The Ambrose Asylum is not a shelter; it’s a prison.
And in a way, I’m surrendering to it.
“This is it,” Benji says. I bite the inside of my cheek. He’s just announcing our arrival, but the words are different now, like this may actually be the end of me.
But I have to be here. I owe it to my mother and myself.
“Great,” I say. The word comes out snarky. I grimace and roll my eyes. I need to be nicer to Benji. I fix my tone: “Thanks for doing this with me.”
“Anything for you,” Benji says.
I smile weakly. Benji is always polite and considerate. Sometimes, I wonder if I deserve him.
Before those doubts begin to fester, I change the subject: “Will the doctor have me stay after the initial examination?”
“You mean overnight?”
“Sure.”
“I mean, I’d prefer not,” Benji says. “But yeah. Between the videos and losing your job, he might think you need extra help.”
Benji told the doctor I was found masturbating with a knife handle at work and was fired, which is similar to what the records say about my mother. Whether her records are truthful is another story.
As for me, I was actually fired because I stopped showing up for my shifts. After I became obsessed with finding out everything I could about my mother and the Ambrose Asylum, work, my relationships, sleeping, even eating regular meals were no longer my priorities.
Then came the videos.
My cheeks heat. I turn to the side, away from Benji. We did a lot of messed-up things to be here, like pissing and choking videos. It’s embarrassing. I’m not a toilet or a victim; I’m a person, and I only asked him to do those things so I could get the chance to kill my mother’s murderer.
But I just?—
I just?—
“You okay?” Benji asks.
I gnaw on the inside of my lip. My mother’s file says she was into strange sexual acts, including arousal from urine; I don’t know if it’s true or if it was something Dr. Ambrose might have made up. Based on my research, Dr. Ambrose seems like the kind of person who would lie to keep someone under his control. I know he lied about her death; I wouldn’t be surprised if any notes he took on her were based on his own disgusting interests.
What if I like those disgusting things too?
I shudder. My fingers link and unlink rapidly in my lap. I can’t sit still. People have said I’m a freak like my mother, but even if I share her blood, it doesn’t mean I’ll be like her.
This isn’t about my desires. This isn’t even about me. This is about avenging my mother.
I’m going to kill Dr. Ambrose.
“Violet?” Benji asks.
I shake my head. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” I say, more to myself than to him. “And it’s not his assistant doing the appointment, right? It’s just him?”
“I don’t know.” Benji lifts his shoulders. “His assistant is here and there. Plan it like he will be there, and either way, you’ll be good to go.”
Because of our long-term preparations to get me admitted under a fake diagnosis, Benji knows the asylum well. During the consultations about his concern for my sexual fantasies, Benji mentioned my connection to a past patient to Dr. Ambrose, and the next time he visited, my mother’s file was on top of Dr. Ambrose’s desk. It was easy for Benji to take the file.
The photographs in it were hard to stomach though.
There were monochrome close-up shots of her body, as if the images were records of her progress. I had to piece them together. Based on my birth certificate and the timestamps on the photos, she was only a day past childbirth, her belly still round and her bruising visible. Black patches marked her breasts and arms. There were even small wounds on her inner thighs, close to her sex.
Her death records claim she died from childbirth; it was obviously more than that. And Dr. Ambrose was her only caretaker back then, so he’s responsible for whatever happened to her, and back then, he was only Nurse Ambrose. According to his notes, he kept her in isolation to keep her perversions from escalating.
