When she’s done, she turns around and walks toward the door, ignoring me completely. If I’m going to do something, I better do it now before my chance is gone.
I slide closer to her as discreetly as I can. She places her finger on a scanner beside the door, and with a click, it opens. Mentally preparing myself, I take a deep breath. Then I grab her head with both hands and shove her against the doorpost. She shrieks, grabbing my arms, trying to push me away, but I have her locked between the door and me. One more bang against the metal and she’s gone. Blacked out. Her body sinks to the floor while I try to catch my breath. My hand is shaking as I withdraw and step back, stumbling over her legs. I feel like a monster for doing this to another person. She’s only here to clean and I just attack her out of nowhere. This is bad, so bad, but I know it is the only way for me to get out. I don’t trust this place, and I don’t trust this woman. I don’t trust anyone but myself right now.
So I make a run for it.
Through the halls, my legs take me wherever they can. I’m lost in a maze of long hallways that seem endless, completely vapid of any life source. This isn’t the hospital that I was in before I came to Sebastian, that’s for sure. It’s like I’ve been taken and zapped off to another planet. Ludicrous, but still it crosses my mind. The walls are completely void of any sign of human contact—no paintings, no phones, no scratches, no tapered wallpaper. It’s all blank, emotionless. All that I see are rows and rows of doors with tiny windows and empty rooms behind them. The more I look at them, the more I freak out. Where in the hell am I? What is this place where no one seems to live except me? It’s like it’s been completely abandoned or I’ve been running in circles. In any case, all the rooms seem empty and nobody is responding to my calls for help.
And then I see it.
It’s only a glimpse, but what I see cannot be unseen.
The woman in the back of one room, sitting on a stool, strapped to a chair. Her auburn hair falls down her shoulders, framing her pale, blank face.
That face makes me shudder. Her stare makes me stop in my tracks. My breathing comes to a halt, and for a second, I think my heart has ceased beating as well. I know her. I know her so well that it makes me scream out loud until I choke in my own air.
The woman in that room is my mother.
Accompanying song: “Supremacy” by Muse
Six hours ago
Coiled up by anger, my heart breaks in two, and thorny vines grow in its place. I feel punctured by my own wishes, bleeding out until I die. I scream at the car driving away, holding my precious little fairy. I can’t believe she’s been taken from me. Slipped away from my grasp, she made a run for it to try to find them herself. On her way to meet them, she was plucked off the streets and pushed into darkness. Evil has her in its claws and I know from personal experience that they won’t release her. Not by consent at least.
I stampede back to my building, trying to ignore my instinct to chase after the goddamn car, rip off the roof, and fetch her myself. I know it won’t work, and even if it did, I’d be dead before I got my fingers wrapped around her wrist.
The best course of action right now is to breathe. Slowly. Calm myself down and think about this rationally. How can I get her away from them? I know they’ll take her back to the facility, so the first thing to do is scour through their records to try to find something that I can use to free her. I grab my phone. The desire to raise hell on earth is too strong to ignore, but I know that I must be careful. One wrong word and they’d know I had it all planned out. One word could mean the end for the both of us, and she has to survive. After all we’ve been through, all that I’ve done to bring her back from the brink of insanity, she needs to live. Too much effort has been poured into this to fail now, and I care too much about her to let her be taken back there. I know that place isn’t good for her and that she’d be better off by my side than anywhere else. I know her deepest, darkest desires, what makes her tick. Nothing can replace that, no therapy can fix her brokenness—which I caused and only I can mend. She needs to be with me. How dare they take her from me?
The phone is almost crushed as fury rages through my veins. A sudden ringtone pulls me from my thoughts. I bring it to my ear, sucking in a deep breath to prepare for the blow.
“Arthur here. I’ve come to report to you that we found her.”
“Oh, really?” I try to act all surprised, but my blood is boiling right now.
“Yes, and we’ll take her to a facility in a more remote area.”
“What do you mean ‘remote area’?”