Page 34 of Lethal
“I know, little toy, it will all be fine. We’ll protect you, and if he tries to hurt you, I’ll kill him.”
His words should fill me with hope, and also humor. How is he going to protect me from Halstead, or even kill him, if he’s already dead? A hysterical chuckle rips from lips that soon turn into deranged sobs. I don’t want to live in this world if they’re not in it, yet I’m terrified to die. I force myself to meet Halstead’s observing gaze. He’s cataloguing all my reactions for his heinous research, research I know won’t end with me, because he’s the biggest monster in the room, maybe even in all of Wellard Asylum. Bash, Wren, and I are killers, but Halstead... he’s something much worse. “Why would you help me? You said I was weak, and that I was no longer of any use to you? Are you going to kill me?”
A flicker of an emotion crosses Halstead’s features, so quickly that I’m not even sure that I actually witnessed it, and it isn’t my broken mind supplying what I want to see. “The reasons are my own, Cecelia, but to answer your questions, no, I don’t plan to kill you, unless you leave me no alternative. You need tounderstand that you will never leave Wellard, whether you agree to this or not, not even when your heart ceases to beat. Your flesh will rot, and your bones will turn to dust, and you will still remain here under the bowels of this asylum.”
Every word out of his lips is another painful slice into my resolve. The desire to tear my gaze away from his, and look at the twins for reassurance, almost overwhelms me, but I hold strong, needing to show Halstead that I can handle whatever he throws at me. It’s not like, now that I’m semi-coherent, I don’t remember that I’m serving a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, for Thomas’ and Caterina’s deaths. That was before you even add the dead orderly to the mix, and that’s if his murder’s been reported. Somehow, I don’t believe that Halstead wants the authorities wandering around Wellard, and investigating his patients. No, he’ll make sure that my crime never sees the light of day, just like I’ll never get out of here, to reveal what he’s doing to his vulnerable patients.
I raise my eyebrow, with cockiness that I for sure don’t feel, urging him to continue. It hasn’t slipped by my attention that Halstead needs to feel in control, and the fucker likes to hear the sound of his own voice. My eyes slide discreetly around the room for a weapon. If he’s going to send me to hell’s door, perhaps I’ll take him with me. Both his henchmen, Jason, and Henry, have moved closer, awaiting their unscrupulous master’s instructions. I shake out my hands, clenching and unclenching my fingers, and my eyes spy Halstead’s pompous silver pen in the front pocket of his pretentious doctor’s coat. I quickly divert my glance, so he doesn’t realize what I’m looking at, and lean closer, bringing myself nearer to him. In his arrogance, he doesn’t even seem to notice. “In your weakened state, a transorbital lobotomy is what I’m offering you, Cecelia. It would be a type of‘soul cure’,freeing you from the weight of all your sins, and trauma.”
“Don’t trust him, little toy!”Bash rages.
“He’s going to hurt our pretty, broken dolly, Bash! Don’t let him hurt what’s ours!”Wren screams as he moves closer, his body twitching like a live wire.
“A lobotomy?You’re going to cut into my brain? What the fuck is the matter with you?“ I dart forward, my hand ripping the shiny pen from his pocket, and lunging toward his face with it, but he moves suddenly out of the way with a gasp, and Henry rushes forward, placing himself in the way. I don’t have time to think, I raise my hand and put all my strength into the movement, as I swing forward and embed the pen into Henry’s eye. Both his eyes widen dramatically, filled with pain, as if he can’t comprehend what I have just done. Blood sprays all over my hand, coating it with stickiness, making it impossible to maintain my grip, as the two of us go tumbling to the floor. His frantic limbs tangle with mine, as various shouts and screams surround us. I can hear the twins urging me to get up and run, but before I can scramble to my knees, a sharp pain assaults me in the back of my neck.
“Oh, Miss Vaughan, how you surprise me. I do believe now that I will be doing the world a favor, by ensuring you can’t hurt anyone else.”
The room spins around me, and I can hear both the twins screaming at me to get up and fight, but my limbs feel like they suddenly weigh a ton, and I can’t lift my head more than a few inches. My body drops with a thud on top of Henry, as his body ceases its twitching. The last thing I see is the pen sticking out of his pupil, as a horrified expression fills his features. “Bash... Wren... I’m coming... wait for... me.” Darkness blankets over me, soothing the rage that inhabits me. I no longer care what happens to me, as long as I get to be with them, myCarnevil Twins.
“Please... don’t leave me...”
The sound of strange beeping fills my head as I try to lift my hands toward it, but something prevents my movements. I turn my aching head slightly, and get a glimpse of thick leather and steel straps biting into one of my wrists, slick with blood. My fingers twitch in the restraints, reaching for something that doesn’t exist, something safe, for them, thetwins,but all I have instead is the frigidness of the surface below me, and the static buzzing of the light above me, like a fly stuck in a jar.I’m trapped! Bash! Wren! Where are you?
“Finally awake, my dear,” Dr. Halstead’s cheerful voice slices through the haze like a scalpel, his breath warm against my cheek, and his overwhelming scent foul with smoke, and something metallic. Something filled with blood, death, and the rot that permanently inhabits this place. “It’s time we open up that pretty little head and let the poison out. You’ll thank me once I’ve freed you, Cecelia. Your slate will be scrubbed clean.”
