Page 146 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

Riley claws at the walls until his fingers bleed and he’s silently begging for things he doesn’t understand, body all messed up like crossed wires firing with no circuit to break. Once or twice he hears Troy talking about him through the heavy door. Telling people not to come up here, that Riley is dangerous, he’s wacko, he’s a nightmare.

Lost it.

He’ll fight, kick, scream, bite and kill anyone who gets near.

Riley is in no frame of mind to appreciate that Troy is trying to protect him, that he’s trying to keep his own people away.

He just despises him.

One night, he can’t stop crying.

Curled up in a tight ball under his bed, a short lifetime of grief is eking its way out through the salty water of his tears.

There, he finds Bunny.

He’d forgotten all about his only friend.

Riley hugs him close, cries harder.

But he doesn’t feel like he did the last time he held this small creation. He feels grown, horribly stretched to be bigger, older, and far more jaded than he should be at… sixteen? Seventeen?

Days bleed into months too easily.

He can’t remember anymore.

He only knows that his life is so much worse than when he had free rein to at least go where he liked in this place.

When he was mostly ignored.

When he was normal.

Has he even been normal?

Probably not, but it wasn’t this.

Riley falls asleep eventually, exhausted from crying, and when he wakes, the bed has been moved, Bunny is gone and Troy is there, stone-faced.

‘You’re a mess.’

Riley looks around, blinking hard through swollen eyes.

The fever itch of confusing need has dissipated, but Troy is right.

Riley is a mess. His body is covered in scratches from his own hands, he bit his own arms, he hit his head, he…

Oh God.

Troy has draped a blanket over him for modesty, but Riley’s cheeks sting red when he realises that he’s naked and has fluids on him. His own fluids. He’d give anything to wither away and die, but Troy never lets him.

‘Yeah,’ Riley croaks, stares across the room, dissociating. ‘I am.’

✴

Just two weeks after that sickness, Riley starts bleeding.

He’s strongly in denial about it at first. Staunchly ignores traces of pinkish-red when he wipes, tells himself it’s something else happening, maybe he’s dying. God, he wishes he was dying.

But of course that’s not it, and Troy yet again was right.