Wildfire

Chapter 47

47. Addict

I watched the drip-drag of black oil down the wall of my bedroom, tilting my head until the colours started to spin together. Black-and-yellow-black-and-yellow-black-and-yellow, just like that song. I scrunched up my nose and hummed the melody under my breath, my fingers tapping an off-beat staccato on my knees and then...

I glanced down in confusion as a hand with eleven fingers closed around mine, and then there was a voice whispering through the air, "This is for your own good."

I frowned, but the meaning of each loud, booming word was lost as it floated toward me, twisting and twirling into something pretty and sparkling in a plastic syringe.

"We're going to fix you," a voice murmured from a blur of eyes-that-weren't-shaped-like-mine-but-looked-like-mine; a greeny-brown mix of hazel. "I'm sorry about this, Paige, but there's no other way."

A hazy kind of understanding came with those words, as though I comprehended their meaning but it didn't impact on my mind the way it was supposed to. I smiled sloppy-eagerly, feeling my smile-muscles stretch across each cheek and I knew that when I was sick, I would always wish to get better soon. And I would whisper those words into my pillow at night for my mother, so one day she might wake up and feel good in her bones again.

"You're dead to me," I giggled. I watched the black-and-yellow swirls coalesce into an oily noose, wrapping themselves around the neck of my tormentor. My heart burned with malice while the dreamy quality of happiness nibbled slowly at its edges, taking me over. The echo of a memory tumbled through my mind, one laced with darkness, as those same words tripped off my tongue.

But as I looked into my tormentor's same-not-same eyes, I felt their meaning become lost to the jumble.

He touched my cheek and the noose melted into a cloak, draping over his shoulders and spreading over the timber floors like a dark mist. "You'll be better soon, daughter."

And then he was gone, evaporating like water vapour into the swirling darkness.

($^%&*&^%$£")

Lucidity came in snatches. A part of me understood that I had been drugged with Incoendium and that it was my father who came to administer each dose faithfully, but I could never quite grasp his words or the meaning behind them. I knew there was something important that I was missing, but each time I remembered to think of it, it kept dancing beyond my reach.

I had no concept of time, no concept of anything but each visit and the periods in between, staring at the ceiling and imagining a whole world laid out beyond my vision. I felt both invincible and insignificant with each second, like my awareness had expanded beyond my comprehension and I was simply... revelling.

I was happy and angry all at once, a blend of hate and love and warmth, tethered together by the cold. The confusion left me zombified and I did little more than walk around my room. It occurred to me, on those rare lucid moments, that my door was unlocked... but the handle became a foreign entity, something unrecognizable with every thought. Each breath was spent waiting for the next visit, the next dose... the next shiver of happiness that rolled down my spine.

The first time he came late, my body noticed. The darkness began to overtake the light, the heavy weight of depression weighing down on my shoulders until my body was wracked with shudders.

And when he came, there was a screen — and on that screen, I watched as a reddish-brown wolf tore apart a woman I knew, a woman with fear in her eyes and pain etched into her face.

"How do you feel?" a ghost-voice would ask me, as though it was possible to formulate a coherent sentence with the tumult of emotion rising inside of me.