Dedicated to the above author because not only have they shown unending support for this book, but they also reread it!! Their comments never fail to make me smile :)
I squirm around, the tight straightjacket chafing my arms as I do so. I inchworm into a sitting position, made all the more difficult by the padded floor and walls of my cell.
I hear the multitude of locks on my door begin to click open. Here we go again.
To keep my captors sure of my insanity, the Voice tends to take over whenever someone drops by.
"Whee!" I squeal, falling on my side as my body convulses. I am the Voice. The Voice is me. I am craaazzyyy.
A woman enters the room. She has no hair, just like everyone else. My hair is the longest and the prettiest.
"You're pretty," I tell her, giggling.
"Do you need to use the bathroom, Sage?" I have never been cared for by this woman before, but this is obviously not her first rodeo. She knows how to deal with inmates.
"Did you know I murdered people in a bathroom? Two of them. One was just a little girl!" I giggle and then frown. "Her screams were loud."
"Do you need to use the bathroom?" I have to hand it to her – this woman is keeping her cool remarkably well.
"What am I using it for?" I ask innocently. They should know by now – I love the ones that keep their cool. They're more fun to break.
The woman signals through the cracked door and two men push their way in, wheeling a metal cart in between them. Today, I do not fight them. I get punished for fighting them, and I don't feel like being punished today.
For safety's sake, they strap me down a little too tightly to the cold surface. It's not their fault that I'm scary. I remember murdering someone with a spoon!
The bathroom is a dark, dismal room. The woman is not allowed to remove my straightjacket, but she is allowed to unbutton my leg restraints – only after giving me a tranquilizing shot through the material.
After helping me do my business, the two men return me to the metal platform and the woman tells me, "You have a visitor."
"Yes, I know. She lives in my head and she's perfectly lovely. Well, that's what she says."
Neither of the three adults say anything as we rattle down the asylum hallways. I listen happily to the moans, shouts, screams, and insane rantings of my fellow inmates.
And then the Voice is gone.
An inexperienced victim would probably cry. They would probably rage against this inescapable hell. Perhaps even fight against the Voice, try to keep her at bay.
I can't remember the last time I even considered fighting the Voice. I believe it was right before I snuck into that bathroom with a paint gun and a rusty knife.
My first victims.
I fought my demon for a long time before it forced me into that bathroom. I thought I was winning.
I was very, very wrong. It is nothing without a body to do its dirty work – or so I assume – and I am nothing but an end to its means.
Sometimes, I wonder if I'm even still me, or if it's just the Voice, molding my brain into its pretty little shapes.
I watch the woman walking alongside the cart. She really is attractive; I wasn't lying. She's bald, of course, so the inmates can't pull her hair, but that somehow only serves to define her features. Her skin is a beautiful shade of cocoa, and her eyes are a rich shade of mahogany color.
The Voice returns, purely for recreational purposes this time. I can tell. I whimper before it takes control. "Danger," I choke out, and then it clamps my lips shut.
"You're fine," the woman tells me comfortingly. "Nothing's coming to get you."
Nope, nope, nope, it's not. Because it's already here. It already got me. It's already inside me, worming away, killing me slowly from the inside out.
The Voice retreats. It does not leave, not completely - it never has. It merely sits back and watches instead of stepping forward to drive.
I am removed from the cart and shoved into the visiting room, separated from where the normal people stand. The small room looks like my cell, just smaller and with a window in one wall facing my visitor.
It is Mike. Must be around my birthday, I think to myself. Mike only ever visits around my birthday, which coincidentally is – was? - our anniversary.
"Hi," I greet him, standing with my nose practically pressed against the foot-thick glass. There is a microphone hidden somewhere in the room so that Mike can hear me. I can't find it because my captors believe I could use it. They're not wrong- I was known for killing many, many people with incredibly simple, ordinary objects, after all.
Mike just watches me silently. His eyes are large. Big blue eyes in a dark brown face, hopelessly taking in my outfit and dirty, knotted, long blond hair. My captors only let me wash it every so often. Part of me wants to reach a hand up to feel it, but even if the Voice would let me, the straightjacket wouldn't.
"Why?" he whispers.
I have been asked this question many times by many people. My victims, as they begin to choke on their own blood. The policemen who finally managed to capture me. The judge who presided over my court case. My captors, who watch over me in this hellhole.
And, of course, my family. Mike.
"I had to." It is the answer I have always given. It is an answer that I stay by, even when it has gotten me nothing.
"No, you didn't. Why would you have to?" He is furious, shaking with rage. His fists clench and unclench as if wishing to throttle me. He does not believe me. Nobody ever does. That is why it is safe to tell him – and everyone else – the truth.
I train my gaze on the floor. "It made me."
The Voice grabs control, makes me gnaw at the glass with my teeth, makes me bang my head against the unrelenting surface until the world fades away.
*
Beeping. Voices. Not my Voice. Outside voices.
I remember times like this. My family was a large and inclusive one. Often times, I would wake up slowly on the weekends to the sound of my parents chatting quietly with a cousin or family friend.
But that life is gone. It was destroyed long ago.
Like the one hundred and twenty three people strewn across the continental United States.
My thoughts drift to Mike. Why does he persist on visiting me just to ask that one question? His annual visits aren't going to get him the answers he so desperately yearns for, nor are they going to cure me.
I remember wanting to kiss him. As young as we were, several of my friends had already had their first kiss, and I wanted to have that experience with nobody but Mike, my first boyfriend.
I don't want to kiss him anymore. I want to rip him apart.
He was next on our – no, the Voice's list of victims. I was going to murder him next. My crowning jewel. He would have deserved it. He was about to hurt us.
Finally, I pay attention to the conversation happening around me.
"Sage has said the same thing to that poor boy every year. You heard her. 'It made me.'" That is the doctor's voice. I hate the doctor. He has caused me more pain than everyone else combined.
"What are you saying, Doctor?" That is the woman, the woman who helped me to the bathroom and to Mike.
"I - maybe - I don't know. Maybe this isn't a run of the mill nut job? I've never seen anything like it. Perfectly wonderful childhood, straight-A student, respectable group of friends – and then she just snaps."
Stop. Stop. Stop talking. You will make the Voice angry and then it will make me punish myself because it's my fault, my fault, my fault.
After a short silence, the doctor sighs and gives up. "We should replace her teeth again. They're chipped from the glass, and they were getting pretty rotten, anyway." My captors do not brush my teeth. Not after the last guy who tried it. It was an unpleasant experience for the both of us. I hate the taste of blood.
Everyone's so afraid of me it would be funny if I wasn't being controlled by the Voice, who is currently paying close attention to this discussion.
"No, thank you," I say, trying to remain calm so the Voice doesn't feel the need to take over. "I'm fine with my teeth the way they are. It's okay."
"We have to, Sage. Your teeth are a mess," the doctor says, speaking slowly and carefully as if I am a child.
"I heard a fair deal of it," the Voice tells him, before remembering that he might not know what I'm – we're – it's talking about. "Your conversation."
"When did you start listening?" the woman asks carefully.
"When you were talking about what I tell Mike," I reply, struggling to maintain my smile. The inexplicable urge to scream suddenly comes over me. I am no longer angry at the Voice, but sometimes intense waves of fury wash over me, so intense, I can barely contain them.
It is courtesy of the Voice. It used one of the waves to force me into that bathroom and start it all.
The doctor glances at the woman. She shakes her head slightly. The Voice calms.
The doctor merely remains silent, walking closer to me and picking up one of the dental tools that I recognize all too well.
I scream and scream and scream.