Page 45 of Lolli-Gag
The door dents.
“Again.”
The lights flicker.
“Again,”it tells me as the voice is no longer screaming for me to break something. It knows I am. The door gives with a crack that sounds like a bone remembering what it is. I laugh then step into the hall. Two guards are already there. They raise their weapons, and I smile.Wrong choice.
I don’t feel the first hit or the second. I only feel… forward. One guard goes down, and the other backs away too late. My fists meet bones and I shatter them, then smash a skull into the wall, reveling in the feeling of warm blood splashing against my heated skin. Everything becomes motion.Sound. Red lights. Shouting.
Her screams still echo in my head. I can save her. At least this time I’m not eight and hiding behind a closed door. I am the thing coming through it.
Another alarm starts, only louder, as the hallway erupts around me.Patients scream. Locks slam. Guards shout orders they won’t live long enough to finish.I walk through it all—no, not walk… I hunt.
“Lolli,” I roar as the building answers with chaos. And somewhere ahead, a faint, broken but furious voice… I hear her.
“Hold on, Little Riot,” I yell as my smile splits wide. “I’m coming for you, baby,” I shout as I tear the next door off its hinges.
Not Alone In the Darkness
Lolli-Gag
They took me out of the room screaming, but I heard him. Hillsboro changes when Jagger moves through it. The walls don’t hum the same. The lights don’t flicker, they blink. I giggle as the orderlies start sounding scared.
“He’s coming…” I sing as they strap me down again. Wrists. Ankles. Chest. Like they think the worst thing I can do is sit up.Silly little rabbits.I giggle again, because the worst thing I can do is remember… and I remember everything.
Master D’s deal. The needle. The fake warmth. The dream that tasted like want. The boys smiling at me like I hadn’t been hollowed out while I slept inside a lie.
My head lolls to the side as the room swims. Too white, too clean, and quiet. There’s a dull ache low in my body. Deep and wrong, a stolen kind of pain I don’t understand yet.I don’t like not understanding.
“Jethro?” I whisper, but he’s quiet.
“Someone is coming,”he warns, like he’s watching from somewhere behind my ribs. A smile twitches at my mouth.
“Who?” I ask as the door rattles once then hard enough to make the orderly beside me freeze. Another one reaches for the cart, but it’s too late. The second hit makes the hinges scream, and my breathing catches. That sound—that beautiful, violent sound.
The third hit nearly tears the door from the frame, causing the orderly to curse under his breath. “Secure her!”
I laugh then turn it into a giggle. “You’re in trouble now!” I giggle again as the door bends inward and a shoulder slams through it. Metal shrieks as my smile stretches painfully.
The lock finally gives and then—Jagger. He fills the doorway like a nightmare that learned my name. Bare arms marked and tense. Head shaved. Tattoos shifting over muscle as he breathes like he’s been carved out of rage and sent straight to me.
Our eyes collide and everything stops. Not the alarms. Not the shouting. Not the men scrambling around him. Just me and him. He stands there like he’s been burning alive and I’m the only thing left in the world that matters.
“Riot,” he says, and my smile widens.
“You came,” I say, and his face twists into anger then pain.
“Always,” he states, and the words land in my chest, burrowing so deeply that a lone tear falls from my eye. The orderlies move, but Jagger doesn’t look away from me when he handles them. That’s the terrifying part. He never takes his eyes off mine, not once, as bones break and blood splatters against the white walls. Noise crashes around us. Metal clatters, and someone screams into the floor, but Jagger looks at me like the rest of the world is only weather. Then he’s at my side. His hands working fast against the straps. His fingers shake once at the buckle.He hates it, I see it written all over his gorgeous face.
“Who did this?” he growls, and I blink up at him.
“I don't know yet,” I answer, and his jaw flexes.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have,” I say as the wrist strap snaps open and my hand comes free. He grips it immediately, too tightly that I wince. Then he loosens, like touching me is a fight he's having with himself. His thumb drags over my knuckles, causing my throat to close. “I-I thought you weren't real,” I whisper, and he freezes. For one breath, the monster in him goes still.
“What?” he says, and I hate the way my eyes burn and the way my voice shakes.
