Page 61 of Ghosted in Arkadia
“You will be sent to Arkadia Asylum.”
I nod, looking into my reflection. A slight smile threatens to poke out from the edges of my lips. I get to live.
Ghost will come for me.
Casually Mentally Ill
I’m wheeled into my new room inside Arkadia Asylum. They have pumped my veins full of enough chemicals to make sure my feet will be unable to bear my weight in case I tried to escape. I expect padded walls like those in my prison cell, but these are firm and polished. The room looks sterile. It’s a white so pure it forces me to squint. The walls match the floor in glossy texture, making it feel like my reality has been bleached.
The bed consists of a slab of metal bolted to the floor, but at least there is a paper-thin mattress on top. The sheets look as though they were white once upon a time. Not exactly dirty, but not quite clean, either. Spots are faintly visible, splotches that scream out the horrors done to people here before me.
Forgotten people.
There is a drain in the center of the floor. Stainless steel and shining as if it’s been recently sterilized for my stay. There isn’t a clock on the wall or a window, only a speaker embedded into the ceiling just above the heavy metal door that locks the moment it shuts. Next to the speaker is a camera with a red blinking light.
“Welcome home, Miss Blackwell.”
“Kira,” I say to the orderly, but he doesn’t acknowledge me.
He wheels me next to the bed, and with the press of a button, the wheelchair moves my body into a prone position. The orderly moves me with ease, shifting me into bed. I stare at the ceiling because the idea of turning my head feels too complicated for my barely there brain. The door to my room opens and then shuts with a firm click of the lock.
Now, I just have to wait for Ghost to rescue me.
The days bend, merge, and blur together. Sometimes music plays from my speaker, a horrible melody of tones. Like lullabies for children on a loop. At night I can hear the screams of other patients, the sound comes through the walls on every side. It makes it hard to sleep.
After the first few days, I lose the ability to track the night and day cycles. Different orderlies come and go. Inject then leave. I start to get a sense of when they might arrive by the lack of buzzing hum to calm my thoughts. Those are the worst times, because that’s when the voices start up in my head again.
It started with dreams.
My face in the mirror, twisted and distorted to laugh at me before the faces of the judges start to slide through like I’m on a merry-go-round from hell. They are always laughing, telling me Ghost isn’t real. No one is coming to save me.
It’s always just been me.
Then I dreamed of Todd Angler, inside the hospital room. Bandaged. Chords coming and going to various machines. He’sfull of bullet wounds from the chamber of my gun. But it hadn’t been enough. He wasn’t dead… yet. I watch myself as an observer, grabbing a hypodermic needle and filling it with air before spreading Todd’s toes and injecting him with nothing.
At first, nothing.
Then his eyes pop open and the monitors beep, erratic, fast-paced. Todd clutches at his chest while I take several steps back, a smile stretching across my face as I blend in with the shadows. A nurse bursts through the door. She’s frantic and doesn’t notice me. I hide and watch Todd Angler die, then slip out unseen, like a ghost in the night.
I wake from the nightmare covered in sweat, even the sheet is dripping. An orderly rushes through the door, looking far too much like the nurse from my dream. She holds up a syringe with a twisted smile. I want to fight her off. She won’t kill me like I killed Todd. She injects me, and calm takes back over.
Why was I so upset?
“I am Kira Blackwell.”
I close my eyes and see Alexander’s face. His eyes are bulging from their sockets. He claws at the sheets I hold around his neck.
He doesn’t want to die.
I didn’t deserve to be cheated on.
I am behind him, twisting the sheets together before moving back-to-back for even more leverage. He squirms, fights. His legs kick in desperation, trying to gain purchase against the fitted sheet.
He gets blood on the sheets from his nails digging at the fabric around his neck. It takes several minutes before he stops moving and then I hold on for several more. I need to be sure he’s dead.
My name is Kira Blackwell.
“Ghost is real.”
