Summary: Bad dogs always get muzzled.
Words: 5.6k
TW: Extreme violence, horror-coded description of high security mental hospital, mention of torture, killing, and snuff movies, humiliation, a tad bit of medical torture, angst ++, evil MC, psychopathic and homicidal couple in the making. Anyway, at this point, you know what to expect, though this chapter is quite tame. Fun fact: McDermott and Van Patten are names taken from American Psycho.
Notes: Emilia Horsby belongs to @cillmequick. James Thorne (mentioned) belongs to @justrainandcoffee. Lucas Woods belongs to @jelly-rei. Cast at the end.
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The dirty white walls of St. Judith high-security psychiatric hospital smelled like chlorine so strongly that it burned her nostrils. Frankly, Emilia didn’t know what she hated the most as she walked past the heavily armed guards: that chemical stench or the neon lights of the place, which buzzed relentlessly because of their bad wiring, like a grim murmur that crept above the ceiling tiles. The young nurse adjusted the sleeve of her uniform as she waited for the head nurse to check her identity, trying to hide how sweaty her palms were. It was her very first day here, a job she didn’t really ask for but which came with good pay.
Nurse McDermott, a fifty-years old and broad-shouldered man with a stern face and grey hair, finally gave her the patient list for Ward 6.
“You’ll do fine,” he said, even though his expression didn’t match his reassuring words. “Just keep your head down and don’t make eye contact with anything that bites.”
She would’ve loved to believe that it was a joke but she could sense that the man was too old school for that. Crew cut. Smelling like mint gum and budget cologne. Her brown eyes had noticed a stain on his sleeve that might’ve been bolognese or dried blood — Emilia didn’t want to know.
Beside them stood Van Patten, the older floor nurse, who had joined them mid-briefing while clutching her mug like it was the last source of warmth in this grim hospital. Forty three, she was wearing crocs, a crucifix and the weary facial expression of someone who’d stopped believing her job was to cure patients a long time ago.
“Any patient in particular I should be aware of?” Emilia asked, more to feign interest than to investigate for she guessed that more or less every patient here was considered high-risks. Yet, the young nurse didn’t expect the loaded silence that first replied to her question. It was McDermott who broke it, exhaling through his nose loudly. Then, he reached for a labelless manila folder, on which a note clipped to the front said the following in red ink:
DO NOT ENGAGE WITHOUT SUPERVISION. FEMALE STAFF: DO NOT ENTER ROOM ALONE.
The male nurse flipped it open and tapped a picture inside it.
“That one.”
Emilia leaned and was quick to frown at what she saw. The face that stared back at her looked like it belonged to the cover of a fashion model magazine. He had eyes as black as coal, black hair slicked back, high cheekbones, perfectly trimmed beard, a jaw that could cut diamond… And lips so sinfully perfect it didn’t matter what he said for people would cling to every word regardless, just for the pleasure of watching them move. Patient 0667 definitely didn’t look like a bloodthirsty lunatic monster.
“Amos Von Bismarck,” McDermott said, “Heir to the VBI fortune and golden boy. Or he was, before authorities found pieces of a businessman partner scattered all over his penthouse. He chopped him with an axe.”
Emilia swallowed, dropping two shades paler. “Him? But he looks so… normal.”
“That’s the problem,” Van Patten cut her off, setting her mug down with a thud. “Looks like a goddamn perfume ad and talks like he’s been auditioning for ‘Most Fuckable Sociopath’ since the cradle. That bastard could sweet-talk anyone into jumping off a bridge.”
“What’s his diagnosis?” Emilia couldn’t keep her eyes off the patient’s picture.
“Officially? Type I psychosis with dissociative episodes.” McDermott muttered as he glared at Van Patten for her crude way of talking, “But don’t buy it. That guy is a high-functioning psychopath with comorbid narcissistic delusions and a god complex. Almost scores 40 out of 40 on the PCL-R”
Emilia’s heart missed a beat. She finally stopped staring at these coal black eyes, “Is he violent?”
