by Lily White
The other women were growing restless, each one shifting in their chair, knowing they should do something, but none willing to take the risk of what would happen to them if they intervened.
Struck with nothing more than lightweight plastic, Joe was only irritated by the attack. With nothing else to use as a weapon, Dawn was quickly placed into a chokehold, bent forward in front of Joe in a position that made all the patients tremble.
Dr. Ali simply clapped.
“Good job, boys. I think both of these women need to be restrained for a little while to teach them a lesson. Don’t you agree?”
Joe and Emerson laughed, moving quickly to drag us from the room. My feet stumbled over themselves and I was helpless to the beast of a man that held me. With a racing heart, I fought to breathe despite the crushing strength of his arms around my chest. The evidence of his arousal was pinned against my ass, further sinking me into a crushing fear of what he would do to me. Ali grinned, her pleasure in watching me struggle written clearly across her expression.
Dragged through the empty halls, I’d been separated from Dawn as soon as we left the room. Lights flashed above my head and I grasped onto doorjambs and other obstacles as we passed. It took no effort at all for Emerson to rip me away from whatever I could find to hold onto. Flung onto a gurney on the side of the hall, I was strapped down with leather cuffs, the entire time fighting to keep him from closing the bands around my arms and legs.
It was hopeless. He had the strength of an ox and took sadistic joy overpowering me. My muscles hurt from the fight and a rush of blood thundered in my head. Nobody was in sight that could, or would, help me.
From an outside perspective, made by a person who didn’t understand what the patients endured on a nightly basis, I would have appeared as insane as they claimed me to be in that moment. I screamed until my throat was hoarse, I gnashed out with my teeth, hoping to lock enamel over skin and stop him from tying me down. My body thrashed and the gurney moaned and shrieked from the violent movement. No words were escaping my lips, just unintelligible grunts and barks of terror filled desperation. I was an animal struggling not to be caged and a woman fighting for her life.
Gripping my arm with such force that I swore the bones would splinter under the pressure, Emerson cursed above me, keeping me held down to the thin gurney mattress while ensuring his body was far enough away from my mouth and legs to keep himself from being injured. Lights flashed above me in time with my racing heart. My lungs burned with every forced breath I took.
“Hold still you crazy bitch!”
Deciding that physical strength alone was not enough to restrain me, Emerson reached into his pocket to extract a syringe filled with a clear tranquilizer. My eyes opened wide and I forced myself sideways, taking advantage of his loose grip on my body. The gurney tipped and metal screamed when it crashed against the cold linoleum floor dumping me onto the hard surface and breaking Emerson’s hold.
With adrenaline rushing through my veins, I sprung up onto my feet, ignoring the dull ache in my hip where I’d struck the unforgiving floor. Emerson growled, lunging over the gurney to reach for me, but I was too quick to move, suddenly feeling feral and wild, the need to escape overriding every other instinct I had in me.
Powering down the long hall, my bare feet slapped against the floor and my lungs were on fire from my screams for someone to help.
There was no one. Not a single soul that could help or even witness what was happening to me.
Emerson’s boots pounded behind me in loud and angry thuds. With each step he grew closer, his long legs making quick work of closing the space between us. I rounded a corner into an area I didn’t recognize, not caring where I was going or what I would do when I got there.
All I needed was to escape.
I wouldn’t allow myself to be abused.
The thought crashed through my head, the realization that I’d been here before. The acrid taste of fear filled my mouth and my body shook with violent and painful tremors. But I kept moving, kept running down a long winding hall until I was somewhere that appeared vacant and empty.
The lights flashed again, warning me of the dead end that I was approaching. My hands slammed down on handles of doors, finding each one locked and stopped me from moving further. I turned back, now cornered by a snarling man whose smile told me he would pay me back in degradation and pain for my attempt at escape.
No longer running, he took easygoing steps, a syringe balancing in one hand while the other was flexed and ready to grab me if I attempted to move past him. I could hear the pounding of my heart against my chest, every flash of the bulbs above me mirroring the steps he took. On one side of me was a locked door, and on the other was a pile of tools and miscellaneous equipment used to repair the crumbling walls of the corridor.
I had no choice but to defend myself. There was nowhere I could have run, no person who would have heard my screams. My hand closed around the cold metal of a heavy wrench and I lifted it up in warning to the man who steadily approached me.
A bulb flashed.
Boots pounded floor.
My head swam with fear, terror…confusion.
And then HE appeared.
Him. The hooded man. A dark presence first standing at the end of the hall, but then rushing forward with speed untraceable by the eye.
There was blood everywhere. Red footsteps marking the ground, smeared handprints along the windows, doors and walls. Splatter marks on the ceiling and on my clothes. Screams and crunching sounds, a dropped syringe and painful whimpers.
I was surrounded by chaos, my heart threatening to crush bone and tear through my chest.
And then…
There was nothing.
Chapter Sixteen
There is always madness in love,
but there is also always some reason in madness
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Four green eyes squinting at me.
Brown eyes opened wide.
One skinned grape being shoved into a mouth.
