Madness (Madness #1)

Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Five thousand four hundred and ninety-eight days…

Fifteen years of no contact with anyone other than the only salvation I have in my life.

My small beacon of happiness in this twisted and warped building.

Solitary is no joke, and if it weren’t for the visits from Hare, the warden, and the visits to my girl, I would have lost my mind long ago.

My cell is bland, the original warden not allowing me to have anything of value – a punishment for the ‘crime’ I committed against them.

The walls and ceiling are concrete, a bland grey colour so monotone that I feel like I may lose brain cells staring at it as I lay here in my bed, which is just a thin blue mat on a solid base.

There is no point in running the risk of trying to kill ourselves with springs or thread from losing our minds from loneliness.

I hear how the others around me scream at night, talking to the voices in their head that their mind makes up to make their existence less bleak inside of the confined four walls that we’re forced into.

I know it’s midnight from the guard's walk echoing down the hallways, his gait different from the evening guard that roams the hallways every fifteen minutes. I smile at his arrival because now I can finally breathe.

I count to one thousand and two hundred… twenty minutes.

His checks never last long; he’s grown lazy over the last four years, and I sit up from my thin mat, swinging my legs over the side and stand.

I stretch my arms above my head; the popping of my spine makes me groan, and I suppress the urge to do it again.

I can’t waste any more time .

I pick the lock, something that has become second nature to me after sneaking out of this room to escape at night for the last three years. Slowly creaking the door open, I try to be careful not to make a sound to alert the guard of my movements.

The carpeted flooring helps to muffle my footsteps in my room, and I keep my feet bare so they don’t feel heavy as I lurk around the halls of the institute at night.

The door doesn’t make a sound as I open it, and I slip out, careful not to alert the other patients of my little adventures.

I’m not trying to escape – never without my Atropa.

The hallways are eerily quiet tonight; the usual patients who scream are silent, but I move forward. I can’t afford to get mixed up in more trouble here than I already have.

The cool night air is a balm to my soul as I sneak out of the fire escape a floor up in Ward D. I was here once when the last Jabberwocky thought he would see if I was more amendable drugged and chained to a bed.

I wasn’t.

I was put back into solitary within a week, and I’ve been there since. No visitors were allowed - not like my family would visit me anyway, and I was left to rot in my cell .

My bare feet sink into the soft grass, the blades damp from the cool night air, and I tip my head back and breathe in a lungful of crisp air through my nose.

I don’t escape out here every night, preferring to sink into my Atropa’s warm embrace until the dawn peeks over the horizon, and only then will I sneak back down to the depths of Wonderland and back to my cell.

The glass greenhouse is hidden at the back of the garden, hidden by years of neglected trees and bushes.

The glass door groans as I slide it, but thankfully, there are no guards this far out. They’ve become too complacent at their jobs, years of the patients being obedient zombies enough for them not to care anymore.

My plants are further back, and the smashed windowpane above them lets them get water naturally in rainy England.

Sinking my fingers into the damp soil, I allow myself to feel free, if even only for a moment.

I know I’ll have to go back to my cell tonight, but I savour the chill in the night air and the sounds of the wildlife surrounding me as I work on my babies.

Deadly – something no patient should have access to, but I do.

Jameson owed me, and he knew that I wanted an option to end my life on my terms should this place ever pull me down into its depths further .

Before my Atropa, I wanted to die daily, ready to give into the darkness they force us to fall into.

The rabbit hole is a ward up from solitary; the patients there are drugged until they no longer know what reality they are experiencing is the real one.

Solitary gets no such thing.

We are left with our every thought, no matter how dark it turns, and Wonderland is no place for people who want to escape to try to get better.

They want us here forever, and they will do whatever they can to make sure it happens.

Realising I’ve let my thoughts spiral to the point of no return, I wash my hands in the water bucket, clean the soil from my fingers, and make my way back into the institute.

I avoid the hallways to solitary, instead making my way to the main floor.

There’s no noise as I walk, my bare feet padding softly against the tiled floors. Her door looms ahead. The warm glow of her light cast across the floor lets me know she’s still awake, most likely painting the mural on her wall.

I don’t knock – I never do.

I turn the knob on her door and open it enough for me to slip in.

She’s engrossed in her work, and I have to take a moment to watch her as she works. It’s such a rare sight that I become just as entranced in watching her as she is as she digs her thumb into the well of crimson blood on her wrist and swipes it across her white concrete wall.

