Page 15 of Psycho Obsession
Chapter
Three
HALLOW
The morning isn’t a sunrise; it’s a chemical awakening.
They pumped me full of something blue and viscous at four in the morning—a “stabiliser” that feels like liquid lead in my veins. My limbs are disconnected from my brain, dangling from my torso like the strings of a marionette left out in the rain. The world is a blur of high-contrast whites and nauseating greys.
I’m not walking. I’m being hauled.
Miller has his hands under my armpits, his fingers digging into the fresh bruises he left yesterday. He smells of fear and cheap soap, his touch hurried, as if he’s afraid the doctor might see him touching the “private collection.” I want to spit on him, but my mouth is a desert, and my tongue feels like a heavy, dead thing resting behind my teeth.
The cafeteria isn’t a cafeteria. It’s a stage.
The air here is cold—biting, sterile air that makes the thin cotton of my gown feel like nothing. They drop me into a chair at a small, isolated table in the centre of the room. My head lolls to the side, my hair a matted bird’s nest of dried sweat and the copper tang of yesterday’s violence.
Across from me sits Aris.
He looks perfect. He’s wearing a charcoal suit that probably costs more than the life insurance policies of everyone in this building. He’s cutting a piece of dry toast with a silver knife, the precision of his movements making my stomach roll. There’s a plate in front of me: a bowl of grey oatmeal and a single, bruised apple.
“Eat, Hallow,” he says, his voice a smooth, terrifying caress. “We need to maintain your strength. A masterpiece is no good if it withers.”
I stare at the oatmeal. It looks like the insulation they pull out of the walls. I look up at him, my one good eye tracking him through a haze of sedative-induced static.
“Is this the part where I thank you?” I rasp, my voice a jagged ghost of its former self. “Should I get on my knees and tell you how much I enjoyed the way you dissected my soul between my legs? Or do we save the gratitude for dessert?”
Aris doesn’t flinch. He just spreads a thin layer of marmalade over his toast. “You’re being dramatic, Hallow. It’s a side effect of the psychosis. You’ve confused clinical observation with something… more.”
“Clinical observation?” I let out a low, wet laugh that hurts my ribs. “You didn’t look very clinical when you were shaking against my thighs, Doc. You looked like aman who finally realised his degree couldn’t stop him from being a fucking monster.”
He pauses, the knife hovering over the bread. The silence in the room is deafening. The other inmates are hunched over their trays in the distance, grey ghosts eating grey food, but here, in the centre of the light, the air is thick with the scent of our shared rot.
“You have a very dangerous tongue,” Aris whispers, leaning forward. “It’s a shame, really. I’d hate to have to remove it to keep the rest of you quiet.”
“Do it,” I challenge, leaning in until the scent of his expensive cologne makes me want to gag. “Cut it out. Put it in a jar. Label it ‘Defiance’ and keep it on your desk so you can remind yourself every day that you couldn’t break me with your cock, so you had to use a scalpel instead.”
His eyes darken, that same predatory hunger from last night flickering behind the glass of his gaze. He reaches across the table, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw, his thumb pressing hard into the split in my lip.
“You think you’re winning because you can still scream,” he murmurs. “But a scream is just air, Hallow. It’s the sound of a lung collapsing. You’re not a revolutionary. You’re a girl in a cage who has mistaken her own bleeding for a crown.”
I pull back, my head spinning as the sedative tries to pull me under. “A crown is a crown, Aris. Even if it’s made of thorns. Even if it’s heavy enough to snap my neck. At least I’m not the one hiding behind a white coat because I’m too afraid to admit I like the taste of blood.”
He smiles—a thin, cruel line that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Eat your breakfast, Hallow. Today we begin thedeep-tissue mapping. I want to see how far that ‘crown’ of yours actually goes.”
I look down at the oatmeal. I pick up the spoon, my hand shaking so hard the metal clatters against the bowl. I take a bite. It tastes like ash. It tastes like the end of the world.
And as I swallow the grey sludge, I realise the worst part.
I’m still alive. And he’s still watching.
I stare at the grey sludge in the bowl. It’s thick, pasty, and smells like wet cardboard—the perfect fuel for a ghost.
Aris is watching me with that suffocating, proprietary stare. He isn’t eating anymore. He’s just observing the way the light hits the bruises on my neck, his eyes tracking the pulse in my throat like he’s counting down the seconds until he can get me back under the heat of his tools.
“Eat, Hallow,” he repeats. It’s a command disguised as a suggestion.
I pick up the spoon. My fingers are still trembling, the chemical stabiliser making my motor skills feel like they’re being filtered through molasses. I dip the metal into the bowl, pulling up a glob of the grey paste. It hangs there, heavy and pathetic.
