Page 87 of Eat Me Alive
“Holy shit!” The new captain screams.
My eyes find what she’s looking at, and I have to do a double-take.
“Is that Laura?”
The woman on the deck waves at us, smiling with a bioluminescent creature beside her.
I guess Laura found her monster, too.
Xiaoyu
“Yeah, and that’s the story of how I got institutionalized.”
The doctor’s brown eyes judge me critically.“So you do admit you were an accomplice to the murder of Captain Jacobsen.”
“Captain Moriarty? I don’t know this Jacobsen dude.”
“He was the main ship’s captain. The one who unfortunately passed away by—” the doctor looks down at her notes, then clears her throat. “—asphyxiation by foreign objects. Flowers wereputinside his mouth.”
“It grew inside his belly and choked him, doctor. Just fucking say it out loud.”
She breathes deeply and scratches her neck. For some stupid reason, I’m fixated on why she keeps wearing turtlenecks. The tip of the pen moves it enough that I see ink peeking out.
I’m grinning from ear to ear now. “Are you part of the Void’s cult, too?”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t act so innocent, they’re making me think I’m crazy. Gaslighting me. It’s not working.”
“How long have you thought people were gaslighting you, Xiaoyu?”
I groan and lean away. This line of questioning again. My leg shakes impatiently. The second Alani docked the ship months ago, I’ve been surrounded by these people. I know they aren’t Moriarty. They look more like government employees than anything else.
Doctor Beth, the government psychiatrist, has been trying to make me think I’m fucking crazy. I see it in her exaggerated sympathy, the fake understanding. Everytime she says she feels what I feel, I want to gag.
No, she does not know what it’s like to be manipulated into thinking they are delusional.
“It’s just interesting to me how you keep mentioning people—mainly your mother—are making you think this way. Yet, you do not do anything to make them think otherwise.”
Because the truth is bat-shit crazy. She continues, “You also said your significant other—”
“His name is Datu.”
“Yes, him…is a plant man? But also a god? And then you tell me that he isn’t a god anymore, but just a monster?”
What’s the point in talking to this doctor when she’s just going to psychoanalyze what I tell her. Well, she is a psychiatrist. One who is part of the Void’s cult, though. They will do everything in their power to make me think I’m mentally unstable.
“You also said Moriarty is taking troubled women to this place and…feeding them to the people?”
“Esoterra. They gather information, okay! Almost all these women have had tough livesandanswered a stupid “are you human” verification test. When there’s no privacy, people’s personal information is a billion-dollar trade. I see women who need help, they see profit.”
“That sounds horrible, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, because y’all are just letting machines replace the real people here. Don't you ever think that's you aiding the end of humanity?”
She releases a long-suffering sigh, shutting her notes closed. “Xiaoyu,” Leaning in, she levels me. “We’ve been going through the same thing for months now. And, every time, your story changes, everything gets increasingly more fantastical. Do you see where I’m at right now?”
“I understand, doctor.” No, I don’t.
