Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 48 -

The next few nights were cold enough for Rachel to bring another thick blanket to my bed, given my bedroom's lack of a fireplace. It did not take me long to stop awakening from my bed in confusion, unsure of where I was. But I still did not feel as if I was home. The comfort the Doll House had brought me was simply not there yet. Although Damian's presence calmed me, and certainly helped me not feel so lost in the strange house, he could not watch over me every second of the day for long. He had to return to work at the college.

"I aid in their research for the asylum," he said. "When a patient passes away, I undersee the autopsies. But most of the day I take discussion sessions with the patients: ask questions, discover their histories. Slowly but surely, we shall unravel the mystery of their mind's illness. Not through electrical shock and physical stimulations - I find such methods barbaric. The mind is an exquisite and complex organ. There is far more to it than we as doctors can yet understand."

I was frightened to be in the house with out him, although I would not admit it. There was a comfort in his presence, wherein I could rest assured that if I lost control again, he would be there to stop me. But it seemed Damian was afraid of the same problem arising in his absence. When he returned to work on Monday, November 5th, he left me with a guardian.

"So what is it ye' do all day, lass?" Alexander Iscariot's nose had been rather haphazardly patched up, and it made his voice sound particularly nasally. I doubted he had ever gone to a doctor for it - it looked as if he had set it straight and bandaged it himself. "You should be reading the Word of the Lord, you know. It may bring ye' comfort."

I was uncertain how much Damian had told Alex of my situation, but I certainly wasn't about to spill more to him. Any man who toted about a Bible on his belt at all hours of the day made me uncomfortable, even if Alex was the strangest man of the Church I had ever met. In truth, this was the first time in my life that I was utterly without work to do. In my father's house I had worked from sun-up to sun-down, caring for the animals and helping mother tend the house. In the Doll House there was never a shortage of clients to see or chores to do. But now...

I opted for spending the morning in the garden, despite the dreary weather. The sky was all gray clouds but the garden still felt like a haven. Little paths lined with pebbles meandered through the small backyard space, while magnolias clustered along the brick wall and largely obscured it from view. I sat on a little wooden bench beneath one of the tree, while Alex wandered boredly about.

I couldn't take much more of the man's pacing, so I said suddenly, "So did he live? The man from the Church?"

Alex looked confused for a moment. "The man from the - ah, oh, that man! Aye, he's alive. Hospital patched him up. Getting him a right fine faux arm as well, to take the place of his wee stump." He waved his fist about cheerfully, as if there was something funny to be found in the man having lost a limb on account of me.

"False limbs are expensive," I said softly. "How will the poor man work?" Unbidden, memories of my vicious attack flooded my mind. The glee I had felt when slicing in his flesh, chopping through bone and sinew like he was little more than a carcass on a butcher table. To think that I had allowed myself to become that...my stomach knotted. "I've doomed him..."

Vicious little Samara. Stop denying you enjoyed it, you know you should be ashamed. Like a rabid dog, everyone would be better off if someone just-

Alex looked confused yet again. "Damian didn't tell you? He's paid for the man's limb. He set him up with a job at the college, something easy the man can do seeing as he's missing a hand."

I had never asked Damian about the man; I had consistently been too caught up in my own worries to even think of him. I didn't even know his name... Perhaps Damian thought I simply didn't care...and why shouldn't he? I had shown myself again and again to be selfish. What must he think of you? Self-absorbed little Samara. Always so caught up in your own little problems.