Page 53 of Burn For Me

I’d memorized everything about Wallace’s face. I’d wanted to make sure I could recognize him even in a darkened room where only my hands could guide me. He’d played god with my life, and I knew exactly what I was going to do next. Instead of me doing it, it was far more entertaining to have Dr. Phil Wallace have to choose if he lived or died. At least he’d think he was getting a choice, but the result would be the same in the end.

Two orderlies were forcibly dragging me down the hall in leg restraints. I had no idea where they were taking me, but even at seventeen, I knew it was never a good thing when your first meeting with a doctor was before the sun came up.

I struggled in their strong grasp. The stupid straight jacket cinched tight around me, stealing all of my strength and ability to fight them off.

“Please, just let me go back to bed. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“If you’re in here, you’ve already done something wrong,” one of the men said.

They’d dragged me into a part of this crazy fucking place I hadn’t seen yet—the doors were much heavier, and I shivered as a cold breeze flowed over me. Even wearing scrubs and a straight jacket, all the hair stood up on my body. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest.

“What is this,” I asked as I was hauled into a room with a large chair with restraints and a bathtub.

My struggling became more insistent as the men tugged me toward the tub, which was filled with water and ice cubes.

“Welcome, Mr. West. I’m Dr. Philip Wallace, but you can simply call me Doctor. I’ll be treating you while you’re here with us.”

I hadn’t noticed the doctor standing in the corner until he spoke, my eyes seeking and finding his behind a pair of wireframe glasses. The name alone was enough to make my blood freeze and my stomach flip. My father’s name was Phil, and that name had never meant anything good for me. I had the scars on my body to prove it.

“No greeting? Manners are important, Mr. West. It’s customary to say ‘hello’ or ‘how are you,’ maybe even ‘nice to meet you’ when you are meeting someone new,” he drawled, sounding far older than he looked. I guessed his age to be in his early forties, which seemed young for a head doctor at a hospital for the mentally ill, but who the fuck was I to judge?

“Why should I bother? Being nice landed me here.”

The doctor stepped forward and tapped his chin. It was an action I instantly found irritating.

“Interesting. So, you feel that murdering four people is being nice?”

“Ridding the world of fucktards is,” I said before yanking again on my arms, which the men had yet to release.

“Well, I’m not here to hurt you, Mr. West. I’m here to help you.” I searched the doctor’s simple features. He had one of those forgettable faces that you’d lose in a crowd—and maybe you’d want to. His face was a little too long for his jaw to be considered strong, and his eyes were a little too narrow, making him seem rattish. I’d already met enough liars in my life to know that this man genuinely believed what he was saying. The fact that he didn’t look like or consider himself a monster, and yet I was still standing in what could only be some sort of old-ass therapy room, screamed just how fucked up this place really was.

“Yeah? Prove it. Let me go.”

“As in, let you out of the hospital to roam the world free?” The doctor laughed, and the orderlies snickered behind me, which sent blood racing through my body.

“I’ve been assigned to help you so that you won't be a threat to others once you’re rehabilitated and freed into the world. Simply letting you go so you can continue to build on your skills and kill more people is not the way to accomplish that.”

“I don’t want to kill more people. I tried to tell the guy that came to speak to me that I killed the ones I did for a reason, but I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

Dr. Wallace took another step closer, his eyes searching my face.

“I believe that you believe that, but someone like you, a firebug—that seed only sprouts with time. No, this is the right thing to do so that you don’t end up a blooming flower of chaos and destruction.”

I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the man. To date, that had been the strangest description I’d ever heard used to talk about someone.

“A flower doesn’t sound all that bad.”

“I’m not here to quip with you, Derek,” he said, drawing out my name like it was disgusting to say. His eyes suddenly flashed with an evil that I’d also seen way too much of in my seventeen years, and I realized there was no way I was getting out of this place, not ever, and especially not alive. “I’m here to help cure your obvious dark desires and manic behavior.”

“Um, how do you know I have anything like that? We’ve never spoken,” I asked, and Dr. Wallace rolled his eyes at me.

“Jason, get him in the tub, and then we will see how the new electrotherapy machine works.” Dr. Wallace’s eyes found mine again, and this time when he smiled, I could see the sadism shining back at me. My father always had that look in varying degrees—the biggest difference was that my father was like a raging bull while the doctor here was far more cunning. He was a snake in the grass, lying quietly until his moment to strike presented itself.

The one thing I could tell they had in common was that as long as you were suffering some form of mental or physical pain, they were happy.

“Please don’t do this,” I begged and then started to struggle as he nodded to the men behind me, who simply picked me up off the ground. “No, no, please don’t do this!”

“It’s for your own good, and for the good of the world, that we reset your brain and your thinking, Derek. We need to make sure you never want to start a fire again.”