“Not anymore. He’s pumped so full of tranquilizers his dose could knock out a fucking tiger. The danger is elsewhere now.” McDermott let out a hollow, humorless chuckle before going on, “Once he got a student nurse to smuggle him benzos and a knife. She thought he was in love with her. Poor thing got fucked two times. Once by him, literally, and then by the hospital board when they fired her. She was so brainwashed she carved his initials into her thigh with a scalpel from the supply closet.”
Emilia’s jaw dropped. It couldn’t be possible.
“She was married and had a kid,” Van Patten added, rubbing her temple. “...Still asks about him and sends love letters.” Letters he didn’t bother reading and that ended up in the bin. Then she said, “Wanna know the real kicker? He doesn’t even remember her name. He was just bored and she happened to be nothing but a temporary distraction.”
A heavy silence settled over them. The young nurse stared at the photo again, at that drop-dead handsome face and the way the camera’s flash didn’t even gleam in his eyes, as though they were two soul-sucking black holes that swallowed light.
“Can I just… avoid him?” She asked, unable to hide the faint tremor in her voice.
McDermott barked a gravelly laugh. “Oh sweetheart, I hope so.”
“Don’t talk to him,” Van Patten warned. “Don’t smile at him. Don’t answer if he asks your name. Don’t even laugh if he makes a joke. You don’t give him an inch of you, ‘coz it’s enough for him to take your goddamn soul. He’s charming, sure, but like a fucking snake.”
She passed Emilia the updated meds list and, immediately, the young nurse held the file close as if the sensation of paper brushing the pad of her fingers helped ground her.
“Got it,” she whispered.
Van Patten gave her a supportive smile but the muscles of her face were so unused to the motion that it looked like a wince more than anything else. Her pale gray eyes flicked to McDermott, who nodded one single time, before she started to walk away from the head nurse and the pretty newcomer…. Only to pause in front of a long corridor and glance at Mrs Hornsby from her shoulder.
“If you ever catch yourself thinking that relishing on his charm is harmless…” Her chapped lips curled in a twisted way this time, “Just remember that the dismembered body the cops pulled out of his penthouse was just the one they found.”
In a blink of an eye, she disappeared through the maze of the hospital.
“Welcome to Ward Six, kid.”
Emilia nodded, her knuckles turning white as she clutched at the file she was holding. Her eyes dropped to the manila folder, from which the glossy photo of Amos Von Bismarck peeked with that perfect frozen smile, as if he knew exactly what they were saying.
He had woken up in a hospital bed, dizzy and nauseous, with one of his wrists tightly handcuffed to the bed’s bars. Got told he miraculously survived the car crash with nothing but scratches, but that he was under arrest for first and second degree murder. His psychotic episodes and gruesome crimes had him locked up in a mental hospital through his trial because he was deemed too mentally unstable, as dangerous to himself as he was to others, to go elsewhere.
A little groan escaped from his lips because the noise around him fed his pulsing migraine. That fucking ward was never quiet. In fact, a chorus of human noise constantly floated in the air: murmurs of sedated voices, the guttural shouts of a man arguing with someone only he could see, and a sudden hysterical laughter bouncing against the walls. Today, a new patient was sobbing behind the closed door of her room, only to stop abruptly and start singing a children’s nursery off-key. Amos dragged himself forward, his bare feet rasping against the dull linoleum. The ankle monitor made a faint metallic click with each step and reminded him that he was trapped here for good, like a maneating tiger who finally got caught and thrown in some kind of illegal and unethical zoo.
He shouldn’t have been here. This place was for the mad. The lost. The drooling and broken wastes of society. Not for him, who was a functioning human being. Who fucking fitted in. Who belonged to the outside world, not in an asylum that stank of despair and that was filled with people pissing themselves. Moreover, it wasn’t as if they were truly trying to cure him. They rather caged him behind huge walls and gave him tranquilizers so strong it left him utterly heavy. His homicidal thoughts might’ve stopped rushing in his head, but they were still here, embedded in cotton, moving in thick and slow loops, while his body felt so sluggish he swore his vision lagged a second behind whenever he moved.
