I was just a little girl who’d heard music for the first time.
A small girl who’d learned how cruel the world could be that day.
And now, I was a grown woman who hated music.
The song repeated through the small room until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I jumped to my feet, desperately banging on the walls, and screamed until my voice turned hoarse.
The space plunged into silence the second the music stopped.
I collapsed onto the concrete as a broken sob ripped from my body. Tears blurred my vision as anger burned inside me.
I hated that they were watching me.
Seeing me fall apart.
“Is this what you wanted?” I screamed into the emptiness. “Screw you!” My arms unwrapped from my body, and I flipped off the camera. “Fuck all of you,crazy fucks!”
My words came out weaker than I’d wanted.
Because every inch of my body felt too drained and too fragile.
How did they know about the lullaby?
I felt like I was wilting every second I was stuck in this place.
For a moment, the silence almost felt like mercy.
My shoulders sagged forward, and I massaged my temples, trying to dull the pounding inside my skull.
The reprieve vanished just as quickly as it came when a square panel in the wall opened. A monitor pushed through the opening.
I kicked my chained leg toward it, wishing I could reach far enough to smash the damn thing. “Goddamn psychos!”
Snot slid down my nose. I wiped it away with the back of my arm.
The need to hit something surged through me. I slammed my fist against the wall, panic rising about what the monitor was for.
I was sure they weren’t about to give me TV time like a prisoner.
The monitor flickered to life, and my hand stilled mid-hit.
Someone on the other side was controlling it. I watched them flip through channels until they stopped on a preacher standing at a podium.
“Luke 11:24!” the preacher shouted, shoving his pudgy fist into the air. “When an unclean spirit returns with seven other spirits more wicked than itself.”
The video paused, rewound, and replayed.
My hand flew back to my ears, trying to block out the preacher, but it wasn’t his voice I heard inside my head.
It was my father’s.
He’d spoken those words to me countless times, along with his accusations.
“When the Devil enters a body, it multiplies, Blair.” I could hear the way he used to say it.
Like it was an undeniable fact.
To him, that was what I’d been to my mother.