Four heads stared down at me and I jumped when my vision came into focus.
“You okay?”
Sally spoke first, reaching over to brush my hair away from my face. I tried to move, tried to shift my body out of the uncomfortable position it was in, but my arms were pinned around my torso and my legs were chained in place.
“You aren’t going anywhere, sweetheart. You’re in a jacket. I’d stopped struggling against it if I were you,” Michelle suggested sympathetically.
A screaming woman could be heard in the distance. Her words were disjointed and indecipherable, but the misery she was feeling was apparent in her voice.
All four faces turned away and scowled.
Julianne returned her attention to me, smiling at the voice of the screaming woman. Angling her head towards the voice, she warned, “I’d avoid the woman in the box. They say she hears voices. I say she’s the craziest of us all.”
Lesley elbowed her and Julianne reacted by sticking out her tongue.
“Stop trying to scare her, Little Julie. She’s in enough trouble as it is.”
“What?” It was the first time I tried to speak and I had difficulty enunciating my words around the cotton that was filling my mouth. “What trouble?”
Michelle chuckled. “Hard to talk when you’re doped up, isn’t it?”
Sally finally looked back at me and smiled. “You killed Emerson. Not just killed but flattened his head. Literally. Brains and blood everywhere. It was intense!”
My head swam, their images coming in and out of focus….eight women and then four. Blinking my eyes, I stared up at them trying to make sense of what they were telling me.
“I … what? I didn’t kill anybody.” The words slurred together, my head rolling on my shoulders. I didn’t know if it was the room that was spinning or my chair.
Sally opened her mouth to answer, but a sound in the distance had all the girls suddenly on edge. “Shit. We have to go. Talk
later, kid.”
They were gone. I closed my eyes, searching my thoughts for any clue as to what had happened or why I was here.
“Ms. Sutton?”
The seductive and smooth voice rolled across my thoughts. Jeremy; a man who was beautiful and smart, yet distant and so cold. My heart fluttered, my head pounded with want and I could no longer ignore the heat that flamed through me when he was near. Our last session had ended with his arm wrapped around me. Whispered confessions echoed in my memory. But it couldn’t be him. Wouldn’t be. He was too good to actually exist in this nightmare.
“Alex. Open your eyes.”
It was an illusion – nothing more than a dream. If I kept my eyes closed, I could imagine his sapphire blues eyes, the cut of his strong jaw or the way his dark brown hair framed his face. Squeezing them tighter, I imagined what existed beneath the sterile lab coat he always wore and I laughed when I thought of the little drawings he must have always been scribbling on the notepad that was his constant companion.
Just a dream.
Simply an illusion.
And a light phantom touch on my cheek that was warm, as if a real person was actually brushing their finger across my skin.
“Alex!”
I opened my eyes and blinked away the distorted image. There were three of him swirling around. That’s how I knew he wasn’t real. There couldn’t be three. Only one.
A penlight was flashed in my eyes and he swore under his breath. I don’t know why he was angry, but it didn’t matter because he wasn’t really there.
“Ms. Sutton, do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?”
“Y-you’re not real.” I laughed, the sound garbled and thick from the cotton still in my mouth. I tried to spit it out so I could tell him again that he wasn’t real, but only drool dribbled down my chin from the effort.
He turned to someone standing off to the side. I tried to turn my head as well, but it just rolled in all directions on my shoulders.
“How much tranquilizer did you give her?” He sounded angry, but he couldn’t have been. He wasn’t really there.
“As much as it took to get her to stop attacking people who got near Emerson’s body. Joe was busy with another patient so it took Lisa and me several tries to sneak up on her. She was feral, Dr. Hutchins – completely out of her mind. The entire fucking ward saw what she did before anybody could gain control over the other patients.” There was humor in that voice, but the joke she told wasn’t funny.
A woman stepped into my field of view. Blonde and with horns that weren’t visible when I’d seen her before. Ali. The bitch. The woman who let Emerson take me. With bright red lips and fishnet stockings beneath her short white skirt, she rubbed against Jeremy, purring in his ear and nuzzling his neck. He didn’t react and it proved he wasn’t there at all.
“I’m going to take her to the therapy room. Being confined to this room won’t help pull her out of whatever this is.”
Ali snorted. “You must like risking your life, Jeremy. She just killed…”
“We don’t know what happened in that hall!” His voice thundered in the room and I jumped where I sat, scared by a sound that shouldn’t have existed. If he wasn’t there, he couldn’t scream and if he couldn’t scream then I was frightened by nothing at all. He turned towards her, his face shifting into a venomous anger I would never have believed was possible in a man as kind as him. “Why was she with Emerson in the first place, Doctor? She was supposed to be in session with you! I trusted you to look after my patient!”
“It’s not my fault she assaulted me, Jeremy. Look.” She held out her arm to him, but I couldn’t see what she was pointing at. “Both her and Dawn attacked me for no reason. I was lucky that Emerson and Joe were nearby and heard the fight. Who knows what would have happened to me. I could have ended up like Emerson.”