Amos’ skin itched under the washed-out black t-shirt and gray sweatpants he was wearing. Shit. This was a fucking torture. He wanted his suits. He wanted his expensive perfume. A haircut. A proper shave. He wanted his fucking body to feel like it belonged to him again.
A nurse wheeled a cart past him, the clinking metal resounding across the hallways and little paper cups of pills wobbling as she walked. She didn’t even acknowledge him. None of the women here did since the new policy – no female staff were allowed to administer his medication or do his room checks alone anymore. Not after what he’d done to the last one who’d gotten close enough to touch his warm skin. The administration called him “high-risk for manipulation and boundary violations”, which was their polite way of saying ‘he’s so pretty we’re afraid he’ll fuck nurses’. And honestly, it wasn’t unfounded. Even drugged, stripped of his tailored armor and all the power he carried, Amos remained dangerous. Beautiful in a way that unsettled and pretty much able to make people bend when they should’ve run.
“Hurry up, Bismarck.” The man who called him was built like a fucking freezer, hands pressed down on a metallic table cramped with little plastic cups. Walking to him automatically, the tall darkness thought of the nurse/guard/whatever he was as a fucking zookeeper.
When he reached him, Beefcake handed him one of the cups.
“C’mon Dorian Grey, chug it down.” He said with a dash of mockery in his voice, not giving him a chance to refuse. A cup of orange liquid was pressed into his palm, thick and sweet, and he was made to swallow it under watch. The same went with three different pills. Amos did it, the corner of his mouth twitching at the bitter chemical aftertaste, even if, by now, the ritual was familiar. Swallow. Open wide. Tongue out. Swallow again. Move the fuck out.
Following the daily meds cocktail, the fallen prince slouched down on a couch in the dayroom, the one closest to the window. The space was big, with bolted-down chairs and tables displaying different boardgames and books, but it still smelled and looked like a bloody kennel. Nearby was a man chewing the hem of his hospital gown. Disgusting. There was also a girl sitting on the floor with her knees up to her chin, rocking back and forth. Her hair hacked off unevenly as if she’d tried to claw it out herself. Pathetic. A flicker of irritation sparkled deep in his chest, but the fire didn’t catch – they had even managed to numb his anger.
Trying hard to ignore the other freaks, his glazed eyes simply looked at the grimy window through which the sky was already dark and heavy with winter rain. However, it wasn’t the landscape that made him feel dejected, but the reflection trapped inside the glass. Indeed, his own face stared back at him, displaying an unkept beard, longer, messy hair looking greasy due to the hospital’s cheap shampoo, and reddish eyecircles.
For the first time, Amos’s heart broke.
“This isn’t me.” He whispered to himself, not recognizing the man looking back.
His reflection did not argue.
Visitors Room
Orion shifted uncomfortably on the blue molded plastic chair that faced his brother. With his hands folded and his jaw tight, the youngest of the two heirs had to admit that the neon lights were far too white in this asepticized shit hole. They buzzed so aggressively that it could have made his head throb hadn’t he swallowed a Xanax prior to the visit. Orion let out a long exhale through his nose and focused on his brother again, sat behind the reinforced glass, dotted with holes to facilitate conversations, that stood between them. On the table lay a brown paper bag, an old iPhone without a sim card but loaded with music, and a pair of carefully chosen books. Five long, agonizing minutes had passed and no one had said a damn word yet.
Amos was slumped on his chair, his shoulders too still and his head ever so slightly tilted to the side, as if he was listening to something only he could hear. It pained Orion to admit it, but the hospital whites made his brother look wrong. That, and the badly trimmed stubble, the dark circles and, most heartbreakingly, his coal-black eyes all glazed up from whatever chemical cocktail they were knocking him out with – an efficient mix of antipsychotics and tranquilizers, perhaps. And though he bore Amos’s features, the man in front of him wasn’t the one who used to run a billion-dollar company like a stage play. Worse, he wasn’t the brother Orion had once worshiped as a superhero. What sat there now was something else entirely.
