Page 48 of Wicked Vile King
The kid looks up at me and doesn't look away, his milky white gaze unblinking.
"You can fuck off too," I tell him as more join in, appearing like apparitions come back to life around me. I am paying the cost of my past.
Some stand around the table, peering down at me.
Some kneel as though they are about to pray.
Some prop an elbow against the wall and look in the opposite direction, at shit I don't remember and can't see.
And others, they just sit on the floor and judge me, tipping their heads to the side and saying everything while not saying anything at all. They all have one thing in common though, when they look at me—and they always do, eventually—their frost-covered gazes never fucking blink.
The bastards.
There are dozens of them filling the room, maybe more, and somewhere off in the distance is the smack of a knife through human meat.
I laugh up at the ceiling, between the faces crowding around the gurney and staring down at me. The sound is ugly and cackling as the ghosts of my past come back to life to haunt me.
"You must have me on the good stuff," I shout for the doc or at least I think I do. Maybe the words don't come out, or maybe they're slurred. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
The big, bad Butcher thinks he can break me open with some strong meds and see all the nasty shit that makes me, well,me. It won't work though, no matter how much he tries, even if my veins are more hallucinogens than blood at this fucking point.
He's tried before. He'll try again. And he'll never,everwin.
I hope he can hear me. I hope he's listening, and I'm ruining his disgusting fucking day. I'll be the egg he can't crack, and I hope it drives him absolutely nuts until they lock him up in here with us.
If I was normal, I imagine I'd feel something—fear, probably—when all the specters of my life come to demand penance at my bedside. But I don't because I'm not. And I don't need the Butcher's special treatments to tell me that.
Everything starts to waver again.
In and out.
Conscious to unconscious.
The expanse of nothing and back to this damp, dark room.
Still, my visitors remain, unblinking and judging me.
"Go away!" I shout at them, testing the strength of the restraints on my arms and at my ankles. I try harder than before, bending my back as though I am auditioning for a contortionist position, little good it does. I can't get free, which is exactly what the Butcher wants. I am a slab of meat, tossed and ready for his special seasoning, or as the case may be, a cocktail of drugs strong enough to drop a horse.
When I look around the room, they're all still standing there, staring at me.
I watch them stare, and I stare back.
I don't care.
I won't petrify beneath their gazes, and they are dead and gone and can't take me with them.
The girl in the corner in the bloodied hospital gown thinks she can judge me?
Come on! She's dead—sent to the afterlife or oblivion, wherever we go when we die—and I'm locked away in this hellhole until graduation.
Fuck her for not being strong enough to survive and for going splat on the pavement.
Not. My. Problem.
The fuzziness in my brain grows heavier, but I shake it away with a violent thrash of my head as lightning cracks outside the ugly, stained walls. A thin window runs in a horizontal line near the ceiling, and when the lightning hits just right, it illuminates every dark corner of the room. When it does, I see all of them, the ghosts of my past, even the ones that hide in the shadows.
Some are broken and bloodied.
