“He looks kind of puny without the scissors, doesn’t he?” said Jack as they all stared down at him. “I’ll toss you for who gets to put the cuffs on.”
Just then the Scissor-man stopped yelling and screaming, as he had suddenly noticed a small, accidentally self-inflicted cut on his hand.
“Snip!” he said to himself in dismay. “Cut myself—bad—wrong!”
“How apt,” murmured Jack. “Mr. Red-Legg’d Scissor-man… you’re nicked.”
3. St. Cerebellum’s
Most outdated secure hospital: St. Cerebellum’s, Reading. This woefully inadequate and outdated institution was constructed in 1831 and was considered modern for its day. With separate wards for unmarried mothers, milk allergies, unwanted relatives and the genuinely disturbed, St. Cerebellum’s once boasted a proud record of ill-conceived experimental treatment, with curious-onlooker receipts that surpassed even Bedlam’s. But the glory days are long over, and the crumbling ruin is now an anachronistic stain on Reading’s otherwise fine record of psychiatric treatment.
Dr. Alan Mandible led the group of suited consultants along the peeling corridors of St. Cerebellum’s, Reading’s premier secure hospital for the criminally insane. While perhaps not the newest, cleanest or driest, it did contain the most interesting patients. There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum’s could field three—not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes.