“No. You can’t do this!” The shrillness of a woman’s voice bounces down the hallway and into the room. That familiar shiver climbs my spine like a contorted beast awakening under the full moon. Each laddered rung of bone twisted and knotted as I scan the room for an escape. Popping my head out of the doorway, I see two orderlies fumbling to drag a young woman between them, heading my way. I run over and grab for my satchel on the floor, snagging the strap on a vase of fresh lilies propped up in the corner, and it falls against the rug, quiet enough under the raucousness outside that I silently thank the patient they are manhandling.
“Of course, these ones aren’t glued to the fucking floor,” I whisper yell, panic clawing at my throat. Hurrying to gather up the flowers, I stand the vase upright as quietly as I can with my teeth clenched. I consider for 0.3 seconds the validity of climbing inside the vase and hiding, but unless I’ve gained the power of rodent transformation in the time I’ve been in this room, that isn’t going to work.
The voices get closer, one of the orderlies grunting and yelling out in pain as the young woman cackles maniacally. I don’t know what she’s done, but it was enough to get a rise out of the living statue, so it can’t have been her playing nice. Thefamiliar whipping sound of a large hand backhanding someone’s face rings out. It doesn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks.
I hear the tinny splash of dripping water, my years of being locked in Doc’s dungeons when I didn’t behave like the model whore he’d trained me to be, the sound alerts me to a possible escape route. I kick up the edge of the rug and drop to my knees to see if there is a hidden hatch in the wooden floor, but that would be too serendipitous even for me.
You’re shit out of luck, Cara.
At this vantage point, crouched on my knees, wishing I was anywhere but here, luck flips the coin and shines her grace down on me—for once. I see a sliver of light creeping through, behind the edge of Lenora's portrait on the wall, and scramble into action.
“Put me down,” the woman in the hall shrieks, close enough now that I can hear her fingernails scraping against the papered wall just outside the room.
I pull at the painting with everything I have, feeling for a latch behind the frame flush with the wall. My chest heaves when my frantic fingers feel a strip of metal; unhooking it, it swings open like a door and grants me entry. I jump inside and pull it closed behind me, leaving a gap so I can still see into the room, my heart in my throat as I try to calm my erratic breathing. The orderlies enter the room and dump the girl on the floor, not caring how she lands as she hits the rug in a crumpled mess, her blue patient scrubs torn and bloody exposing her battered skin beneath.
Rising onto her feet, henchman number two filling the doorway in case she tries to escape, the guy in charge levels her with a punch to her gut. She doubles over, her knees hitting the floor, her cheek now resting against the ground as she spits out a mouthful of blood. Her once white teeth are stained pink, hermaniacal smile still set in place as her piercing grey eyes meet mine through the gap. She sees me.
“Stay down bitch,” the guy guarding the door bellyaches with a booming voice as though her mere existence is an inconvenience on his day. He turns to step outside, glancing down the hall while the other man rummages around in the boxes on the shelves, loose papers littering the floor around his feet, no care for the mess he’s making. I don’t know what I’m going to do once I get out, but I can’t wait back here when she clearly needs help. Pushing the frame open, she shakes her head at me, mouthing the wordnosharply, insisting I listen as her eyes bulge in warning. I pull it closed again, suffocating under the urge to help where I’m not wanted. When it’s closed enough to hide me again, she smiles genuinely and rests against the carpet, the will and fight for herself beaten out of her, but her noble attempt to save me alight in her gleeful expression.
“Got it,” the man at the shelves hollers, signalling for the other guy to come and pick up the young woman and haul her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Grabbing her chin between his fingers, the orderly waves the file at her. “Transfer papers all in order, Monica; that will be the last time you bite me, bitch,” he seethes, and then they are gone, stomping off down the hallway until I’m left alone again with the wild thump of my overworked heart filling my ears.
As my panic dies out, and my heart stops trying to cleave its way out of my chest, the soft rumblings of music fill the air. However, they aren’t coming from the room behind the painting shielding me, but rather from below, down the stone steps I’m crouching on that lead down into darkness. The outline of a door below in the distance is my only sign that the carved-out brick tunnel I can feel beneath my fingers isn’t bottomless.
