Teaching A Bad boy

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I hate this room. I hate it with the utmost burning passion in my heart. Its plain grimy walls, its beige linoleum. The loud incessant beeping that echoes and clangs in my skull as I try and zone myself out unsuccessfully, to have its monotonous noise pull me back.

Yet here I am, again. 8th time this year.

I leave each time, telling myself, promising myself that I wouldn't come back, not again. Never again. Yet I do, and each time I make myself the same dull, ineffective promise. It's become a habit now. I don't even mean it when I say it, but I say it anyway because at least that way I fool myself momentarily, be it a week, a week delayed, in coming back.

But there we have it. Me lying here in my scratchy hospital gown with my lank hair pressed up against the hard starched pillows staring at the white corkboard roofing. Counting the holes in each square ignoring the hushed whispers coming from outside my door.

And like each time, I can hear exactly what they're saying. The doctor says I should leave town. My mother says no. The doctor says I'm a risk to myself. My mother says that's bullshit.

And I say...nothing.

I never do.

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Zacky Ashcroft and his 2 brothers are the heirs of the affluent Ashcroft Manor house. Money, wealth and good looks. The family have it all.

But they hide a secret. A secret bigger than anyone could ever imagine to be true, a secret they have kept for hundreds of generations hidden in their blood. But with the arrival of a small insignificant person, their secrets are threatened as are their lives.