Page 21 of Devoured

I pressed my back against the wall and tried to breathe normally. I just wanted to get back to my room. Take the meds. Sleep. Stop imagining things that couldn’t be real. Stop giving Varnar more ammunition to use against me.

But as I walked back through those stone corridors, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching.

Waiting.

Chapter 8

Two weeks at St. Dymphna.

Two weeks of oatmeal that formed a skin on top, no matter how fresh it was.

Two weeks of showers that scalded you one second and froze you the next, no matter how you adjusted the handle.

Two weeks of lying awake at night, wondering if what I saw was real—or just my mind cracking.

It was the same routine every day.

Wake up to the click of the magnetic lock releasing.

Choke down breakfast.

Sit through group therapy where everyone lied.

Except the sleeping part was getting worse.

Fourteen nights lying on that narrow mattress, staring at the ceiling. The red eyes from that first night hadn’t come back. But Theo had.

He showed up after lights out, when the hallway went quiet except for someone crying a few doors down. Sometimes he looked normal. Sometimes he had holes where I’d stabbed him.

“Getting fat, aren’t you?”he had said the previous night, standing in the corner. Blood dripped steadily from his chest. “Look at those thighs. That belly. No wonder I had to fuck other women.”

I had pulled the blanket up higher.

He was right. I had gained weight since coming here. The food was bad, but it filled something in me. Stress made me eat even when I wasn’t hungry—just to have something in my mouth, something to do with my hands. My scrubs were tight now.

“Nothing to say?”He walked around my bed, no footsteps, even though dark liquid pooled wherever he stood. “You always were pathetic. But at least when you were just plump, you were pretty pathetic. Now you’re just fat and disgusting.”

I didn’t answer anymore.

If I told anyone about seeing him, they’d up my meds. The current ones were already making everything blurry and far away.

I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all.

In these two weeks, I’d had three more sessions with Dr. Varnar. Each one left me feeling like he’d taken something from me that I couldn’t name.

The second session, he stayed behind his desk. But his questions cut deep anyway.

“Tell me about your childhood,”he said, voice smooth and interested. “Were you always so accepting of pain?”

The third session was different. He left his desk and walked around my chair while I talked. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his footsteps circling me. Then his hand settled on the back of my neck. His fingers pressed into the flesh there—almost like a massage, but not quite. The pressure made me want to lean away, but I stayed still.

“You have a remarkable capacity for endurance,”he said from behind me. His thumb moved along my spine. “Most people would have broken. But not you. You just absorbed it all. Like a sponge.”

I had wanted to throw up when he said it.

The fourth session was two days ago. He pulled his chair close to mine. Our knees almost touched. When I talked about cutting off Theo’s dick and watching the house burn, he leaned in and put his hand on my knee.

“You must have felt so broken, so forced to do that,”he said. His fingers pressed through the thin scrub fabric. His thumb moved in little circles. It was supposed to feel comforting, but it didn’t.