The different shades of red slowly create a picture – a family.

I’m not even sure Red realises what she’s doing.

The characters in her painting, each one of the people she’s grown to love in some way over the years, all having a tea party.

We look happy.

I scan the faces and note the three new ones that sit surrounding her just as Harry, me, and Jameson do.

I’ve not seen them before, but Red’s movements are reverent as she strokes her index finger over a skinny man’s chin. She moves to paint what seems to be identical twins, one holding a set of cards and the other a clock.

Her work has always been exceptional.

Her past work is hidden down in the storage room in the depths of the institute, and my feet twitch with the urge to get them for her, desperate to make her happy.

Red flits to the opposite end of the wall to where I’m painted, and she smiles up at me, well, the fake-painted me.

Her hand sinks into the pocket of her joggers, retrieving the blade, and she makes another cut, another scar to mar her perfect body.

I growl as a droplet of blood falls from her wrist to the floor.

Red turns and tuts .

“You made me drop some,” she huffs, bending to scoop the tiny droplet from the floor and rushing to use it, completely ignoring me.

“I hate seeing you hurt yourself,” I grunt.

“I need to make art, Bander,” she sighs.

We’ve had this conversation countless times, and I know she’s tired of it.

I do not wish to hinder her, to prevent her from making incredible pieces of art, especially when they are so heartfelt, but the scars that now litter her body because they refuse to let her have some paint angers me.

My fists clench at my side, my knuckles turn white, and I have to suppress the urge to pound my fist into the concrete wall.

“Do you like my newest addition?” Red asks, changing the subject.

I focus all of my attention on her, and she rushes to show me what she has done since I last saw her.

She starts at the top end, the caterpillar that looks so like Abe, the psychologist here, that I have to suppress a snort of laughter that threatens to escape. Then she shows Jameson and Harry sitting to her left side, both staring at her with such love that my heart stutters in my chest.

I stand behind her, offering her some cake, and I pause.

She’s painted me perfectly, right down to the prosthetic eye I have to wear, and the slight dip in my cheekbone as my facial structure collapsed in on itself without the support of my natural eye. My brown hair is red from her blood, but the way it flops into my eye when it grows too long is exceptionally detailed, and the small black flake in my blue eyes is there, too. The scar that runs down my eye and cheek is jagged and puckered from the tool used to do it, and somehow, the details on the wall match it to perfection.

I resist the urge to cover it with my hand, an old habit that my Atropa admonishes me for whenever I do it.

To be loved is to be seen, and my Atropa sees me for who I am.

I never truly had that. From a young age, I begged for scraps of attention from my parents, and I never felt loved.

I thought that acting out would get me some of their attention, even if it was negative, but they never showed up when my acting out went a step too far.

“Bander?” Red asks softly.

She approaches me hesitantly, like a startled animal, but I smile softly at her and gather her into my arms.

Pressing a soft kiss to her red locks, I breathe in her scent and curl my body around hers.

My towering height practically engulfs her, and she meagerly pounds her fist against my chest, “Can’t breathe!” she muffles against my sternum, and I chuckle, releasing her.

She glares, but it’s half-hearted at best .

“Are you staying?” she asks.

“Can I? I’m not interrupting?”

“Not at all. Let me finish this part, and we can cuddle,” she says, pointing to the bed. I obey happily.

Her mattress is soft, and my body sinks into it. The smell of her clings to the covers, and I pull them over myself while she finishes her work.

I don’t sleep while we cuddle; instead, I happily watch her as she dozes in my arms.

Our time together in this place is so limited that I savour every moment, and being in solitary means, I get to sleep when I finally retreat to my cell.

Removing my eye, I put it in the glass of water she keeps beside her bed strictly for me, and I close my eyes for a moment.

I can hear her shuffling around the room, the sound so comforting that I allow myself to daydream for a moment about what our life could be like if we ever managed to escape Wonderland.

We are all counting on Jameson to do this right, not wanting to risk the hunt that would happen to bring us back here because it wouldn’t just be us.

Hare would have to come, too, and based on the mural on my Atropa’s wall, we would have four others tagging along.

Only one person has ever escaped Wonderland, and they never gave up searching for her. Now she’s dead, and her book sits locked up in Jameson’s safe in his office.

He is fully aware of the details of the book's contents, and we have contingency plans in place should we need to get Red out of here if things take a turn for the worse.

However, the plan stays in place for now—it has to.