Page 20 of Atrocity (The Wellard Asylum #5)

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."

— Carl Jung

B lood clings to me like a second skin. Slick in some places, crusted black in others, flaking in my joints when I flex.

My knuckles are still wet from the last few punches, sticky with something that used to be alive.

Something that used to whimper when it saw me.

Something that thought love meant licking my boots clean and calling it devotion.

My fucking masterpiece turned mutiny.

And now he’s nothing. Just a red smudge on my memory. A sigh in the padding. A twitch in the corner of my eye I no longer feel the need to blink away.

I breathe deep. Inhale the rot. The leftover sobs soaking the walls. The coppery perfume of his betrayal. I can still taste it in my mouth. Still feel the tremble of his breath under my tongue, the way he kissed me like it was a confession, like it mattered. As if that could save him.

Too late for saving.

I don’t do second chances.

I slide the keycard from my pocket.

It’s still damp with blood, sticky along the magnetic strip. I roll it between my fingers, feel the edges, slick and sharp, like something alive. Something earned. Something stolen. It twitches against my glove like it knows what’s coming. Like it’s impatient.

Like me.

The sirens haven’t started yet. But I can hear the pressure building in the bones of the walls. The hum of something on the verge of screaming. This place always knew I’d be the one to make it bleed.

I turn the corner slow. Knife loose in my grip, dragging lazy lines into the wall as I pass. A heartbeat in steel. A song without a chorus.

Then I see it.

The fire alarm.

Red. Flashing. Tucked beside the emergency exit like a candy-coated confession. Begging me to pull it. To make it sing.

I laugh.

Just once. Quiet. A twitch in the chest that leaks out of my mouth like smoke.

“You want a show?” I whisper to no one. To the walls. To the system. “Then let’s burn the curtain call.”

I slam my fist into the glass. It shatters like nerves. My fingers curl around the lever, and I pull.

Hard.

The wail that follows splits the air down the middle. The building shrieks like it’s just remembered what pain feels like. Sirens blare. Lights strobe. The fire system comes alive with a breathless, bitchy vengeance, like it’s been waiting years to rat someone out.

Good girl.

I step back. Smile wider. My slippers leave wet, red tracks on the linoleum as I pivot toward the far hall, the one they blocked off years ago.

The one with the busted lights and the peeling ceiling tiles.

The one they forgot when they were too busy writing incident reports and popping lithium like breath mints.

That’s where the back exit lives. Tucked behind a staff stairwell. Unwatched. Unloved.

Fucking perfect.

Upstairs, I hear chaos bursting like fireworks. Screams. Metal beds screeching across tile. A crash of something shattering. Nelly still yelling nonsense at God or the air vents. Maybe both. Shit, I don’t know, but I gotta say, I’m impressed she’s still fighting.

I keep walking.

No running. No panic. Just the slow, sure rhythm of someone who already knows how the story ends.

Which I do, because I fucking wrote it.

Because this is the last fucking chapter.

The closer I get to the exit, the colder the air gets. Drafty. Basement-flavored. I pass the supply closet where we used to hide when things got loud. When punishment felt too close. It’s empty now. Door swinging on busted hinges. The shadows inside breathe like they remember me.

I nod to them.

Then I’m at the end of the corridor.

The exit door stands tall and ugly, rust crawling up its edges like veins. A little green reader blinks beside it. Waiting. Expectant.

I hold up the keycard.

I don’t swipe it right away.

Instead, I stand there for a second. Let the sirens pour down the hall. Let the emergency lights flicker and paint my shadow across the filthy wall. Let the night leak through the cracks around the frame.

This is it.

My map. My out.

My fucking masterpiece.

I swipe the card.

Beep.

Click.

Green light.

The door unlatches with a hiss. I shove it open.

The night hits me like a slap.

Cold wind. Diesel. Rot. Fucking freedom. It smells like everything I’ve ever wanted and nothing I’ll ever need again. The alley yawns open in front of me, mouth wide, waiting to swallow me whole.

I step into it.

Behind me, the asylum howls.

I grin under the mask.

God, I wish I could see their faces.

I move through the alley like a shadow with a switchblade.

The wind licks blood from my sweatshirt, flings it across brick walls.

My slippers splash through puddles that glitter under broken streetlamps.

One of them reflects my face, cracked mask, wet eyes, teeth showing like the end of the joke’s finally landed.

It’s so fucking funny.

I think about McNamara. About how long it’ll take them to find him. About the mess I left in the padded room. About Gabriel, red and twitching, mouth frozen open like he was trying to scream my name.

Or maybe beg.

Too late, puppet.

I reach the end of the alley and slip out onto the side street.

The world doesn’t pause.

Cars buzz past like they’re in on the joke but too chickenshit to laugh. A traffic light winks yellow like it’s thinking real hard about pissing itself. The city’s awake but only just. Half-lidded. Drunk. Clueless. Ain’t clocked the detonation dancing up its spine yet.

But it will.

Oh, baby, it fucking will.

I can feel the tremor twitching behind my eyes. Like static. Like something about to pop and smear itself across the pavement in a big red punchline.

Two blocks down, a mutt barks its brains out.

Sirens start up again, but this time they’ve got teeth. Angry ones. Somebody upstairs finally figured out that the fire alarm wasn’t just a happy little accident. That it was cover. A curtain. A fucking drumroll.

They’re late.

God, they’re always so fucking late.

I pass a liquor store with bars on the windows and a junkie passed out like a roach on the sidewalk. Neon sign says OPEN, but the way it flickers screams ABANDON ALL HOPE, BITCH. I salute it with two bloody fingers and a grin under the mask.

The night’s got flavor out here. Old ghosts jerking off in the alley. Sin trailing like cigarette smoke. Every block’s a fucking obituary with fresh ink. And me? I’m just the highlighter.

I fish the keycard out of my coat pocket.

Hold it up to the light like it’s a love letter I never sent.

Cheap plastic. Bent to hell. Red streaks across the edge like lipstick on a cigarette. Useless now.

But goddamn if it didn’t open the world for me.

I laugh.

That twitchy, inside-out kind of laugh that lives in the back of your throat like a rat chewing wires. Then I fling the card into the gutter like a used condom and watch it vanish into the piss-soaked void.

“Thanks for the exit, sweetheart,” I mutter. “Suck a dick in hell.”

The wind kicks up again, wet and hungry. Smells like copper. Like sweat. Like God’s fucking asshole.

My blood-slick track pants cling like a second skin, slippers flapping with each step like applause from hell. I look like a psych ward dropout starring in Clown Escapes Asylum and Fucks the World Raw, and spoiler alert—there’s no second take.

I duck under a busted awning and take a breath.

Not ‘cause I’m tired.

‘Cause it tastes so fucking good.

Like ruin and victory. Like licking the rim of a bottle that used to hold poison and now just holds me.

I slip into the next alley like a rumor. Let the dark suck me in and spit me out wherever it wants. Doesn’t matter. Anywhere’s better than that white-walled throat they tried to swallow me with.

One more breath.

One more block.

One more name I don't give a single fuck about carved behind me in meat and mayhem.

I’m not just escaping.

I’m not just surviving.

I’m molting.

Shed the patient. Kept the monster.

I’m the snarling, blood-slick joke they never learned how to laugh at, and this?

This isn’t freedom.

This is the fucking sequel.