Page 61 of Devoured
The walls felt closer each time he left. The chamber smaller. I was going mad in this box, with only his visits to mark time. I was losing myself in here. Or maybe finding what I really was. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“Fuck it,”I muttered, stopping in front of the door.
The iron handle was cold beneath my palm. I expected it to be locked, expected some mystical barrier to keep me trapped. But it turned easily. The door groaned open on hinges that sounded like screaming.
Outside, I saw... sunlight.
Actual, impossible sunlight streamed down the corridor beyond. Not the red glow of torches. Not the sickly green of emergency lighting. Sunlight. Golden and warm, filtering through windows I remembered from my first days at St. Dymphna.
I stepped out cautiously, adjusting the sheet to keep it secured around my body. The hallway looked exactly like the hospital I remembered, but corrupted. The walls were decaying, and they thumped like they were alive.
My footsteps echoed as I walked, past doors I recognized. The solitary cells. The medical wing. The rec room where Marion used to go manic. Everything was as it should be, yet smothered in dust and silence that felt... deliberate.
“Hello?”I called out, my voice bouncing off the walls and coming back hollow. “Is anyone here?”
Nothing.
I moved faster, checking room after room. Empty beds with stripped mattresses. Abandoned wheelchairs pushed against the walls. Personal belongings scattered across the floors, like everyone had vanished mid-conversation. Near the elevator, a maintenance cart leaned crooked against the wall, but these weren’t normal tools. A bone saw. Scalpels. Pliers crusted with old blood. A drill that looked made for teeth. A heavy wrench, the kind that could crush a skull. Surgical tools... or torture instruments.
And everywhere I looked, the dust patterns were uneven. Thick in some places, completely absent in others. Like someone had tried to stage abandonment.
Hope bloomed in my chest. Maybe this was all a nightmare. Maybe I’d been drugged the entire time. Maybe I’d finally woken up.
I ran, legs burning, lungs screaming for air. The exit door appeared ahead, unmarked metal that had never looked so beautiful. I sprinted, the sheet billowing behind me. My hand closed on the push bar, and I shoved with everything I had.
The door swung open, and hell vomited in my face.
The world beyond wasn’t Earth. Twisted spires of blackened bone jutted from ground that vibrated like infected flesh. Overhead, a sun burned that wasn’t really a sun. A swollen red thing that gave off heat without warmth, light without hope. Ash fell like snow from clouds that moved against winds that blew from nowhere.
And standing in the wasteland, waiting for me, were three of them.
Things that might have once been human stepped closer, their faces blurred and waterlogged, like reflections in a dirty pond. Features shifted constantly. A nose where an eye should be. A mouth opening sideways across a cheek. Patient gowns clung to their rotting frames, the fabric fused into skin that looked like it had been boiled, then left to cool.
They turned toward me in perfect unison, movements too synchronized to be natural. “Why is she alive?”the first one gurgled, black water spilling from what used to be lips.
“Is she separated from the others? Maybe she can lead us to wherever they’re hiding,”the second one rasped, its head tilting at an impossible angle.
“She smells like hope,”the third whispered. And the way it said hope made my skin crawl, like it was something diseased.
My chest tightened with something I hadn’t felt in what felt like forever. Isaac. Marion. Sela. If these things were talking about others, about people hiding, then maybe... maybe they were still alive somewhere. I didn’t give a damn about Dr. Alan or Tobias. Let them rot in whatever hole this place had swallowed them into. But the others...
“Where are they?”I spit the words before I could stop myself. “Where did you last see the others?”
Their waterlogged faces twisted into grotesque, leering smiles.
“Oh, you want to know,”the first gurgled, stepped forward on legs that bent wrong at the knees.
They advanced, wet gowns dragging with a sound like tearing skin. I backed away, fumbling for the door behind me with shaking fingers.
“We think you know where they are,”the second whispered, its face shifting with each word. “The Judge wants them. The Judge wants you.”
“Oh, he wants to see you all scream!”the third one crooned.
My back hit the door. I scrabbled for the handle, panic rising like bile in my throat. The metal was ice-cold, but it turned. I yanked the door open and threw myself inside, slamming it shut behind me.
“Let us in. Let us make our report,”one called through the door.
“The Judge is waiting for news,”another added.
