They would give me a look of uncertainty and assume I was crazy. They wouldn’t be too far off the marker. I was either losing my mind, or I never quite had it.
The white noise inside my head was in competition with the voices. One side kept whispering and the other kept twisting the words into indecipherable psycho-babble.
Up until approximately five minutes ago, I was worried I’d never be able to stop it. Thenhewalked in, and made everything go quiet.
When I first glanced up at him, I thought he was Mason. Their resemblance was almost eerie. I’d never given much thought about where Mason came from, only that he had to have had a traumatic childhood. No normal little boy grew up and decided to take people apart as a hobby.
The man who came into the room, and was now sitting across the table from me, changed everything. He took my theories and shredded them into a million little pieces. His familiar green eyes were probing, splitting open my shell and studying my interior.
The left side of his mouth had a slight tilt, a skewed smirk that said he knew everything I didn’t. He knew how I ended up in this barren, sterile room with only a pot to piss in. All I could recall was a blue sedan that sped up when I ran out in front of it, instead of slowing down. He wasn’t giving me any answers in regards to that, though.
“You remind me of someone who’s dead,” were the first words out of his mouth, accompanied by a chilling smile.
Who?I wondered, but I didn’t ask.
“You know, when you first got here, I was going to kill you,” he explained, still staring at me in a studious way.
“So why didn’t you?” I rasped out through dry, brittle lips.
“Well…” He tapped a finger on his chin and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the surface of the table. “I find that when someone is eager to die, making them live is much more satisfying than giving them what they want.”
I kept my mouth shut, pressing my cracked lips into a firm white line. It was becoming even clearer to me where Mason got his unusual disposition.
A few long minutes of silences rolled by and we did nothing but eye one another, judging and assessing, forming our own opinions. He had a black wedding band on his ring finger, which admittedly surprised me.
Honestly, who would marry someone like him?
You would,a little voice in my head swiftly responded.
When he smiled again, dimples indented his cheeks and my heart panged. He lookedsomuch like him.
“My wife is no longer breathing.” He held his hand up and wiggled the finger I’d just been staring at. “You remind me of her. Not as pretty, though,” he was quick to point out, as if I cared what he thought of me.
“The pretty girls with the broken minds,” he murmured beneath his breath.
What?
“Where is Mason?” I blurted out. I was over this whole interaction. Why was he even in this room with me? And where exactly was this room, anyway? It wasn’t in Mason’s home—that I knew for certain.
“I was wondering when you would ask about him. He’s around. I wanted to have a little talk with you first.” He stood up and leaned across the table, coming so close, we were almost nose to nose.
I swallowed, resisting the urge to move away.
“My son needs you and you need him, despite whatever you’re probably telling yourself. But I refuse to let history repeat itself. If you become a problem, I have many methods of solving that. Do you understand?”
I didn’t understand anything that was going on, but the clear threat he’d just administered had me nodding regardless.
“Good.” A chipper smile graced his face once again. He stood up, straightened his already perfectly smooth jacket, and turned away. He left the room and let the solid steel door slam shut behind him, leaving me all alone again.
Chapter Two
I watched from a surveillance feed as my father and Katie had a half-hour staring competition. Surprisingly, it was a draw.
Since then, she had been in the room alone for six hours. She had yet to touch the bottle of water, defecate in the bucket, or open the tin lunch box that had been left for her.
I wanted to go to her, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind just yet. I already knew how our reunion was going to go: she’d ask about her father, who was as good as dead.
Then she’d ask about her mother, whose skull I was currently degloving, and then—or maybe first—she’d ask about Annie, her sister, who was down the hall from her. She didn’t do much other than stare at me with brown eyes full of hatred.
