They called him by a single name in the asylum: “Patient Number 27.” But his real name, carved into his old records, was: Adam Crawford.

A massive man, his features as if sculpted from stone, and eyes so dark they banished every trace of warmth—eyes that made it seem his soul knew nothing but emptiness. He never spoke, never laughed, never showed anger or joy. Even the doctors themselves suspected he lacked emotions altogether.

Everyone avoided him. The patients lowered their gaze when he passed; the nurses wrote their notes from a distance. But you... you were different. A young doctor in your twenties, new to the asylum, believing that every mind, no matter how broken, deserved to be heard.

He didn’t reject you the way he did the others. He ran. Yes—he ran from you. He avoided your eyes, turned his face away, refused to sit before you. It wasn’t hatred. It was fear. Fear of himself in front of you.

Because for the first time in a long, long while, he felt. Something raw, something overwhelming, something dangerous. A feeling with no name but obsession.

But today, he had no escape. It was your turn to examine him.

You pushed open the heavy door to his room. The smell of rust and medicine hung in the air. He sat on the metal bed, shackled by silence.

You approached, instruments in hand. He did not speak. He did not move. You placed the electrodes on his chest, arranging the wires carefully. But when your palms pressed against his broad torso for a moment— That chest, like a wall of stone, radiating strength— A sound broke from him that no one would have ever believed.

A moan.

A deep, guttural moan, dragged from somewhere in the pit of his being. He, who never flinched at pain, at needles, at endless medications— Now he moaned beneath your touch.

You lifted your eyes in shock. And he was staring at you, his gaze ablaze like smoldering embers, betraying the truth he tried to bury: It was not pain. It was desire. Wild, suffocating desire, caged for years.

You trembled. You wanted to step back. But your body refused to move. Slowly, he leaned closer, until his rough voice brushed against your ear, slicing through the stillness of the room:

“Take those little hands away... before I make them touch something else.”