Page 43 of Psycho Obsession
“Beautiful,” he breathes. It isn’t eloquent. It’s a grunt. A confession.
The building groans again. Somewhere, a structural beam snaps. The “The Punchline” gas is starting to spark against the failing electrical wires. The circus is about to burn.
He grabs my arm, his grip bruising. “Time to go, Hallow. The audience is getting restless.”
I don’t fight him this time. I lean into him, the knife still clutched in my blood-stained hand, as we head for the exit.
The asylum is screaming.
It’s not just the guards anymore; the building itself is wailing as the fire finds the gas. The green fog ignites inpockets of brilliant, toxic emerald flame, turning the hallway into a neon furnace.
My legs give out three steps away from Aris’s corpse. The adrenaline that fuelled the carving is draining out of me, leaving nothing but a hollow, shaking wreck. I start to tip forward, the bloody knife slipping from my fingers, but I don’t hit the floor.
A pair of arms, strong and smelling of expensive smoke, catches me.
“I’ve got you,” he grunts.
The “Dealer” persona is gone. He’s not performing anymore. He’s straining, his breath coming in hot, ragged hitches against my neck. He hooks one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, hoisting me up against his chest.
I’m dead weight. My head falls back against his shoulder, my vision swimming with the heat. I look up at his jawline, sharp and smeared with the red of the man I just gutted.
“Who… are you?” I choke out. The peppermint gas is burning my throat, making every word feel like I’m swallowing glass.
He doesn’t answer. He just kicks open a set of double doors, plunging us into a stairwell filled with thick, black smoke. He doesn’t take the stairs; he heads for the laundry chute, his boots skidding on the blood-slicked landing.
“Hold your breath, sweetheart,” he says, his voice stripped of its velvet.
He jumps.
It’s a terrifying, weightless second of plunging through the dark before we hit a pile of soiled, wet linensat the bottom. The impact jars my teeth, but he doesn’t let go. He rolls, keeping his body between me and the floor, then he’s back on his feet, sprinting through the basement.
We burst through a delivery exit. The cool night air hits me like a slap, shocking my lungs.
In the distance, the sirens are a chorus of banshees, but closer, there’s a new sound. A heavy, rhythmic thudding. A van—rusted and spray-painted with jagged, grinning teeth—skids around the corner of the loading dock.
The side door slides open with a screech of metal on metal.
Two figures loom in the opening. A giant of a man with a face made of scar tissue and a small, feral-looking girl with a crowbar. I don’t know them. I don’t know where I am. I just see the way they look at the man holding me—not with love, but with a terrifying, cult-like devotion.
“Boss! The perimeter is crawling with pigs!” the girl screams over the roar of the engine.
The man holding me doesn’t say a word. He heaves me into the back of the van, tossing me onto a pile of moth-eaten blankets, before climbing in after me. He slams the door shut, plunging us into a vibrating, gasoline-scented darkness.
The van roars, tires screaming as we peel away from the burning tooth of Hillside.
I’m slumped against the metal wall, my breath coming in shallow gasps, watching him. He’s sitting on a crate across from me, his purple coat ruined, his face a mask of sweat and gore. He’s staring at me with an intensity that makes the air feel heavy.
“You have a name?” I rasp, clutching a blanket to my blood-soaked chest.
He reaches into his inner pocket, his fingers lingering there for a second before he pulls out a card. He doesn’t give it to me. He just holds it up between two fingers, flicking it so it catches the faint red light of the van’s taillights.
The Joker.
“Names are for people who want to be found, Hallow,” he says, his voice returning to that low, cello-crawl. “I’m just the guy who dealt you a better hand.”
I look at the giant man driving. I look at the girl sharpening her crowbar. They are shadows. They are his ghosts. And I am sitting in the middle of their hive, covered in the blood of the only life I’ve known for six months.
“Where are you taking me?”
