Shilan

Eight

Maria's body had already begun to rot, but I seemed to be the only to have noticed.

The repugnant scent of decay was slowly filling this basement, filling my mind and overwhelming all my senses. Her lifeless form on the floor was bluntly evident, and as the hours crawled by, I became all the less certain I'd killed an imaginary girl.

And this terrified me.

The snap of her slender neck had felt so real beneath my hands. I'd listened to her release her last, shuddering breath with my own ears--the sound echoing in my head and reverberating deep in my bones.

I hadn't been able to take my outsized eyes off her no matter how much I'd tried. My inmates around me, however, hadn't even stirred in their sleep as Maria had slumped to the floor. If anything, they seemed more lively this morning, claiming the water they'd consumed had bettered their health.

"How was your night?" Adam bent down to ask me, his thin smile tight, but from concern more than anything.

I let my gaze land on everything but him. "Sleepless. My--My headaches have been getting worse."

A tense sigh left his lips as his eyes rove across my body. I was sitting with my knees curled close to my chest, the bones in my limbs jutting out of my vomit-slick gown unnaturally. Adam rubbed his face with his hand, voice hoarse yet still somehow hopeful. "I'm going to search for food again in a bit. Make sure to keep hydrated, alright?"

I nodded faintly, licking my lips at the thought of water. I'd been sweating all night long. "I think I'll just r-rest a little for now." Because I cannot bear to watch you look at me like that after I'd just killed someone. "Maybe it'll fend off the pain."

Adam agreed that it would, bringing over the sack of soil we'd used as a pillow last night and promising not to make a racket while looking through the boxes. Head bowed, I gave him my thanks, and watched as he straightened and walked away, as he passed the unlit half of the basement, entirely oblivious to the corpse just mere metres away from his feet.

She couldn't have been real, I tried to reassure myself. Someone would have reacted to her absence by now. They would have.

I bit my inner cheek as I shifted to lie on my side, grimacing. My neck and shoulders were stiff as stone from sitting so still even hours after I'd . . . done what I'd thought I had to do. The pain rose with my every movement, a cruel, constant reminder of my previous actions.

Though Maria and I hadn't been so close, it was hard not to be at awe of her. It had taken me four days to notice her presence after arriving at this asylum--her silence having been unlike any other, slight, petite form easily blending in with her shadow--but once we'd become acquainted, we'd grown pretty comfortable around each other.

And comfort was all one wanted whilst living in an asylum.

I hadn't been in the greatest state of mind myself that first day I'd arrived at this building. I didn't want to imagine how I'd appeared that first week, with distorted thoughts and questions mounting in my mind from the absurdity of how drastically my life had changed.

How I'd gone from a girl preparing to graduate from law school to a permanent patient in Lurnie's Insane Asylum. All in the span of four months.

On the way to this ivy-covered building, the view of hulking pine trees and over-grown grass had blurred in my fogged window into a dark, ever-growing cloud of grey and black. It'd chased the vehicle I'd been in; cold and ready to engulf.

That eager cloud had followed me through the asylum gates, up the stairs and into the building. It'd felt as if the cloud had soaked up all the sorrow of the world only to pour it over me as I took in the place's horrendous interior, the smell, the patients' hollowed-out faces and blank eyes. My driver conversed with a red-headed nurse by the door for a minute or two before leaving me to live in this hell without so much as a backward glance.