Madness (Madness #1)

Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Therapy feels more like a punishment than actual therapy, which is supposed to be ‘healing’ our minds — a five-step guide to not being crazy anymore.

Even when attendance is mandatory, the room is clogged with the acrid scent of smoke from Abe’s pipe, and incense sticks are sporadically placed around it to create a calming atmosphere.

It doesn’t.

Each session feels like an eternity, the minutes dragging by as I struggle to focus on anything other than the pounding in my skull and the incessant itch to cut into my skin and paint .

I massage my temples, knowing I’ll be leaving with a migraine just like I do each time.

I used to contribute to the sessions, answering Abe’s questions with enthusiasm and the hope that I’d get out of Wonderland.

That dad would see that I’m not crazy.

Now – well, now, I don’t even bother.

I attend because I have to, and despite Abe’s efforts to draw me in, I sit there in silence for the majority of the session.

I’m vanishing, my mind slowly spiralling into the madness that eventually plagues every patient in Wonderland.

If we weren’t mad before we were forced into these walls… well, we are now.

The door opens, and the twins appear through the haze of smoke. I squint at the similar clothes they have decided to wear today. The matching outfits make it hard to tell them apart, and I scan my eyes over them both, desperate to figure out who is who.

“Are they the same?” Al cranes his head forward to get a better look.

The twins stand side by side and turn their heads towards us, matching faint smiles on their lips, “We are,” they reply in unison, their voices blending perfectly as if rehearsed.

“But who is who?” Abe blows smoke from his pipe, quirking a white bushy eyebrow at them both .

“Well, I am him, and he is me,” one twin shrugs his shoulder.

“And I am me, and he is him.”

“Aye, Doris, they dae look like right pricks,” Harry laughs with his mouse, who squeaks in response.

“Are you both done?” Abe sighs, pushing himself out of his chair, his patience wearing thin, “Sit down, both of you.”

The twins do as they are told, but I still can’t tell them apart, and I find myself growing frustrated. Despite countless interactions with them since they emerged from the rabbit hole, I still find it impossible to distinguish between them—especially when they decide to act like the other.

“What are we pondering today?” Harry strokes Doris’s head as he asks, not sparing a glance at Abe.

“We are not pondering anything today. We are simply thinking of our existence. Who would we be if not for the choices we made on our journey to get here?” Abe says, pacing in the middle of our fucked-up circle of chairs.

My hand shoots up in the air before I think to stop myself, the words tumbling from my lips, “What if the choices that put us on this fucked up journey were not choices that we made? What if it were the choices of others? ”

“Then reflect on whether you can forgive—not for them but for yourself. Anger is no good for the soul.”

“Fuck that!” Harry shouts, shooting up from his chair and knocking it back so hard that it tumbles to the floor with a thud, “Forgiveness isnae something the people who paid to put us in here deserve!”

Abe’s forehead crinkles, “That’s serious allegations. Eden Institute doesn’t accept bribes; if you are here, then you are here for a reason.”

“Bullshit!” the twins shout in unison again, their angry tones blending into one booming noise.

Al sits confused in his seat, his eyes bouncing between us. He settles on me as tears brim in my eyes.

The tension in the room thickens until it’s too hard for me to breathe, and my lungs struggle to expand.

I want to shout, to explain how I ended up in Wonderland no matter how much I begged them not to put me here.

I was sane once until my sister lied through her pearly white teeth the moment she got her doctor’s degree, and my parents believed her.

It’s how I found myself here, subjected to the whims of her every sick and twisted desire as she played doctor on me like she did when we were kids, only this time it was more deadly .

Memories from when I first came here surface, flashing before my eyes – her determined eyes as she pressed the electric prongs into the side of my forehead until I was no longer coherent enough to beg her to stop. The drugs she would pump into my system to keep me compliant when dad would come to visit – ensuring I could never tattle on her.

I can’t deal with this anymore.

My chest feels like it’s about to cave in on itself, and I feel like the smoke filling the room is making it worse.

Ignoring the calls from everyone, I flee therapy and rush to my room, needing my sanctuary.

The hallways rush by me in a blur, and my movements become second nature as I take the twists and turns like I have every day since I was placed here.

My heart pounds in my chest, a wild drumbeat that syncs with the pounding in my skull and how my blood rushes through my veins.

I once felt at home here in Wonderland, befriending the nicer patients while Dad worked tirelessly to make them better, now…. Now it’s my prison, the walls no longer a comfort but a looming dark shadow of what my life has become because my sister hates me.

Finally, I reach my door, my sanctuary within reach, and the familiar tingle in my arms tells me I need to paint; otherwise, the darkness in my mind will take over, and I’ll be lost to the whims of my sister once again.