Her voice had the pleading quality of a child being sent to the corner. If I could have seen straight, I’m sure I would have seen her bottom lip pouted out and tremble as she begged him to believe her.
“We’ll discuss this at the staff meeting tomorrow. I want full accounts from every person involved. Do you understand me?”
She nodded her head and Jeremy disappeared just before my chair moved forward and out of the small room. I wasn’t walking. I was floating. The lights flickering overhead, images flashing of people moving out of my way. Patients and nurses were all looking at me and most likely wondering how I could be traveling the halls without moving my legs or my feet. I wondered too, but I didn’t stay near any person long enough to ask the question.
The ones I recognized smiled and waved as I passed. I tried to wave back, but my arms were tied to my body.
A door opened and closed. There were rooms, so many rooms: black, white, red, green and then the one hidden behind curtains, the one where I imagined he’d touched me, where I’d allowed myself to believe he would comfort me.
I wished it were real. I’d never wished for anything more.
I stopped moving and he appeared again, bending down to look me in the face, shining the penlight in my eye again and reaching out to check something on my neck. I rubbed my cheek against his arm, delighting in warmth that wasn’t really there.
“Alexandra…” He whispered my name, wrapping each syllable with seduction and lust. “…what have you done this time, my beautiful girl?”
I didn’t know what he meant – didn’t care. He wasn’t there. He didn’t exist. Only HIM – the hooded man – whoever he was.
Jeremy disappeared again, but I felt something push my shoulders forward until I was hunched over myself. Several tugs later and my arms sprung free, covered by thick canvass that shielded my hands. When Jeremy reappeared he pushed me up so that I was sitting straight and reached for my body.
I jumped, not able to let him touch me, too afraid that when I didn’t feel his hands, the illusion of him would disappear forever.
“Don’t be afraid, Alex. I’m only taking the jacket off you.” He looked up at me from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “You need to lie down and sleep off the drugs they gave you.”
No drugs. I wasn’t drugged. I was lost.
It was that simple.
I held my breath when he reached for me again and tears dripped from my eyes when I could feel the heavy material tugged from my body. But I never felt him because he wasn’t real.
He couldn’t be real.
Kind people did not exist inside nightmares.
I was floating again, two strong parts holding me up, my body crushed against steel heat so hard, yet soft that I felt comforted by it. I was embraced within safety and delusion.
Falling on top of a black bed, the sheets slipped beneath me as I sought out the warmth and comfort that had released me and placed me on the mattress. Metal shrieked against metal and the room was closed in by pitch-black midnight.
I was in my coffin where light couldn’t penetrate, where he’d left my side. I cried, the pain leaking out of me in tears and low moans. Hugging my arms around myself, I curled into a ball, weeping with such force that the mattress sank beneath me, bouncing me where I lay.
The warmth returned, first against my back but then wrapping itself around me until I could feel the demons breathing down my neck. Jeremy was gone, a whisper in the darkness that shrouded me. The demons wanted me to believe it was him wrapped around me, wanted me to think I was safe inside the arms of the only person I could trust inside this place.
It couldn’t have been him.
My breathing slowed down and my heart pattered softly inside me. Tears continued to stream and I wrestled against the strength that held me in place.
“Shhhhhh….”
Deep and soothing, a sepulcher voice that lulled me into false hope. It was a tangled web, words spoken to seduce and to deny.
“I want you, Alex. All of you. The parts that are on the surface for all to see and the parts that are hidden so deep, not even you know they exist. But I won’t take you
like this. I can’t take you like this, not while you’re drugged. For now, beautiful girl, we sleep.”
“And tomorrow?” The words escaped me before I realized I was talking to nothing. Given the circumstances, I was too weak not to allow myself to believe it was him that held me.
Time stood still, our bodies breathing in rhythm with one another. Finally, on a whispered breath that brushed down my neck and across my cheek, he said:
“Tomorrow we’ll discover how to free you from your nightmare.”
Chapter Seventeen
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
- Carl Jung
My eyes opened, but I couldn’t see. Pounding drums were inside my head, pain shooting along my scalp, threatening to crack and shatter my skull. Reaching up, I cradled my head in my hands and groaned to release the incessant agony pulsing through my body. I shut my eyes when a light flicked on beside me.
“Drink this.”
Cool glass was pressed against my lips and I shifted to sit up, still clenching my eyes shut against the light. Opening my mouth, I allowed the crisp liquid to slide over my tongue and down my throat, quenching the fire inside me.
A finger brushed down my cheek as the glass was pulled away from my lips. Daring to peer out despite the light, I blinked my vision into focus and found Jeremy standing next to the bed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like someone hit me over the head with a ton of bricks.” I cringed at the sound of my own voice booming in my head. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the therapy room. I felt this area would be more conducive to your recovery than if you were to have woken in an isolation room. Terrie will be here momentarily to escort you to the bathroom. She’ll also take you for breakfast and administer your medications. After that she’ll monitor you in the rec room until I can return from my meeting this morning.”
It was a lot of information to take in when I could barely hear over the thundering of my heart.