My mother used to warn me that curiosity killed the cat, and as I contemplate seeing where these stairs might take me,I conclude that I am in fact the cat in this scenario. Does this realisation stop me? No, of course it doesn’t; tenacity always has been my most annoying personality trait. The one most likely to get me in trouble.
Be the cat, curious Cara.
My feet are descending the stairs before I’ve even had a chance to weigh up the cons of such a monumentally stupid decision.
CHAPTER TEN
CARA
Itrail my fingers blindly along the crumbling exposed brick walls, one foot in front of the other, waiting for that lurch of my belly when I finally reach the bottom. I almost faceplant the metal door, the light creeping in around the edges burning my retinas the closer I get. Pushing open the heavy door with my shoulder, I bite back the grunt of exertion.
‘No one said it was going to be easy on this curiosity mission, Miss Kitty,’my brain offers unhelpfully as I quietly push the door closed behind me. The beautiful music that fills the hallway is much louder now.
I tread carefully around the stacks of chairs and old office equipment piled untidily either side of me. The scarred nubs where my fingers used to be beneath my prosthetic ache—reminding me of the last time I got too tenaciously curious for my own good.
The dial of an old radio is turned in a room ahead of me, the buzzing of static as a station is searched for ringing out into the hallway and letting me know I’m not alone; it makes me pause. I run my gloved hand over the placard on the wall that reads‘Morgue’and wait for the sounds of grunting and whimpering that I had heard when I entered the hallway to ring out againover the Woodstock seventies playlist, hoping whoever is in the room is now distracted enough again not to see me peering in through the viewing window.
What appears to be a usually depressing, off-white tile room with scuffed linoleum flooring is prettied up with a draped gothic backdrop, the luxurious hanging black satin material secured to the ceiling. Vibrant white lilies in tall vases line the back wall. We’re obviously in a basement so there are no windows down here. Vaulted cinnamon-scented red candles in twisted brass holders dotted around the space flicker as their bodies move. It’s a stage set perfectly for an old Shakespearean sonnet reading, although I don’t think this particular performance is the kind that would require a script or any stage direction. My feet plant themselves to the spot, hidden behind an old filing cabinet as I stare into the room with a wide-eyed gaze. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget what I’ve seen here.
I miss the days where something like this had the ability to shock me.
His hands explore her sweat speckled skin, tugging at her peaked nipples as she sucks the other guy’s cock between her lips greedily. If I were here under different circumstances, I’d clap for the woman as the head of his length works its way past her gag reflex with ease and down into her throat—this is not her first rodeo into double-teaming, and the beautiful arch of her body is proof of that. She’s taking them both like a seasoned pro. As the guy settled between her lips arches his spine and throws back his head, I can tell he agrees. I’ve grown to love the darkness, the depravity of it all, because it has been ingrained as my normal for so many years. To think there was a time when I knew nothing of this world. That feels so long ago now.
I watch avidly as theNosferatuporn hub special—two cocks—all the holes edition plays out to ‘The Clash’s Should I stay or should I go’.
For once it isn’t the act but rather the participants that have my attention glued to the scene playing out in front of me.
As though the universe is trying to tell me my ability to be shocked is very much still within me, I pinch my lips together to silence the squeak of realisation when it finally hits me, a million and one questions filling my head in quick time.
The slapping of skin and laboured groans of the here and now sucks me back in. If you had told me yesterday that I would be watching a live play-by-play of my boss fucking two mental patients, I would have called your bluff; my life may be crazy at times, but that is a little insane even for me. It seems Blackwood Asylum has a few more bombshells up its sleeve.
I’ve been in this life long enough that gratuitous sex playing out in front of me isn’t much to write home about; when you’ve dropped your keys into a bowl on a governor’s yacht on New Year’s Eve where everyone is dressed as an animal from a production ofTheLion King, the weird quickly becomes the unfortunate norm. I’ve been maneuvered into more positions than a trapeze artist travelling with the Cirque du Soleil.
But this is something else.
