“What about you?”
“My plans sound about the same as yours.”
“Of course they are,” he scoffed. “That’s what happens when you are, in fact, a part of me.” Brooks said it more to himself, but that was the irony wasn’t it?
“Whatever, Debbie Downer. I’m choosing to be happy and hopeful today. It would do you some good to try it, too.”
Frustration nipped at his heels.
He would bet his best pair of grippy socks that the food was shit and the world didn’t turn, just like every other goddamn day in the asylum. He sighed.
“Brighten up, buttercup. It’s time to face the day.”
He tried to stop the small smile from lifting the corner of his lip, but it was hard to be grumpy when she was such a ray of light. Even if she was a hallucination.
Itwasasadexistence when the only color in one’s day was the disturbing brown mush the kitchen staff called oatmeal. Brooks pressed his spoon into the shit pile and barely suppressed a shiver when the prunes sprinkling the top didn’t budge.
“Fuck. I hope those are prunes,” he muttered under his breath. From the looks, it could just as easily be roaches.
Brooks put the sludge to his lips and chewed begrudgingly, his gaze sweeping the room and cataloging everyone in it. Most of them avoided Brooks like the plague and didn’t dare sit too close. He wasn’t sure why, but didn’t care enough to seek an answer. It was fine by him. He preferred to be alone, anyway.
When his assessing stare had come full circle, he stopped and looked at the bald man sitting across from him. His crossed eyes were so close together they almost merged and the hairy pudge hanging out of the bottom of his scrub top made Brooks cringe. He watched as the poor fucker shoved the prunes up his nose gingerly with a single finger, his paranoid gaze looking left and right to make sure he wasn’t caught.
As the man buried his treasure with fervor, the thin cotton of his long sleeve undershirt slid down and a hint of black peeked out from under it. Brooks trained his vision on the spot and was surprised to see a tattoo.
A black, eight-pointed star joined by a circle in the middle decorated the mans wrist. Small tendrils of black bled from the design as if small shadows were seeping into the surrounding skin.
A loud gag pulled Brooks from his examination and he realized that the man had stuck so much up his nose that the airway was blocked there.
“You poor, sick bastard,” Brooks mumbled under his breath.
The man didn’t even look Brooks’ way. He just gathered his composure and continued cramming shit into his numerous hidey-holes.
“Choking on a dick would be better than this,”a deep, male voice slithered through his mind.
He jumped at the intrusion, his eyes scaling the shadows pooled around the room in search of his Passenger.
“Get out of my head,” he whispered.
“How about we try something new, and you getintomy head? Then we could blow this fucking joint.”
Before the paranoia could really set in, the intercom crackled to life around them. Maybe it made him a sexist motherfucker, but if he had to choose between the auditory hallucinations he would pick the sing-song woman over the serial killer any time.
“Tables A through C, please proceed to the med station for your morning medications. Keep your hands in front of you, single order and make no contact with those in front of or behind you.”
Brooks dropped his spoon, pushed his chair back and made his way hastily toward the med station. He couldn’t help but throw quick glances over his shoulder to see if the shadows darkened or gathered where they shouldn’t. Paranoia was the name of the game here, but the way his spine tingled forced adrenaline to flood his heart. Someone was watching him, and he didn’t have the nerve to find out who.
To keep his mind occupied, he stared out the window on the far side of the cafeteria. The skies were ashen and clouds rolled by at an unsettling pace. Muted thunder rattled the walls during his early restless hours and he spent his time pondering the sound. Soft shivers of vibration shook his bed, but the sound never matched the intensity. Brooks assumed it was something to do with the thickness of the asylum walls and windows.
He hoped the storm would pass before breakfast was over. If the skies were clear, sometimes they were able to visit the greenhouse.
He spent so much time shut in his room that any chance to be outside was something to look forward to. Even the miserable landscape choked with weeds was a better sight than the peeling paint of his four-walled prison.
“For every rolling storm, a Siren has caught a sailor in her web,”that sing-song voice lilted.
“What does that even mean?”Brooks answered her silently. He couldn’t risk talking to her out loud with so many orderlies around. He wasn’t trying to get sedated into oblivion today.
“Good morning, Brooks,” the orderly’s voice pulled his attention back to the med station window. “Multivitamin, fiber, antipsychotic, and a little something for nausea.” The cup was passed through the small opening at the bottom of the plexiglass shield.
