Fear Games

12. Call Me Crazy

"I don't understand," Eden said. "You're telling me that they opened this hospital for mentally ill people to have psychiatric evaluations, who would eventually be sent to St. Mary's? Why not just use St. Mary's?"

"Bigger profit, I guess," Daisy said. "Like I explained, the plan failed, and after about a year or two, they opened up another hospital to move adult patients from St. Mary's into their own place--St. John's."

My brain was having a hard time comprehending everything going on. "Why would they need another hospital after this one failed?"

"This hospital didn't fair, per se," Daisy said. "It was a failed idea. Eventually, St. Mary's was becoming overloaded with patients since it was a long term facility. That's when they decided to open up a new hospital, St. John's a couple hours away from St. Mary's."

"So right now there's two hospitals," I said. "St. Mary's for youth and St. John's for adults."

"Ding ding ding!" Daisy said enthusiastically. "I wasn't a patient at St. John's, but I went to see my doctor as much as possible. Pretending to be healthy and happy and great was the only way I could get them to let me go to college. It was great for a couple years, but then in college I met Ryan."

Of course. Ryan, Noah's brother. The pieces were suddenly falling into place. "But wait, you and Ryan didn't go to the same college. How'd you meet?"

"It was a party," Daisy said. "One of my college friends brought me to this party on a vacation we went on. I met Ryan there. He looked really familiar to me, and we ended up talking, realizing we grew up in the same town. It was like fate brought us together, you know? When he told me about what happened with Noah, I realized I wanted to help him."

"Oh please," I said. "You don't have any good in you."

Daisy laughed. "I didn't want to help him like that. Although, it was pretty easy letting him think I actually gave a crap about his brother. I just wanted to kill. It was like fate brought us together so I could teach him all my ways. It was cute, at least for  a little while. I helped him come up with the idea of Fear Games, how to get revenge on his brother's enemies, and I even helped record the voice in the Fear Games house so no one would suspect it was him. It was the perfect plan. I enjoyed knowing the deaths were partially because of me."

"Did Ryan ever figure out that you didn't care about him at all?" I asked.

"Of course he figured it out," Daisy said, rolling her eyes. "He was so dramatic. Told me I couldn't help him with the Fear Games anymore, completely cut me out. But it was my idea. So that's when I started working on some Fear Games of my own."

She walked over to Luke, who was finally starting to wake up. Daisy continued her story anyway. "It wasn't too hard, exactly. I just needed to kill. But the plan had to be elaborate, of course. That's when I realized you were the perfect target."

Me. This was the part all about me. "But why?" I asked. "This clearly isn't because of me being gay. You certainly don't seem like the religious type."

Daisy laughed. "Of course I'm not. What do I look like, a freak?" I opened my mouth to answer her, but kept it closed, figuring my response wouldn't help my case very much. "I started looking into religion, though. I found it interesting just how much people worshiped these Gods that they had no proof of. Nothing but a little faith."

"The notecards," I said. "Damien wasn't looking into religion, you were."

"It made me realize that I wanted that," she went on. "I wanted to be feared the way these gods were. I wanted to send people to hell--the idea sounded so pleasing to me--but since that clearly wasn't possible, I realized I could bring hell here. To you."