Page 8 of No Asylum Here

One of them? Ha. Sure, Rook had given me the same experimental “medication” he’d given his staff. But I was nothing like them.

I threw a right hook at the one in front of me, and my knuckles landed on his nose with a sickening crunch. My sculpted arm painted the man's face with blood, and his nose gushed red. I couldn't tell whose blood was whose. That had my smile growing wider, even as the demons threw themselves at me, each one grabbing an arm.

The cockless orderly crumpled to his knees with his hands clutched tight to the gaping hole between his legs. As if that would stop the bleeding. “I–I’ll kill y–you for this.”

I licked the last drops of his blood from my lips with a snicker. “Promise?”

I’d welcome death with a spread asshole if it meant my freedom. This new staff member was too new to know there was no escape from Saint Bart’s.

They strapped me to the bed and secured a leather mask over my mouth. The orderly in the front had a syringe, the kind with a brutally thick needle. I kept on laughing like the psychopath I was and didn’t stop, even as the demon slammed the needle into my arm, making it as painful as possible.

“Stop laughing, you psycho fuck!”

“We need to up his dosage.”

It wasn’t until I felt a second needle in my other arm, siphoning a second dosage of the sedative into my veins, that I stopped laughing.

“Congratulations. You just bought yourself another week in the muzzle, and the straitjacket too.”

Worth it.

I gritted my teeth, refusing to show any sign of weakness. Wouldn’t give these fuckers the satisfaction.

The drug acted fast. My vision blurred, my brain felt like sludge, and the monsters the drug brought on danced at the edge of my vision, waiting for their moment to descend.

I always fought against the drug, against sleep. I didn’t want to see the monsters in my head.

Until now.

Until her.

Against all odds, I found myself praying to whatever would listen that I would see her again.

Chapter Four

Tuesday

I couldn’t shake the chill in my bones, and it had nothing to do with the weather.

Towering over me, with its many turrets and towers reaching high into the overcast sky, was a building that looked like something straight from the set of a Hollywood horror movie.

I’d never seen a hospital with a bell tower before.

Dr. Rook mentioned that the facility had once been a Catholic church. Arriving with that knowledge still hadn’t prepared me for the sheer intensity of the stone building, with its stained-glass windows depicting holy figures covered by rusty iron bars.

The large—somewhat newer—sign bolted to the front of the building’s brick facade read: Saint Bartholomew’s Center for the Criminally Insane.

I took a deep breath and adjusted my grip on my suitcase, the handle slipping from my sweaty palm.

Too late to turn back now. The Uber was gone, and my cell reception was zilch all the way out here. It wouldn’t make any sense to change my mind now anyway.

This is a good thing, I kept telling myself. This is a chance to get my life together.

This position at Saint Bartholomew’s was the answer to all my problems. The salary and benefit package were unheard of for someone like me, so fresh out of residency.

Dr. Rook had hired me over the phone after a curt interview that had felt somewhat pointless, like he’d already made up his mind about hiring me before we even spoke.

Still didn’t make any sense.