My pulse is still racing as I get up off the crunchy, glass-strewn floor. I bolt over to the wall and throw on every light switch I can reach.
There’s nothing andnobodyhere.
I swallow shakily, my eyes scanning the space. Quickly, I go to the front door.
It’s locked. From the inside.
The back door is the same, and none of the windows is smashed in. I already know the answer, but I check upstairs too, anyway—hoping I’ll find a broken window, or a hole in the ceiling. Anything to prove that I’m not crazy.
But of course, I find zero signs of forced entry.
Quietly, my pulse back to normal, I clean and bandage the small cuts on my hand. I vacuum up the shards from the lamp I murdered and pull the side table back onto four legs before sliding it back into place next to the couch.
The addict in mescreamsfor something to take all this away. But I know now that not even heroin can get rid of the thing that’s in me.
The broken thing. The tangled, easily confused thing.
Which is just a kinder way of reminding myself thatI’m fucking crazy.
Like, actually.
They tell me that I’ve been on my array of daily psych meds since I was a kid. But I know the doses all increased after my ordeal.
Most of the time, they help.
Sometimes—like tonight—they don’t.
There was no intruder. No attacker. No danger.
The only enemy here isme.
I smile wryly as I shut all the lights off and head back upstairs. In my bathroom, I open the medicine cabinet and let my eyes run over the familiar lineup inside.
Lithium, for my bipolar disorder. Risperidone, a mood stabilizer. Zoloft, an antidepressant. Lorazepam to counter panic attacks, or to help with sleep. Lexapro and Buspirone for anxiety.
I end up taking a lorazepam and twenty milligrams of melatonin so I can conk out. Then I crawl back into bed.
Sullen. Subdued. Quiet.
Joke's on you, motherfucker, I think to myself, picturing Bane’s obnoxiously attractive face.You have no idea what kind of crazy you just chained yourself to.
10
DOVE
At first,I dream of the room.
I feel the metal clamp around my ankle, the stinging razor burn on my scalp. I smell my own urine and the stench of rotting wood coming from the moldy walls.
I hear the muffled, gagged sobs of my friend in the next room, and the rhythmic thrusts of our captor as he ruts into her.
I taste my tears, mixed with the bile rising in my throat as the scream I don’t have the strength to release dies in my mouth.
This isn’t a rare nightmare. I have it all the fucking time.
But I’m numb to it at this point: no longer a terrified victim, just an apathetic observer. Like I’m watching a horror movie that I’ve seen a thousand times.
Iknowthe monster is behind the door. Iknowwho dies first.