Throwing open my bedroom door, I jerk forward, a cry slipping from my lips as two guards with red blood-coloured uniforms stand in front of my mural, soapy buckets of water in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other swishing back and forwards across my work.

“No!” I scream, even though I sound like I’m underwater. “You can’t. Please, you can’t.”

I know I shouldn’t beg. The guards are far too loyal to my sister to listen to my pleas, even when my soul feels as if it’s being ripped apart with every stroke of their brushes against the wall.

They aren’t adding to my work - they are removing it.

Eviscerating my blood… my literal blood from the work I’ve spent hours perfecting.

Jameson’s face disappears, the dried blood smearing across the concrete wall and dripping down over Hare’s smiling face.

I know I should move from the spot I’m frozen in, but I can’t – I don’t, not until every last spot has been scrubbed clean.

Just another thing she’s taken from me, and I’m done fighting.

I'm done fighting to ever try to escape Wonderland when she’s controlling every aspect of my life .

I don’t know when I fell to my knees or when the tears slipped down my cheeks, but when I finally look up, she is sitting on my bed, picking invisible lint from her too-tight uniform in a desperate attempt to get Jameson’s attention.

“Tut, tut, tut, little sister. Did you not learn your lesson from last time?” she mocks.

I force myself up from my knees, my legs having lost feeling, and I struggle to maintain my balance, but I push forward, refusing to look weak any longer in front of her.

“What lesson was this, sister ?” I sneer. “Was it that I have what you want? Or that I simply exist even when we can’t call this existence?” I hold my arms out wide, gesturing to the room that my entire life has fit into the last ten years.

Nurse White scoffs, her head raises, and her bright blue eyes, matching my own, look straight through me just as they always have. “No, this isn’t existing, is it? Even though it’s a pity you exist at all. Have you thought any more about my offer?” her voice is sweet, too sweet, the kind that would rot your teeth, but I see the snake that lies below, waiting to strike the moment she sees any weakness.

“That was no offer, sister. That was a suggestion... an order.”

“But the suffering would stop. You would be free. You do want to be free, don’t you?”

“There is no freedom, not from you and not even in death,” I whisper, but I know she can hear me .

She always can.

I may wish for the sweet oblivion of death to free me from the monstrous things that she’s capable of, but that means leaving Hare behind on his own, and he’s already been through too much.

Harry knows only a little, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I rifled through Jameson’s files when I was left alone.

Pure curiosity drew me to Hare’s folder, desperate for an explanation as to why he was the way he was, and he had no way of ever telling me. What I found was horrifying and brutal, and I swore never to tell another soul unless absolutely necessary.

Just the thought about the things that have happened to Hare has rage thrumming in my veins, and I steel myself, “Get out.”

White scoffs, but I see the way her head jerks at the venom in my tone, “I don’t have to do anything, little sister. I run this place, and you know it because I own you. Shall we play doctor and patient again? See if you can stay conscious this time?” she smiles, but it’s fake – brittle.

“I said get out!” I scream, unable to have her in my space any longer.

She’s taking enough from me already.

This is my room… my space. The only space I do have in these twisted walls of Wonderland, and I feel like I can’t breathe with her here .

Her heels click against the floor as she leaves, and I almost breathe out in relief until I remember that my mural is no longer on my wall, and the tension coils tighter in my gut with the need to paint.

White pauses at my door, “Remember, sister. For as long as you are in these walls, you are at my mercy.”

I open my mouth to respond, but she clicks my door shut behind her, and I’m left staring at the spot she was standing in.

My eyes slide to the now-streaked mural.

No signs of my work are there apart from a few red specks of blood that dried into the wall too long ago to be removed.

The blade appears in my hand, but I have no recollection of ever grabbing it.

My mind turns hazy, and I barely register the sting as I cut into my skin like I so often have, nor do I care about the wasted blood as it drips from my wrist onto my carpet.

What’s one more scar to add to my collection? Jameson and Bander may get mad, but we all have messed up ways of surviving in Wonderland, and this is mine.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The puddle below me get’s bigger, and my head wobbles in an effort to keep it up. I lose the battle and lay on the floor, waiting for the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness to pull me under.

I won’t die.

The cameras in the corner prevent that.

“As if I would ever let you leave me, my love. Not even in death will you be allowed to,” his voice is muffled, and his arms cradle me as if I’m made of glass, his lips press to my forehead tenderly.

I chuckle.

Why would I ever be made of glass? I would probably fall through the ground into another world that is entirely mad.

Though Wonderland is quite mad… am I mad? Or am I just so broken from my sister’s playtime that I can’t find what way is up or what way is down?

“Definitely mad,” I whisper to myself as I tumble into the dark hole of my mind.

Safe – she can’t touch me here.

Down.

Down.

Down the mad rabbit hole.

“I’ll protect you, Atropa. Sleep.”

“We’ve got you, my love. Now rest.”