Page 91 of Freak Show

I was fiddling with the blanket covering my body when an idea occurred to me.

Thinking it was perfect, I pulled it up over my head, and had the first relief I’d had in an hour.

Blissful darkness.

I don’t know how long I sat like that when I heard the first mutterings of a dead person in the hallway.

“I can’t believe they’re so busy that they’ll just put dead people in the hallway,” someone whispered as they moved in the hallway. “That’s horrible.”

“That poor person probably didn’t have any family. I mean why else would they be left alone in the hallway?” another replied.

Why indeed.

That poor person.

Another person whispered, and then another.

“At least it’s only food poisoning,” I heard said. “It could be worse. We could be dead like that person.”

Was this person close to me or something?

Not that I could look or anything.

I was practically strapped down to the bed.

All I’d accomplish by pulling the blanket up was binding it tighter around me.

I hummed to myself as to not think about that poor dead person likely only feet away from me, and instead tried to think about what I would say to Slone if I ever saw him again.

I’d broken up with him.

In fact, I’d done it so spectacularly over the phone that I was embarrassed with myself.

My sister had laughed about her antics later—my god, who the hell showed their twin sister photoshopped photos of their possible boyfriend and thought it was a good idea?—but I wasn’t laughing.

Instead, I was fuming.

I was also seconds away from leaving the circus and never coming back, and fuck their inheritances.

I loved my sisters.

Truly, I did.

But Hades was pushing my buttons.

In fact, if I didn’t see her again for another two months, that would be too early.

I couldn’t believe that I’d been played by her.

I also couldn’t believe that my rash behavior had ruined a relationship I was really beginning to think might be ‘it’ for me.

I mean, it took a lot to deal with the things wrong with me, yet Slone had all but shown that he could handle that and more.

It wasn’t every day that you could find someone to make love to you with the possibility of you falling asleep on them in the middle of the deed.

There was a rush of whispered conversations, and then a ‘Oh my God!’ and ‘It’s him!’

I wondered who ‘it’s him’ was.

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