Page 8 of Monsters Like Us
I lower my head and push the food around my tray. My appetite has shifted. The hunger I feel now has nothing to do with the slop they serve in this place and everything to do withher.
Katana doesn’t know it yet, but she’s already mine.
And before long, this entire institute will know it, too.
The need to be near her squeezes the air from my lungs. It’s an obsession with no boundaries.
I sit and watch the other patients, eyes sweeping the cafeteria until I lock on one of them. Someone who mouths prayers to a god that doesn’t answer. He keeps glancing my way, shaking under the weight of his own small, useless rebellions. He thinks his looks are hidden. He’s wrong.
I lean forward until my knuckles whiten against the tray. For ten years, I learned how to pull a string and watch the puppet convulse. It’s an art. It’s control.
Slowly, deliberately, I fixmy eyes on him.
At first, nothing happens. Just the scrape of his chair and the low hum of his voice. Then his breath shortens. The slight scratching of his nails on the tray grows frantic. He swallows, but cannot make the sound work. His head turns a fraction toward me—and that look, the pleading panic—feeds something cold inside me.
I don’t blink.
His face contorts. A sound builds in his throat like a sob squeezed into a vise, and then it snaps free in a high, keening wail. Heads turn in his direction. A nurse rushes over, hands awkward and useless. He shakes and twitches, his eyes wild. His tray tips and stew splashes across the table.
I sit back and let the room settle around the echo of his collapse. They swarm around the broken, animal-like child, trying to calm him.
Satisfaction blooms inside me. I’ve made my point. Ownership is a language here, and he just learned a new word.
Heat burns in my chest. I stand, smooth my hands against my sweatpants, and begin moving toward her.
The kid is still freaking out, which has unsettled other residents, as I knew it would. Marcy is drawn to a row where two men are pushing each other. She intervenes, authoritative and loud. It’s the perfect distraction—a slice of chaos to keep her busy.
I slip through the crowd like smoke. Marcy doesn’t notice me. Not when she’s all teeth and commands. Bruce is busy trying to break up a fight. No one pays attention to me.
Katana’s shoulders are small in the gray fabric that swallows her. Long hair spills in a loose tangle down her back. The way it catches the fluorescents—dark threads against rumpled grey—is an offering.
I move behind her. My fingers hover a breath away from the fabric, feeling the warmth of her skin through thesweatshirt. I let my hand trail lower, the motion casual. The kind of touch that looks accidental but isn’t.
My fingertips brush a loose strand of hair resting on the sweatshirt. It’s dark, silky, and smells faintly of cinnamon. I curl my fingers and lift the strand of her hair, slipping it into my palm. It’s a small thing—a thread. But trophies consist of small things.
The world narrows to the piece of her in my hand: a single brown filament, tremulous and stubborn. I tuck it into my sleeve where the heat will keep it close and private.
Across the room, Marcy shouts, and Bruce hauls a man to his feet. The noise climbs, the room swells with motion.
Katana eyes the chaos, oblivious to the theft. Her shoulders are still, a woman who has learned to survive by trying to be invisible.
I stand behind her for a heartbeat longer, watching the line of her spine, the angle of her jaw.
As if she feels me, she looks up. Her breath hitches. Her fingers curl around her tray like an anchor.
My lips brush her ear as I whisper, “Don’t worry, Katana. I won’t hurt you.”
Her face registers understanding and shock in a single, terrible flash.
Then I straighten, the movement smooth, before I turn and walk away, heading back to my prison to store my treasure where no one will see it.
I slide the strand of hair to my palm as the corridors open like a river of dull faces that part without meeting my eyes. Bruce hurries behind me, a trembling man in his hold.
“You good, Micah?” he asks.
I nod. He moves past me with his charge, heading for the elevator. I know exactly where that guy will end up. Solitary.
A grin spreads as Bruce disappears. He thinks I’m contained.He’s wrong.