“Hey,” Orion said quietly, overcoming his anxiety. He nervously shifted the paper bag from one hand to the other. “I brought those cinnamon rolls you like.” He forced a small smile, glancing toward Amos but finding no reaction. “There are also a few books and hair gel. Thought it’d come in handy since you can’t cut your hair at the moment. Oh! And there’s a new toothbrush. Y’know how you always hated the shitty ones in hotels.”
The silence that came after was heavier than he’d expected. In fact, Amos just blinked slowly, as though that simple gesture took a humongous amount of effort. For sure, the medication had flattened every edge of him, turning him to a state close to zombification, however something feral still flickered in his soul-sucking irises at irregular intervals.
The youngest Von Bismarck sighed loudly. Alright, small talk didn’t seem to work.
“I – I spoke to the lawyers,” he let out, straightforwardly, “They’re trying to keep the whole case quiet but it’s still pretty chaotic out there. Even with dad doing damage control.”
No answer. Amos didn’t move, and this time he didn’t even blink. In fact, his eyes were open but unlit, like someone had turned off a switch inside. Such a sight made something twist deep inside Orion’s chest. He’d come here ready to see anger, confusion, – maybe even regret – but this quiet absence was way worse than everything he’d imagined. Instead, he just got to see his beloved brother fade in real time, slipping further away with every heartbeat.
Tears prickled at the corner of his black eyes as he tried to speak again, ignoring how tight his throat felt.
“Lucas said there was a shit ton of torture tapes. Inside the piano”.
God knew what triggered a reaction in this sentence, but Amos’s lips curved, just barely, with the ghost of a smile. As if his body was remembering how to pretend.
“Told you that old Bösendorfer had good acoustics…” He said sarcastically, almost himself again. Then the moment slipped away, his smile vanishing first, soon followed by the fragile light behind his eyes.
Orion’s stomach churned.
“Scheiß…” He muttered under his breath, even if the word was nothing more than a feeble whisper. With trembling fingers, he wiped the tear that was forming in the corner of his eyes, as if ashamed of it, and searched desperately for something – fucking anything – that might reach through the chemical fog and whatever madness had taken his brother from him. And though Orion would have loved to have inherited from Amos’s coldness and perfect composure, it wasn’t the case and he couldn’t help but crack.
“He put everything on you, didn’t he?” He sniffed, “Dad, I mean.”
Amos’s posture shifted a bit, right before his eyes locked onto his baby brother’s.
“All the pressure. The legacy. The fucking perfection you had no choice but display,” Orion went one, gathering force as his spilled his bitterness on the table like a knocked out cup of coffee, “He built you like one of those perfect marble statues in the fucking garden, back in our castle in Germany. And then he acted surprised when you cracked.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Hell, he still does.”
He shook his head. At this point, he didn’t care if Amos was listening or not, it seemed like he just had to find some explanations for the horror that had been discovered in light of the recent events.
“I still remember how he screamed at Mom,” he growled, “She just wanted to get you help, back when you were a teen. I think it was after James got arrested. Then dad lost it – ‘Nothing’s wrong with my son. Do you want people to assume my heir’s insane?’ “ Orion spat the last part out, pitching his voice in a cruel imitation of their father. “That’s what he said. Because God forbid anyone finds out dad’s fucking masterpiece, Amos Von Bismarck, might need a fucking psychiatrist.”
Amos didn’t deny it or confirm it either, though the way his nose scrunched – something that happened whenever he was going through a genuine emotional wave – betrayed him.
“You are the golden boy, after all,” Orion added, softer, “And I’ve always been the spare. Not that I ever complained eh. I used to tell myself I wouldn’t want to be you anyway. Not after watching you walk through fire just to prove you were enough for dad.” His dark eyes dropped to the floor. “And now… all this…”
The silence was about to settle again when Amos’s hoarse voice cut through it.
