Page 31

Nostalgia: Bittersweet ache for something lost.

A ll I will ever have are my memories of her.

I awoke to the sound of a baby crying.

What the fuck?

I was on a couch in a house that reminded me so much of my old home. It was like a replica of the life I used to live, but living here was a different family. The pictures on the walls were of Micah, Ivy, and their daughter Anastasia.

I rubbed my hand over my face trying to remember what the fuck happened.

I vaguely remembered talking to Quinn…Fallon was there. Talking to me and soothing me. I fell asleep, and that was the last thing I remembered.

Now, I was apparently sleeping on Quinn’s couch. I sat up, swinging my feet to the ground and getting myself to a stand.

My phone was buzzing somewhere in the distance, and it took me a minute to locate it in the dark, following the light to the island table. I answered the call.

“Masters,” I said into the phone’s speaker.

“Roe…” He began to sob. My brother was crying on the other line?

Alarmed, I cleared my throat from the sleepiness and said, “Goliath? What’s wrong? Is Ezello okay?”

Goliath may be seven foot six, but his four-foot-eleven-inch-tall woman brought him to his knees more than once. There wasn’t a thing in the world that could affect my brother like this unless it was her…or us.

“She’s fine. It’s Judas.”

Shit.

“What the fuck happened? What’s wrong with Judes?”

Goliath blew his nose, trying to get it together. There was pain and fragility in his voice that I barely heard.

“He went bat shit, Roe. He attacked us from the bars, ripping his hair out and smashing himself over and over into the walls, screaming ‘kill’ a million times. I had to put him out. He’s fucking sedated in the nurse’s wing.

He was going to kill someone or one of us.

He wasn’t himself. He was something entirely different.

Like an animal. I have never seen him like that before, brother. ”

I gasped. “Geez-us. What the fuck do you think happened? Is it his disease?”

Goliath breathed a heavy breath. He was smoking. That was definitely not something he had done since he was a cop back in the day.

“It’s okay, Lith. You did what you had to do to protect him. I understand.”

He breathed in another shaky inhale.

“No, you really don’t,” he said softly, and I frowned.

What the fuck?

“He was in some kind of psychosis, man. He said…”

There were more tears, so I waited for Goliath to get a hold of himself, my heart rate picking up.

“He said, ‘Tick-tock, soldier me. Kill soldier number three.’”

I fell silent, sure I had heard my brother wrong.

‘Soldier number three…’ That was what Joe said to us before he died. When Judas shot him, he said something about a…sleeping doll and tick-tock soldier number three. And something else.

‘The fun is done. You think you’ve won, but sleeping doll won round two, you think you’re safe, tick-tock, tick-tock…but sleeping doll, tick-tock, you.’

I growled, repeating the lines, trying to make sense of the words. The fucking riddles were nonsensical. Ramblings of a madman…but then why was my brother falling into a mania like Joe’s?

“What does it mean, Lith?” I pressed. Anger and confusion made me seethe.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I can’t wake Judas until we find out.”

That felt so harsh, but I understood. I couldn’t disagree with him as much as I wanted to. The asylum had fucked us all up. We may not have arrived as monsters, but we certainly became them along the way.

Joe appeared, and I ignored him, writing down the words on my phone and trying to decipher their meaning.

“Ohhh, a game! Fun fun!” he hissed.

“Go away, Joe,” I growled, turning my back to him.

“Huh?”

I cleared my throat and said, “ Oh, um, a fly. I said, "Go away, annoying ass fly.”

Goliath snorted. “Dude, just kill it.”

I glared at Joe in the corner. “I did, but there seems to be a lot of flies lately.”

Goliath, not understanding me at all, just snorted again. “Whatever, man.”

“Did you get Emmy back to Hospital Thirteen, all right? Is she sedated, too?”

Goliath was quiet for a moment, another drag of his cigarette before he spoke.

“Bro, I don’t know how to say this, but Emmy was never there.

I checked the CCTV footage, and she was asleep in her cell all night.

All I found in that hole was a dead woman.

I barely got out before the cops started throwing up the tape all over the place.

Did you know you were leading me into a fucking pig pen? ”

“Not there? What do you mean? I saw her! I fucking swear she was singing, she took the baby and was singing about….”

My brain short-circuited.

“She was acting just like Joe. She was singing those riddles, and she said…”

I wracked my brain for the exact wording she used, trying to make sure I wasn’t fucking insane, but no matter how I tried…It was all blurring together.

“I swear man…I…There was a girl with me. She saw everything. She saw her, too.”

Goliath was silent. His voice lowered into that calm tone bullshit he used on the fucking patients. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Maybe we all just need to get some sleep and look at things when we wake up.”

“Are you going to sedate me too, Lith?” I accused.

The dig was cold and undeserved, but I hated that he was acting like I was insane.

I wasn’t. Maybe I wasn’t exactly stellar, but I knew I wasn’t on Judas’s level…yet at any rate.

I needed to figure this out. I needed to decipher these fucked up puzzles. I had to learn what happened to Xenia. I had to fight for her. And Ariah…before I truly did lose my mind.

‘Tick-tock, my time is almost up.’