KILL THIS LOVE | JENLISA

Chapter 19

Jennie

The fact that there was not an ounce of emotion on Lisa's face as she answered, rattled some apprehension in me. I'd almost forgotten that I was dealing with a psychopath here. I heard Lisa take a rather deep breath.

"Tell me, Ruby Jane, what is your biggest fear?"

I stilled. Lisa's question had caught me out of nowhere, like a deer in bright headlights. My biggest fear? I didn't have to think twice. I knew the answer very well, too well, unfortunately. Attached to my fear, was a secret I had spent half my life trying to reserve. So I inhaled deeply, parting my mouth to say the first generic thing that came to my mind like spiders or height. "Needles."

My eyes widened at my own self. I reeled from the fact that my mouth had betrayed my brain, revealing something I had kept locked down in the deepest corners of my mind for nearly ten years now. I had just revealed a part of myself that I had buried 10 years ago. Not to mention; that too, to a cold blooded murderer.

Had I finally started losing the last fragments of my sanity? I dropped my eyes to the floor, silently praying Lisa wouldn't ask me to elaborate why needles.

"Your turn."

I looked up, almost letting out a sigh of relief when I heard those words coming out of Lisa's mouth. I drew in a deep but silent gasp of air, resuming to think of a question. My eyes zeroed in on the pieces of rough paper sprawled all over the desk, some even on the wall, that I had tried not to pay attention to since I had entered the room five days ago. But I did.

"Did you draw these?" I motioned towards the sheets that practically overflew with different melanges of colours, fighting for dominance on the pages.

"Do you like them?" Lisa smiled, albeit intentions not very apparent.

"Yes, they're beautiful." I hesitated, "You have some serious talent Ms. Manoban." I meant it. I was reluctant to say it, but damn, I wasn't lying. It wasn't the most uncommon thing for asylum patients to be scribbling or drawing gibberish, sometimes horrific images from the darkest depths of their mind. But Lisa's drawings were something else. Hers were..exquisite.

Some I could make out to be divine sceneries, others still objects. The details, the hues were something I expected to see in a high end art gallery, not in a mental institutional confinement.

A painting of a willow tree, that peeked out from underneath all the different paintings, left me especially astounded. The dark, almost black bark of the tree swerved into various gripping patterns, as well as a huge crack in the centre, highlighted by a lighter shade of bronze. The realism in Lisa's drawings was truly arresting.

"Do you appreciate art, Ruby Jane?"

I bit my bottom lip, out of habit. "I'm not very good at it, my si..." I cut myself off, biting my lips again, this time in hopes that it would shut up my treacherous mouth.

"Yes?" Lisa pressed, catching the slip up.

"Nothing. I think time's about to be up..."

"Something's making you tense, isn't it?" The sudden depth in her voice added to the menace in her aura.

I shook my head into a small 'no'.

A chuckle escaped Lisa's mouth, "Let me rephrase that." To anyone observing the scene, nothing at that moment, would have seemed out of the ordinary. But to me, it was then, that everything changed. Everything around me was now painted with a darker chrome.

In my eyes, Lisa rose up from her seat, slowly, agonizingly, walking over to where I was sitting. I froze in my place, feeling as if, some of my unchecked hair was being pushed back behind my neck by callous fingers.

"Am I making you tense?"

I felt Lisa's mouth at my ear. "Ms. M-Mano..I...I.." I gulped, my mind too stupefied to finish the sentence. Even though I couldn't look at her face, I could feel her enjoy watching me stagger, rendered helpless.

"No?" Lisa questioned condescendingly.

And just when I felt cold fingers dipping down to the nape of my neck; the illusion vanished. I opened my eyes, and everything was in its place like before. Lisa sat there, in chains. Her mere words commanded such a dark power, not only did they make me hallucinate the chilling scene, they'd also made me feel every intent behind them.

She sat there not saying a word, gazing at me like she knew exactly what had happened. After what seemed like a whole eternity of unsettling silence, Lisa smiled, starting to hum a tune suddenly, only haunting me further.

I licked my dry lips abstractedly, trying to process everything. A heartless beast, a raging murderer was toying with my mind in indescribable ways, getting her sick pleasures out of playing her sick game with me. What is happening to me? I glanced at Lisa, still humming the unnerving melody, looking directly at me.

While she could act all brooding, hell, even charming, she could possibly only be daydreaming about plunging a hot knife into my abdomen with my blood pooling everywhere, staining the marble floor as well as her blue asylum clothes, watching the life slowly drain out of my limp body.

I snapped out of my thoughts only when I heard the familiar sound of the door being opened. I didn't waste a second, getting to gather my things in a flash. I stood up, glimpsing back at Lisa who sat in front of me.

"Good night, Lisa." I didn't meet her eyes, or wait for her response, just quickly bolting out of the room. As the door closed behind me, I stood there almost breathless.

"You okay there?"

I knew the voice, it was So-yeon. I nodded, still not glancing up. "Yeah, I'm fine."

And for the second time in the evening, I questioned my sanity.