“I didn’t think it would end this way.”
Orion froze. His throat tightened as he tried to swallow the lump forming in it.
“Yeah, well…” His voice cracked despite his effort to steady it. “Neither did I.”
His eyes fell to the bag of sweets between them. His chest hollowed when he thought about the content of it. In fact, Amos loved cinnamon rolls. He used to buy some each time he’d pick him up from school. They would eat it on the way home, like a sacred and secret ritual between brothers… That same caring older brother who had a hidden room for torturing and butchering people – and recordings to prove it.
“You know,” he said, “I came here to ask why. Why you did all that. When you started. I thought maybe I’d also ask if you feel sorry, if you regret any of it.” He shook his head, his tone dropping to nothing more than a whisper, “But now… Now I don’t even know who I’m talking to.”
Something in his sentence seemed to have hurt Amos in a way, for his shark’s eyes met his brother’s and looked briefly alive. Briefly human.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re talking to your brother.” It sounded like a scold.
“No.” Orion cut him dryly, “I don’t think I am. If you want me to be true, I’d say that I don’t recognize you anymore. In fact, I wonder if I ever know you at all.”
The words, coming from the same baby brother he truly cherished, felt like a million shards of glass cutting through his skin. The tall prince leaned in just slightly in a slow motion weighted by both medication and fatigue. Despite the fact he was talking to someone he loved, no trace of warmth could be found on his face, only the hollowness of a creature that was too tired to pretend anymore.
“Of course you don’t.” His dull dark eyes observed him attentively, “You only ever saw the parts I let you see. People always want to believe I’m just one thing, one face. That one specific version they want me to be, so I… adapt.”
Then, Amos’s irises flicked around the sterile room with a gleam of disdain visible through the fog.
“This, though…” He gestured lazily at the walls. Or his handcuff. Or the humming light. Who knew? “This isn’t fair. I don’t belong here and you know that, Orion. You know me well enough.” His gaze locked onto his brother’s again as the veneer cracked enough to let impatience seep through. “Get me out,” He asked, black eyes pleading, “Please, get me out of here…”
Orion was dumbfounded.
“Pardon? You said… Not… Fair?” He paused, staring at him as if he’d misheard.
Orion’s breath hitched, then his voice hardened as he replied, being sure each word landed like a blow.
“Sasha, you butchered someone with an axe. In your fucking penthouse. And he wasn’t the only one, was he? He was just another name on a disgustingly long list.”
Amos’s expression remained etched with that calm detachment he used to terrify his employees and business partners in meeting rooms.
“You went full Patrick Bateman,” he spat. “So don’t you dare talk about what’s fair. Of course, you deserve to be here.”
For a long moment, Amos could find nothing to answer so all he did was watch the youngest with a far too off-putting, unblinking gaze, until an almost imperceptible sparkle of amusement twinkled very briefly in his empty eyes. His head tilted slightly, the same way a cat does when you scold it and it can’t understand what you’re being all fussy about. A soft hum escaped his charming lips.
“Patrick Bateman?” He repeated, the name rolling off his tongue with a delighted surprise, before a faint mocking smirk ghosted at the corner of his mouth, “Well… I always did like Christian Bale.”
Orion’s mouth opened, then closed again, for he could feel bile in his throat as a wave of nausea crashed against him. And just like this, there was nothing left to say. Everything felt sickenly pointless — the conversation, the visit, all of it. Whatever part of Amos he’d hoped to reach wasn’t there anymore. Or maybe it had never been. Without a warning, the young Von Bismarck pushed his chair back. The plastic legs of it scraped against the tiles.
“You know what?” He said, as he reached for his worn-out leather jacket, “Enjoy your fucking cinnamon rolls alone.”
He didn’t look back as he walked away. However, he stopped at the door when Amos’s soft voice resounded in his back.
“Hey, pup’...”
