Page 92 of No Asylum Here

Something broke my fall.

Pills. Countless pills.

Adrenaline and pure distilled terror exploded through my bloodstream as the horrifying realization that I wasn’t alone hit me like a truck.

It wasn’t just the pills that filled the open grave. There was a body in here.

Tentatively, I tapped my phone’s flashlight to use the very last of the battery to cast the carcass in light.

The cadaver was weeks old, with yellowed, decaying flesh and maggots wriggling through her eye sockets. Judging by the stage of decomposition, she’d been dead a while now. So it was strange that her gaping mouth was foaming, as if she’d just passed away from an overdose.

Nausea tore through me, and I unloaded my stomach onto the piles of what I recognized as my preferred brand of hydrocodone.

My phone died just as cold realization settled into my bone marrow.

This was my body.

My corpse.

Lauren had led me to my own grave.

Summoning the last vestiges of my resolve, I clawed my way out of the grave, struggling to gain purchase with the pills shifting beneath me.

My nails dug into the walls of the grave, every muscle in my body screaming for relief that I wasn’t sure would ever come.

A scream clawed up my throat when I finally reached the surface, only to find the other graves were open.

No longer was I alone, although this wasn’t the company I’d been hoping for. Bunny had been right. There were monsters that lived beyond the fog. Not just monsters, mutated bodies that had failed to survive Rook’s Treatment.

It clicked that this wasn’t St. Bart’s primary patient cemetery at all. This cemetery was somewhat smaller and designated for the medical staff.

Nurses, orderlies, even cleaning and lunch staff, roamed around in ratty uniforms. Their eyes glowed green, the illumination bright enough to chase away some of the darkness.

The Treatment had warped each soul uniquely.

Some were nothing more than dried-up husks of flesh and bone, skin and the filthy rags. Others looked like extras for a zombie film, with fluid-filled boils leeching with Treatment, some with staggered movements. Some had vicious claws, wings and fangs. Others were barely more than cancerous-like tumors that had swelled so much they were little more than ample bags of noxious liquids.

But they all had one thing in common—glowing, poison-filled veins.

“You poor people…” I sobbed, my gaze falling to a woman in an old nurse’s uniform, slumped against the backside of the gravestone beside mine. A scalpel protruded from her throat, making me wonder if she’d met her end by her own hand, or if it had been Rook, frustrated with another botched experimentation.

All of these poor souls provided deeper insight into the Treatment and its effects. Turns out, Mal wasn’t insane, at least not in the traditional sense. It was the Treatment splitting his soul in two to create two very different entities in the same body. His old self, and the demon or “mad thing” inside. These people’s demons had consumed them entirely.

Mal’s was different.

Mine was too, I could feel it.

All thoughts of Mal were shoved to the sidelines of my mind when a creature moved toward me, groaning and growling with every step.

The thing was tall and spindly, tendrils of glowing drool hanging off its maggot-eaten lips. Its fingers were syringes filled with glowing liquid, its nails sharp needles with drops of the Treatment clinging to their points.

It was going to do more than kill me. It was going to stick me with those needle fingers.

There was no way I’d allow myself to end up like these people.

I turned and took hold of the scalpel sticking out of the demon’s throat, wrenching it free with a sickening squelch. Just as the needle demon was upon me, I sliced my own throat, knowing it would be the quickest death.

I waited for the pain, but darkness took hold of me first as I toppled back into my pill-filled grave.