Still present in the gathering room, with my glare stuck on the sedated, intriguing man, I raised from the couch and walked over to the painting table only to get a closer look at the criminal seated about ten feet away.
Even if I laid eyes on him just as he arrived and already inspected his appearance by then, there was something inside of me being so extremely curious around brutally sick and wicked people, which made me want to approach him and take an even closer look.
I sat down on one of the wooden chairs beside a mid-aged woman who painted surprisingly beautiful on a big white paper.
Sometimes I forgot that the people in the hospital were not all destroyed, some of them were just weaker, and some of them just ended up here because their different way of being wasn't accepted nor wanted by the society. It was a sad fact, but unfortunately, it was true.
From where I now sat, I could sight Joseph much more rigorously than before. I didn't want to stare, because I was sure he could notice me in the corner of his eye if I did, and the last thing I wanted was to know what could happen if he exposed me glaring at him.
I talked to the lady seated beside me while carefully moving my gaze up and down to inspect the new inmate. He still didn't move an inch, he just sat there, staring out the rainy window.
I wondered if he was heavily drugged, or if he just felt threatened by the much bigger guard standing right next to him, making him so tranquil.
Suddenly I got interrupted by the door opening up to the room, and Brandon stepped inside with confident steps even though Frank walked right behind him.
He truly knew how to make an entrance that boy.
I noticed how he didn't see me at first, but the moment he did, he immediately started walking his way over to the table where I sat with the other patients.
The leer was broadly spread over his face as usual and I couldn't help but smirk at his handsome figure as he walked towards me over the wooden floorboards.
He sat down at the chair standing by the corner of the long table, and grabbed a piece of paper and a couple of pencils. Instinctively, I started grinning as I watched him begin with his work.
"I didn't know you draw?" I framed, and bit my lip in a gallivant way, holding my giggle in.
"I don't," He responded, glancing up at me with eyes filled with playfulness. Of course, he only sat here because he wanted to be near me.
I felt elated with the acquaintance that Brandon felt safe in my company and chose to hang out with me even in the gathering room in front of other patients, nurses and guardsmen, but I was still paranoid about making someone around us suspicious about our forbidden, shared secrets.
Brandon kept his eyes on the paper and drew something I couldn't solve even with my wildest imaginations, while I continued my spying of the old man still sitting quietly on the couch a short distance away from us.
I could see how his chest slowly moved up and down as he breathed, and I observed how his eyelashes flattered every time he blinked, but still he didn't move more than that.
Who was this man really?
What got him to end up in this place?
Stuck inside my most curious thoughts, I got interrupted by Brandon's arm carefully pushing mine to catch my attention.
"What are you staring at?" He asked, and his eyes got bigger with the question.
"Our new inmate," I stated quietly while discretely nodding my head forward. Brandon looked in the direction of where the man sat and in just one short second, the whole world stopped and I could feel how I lost my breath along all ability to move.
Brandon's body froze to ice and his eyes turned more black than I had ever seen them before. His jaw tensed till the veins came through and I could see how hard he grit his teeth together in his mouth. His fists tied and got white by every knuckle and I could hear his rough heartbeat from my distance, banging with rage inside of his chest.
Everything around us disappeared, the only thing left I could scent was the extreme aura of Brandon's and how every one of his emotions affected me.
I forgot how to breathe and I almost suffocated in his proximity now.
The room was completely quiet from all the noise and every other person, including myself, seemed to be enabled to move, just like someone pressed pause to a movie.
I was paralyzed, the physical withering being too strong to fight against. I wanted to move, wanted to embrace Brandon, ask him what was going on, but I couldn't. Everything seemed to be impossible, like somebody had just cast a pernicious curse over me. The only thing I could manage moving was my eyes.
I was fully awake and conscious while time passed by me in slow motion and I could only mentally stay observant while my body was absolutely numbed in every physical way.
My eyes got interrupted as they noticed the movement of Brandon who was still sitting by my side.
And then, in a rough, discrete move, he grabbed one of the pointy sharpened pencils and jumped off his chair to attack the old, bald, man where he so peacefully sat on the couch in front of us.
I witnessed how Brandon brutally smashed the sharp, pointy tip of the pen right into Joseph's rugous neck.
The perfect hit of the artery vein made the blood squirt out from his neck in the most graphic way, and Joseph slowly fell backwards with his head while the blood covered his white clothes and colored them completely red.
The brown couch got darker in shade as the blood floated out of Joseph's neck and soaked the fabric with the dark, thick fluid.
Everything passed by quicker than I could blink, yet it felt like a moment of hours.
Completely paralyzed, I witnessed the horror in front of me. Eyes wild with terror, wide as ever, mouth slightly opened, drying my lips from the frantic breathing, assuring me of my weakness even though it all felt like a dream.
Slowly I started fading back into physical control when the guards grabbed Brandon, forced his arms to bend behind his back, and beat him down to the floor in another graphic, violent way.
My eyes moved from the dead man to the one now laying on the floor in the painful grip of three much bigger institutional guards.
A tear started running down my cheek as I began to regain all my five senses.
I just witnessed my lover murdering someone, right in front of my eyes. There was nothing I could do about it, which made me feel so empty yet so horrified and helpless.
There was no time to intervene, no time even to react. Not for the guards, not for the nurses, not for me.
I fell out of every emotion as I was now completely present with every function, and I began to whine out in tears.
Even if the scene was right in front of me, with the dead man and bloody furniture, the screaming and running-around patients, I found it hard to comprehend what actually just happened.
The closeup imagination of the pen piercing the layer of skin to kill the unknown bloke of man went on repeat inside my brain.
It happened too fast, this was not planned. The way Brandon snapped like someone pushed a button inside of him, it was way too unexpected, even for him. It didn't make sense.
Why did he do it?
The terrifying screams from the other patients and the faces of the shocked nurses only made the situation worse as I watched the guards lead Brandon out of the room.
He roughly turned his head around and looked at me with big, red eyes. Stumbling as he tried to fight back the guards turning him away.
"Beverly, I had to! I know you'll understand! Please Beverly!" His voice shouted in panic for me, but I couldn't care less about him and his act of duplicity, begging for mercy even after something like this.
He just killed a man in front of my eyes.
Was his desperate shout just a stupid try of founding pity for his unreliable action of outburst, knowing I could fall for it? Or was he actually trying to tell me something?
Why did he have to do it this time? What was his excuse?
I couldn't understand a thing. Everything I felt for him now disappeared in just a matter of a minute. Like a cleansing shower washed away every dirty stain of attraction and devotion.
I felt so empty, so betrayed and fooled.
He wasn't different. He was just like he was described by the world, a manipulative, dangerous, cold-hearted psycho-killer.
A monster.