The loving nickname sent a pang of ache in Orion’s heart. Enough to make him glance from above his shoulders, through the few curly strands that fell on his face. The fallen prince spoke again and, for a few seconds, the drug haze seemed to lift just enough for him to surface again.
“Out of everyone and through all the fakeness… You and James were the only ones I’ve truly ever loved.”
Then he lowered his head and his usual lazy smirk crawled back on his chapped lips. The expression never reached his eyes but, somewhere beneath the emptiness, the tall darkness felt a quiet ache. A shame, he thought, I’m wired this way. Because love didn’t cancel out the body count, did it?
Orion didn’t respond. He just walked out, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound so loud it echoed through the corridor, like the final note of a broken symphony.
In the ward, there was almost no way you could tell time if you weren’t allowed near one of the very few windows. When he first came here, the only way Amos could have a sense of time was through the staff’s movements: breakfast tray, meds, private appointment with his psychiatrist, lunch, group therapy, meds, stupid crafting activities, dinner, shower and meds again. By the time he could be trusted near windows again, the drugs made sure he didn’t care anymore. Days bled into each other, blurry and slow, until they stop being days at all. Now, he couldn’t even tell if it had been a week or months since they’d locked him in here. And no matter how long it had been, still no trace of his lawyers.
Mr. Von Bismarck is in no condition to be seen at the moment. They say he’s still too unstable, too deeply embedded into a dissociative state. We’re gonna need to work on a legal strategy without him, at least for now.
Sometimes, he thought of Orion’s last visit, the memory of his trembling voice cutting through the fog for a minute, before clarity vanished again in the quicksand of his mind. Days bled and bled and fucking bled. Feeling emptier than he ever had, Amos spent most of his free time lying on the thin mattress of his bedroom, either staring at the ceiling or counting the noise – a game he used to play with car engines' clicks when they cooled down.
In here, the fallen prince came to realize something: the worst wasn’t the madness anymore, but it was the absence of it. The meds had scraped the fever out of his skull, suppressed all the hallucinations and erratic thoughts linked with psychosis, but they also chased away his angel. Heaven used to dance behind his eyelids, radiant and sensual. He used to feel her light in his veins and the exquisite lilt of her voice in his ear, but now she was gone, just like the rest of his delusions. The businessman’s arm stretched toward the ceiling, as though he was trying to catch something out of reach. “Don’t leave me here.” He begged in a weak voice.
No answer. Only the hiss of the heating vent and the scream of someone three rooms down.
On the fourth week – or the fortieth, who could tell? – they took him outside for his mandatory walk, as they’d do with a dangerous dog. To complete the humiliation, they had fastened a posture collar around his neck, its leather straps digging in just enough to remind him that control was no longer his.
Two orderlies were on either side of him to make sure he wouldn’t do something reckless. Both men, always men. Fucking idiots, didn’t they know he was bi? The hospital’s courtyard was just a rectangle of cracked asphalt with a few patches of grass, bordered by gigantic walls mounted with barbed wire. There, patients shuffled in circles like ghosts while guards and nurses smoked, looking as drained as the ghouls they were watching. And Amos? He walked too, because they told him to walk, despite meds slowing his steps. But through the drugged haze, the dull routine and the gauzy weight of an overmedicated mind, a flash of white suddenly cut through in his peripheral vision.
A fresh snowfall. The halo of a seraph. Bliss. Her.
Turning his head rapidly, he saw the tall white-haired creature walk past the massive main entrance of the hospital courtyard, out of the administration building, with a folder under one arm. Reading what was written on it from a distance was an impossible task, but the color of it was the one used for former patients who still had to attend mandatory appointments. She was wrapped in a white, luxury fur coat and the pale sun made her long mane glow with silvery shades under its light. Amos’s breath hitched as he stared at her with his eyes wide open – she wasn’t the ghost that had been dancing in his mind for years, nor had she been a hallucination in that shady strip club; she was real. Flesh and bone.
Amos stepped forward, almost tripping over his own feet, as he felt his heart stopped abruptly – only to start pumping again, too fast for the sedatives to smother it.
