Page 67 of Sick Bargain

The sensation of spider legs skitters over my goosebumped skin. The stone surrounding me chills the damp air, but the darkness beyond the door is colder. A chilled sweat sticks my shirt to my lower back, and no matter how many times I swallow, the lump in my throat never goes down. I wrap my fingers around the bars, hesitantly leaning forward to peer through the slats in the door.

Absolute blackness.

I look over my shoulder towards the corridor.

Absolute darkness. I’m trapped in a living nightmare.

The only light comes from me. Because the fucking shirt I’m wearing has a glow-in-the-dark unicorn on it, and I built its charge by standing under the fluorescent lights for so long. I try to rip the hoodie off to turn it inside out, but as soon as I pull my arm through the sleeve, I go still. Footsteps. Coming closer. Coming from everywhere. At my back and beyond the door.

Oh, fuck.Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

A terrified whimper makes the lump in my throat worse, and I can’t fucking breathe! Panic chokes me, and I don’t know where to run. I’m trapped among manacles, a dark hall, and a door that promises something worse. And I’m glowing, drawing it all to me.

“Krypt!” I scream, losing my mind. “Please!”

Please, what? Please help me? Please save me from whatever else is stalking me? Please end me now because I can’t stand the thought of walking through that door?

I scorn myself for screaming, drawing attention to my position, but I can’t help it. Fear has me irrational, and no matter how hard I try to steady my breathing and calm myself down, sobs of terror escape from between my lips. I cover my mouth with my hand, pressing my back to the door. I slide down it,trying not to cry, trying to get my bearings, trying to fucking think of a way out of this.

Because fear is the feeling that felt right when Krypt was my focal point, but now that I don’t know where he is, I don’t like it. I don’t want it. I can’t handle it.

I’m a prisoner to it because I put myself in a position to be afraid ofeverythingwhen all I want is to be afraid ofhim. Only him.

I pull my knees to my chest and bury my face in my hands, completely giving up. I’m ashamed of how pathetic I am. Trapped in a madhouse with insane patients and a demon haunting me, I lose myself to fright so hard that I can’t even rationalize the dread eating at my nerves. It’s all-consuming, making me shake and shiver, bawling into my hands because this is it. This is the madness. Thetruemadness. The one that every male in my family surrenders to.

Back in my hospital room, I recognized that taking the pill was wrong. I felt a spark of hope when Krypt sent the calling card to tell me that not even death will take me from him. Where’d that hope go? I’m right back to spiralling because…

I took a suicide pill and survived, but I won’t survive this.

I’m about to succumb to the Sauder curse.

I belong here, in this dark, abandoned ward of the asylum. This is exactly where I’m meant to be, but I’m fresh meat and haven’t yet learned how to live among the others. I’m crippled by the panic of it. Of them.

I cry so hard my head pounds and my body uncontrollably heaves. Those regrets are racing through my mind again, clouded by terror and stomped on by failure. I didn’t want to become another statistic, but here I am, lost in an asylum, losing fragments of myself and no longer fighting to live. I don’t know what’s going to kill me first, the monsters hunting me or thepromise of reprieve if I take my life into my own hands. I’ve given up. Again. For real this time.

Looking up, I find a long length of chain hanging from the wall next to me. I could loop it through the iron bars in the door, wrap it around my neck, choke myself to near death and then let it take me wholly. Maybe I’d get to listen to the rattle of my lungs and be fascinated by it like I was with Ophelia. Maybe my calves will twitch and my eyes will bulge, and when Krypt finds me, he’ll stand there and count down my final six minutes.

My life isn’t mine anymore, anyway. I have nothing to live for, and I’ll never be important to anyone. Krypt might possess me, but he doesn’t actually care about me, so what’s the fucking point? My brother has Vile House, and my sister… she has my brother. They’ll be better off without me, and so will this world.

It’s time. Time to go.

Crying harder as realization dawns that this is my finite ending, I reach for the chain. There’s no game of chance this time, not like with the pill. I know exactly what I’m doing now.

But I don’t get the chance. The door at my back opens, and I scream bloody murder as I’m yanked through. Consumed by darkness. By fear. By fate.

Time passesand I’m aware, but I’m so lost in my own internal safe place that I don’t feel what’s happening to me. I’ve retreated, trusting my mind more than my reality, and that’s the most horrific thing. Because my mind isn’t sane and it promises me no safety.

My eyes are open, my head tipped back on the hard back of a wooden chair. In the cathedral-like ceiling of yet anotherchamber, the moonlight filters through a grate, letting in the cold autumn air along with it. I see it. I don’t know what it means. I don’t feel it.

Until I’m jolted back to life by a shock so intense my jaw clenches and my muscles spasm. Electric currents turn me rigid and jumpy, and the pain of it is so strong I hiss through my locked jaw.

“Play.”

My body sags when the current turns off. My jaw unlocks and the taste of blood fills my mouth. My thick and numb tongue is bleeding, but I don’t have the energy to swallow the blood. It drips down my chin along with my drool, and I struggle just to breathe.

“Play, Remiel.”

I cough, barely able to lift my head. I sag in the chair, but when my legs twitch, something is between them. Closing one eye to look, I find a cello there, propped against me to keep it upright. It’s not just any cello, it’s mine. The one I keep on display in my shop and only play when I’m melancholy and afraid.

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