“Jason, check the electrodes are ready and delivering,” Halstead’s voice comes and goes, as if within a tunnel. My dull vision flickers like flashbulbs in the dark, and suddenly Wren is crouched above me, straddling my legs, but I can’t feel his weight, his blue-gray frantic eyes too wide as he stares down at me.
“I heard a bird escaped its cage,”he singsongs, tapping the side of his skull with one blood-stained finger.“Time to clip her wings, snip-snap, crack-pop! My dolly’s gonna drop.”
“Wren,” I attempt to scream, but it comes out hoarse, muffled, and weak. Something in my mouth makes my jaw ache in pain, as it forces my lips grotesquely apart. My tongue lashes forward, tasting the combination of rubber, and my salty tears, as fear pollutes me. Bash is suddenly at my side, calm and pale as a marble statue, covered in beautiful, sinister artwork. His eyes meet mine, and in their depths, I witness a deep sense of sorrow.
My ears strain to hear his voice, which doesn’t rise above a whisper, “You should have attempted to flee when you could have, little toy. You should have saved yourself, and not let him in. The door to your mind needed to remain locked when he knocked, but now it’s too late.”
Tears slide from the corners of my eyes, and bury themselves in my matted, sweat-slicked hair, as Doctor Halstead chuckles, the sound low and indulgent, and causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. He strokes my hair back with a tenderness that curdles my stomach.Motherfucker, I will kill you!I screambehind the rubber gag, but it comes out as nothing but mewling sounds.
“You are something very special, Cecelia, with your fascinating delusions, and twin hallucinations. Your damaged mind has created two very distinct personalities for them, and a world that you could have never existed inside of, never mind survived. I’ve never seen a mind split so… symmetrically.”
Click.The sound is loud in my ears, and competes with the rushing of my blood. I can’t move, I try forcing all of my muscles to strain, terror racing through me, but my limbs are cement, my muscles soaked in static. I’m trapped, and at Halstead’s mercy, and that is the most dangerous place to be. My eyes slide upward, and I get a glimpse of Jason looming behind the doctor like a silent sentinel, holding a tray of gleaming instruments. Halstead lifts an item that looks like a combination of a small hammer with a curved end, and a sharp ice pick. “This, my dear, is an orbitoclast. This will be an instrument that will change the trajectory of your life, hopefully for the better. That is, if you don’t die during the procedure.”
The metal glints under the light, as he grabs it tightly between the fingers of his left hand, and comes closer to me with a small hammer in his right. My head can’t move at all; something holds me tightly at my forehead, as I attempt to thrash. No, please, no! I scream, only nothing but muffled sounds fill the room.
“Broken dolly, don’t fight, it will only hurt for a moment,”Wren’s distorted voice calls out to me, but I can’t see him in the blinding light Jason shines in my eyes.
“We’ll start with the left, Miss Vaughan. That’s where you keep your dreams, yes?” Halstead purrs. “Let’s see if we can extract the twins.” The metal glints, until it comes so close to my eye socket that my vision blurs. A sharp pain breaks through myface, and it feels like it shatters. “Just a little more, Cecelia. It will all be over soon,” Halstead croons softly.
“Breathe, little toy, please just breathe!”Bash’s voice screams, but I’m long past the point of listening. My confinement forces me to stare into the overhead light, Halstead in my peripheral, and if I’m not mistaken, the fucker is humming a cheery tune under his breath.Crack.The mallet strikes the pick, and there’s a thrust of massive pressure, a blinding pain like a migraine erupting in my skull. It’s an obscene and foreign sensation, like something violating the back of my eye socket. Then I feel nothing but burning, liquid fire threading into my brain. I scream, over and over again, at least I think I do, as the world seems to still, and everything within me goes numb.
All of a sudden, a terrifying sound fills my ears, the sound of manic giggling, and wet flesh parting.“Don’t worry, broken dolly,”Wren cackles.“He’s just stirring the soup until it’s all mixed in!”
Bash enters my sightline, his face lined with strain, and his lips in a stern, angry line. He leans closer to me until there’s nothing but him left to see.“Just close your eyes, beautiful. He can’t reach you if you don’t look. Remember, you belong to us, not him.”My body trembles against the restraints, spasming as I try not to look, but it’s a defeated task. My vision fractures, then blurs, and the shapes melt into one another in a kaleidoscope of colors, before ending in a smear of nothing but white.
“Ah, the anterior cingulate cortex… mmm, yes, such lovely activity, and such resistance, your mind is fighting me, Cecelia. How delicious and wondrous, it seems you are stronger than I’ve given you credit for.”
Halstead twists the pick and pushes a little deeper, the pain instant and overwhelming. I feel my body lurch as I vomit, and it slips between the sides of my mouth, and around the rubber attached to my face. Disgusting warm bile coats my chin, hot andsour, and Jonathon leans forward, and wipes it away without any expression, like he’s dusting off furniture. My heart skips and then stumbles, as if it can’t hold its rhythm. I hear the faint whispering of beeping somewhere in the space that coincides with its sound.
Wren’s voice is like thunder breaking through all the pain and terror, except now he’s screaming, and not laughing. His voice peels through my skull, sharp and deafening.“He’s killing us! He’s ripping us out! Stop him, dolly! DO SOMETHING, I DON’T WANT TO BE TRAPPED IN THE DARK!”
Bash leans forward, his hands landing on either side of my face, with a tender look across his handsome features.“You were always mine, ours, but we were never meant to stay. Come find us in the next life, little toy, we’ll be waiting,”he whispers. Then both of them stand back and stare at me, as if frozen in time.
