I grin at him, my teeth bared, my eyes wide and shimmering with a madness he’ll never understand.
“Oh, I know I’m a toy, Doc,” I purr, the words dripping with venom. “But the thing about toys is that eventually, someone bigger comes along to play with them. And when he finds out you’ve been scratching the paint on his favourite one? He’s not going to write a report. He’s going to peel you like a fucking orange just to see how much you scream.”
Aris’s face goes ashen, his composure cracking like dry earth. He pulls back, his hand shaking just enough for me to see it. He signals to the orderly in the hall—Miller.
“Increase her sedative,” Aris snaps, his voice high and thin. “She’s spiralling. Put her under. I want her silent by the time I do my evening rounds.”
“Silent?” I scream, my voice echoing off the paddedwalls as Miller steps into the room, his eyes dark with the kind of cruelty that doesn’t need a degree. “You couldn’t shut me up if you cut out my fucking tongue, Aris! I’ll haunt your dreams until you’re the one begging for a padded cell!”
Miller doesn’t hesitate. He moves to the bed, his weight shifting the mattress as he leans over me. He doesn’t just check the straps; he yanks the buckle on my wrist until I hear the skin tear, the leather biting deep into the meat. He leans down, his breath hot and smelling of rot against my ear.
“Keep screaming, bitch,” Miller whispers. “It’ll make it easier to know where to find you when the lights go out.”
He plunges the needle into my thigh before I can even draw another breath.
The world starts to tilt. The humming white light begins to bleed into a hazy, toxic green. I lie there, my limbs turning to lead, my heart slowing down until it’s just a dull, distant thud.
I close my eyes, and even through the fog, I see him. A ghost in a purple suit with a grin that could cut glass. He’s not here. Not yet. But I can taste the smoke. I can feel the vibration of the city dying.
Go ahead, Doc. Put me to sleep.
But when I wake up? I’m going to make sure you never sleep again.
The toxic green haze doesn’t just blur the edges of the room; it dissolves them.
The ceiling starts to breathe, the white tiles heaving like the chest of a dying animal. I can hear the chemicals singing in my veins, a high-pitched, discordant screech that sounds like nails dragging across a chalkboard.
My tongue feels like a fat, dead slug in my mouth, heavy with the taste of copper and the bitter, oily residue of the sedative.
Sleep, little monster, the shadows whisper.
“Fuck… you,” I slur, the words tripping over my teeth and falling onto the floor like broken glass.
I’m not falling asleep. I’m falling inward.
In the dark behind my eyelids, the asylum disappears. The straps are no longer leather; they are cold, skeletal fingers holding me down in a bed of ash. I’m standing in the middle of a city that’s melting, the skyscrapers dripping like hot wax into the gutters. Everything is burning in shades of neon violet and acid green, a beautiful, catastrophic sunset that smells of ozone and expensive cologne.
And there, in the centre of the wreckage, sits a throne made of charred playing cards.
I can’t see his face yet—not clearly. He’s a glitch in my vision, a silhouette of sharp angles and chaotic energy. He’s holding a knife, the blade catching the lightof a thousand fires, and he’s whistling. A low, haunting tune that vibrates in my teeth.
Whirr. Click. Whirr. Click.
The sound of the facility’s ventilation system transforms into his laughter. It’s a jagged, beautiful sound that makes my skin itch with a desperate, starving kind of Need.
“Is that you?” I ask the darkness. My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore. It sounds like a choir of sirens. “Are you the one they’re so afraid of? The one who’s going to turn this world into a punchline?”
The figure on the throne tilts his head. He doesn’t answer, but the fire grows hotter. I feel a phantom hand slide across my throat—not rough like Miller’s, but possessive. A claim. A promise that when he finally finds me, he’s going to break every bone in my body just so he can be the one to put me back together.
“Devotion”, the fire whispers. “Madness”, I scream back.
Suddenly, the dream fractures.
A sharp, stinging pain lances through my arm. I’m back in the room, the white light stabbing at my eyes like a thousand needles. Miller is still there. He hasn’t left. He’s leaning over me again, his face a distorted mask of sweat and greed. He thinks I’m under. He thinks the “firebrand” has been extinguished.
He’s wrong. The drugs didn’t put out the fire; they just turned it into a goddamn furnace.
“You’re so pretty when you’re quiet,” Miller mutters, his hand sliding under the edge of my hospital gown, his fingers cold and clammy against my skin. “Aris thinks you’re a patient. I think you’re a waste of good meat.”
