Page 34 of Absentia Mori

“Cum for us. Right. Fucking. Now,” he growls.

I scream and surrender. I give in to their every brutal command and vile touch. I become their whore. Their pet. Their little fucking freak. I ignore the shame and get lost in the wilderness of their depravity.

Never in my life have I felt this broken. This vulnerable. This fucking monstrous. I laugh hysterically as I cum on Fabien’s fist. I buck wildly as all three of them pull and pinch at my flesh. As they nip and bite at my body like animals.

“In Absentia Mori,” Mordecai rasps. “To die in absence… We’ve killed you, Libra. Your body lives but the old you is gone. The spoiled little rich girl is gone. You’re like us now. Dead to the world that never wanted us to begin with. You don’t belong to them anymore. You belong to us.”

His words terrify me. But I know he’s right. I’ve been abandoned and left for dead. No one has cared enough to come looking for me. My entire life has been lived in vain. My family, friends, and teachers have overlooked me for so long. They use me as arm candy and for poison shipments. They come to my parties but don’t stay long enough to take care of me when I get too drunk and black out on the floor.

I’ve always been alone.

“What will I become?” I murmur.

Mordecai caresses my cheek. “The most dangerous monster of us all.”

For the third day in a row, I sit on the floor of my shower and let the tears come while the hot water sprays down on me. I can barely lift my arms, my muscles still heavy and numb from the straitjacket they put me in. I sob into my knees, mourning the girl I once was. I took too many comforts. And it’s done me no favors in here.

This place doesn’t care who I am. That’s why they call meJane Doe. Because it doesn’t matter who I am on the outside. In here, I have no money or power—only my wits. And it’s high time I started sharpening them.

I slip into another standard-issue pair of green cotton pants and one of the many white tank tops they’ve hung in my closet.I sigh as I remember how my closet at Tenebrose housed all of my favorite designers. It seems so frivolous now. I used to think those clothes were my armor. But they were my prison.

I’ve avoided the three unhinged heathens next door for the better part of a week, only leaving my room to fill up on slop. To my surprise, they’ve left me alone. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what happened in their room.

What started out as a sick game led to a bonding of sorts. Their anger toward me runs deep, but it’s also blurred by their obsession. They want to punish me and possess me at the same time. And that’s not even the twisted part. No. What’s even more disturbing ismyobsession with them.

I feel like they are the only ones who really see me. They knew me from before—the spoiled brat, heir to the Thorn empire, vapid and callous as fuck. They see past the makeup and clothes. Past the money and status. And they still desire me. I think they might even desire me more in this state. But I still have so many questions.

It’s one thing to see me as a symbol for all that they hate since I’m the closest thing to Nocturnus they’re going to get to at the moment. But the wounds seem to fester deeper than that. It’s way more personal than me being connected to Nocturnus.

I brush my hair back into a high ponytail and slap some of the drugstore cream onto my face. It smells like burnt plastic and stings a little. I can only imagine what’s actually in this shit. But it’s better than letting my skin crack and dry out.

I take another look in the mirror, forcing myself not to turn away. I’m trying to be kinder to myself. With a bare face, I look younger, softer, and more innocent. I can’t hide my dark circles with concealer, so I learn to embrace them. This is my new armor. The absence of all the things that I believed—thateveryone believed—I needed to feel whole.

I step out into the hall and look both ways. Satisfied that the coast is clear, I turn left away from the path that leads to the cafeteria and gym. I haven’t been down this corridor yet, and it’s time I do some exploring.

With or without the guys’ help, I’m finding a way out of here.

I try to ignore the piercing screams that seem to be coming from this wing of the asylum. Which means, I’m getting closer to the room I first woke up in. My skin prickles with each step as a sinking feeling starts to form in my belly. I cover my mouth as the putrid scent of rot and decay assaults my nostrils. Fuck. It smells like a fucking morgue down here.

Maybe it is. But I can’t imagine this place being respectful enough to preserve bodies. They seem more like the type to just dump you in the woods after you croak.

I jiggle a few doors, hoping to get lucky, but of course, they’re locked. I should have stolen the key from Fabien or Raithe. If they can get into my room, they most likely have the ability to get into any of the rooms here.

I turn down another corridor and pray I don’t get lost. I’m already starting to feel turned around. Everything looks the same. The same green tint on the walls from the ghastly lighting. The same scuffed linoleum floors where I can imagine someone being dragged by their heels. It’s like those creepy hospitals you see in horror movies—dark, desolate, and abandoned by all living things.

A few feet away, I spot a sitting area. The blue couches are torn and faded. A few old magazines lie crinkled on a wooden coffee table, some of their pages dog-eared and ripped in half. It’s apparent no one has sat in here for decades. Maybe it used to be a waiting room for visitors or a lounge for poor souls like me, unlucky enough to have been admitted here.

I head to the room next to it and try the doorknob but it’s locked.Fuck. Why is there the need to lock doors in a hall that’s clearly deserted?

Chills race down the backs of my arms when another dreadful thought pops into my head. There could still be people in these rooms. I shudder and press my face to the door, wondering if there’s someone in there, sedated and strapped to a bed. Just like they did to me.

An icy cold draft passes behind me. I spin around to the sound of giggling. These little creeps again. Fuck.

“Do you little psychos have names?” I lean back against the locked door and cross my arms.

They speak in unison, “We don’t remember.” Their voices are high-pitched, grating on my nerves like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard.

“Well, what do you want? I’m kind of busy here.” I’m not afraid of them anymore. They’re ghosts. Old ghosts judging by their Poison War era dresses and old-fashioned dialect. While they can do a lot of harm if they want, just like Jessamine back at Tenebrose, they are more often confused and easily distracted.

---