psychology media conference with his new wife Shelbye during which he announced to the world, "This experiment, as radical as it felt, says nothing about 'alternative courses' for the regular use of the declared dependable psychiatric drug Klonopin, so I hope critics/reviewers will remember this entire Arkham ordeal as simply a venture into the interiors of the human soul."

Angie meanwhile was also released from Arkham and was now appearing in a special Bollywood (India) film about celebrities going through mental conditions and coming out of them to consult in society as special 'psyche-seers' for the mental community around the world. Scruffs would've been proud.

SCRUFFS: I'm never leaving Arkham...unless they enlist me in the Foreign Irish Republican Army.

Scruffs' old girlfriend, prior to his admission into the 'Arkham Experiment', worried her once government-officer beau was now forever some kind of hallucination maniac and entreated the legal system to find ways to get him out of Arkham and back into her life. He'd confessed he missed making love to her (Elka), but he told the press, "If Elka wants me, she'll have to join me in Arkham...forever."

Elka made a painting of 'Scruffs' (Amlan Satan), or rather an artwork re-presenting what she envisioned what was Scruff's mental imagination about his two great life-loves (Elka and Angie), and she hung the painting on her LA loft wall, hoping someday her beau/pirate would find his way back to her as Storm-Shadow.