Shattered Asylum

Chapter 91

I think it's been a while.

But I don't know if that means hours... or days.

The lights haven't changed. The door hasn't opened. Not since she left.

I slept, maybe. Or passed out. Or just closed my eyes and waited for time to forget me.

At some point, someone slid a tray across the floor.

Food.

If you can call it that.

A few scrapes of bread, edges stiff and curling. Something that might've been fruit, now half rotten. A cup, small, plastic, cracked, with maybe two inches of water inside. Not enough to quench a bird. Barely enough to wet my cracked lips.

I drank it anyway.

Ate every bite. Even the moldy parts.

Because I was starving. Because I didn't know the next time I would eat. Because my body screamed for something. Anything.

Even now, I feel it turning in my stomach. Like it's fighting to stay down.

I don't cry anymore. I think the tears ran out days ago.

Or maybe that was just hope.

My wrists are raw. My back itches and burns where skin is missing. My legs ache from being curled up too long on this thin cot. The blanket they gave me smells like mildew and piss, but I wrap it around myself anyway, like armor, like it'll protect me from what comes next.

But nothing comes.

And that's worse.

I start talking to myself just to hear a voice. Or maybe I'm talking to Grayson. I don't know. Sometimes I think he answers. Sometimes I think he's in the room with me. Other times I think I'm already dead, and this is what comes after.

Then I hear it.

Footsteps.

Slow. Heavy.

Not her.

Too solid.

The door opens with a groan like it hasn't been touched in years. The light behind the figure blinds me at first, I blink hard, trying to adjust, hoping it's Grayson.

Please let it be Grayson.

But when my vision clears... my heart drops.

No.

No. No. No.

Not him.

Joe.

I scramble backward, the cot scraping loudly against the floor. My legs are too weak to stand. My body refuses to move fast enough. I press myself against the wall, every nerve in my body on fire.

He hasn't changed much.

Greasy hair, a sweat stained shirt stretched tight across his stomach. He smells like smoke, metal, and rot. His grin, yellowed and full of cruelty, spreads when he sees me.

But the way he looks at me, that same slow crawl of his gaze across my body like I'm a thing, that hasn't changed at all.

"Hey, sweet-meat," he drawls.

Sweet-meat.

I flinch like he's struck me.

The nickname slices straight through my skin. A name he used to whisper right before the worst things happened. The name his subscribers knew me by, the one they used like I was a product, not a person.