“Heaven…” His voice cracked, a feeble call. Then he tried again, louder, *Heaven!”
No one reacted, except the two guards around him, who shot him an odd glance, silently asking ‘Has he gone mad?’ Of course he was, next question! The businessman called the murderous angel again, but a part of him knew it was pointless, for his voice barely carried over the wind. That was why he lurched forward, the chain linked to his thick collar snapping taut. One of the orderlies barked his name. “HEY! Over here!” he tried again, screaming louder as his body remembered how to move even through the chemical fog, “LOOK AT ME–”
The seductive figure kept talking to a doctor outside, her demeanor unbothered and lazy. However, she did tilt her head a bit, almost as if she’d heard something.
Amos yanked against the guards, as wild and feral as a big cat waking up from anesthesia. “ HEAVEN!”
Now she heard it. Briefly entertained and curious, she turned her head to see which one of those freaks was shouting her name (or praying the sky) but her amusement vanished as soon as her icy eyes met his coal black ones. Her lips parted, shock blooming on her usually apathetic doll face.
“Amos?”
And for the very first time in his entire, depraved life, the businessman’s heart roared back to life, not tenderly but with the violence of a thousand horses. However, the leash clanked and the orderlies moved in. One grabbed his arm, the other his shoulder, and both ended up forcing him down onto the ground.
“NO! Let me go, she’s just there! She’s right fucking there, FUCK!” His screams turned into monstrous, inhuman roars filled with both rage and despair.
“Shut the fuck up, Bismarck!”
“Leck mich am Arsch, Arschloch!” *lick my ass, asshole / which means “fuck you” in German. The sharp pain of a brutal kick exploded in his ribs, cracking something that might have been a bone or cartilage; whatever it was it turned his breath into a ragged snarl that barely sounded human anymore. And yet, the shock didn’t subdue him. Amos bucked against the weight on his back, teeth bared, as he tried to wrench free. Despite the sheer strength and fury of their beast of a patient, the two orderlies managed to overpower him. One slammed a knee into his spine with such brutal suddenness that Amos’s world shattered into pain and a scatter of black, dancing spots at the edges of his sight. After that, everything became easier. The two men, built like tanks, bore down until he couldn’t move at all, reduced to a shaking and panting wounded animal that still stubbornly tried to fight, all of this in front of the other patients, who watched with dull, sedated eyes.
Then appeared a cold needle in one of the man’s hands, that quickly dug into Amos’s neck.
At first, Heaven didn’t really register what she was seeing because of the shock, but soon she broke free of her lethargy. Her pulse lurched, even though it shouldn’t have.
“Hey, stop it! Don’t!” The words escaped her juicy lips before she could realize. Instinctively, she moved toward him, but the doctor’s hand shot out, catching her arm and stopping her mid-motion.
“Miss Lavey, please,” He said with his lips tight and his tone firm, “You need to step back and let the staff manage him. The patient’s condition makes him unpredictable. It’s not appropriate or safe for you to interfere"
The stripper’s head snapped to him with her pale eyes glaring sharply, “They’re not managing anything. They are hurting him.” She said and, strangely, she didn’t recognize the tone of her own voice nor the wild ache that clawed through her chest. What was that? The thought flared in her mind, disorienting. No. No, that wasn’t right. She didn’t do this. She didn’t panic over people. She didn’t care…
… And yet, the light tremor that shook her athletic body betrayed her. Every instinct that usually kept her detached in that cool, clinical calm she was born with was now breaking apart in real time. That sole shift in her empty soul sent a pang of fear through her; that was why she obeyed numbly, her sharp eyes still locked on Amos as the doctor led her away.
The needle bit again, and the tranquilizer rapidly burned its way into his veins. As the fallen prince tried to scream one last time, the sound withered into a hoarse gasp. It was too late: the courtyard tilted, distorted, then spun. Her hair was the last thing he saw before the gate shut and the chemical darkness swallowed him again.
Cast:
tagging:
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