Page 16 of Psycho Obsession
I don’t put it in my mouth.
Instead, I let it slide off the spoon, watching it hit the table with a wet, sickening thwack.
“You know, Doc,” I whisper, my voice catching on the raw edges of my throat. “This looks a lot like what came out of you last night. A bit more grey, maybe. A littleless… frantic.”
Aris’s jaw tightens. The sound of his silver spoon clinking against his porcelain saucer is the only noise in our small circle of hell. “Don’t be vulgar. It doesn’t suit the image you’ve built for yourself.”
“The image?” I giggle, a sharp, broken sound. I dip my fingers into the bowl. The oatmeal is lukewarm and slimy. I start to smear it across the laminate tabletop, tracing jagged, nonsensical lines. “I don’t have an image anymore, Aris. You and Miller peeled that off me piece by piece. Now I’m just… art.”
I draw a circle in the sludge. Then I draw a cross through it. I’m playing with it like a child, my movements erratic and messy, getting the grey paste under my fingernails and all over my wrists. I look like a lunatic. Maybe I am.
“Is this what you want?” I ask, my eyes snapping to his, wide and bloodshot. I take a handful of the oatmeal and squeeze it, letting the mush ooze between my fingers. I start to paint my own arm with it, covering the injection bruises with the grey filth. “Does this make the mapping easier? Or do you prefer it when I’m screaming?”
“You’re making a scene,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. He looks around the room—at the orderlies standing by the walls, at the other broken girls staring into their laps. He’s embarrassed. The refined doctor doesn’t like it when his favourite toy malfunctions in public.
“A scene?” I laugh louder, the sound echoing off the high ceiling. I pick up the bruised apple and dig my thumb into the soft, brown spot, peeling back the skin until the mealy flesh is exposed. I start to shred it, dropping the pieces into the oatmeal mess on the table. “I’m just decorating, Doc. Creating a menu for the funeral.”
I lean forward, my face inches from his, the scent of the oatmeal and my own unwashed skin clashing with his expensive cologne. I take a glob of the paste on my index finger and reach across the table.
Before he can pull back, I smear a streak of the grey sludge right across the lapel of his charcoal suit.
“There,” I purr, watching the way his eyes turn into black glass. “Now you look like you belong here. Now you look like you’ve been touched by the things you keep in cages.”
Aris doesn’t move. He doesn’t wipe it off. He just looks at the stain, then back at me. The air between us is vibrating, a dark, heavy tension that feels like a physical weight.
“Miller,” Aris says, his voice terrifyingly calm.
The orderly is there in a second, his shadow looming over the table.
“Take her back to the Ward,” Aris whispers, never taking his eyes off mine. “She’s finished with her meal. And prepare the restraints in the exam room. The metal ones. I think Hallow needs a reminder of what happens when she tries to play outside her cage.”
Miller grabs my upper arms, his grip bruisingly tight, and yanks me out of the chair. I don’t fight him. I just look at Aris, my face smeared with oatmeal and dried blood, and I give him one last, jagged grin.
“See you in the dark, Doc,” I whisper. “Don’t forget to wash your suit. You wouldn’t want the other monsters to think you’ve gone soft.”
The hallway smells like bleach and desperation, a long, white throat designed to swallow screams. Miller is dragging me, his fingers biting into my biceps, his breath hot and ragged against the back of my neck. He’s pissed. I can feel the tremors of his rage through his grip; he’s still wearing the shame of Aris’s dismissal like a lead vest.
“Keep walking, you crazy bitch,” he mutters, shoving me forward.
We pass the line of “Low-Risk” inmates heading toward the laundry—a queue of grey, shuffling ghosts with hollow eyes. But at the end of the line stands Thorne.
Thorne isn’t a ghost. She’s a goddamn mountain of scarred meat and bad intentions. She’s been in the Ward for six years, and they say she once killed a nurse with nothing but a plastic spoon and a grudge. She stops as we approach, her massive frame blocking the narrow corridor.
“Look at the little pet,” Thorne sneers, her voice like gravel in a blender. “Smells like the doctor’s office. Smells like a fucking whore.”
Miller tries to shove past her. “Move it, Thorne. She’s going to the exam room.”
“I don’t give a fuck where she’s going,” Thorne says, her eyes locking onto mine—wide, bloodshot, and full of a mindless, drug-induced hunger. She sees the oatmealsmeared on my face, the split in my lip, the way I’m shivering. She sees the “favourite” and she wants to break the porcelain.
Before Miller can react, Thorne lunges.
She doesn’t use her fists; she uses her forehead, slamming it into my face with a sickening crunch. My world turns into a white-hot spark. My head snaps back, hitting Miller’s chest, and the iron taste of fresh blood fills my mouth.
“Thorne, get the fuck back!” Miller yells, reaching for his baton.
But I’m faster. The sedative lead in my veins is gone, replaced by a shot of pure, jagged adrenaline. I don’t care about the pain. I don’t care about the blood. I dive at her, my fingers curling into claws, and I sink my teeth into the soft, thick meat of her neck.
I taste her. Bitter sweat and the metallic tang of her life.
