I inhale her scent, filling my lungs with the searing ache, then reverently touch the scratch marks on my cheek. I look at my pocket watch to record the time. “In this moment, we are both monsters.”

19. The Little Death

19

The Little Death

Blakely

I don’t have to notch my walls with the days like some old-school convict. The measure of time is all around me.

Every time Alex checks his watch. Every time he drives a hand through his hair in frustration with an unwanted result. Every cruel procedure he subjects me to is logged with date and time. After nearly three weeks, I’ve underwent twelve electroshock sessions, including the first where I felt every millisecond of torture.

Today’s treatment will be lucky number thirteen.

My mind is foggy and detached. I touch my forehead and blink hard, trying to recall the last conversation I had with Rochelle. She’s the closest thing I have to a friend, or had… Our talk in her office comes to me in fragments, her ironed face a blur and difficult to picture.

My whole life before feels distanced.

Side effects of the drugs and electroshock. Memory loss one of the most prominent. Alex claims he’s curing me of my illness, but if he doesn’t kill me, all he’ll achieve is frying my brain.

I’ll become a hollow vessel. Vacant and lifeless. I suppose he can then claim I’m cured, as I’ll have nothing left that makes me me. I’ll be one of those drooling, empty-eyed, comatose patients in a constant stupor.

I hope he kills me.

Night is the only time Alex allows me out for fresh air, like some caged animal. And only at the top of the basement stairs, not daring to risk another attempted escape. I spend my fifteen minutes staring at the stars. They’re brilliant here, unlike the city, where they have to compete against the big, bright lights.

After that night in the staircase, Alex hasn’t looked at me longer than the seconds necessary to mark an observation. He hasn’t touched me other than to get an updated brain scan. By keeping his distance, he’s assuring he won’t make a mistake—that he won’t give me the chance to get close to him again.

With what mental capacity I have left, I open the notebook to the marked page. Alex did give me a journal. And a pen. I know he reads it while I’m under, so today I write a passage I hope will reach him. One last attempt to unchain myself from this fate.

For some reason, as I touch the pen to the page, an image of Ericson in his wrinkled business suit pops into my head. I can smell the coffee, feel the metal spoon in my hand. I close my eyes and see the words on the page, the notes I’d taken of my target.