They charged toward the surf, Easy's protests lost in the roar of the waves and the peals of laughter as they unceremoniously dumped him in the ocean. Mayhem ensued, a joyful, ridiculous tangle of splashing and shoving in the moonlit surf.
“Peace is a nice word,” Lechuza said.
Flash watched them, a huge, unstoppable grin spreading across his face. Lechuza was laughing beside him, her headresting on his shoulder. "With those guys," he said, pulling her closer, "it always will be mayhem."
He kissed her again, a softer, slower kiss this time. He had traveled untold years and across unimaginable distances to reach this woman. He hadn’t been able to tell her in that now remembered life that he loved her. But as the years stretched ahead of them, a clear and endless horizon, he would tell her every day. With his body, his mouth, his hands, and his words. She would always know his heart. She held it in her hands.
* * *
The airin the Westwood Sanitarium was always too still, too thick with the scent of lemon polish and underlying despair. It clung to the back of Marcus's throat as he made his nightly rounds, the squeak of his worn sneakers the only sound in the long, sterile corridor. He was an orderly here, a job that mostly consisted of mopping up spills and delivering trays of bland, colorless food. It was a routine occupation, and Marcus clung to routine.
There was always something wrong about the woman in Room Six.
Alice Graves never screamed. Never threw chairs. Never clawed at the walls or argued with people who weren't there. She simply existed inside some invisible conversation that no one else could hear. Sometimes she'd spend hours braiding her long, warm-blonde hair with patient concentration before quietly undoing every strand and beginning again, as if she were searching for a pattern only she remembered.
Sometimes, when she sat by the window, the moonlight found her hair before it found anything else. It turned the ivory strands into something almost luminous, silver woven throughchampagne gold. She looked less like a patient than a woman waiting for someone who had forgotten how to find her.
She couldn't have been older than twenty-two. Delicate features. Skin almost translucent beneath the fluorescent lights. A face that belonged in an old family portrait instead of behind reinforced glass. Even the hospital gowns couldn't make her look institutional. She wore them with the absent grace of someone who'd forgotten they existed.
Marcus had learned that beauty could be deceptive.
Her face distracted him, but it was her eyes that disturbed him.
They never seemed to settle on one color. Most days they were a quiet gray, soft and distant as morning fog. Then she'd lift her head, the light would catch them, and violet would bloom beneath the gray like twilight beneath gathering stars. The change was so subtle he often convinced himself he'd imagined it.
Until she looked directly at him. Then he always had the strange feeling she wasn't seeing his face at all. She was looking through him. Past him at something standing just over his shoulder.
"You're going to have a bad night, Marcus," she had said, pleasant as weather, and smiled, the freckles and the sweetness making it worse, not better. "I'm sorry. I really am."
He didn't ask how she knew his name. None of them were supposed to know his name.
Then the scream came.
It wasn't a human sound. It was a raw, ragged thing, a shriek of pure, unadulterated terror that tore through the silence of the sanitarium and seemed to peel the paint from the walls. It came from down the hall. From Room Six.
Marcus's heart seized in his chest. His feet were moving before his brain caught up, his sneakers squealing on thelinoleum as he sprinted toward the sound. The door was locked, and he fumbled with his keys, and opened it.
Alice Graves was pressed against the far wall, as if trying to melt into the pale green paint. She was shaking violently, a frantic, uncontrollable tremor that wracked her entire body. Her eyes, wide and black with horror, were fixed on the empty space in the center of the room, her mouth open in a silent, continuous scream, and she was covered in blood.
It was slicked through her hair, matting it to her skull. It ran in rivulets down her pale face, dripped from her chin, soaked the front of her thin, white hospital gown until it clung to her like a second skin. It was everywhere, a stark, visceral crimson against the sterile white of the room.
But there was no one else there. No attacker, no victim. Just Alice, alone in her own personal hell.
Marcus stood frozen in the doorway, the metallic scent of blood hitting him like a punch in the gut. The air in the room was heavy, oppressive, charged with a malevolent energy that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. His own ragged breathing filled his ears, competing with the frantic thumping of his heart. From the terrified, blood-soaked woman to the empty floor, there was no explanation. A cold dread coiled in his gut. He had seen a lot of strange things in this place, but nothing like this. Nothing like this at all.
* * *
Her mind raced,a frantic scramble of disjointed images and fractured thoughts. She’d killed the Cheshire Cat. He was always whispering to her in riddles and rhymes, his grating purr slithering into her ears, winding her tighter and tighter until she thought she would snap. This time, there was only one thought, sharp and clear as broken glass.Die.
He did just that, exploding like a cat bomb. A gruesome shower of fur, teeth, and viscera painted the walls and slicked her skin. Yet even in death, that fucking smile lingered, a ghastly, floating crescent suspended in the air, a promise that he was coming back. He always came back.
She’d really done it this time. Dr. Lattimer would come. He always knew when she wanted to kill the creature. He’d told her it was fine as long as she didn't make a mess. She figured this constituted a mess. Alice closed her eyes, desperate to escape to her pretty dreams of painting roses red and drinking tea with the Mad Hatter, but the coppery, sickly-sweet stench kept dragging her back to the madness.
"Alice."
The tone was firm, clipped, and sharp with anger. She opened her eyes. The doctor framed the doorway, his thin silhouette a stark, dark slash against the corridor's harsh light. For a flickering heartbeat, she saw dark robes and a crown, something ancient and terrible. The man was so thin his skin stretched taut over bone, sending a shiver straight down her spine.
"I'm not sorry," she warned him, her voice cracking but steady. "At the first opportunity I get, I will kill him again. That's more messes for you. One day, I'll make a mess so big, you won't have enough orderlies or buckets or rags to clean it all up. It'll be dragon-sized with flame-mad eyes, jaws that bite, sharp claws that catch. I'll hang its damn head in my room and use it as a hook for your lab coat."
