Page 1 of Psycho Obsession
Part One
They locked me in a white room and called it treatment.
They strapped me to steel and called it care.
Dr. Aris thinks pain is procedure.
He thinks control is medicine.
He thinks I’ll learn to stay quiet.
This is where monsters wear lab coats.
This is where girls are kept, stitched, and owned.
I don’t break.
I don’t submit.
I wait.
—Hallow Maddix
Chapter
One
HALLOW
The light in the room with no corners doesn’t have a switch.
It is a constant, humming, predatory white that bleeds into my retinas until I forget what a shadow looks like. They tell me it’s for my own protection—to prevent “dark thoughts”—but all it does is make the pulsing red behind my eyelids feel like a sanctuary. I lie here, pinned like a fucking moth to a board, and count the stitches in the mattress.
Four thousand, three hundred, and twenty-two. I know because I’ve traced them with my mind while my body was held down by the weight of the five-point restraints, the leather seasoned by the sweat and the terror of the girls who occupied this bed before me.
It smells of industrial lavender and the cloying, artificial peppermint they use to mask the scent of a soul rotting in place. It’s the smell of a goddamn tomb.
The heavy steel door groans on its hinges, a sound like a dry bone snapping in a quiet room.
Enter Dr. Aris.
He doesn’t walk; he glides, his lab coat crisp and smelling of expensive espresso and a total lack of a conscience. He carries a clipboard like a shield and a pen like a scalpel. He sits on the stool that is bolted to the floor—everything in here is bolted down, because they know if I could move it, I’d use the metal to cave in his fucking skull just to see if his brains are as dull and grey as his personality.
“How are we feeling today, Hallow?”
His voice is soft and rehearsed. The kind of tone you use with a wounded animal you’re planning to put down. He doesn’t look at me; he looks at my chart, at the numbers that represent the fire in my blood that he’s so desperate to extinguish.
“Better than your wife, I hope,” I rasp, the sound jagged and tasting like copper. “How is the old bitch? Still sleeping with the tennis coach, or has she moved on to someone who can actually get it up? I imagine being married to a man who spends his days drugging girls in cages is a real fucking aphrodisiac.”
Aris doesn’t flinch, but the skin around his eyes tightens. A win. A small, bloody win.
“The projection of your own instability onto others is a textbook defence, Hallow,” he says, his pen scratching against the paper. Patient remains combative. Fixated on external anatomy. Increase dosage.
“Textbook?” I let out a sharp, barking laugh that turns into a cough. “Is that what you call this? You’re not a doctor, Aris. You’re a fucking glorifiedzookeeper. Look at me. Look at the straps. Does this feel like ‘healing’ to you, or does it just make you feel like a big, powerful man to have a woman you’re terrified of pinned to a bed?”
He stands, moving closer until he’s hovering over me. The smell of his espresso is suffocating. He reaches out, using his pen to tilt my chin up, the cold plastic biting into my skin.
“You think you’re special because you’re broken,” he whispers, his voice dropping the professional mask for a second. “You think your little ‘myth’ is going to come through that door and save you. But the man you’re obsessed with doesn’t know you exist. You’re a footnote in a file that’s about to be incinerated. You’re a broken toy, Hallow. And I’m the one who decides when you’re too far gone to keep.”
