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Still. I would prevail. I prepared my case carefully, meticulously, in my mind. At my next meeting with the asylum master, I would convince him of my s
anity and Victor’s guilt, and then I would be released. I had been good, as instructed. I would be exactly what I needed to be in this horrible place, and I would win my freedom.
Someone snickered next to me, and I turned my head to see a woman lounging in an almost profane manner on the floor.
“It will not help you,” she said, gazing up at me. Her hair was a mess, her nails bitten down until they were rimmed with dried blood. But her expression was sardonic and intelligent.
I did not want to engage with someone so clearly not in possession of her wits, but I had not spoken to anyone besides the uncaring nurses in a week, and I longed for communion of any type.
“What will not help me?” I asked.
“That.” She jerked her head toward my perfect posture, my hands folded demurely in my lap. “You cannot convince them you are sane by behaving the way you think they want you to. They do not care.”
“It is their job to care.”
She snorted, stretching out, lifting her arms over her head languorously. “It is their job to do what they are paid to do. And what they are paid to do is keep us in here. Keep us alive. That is the sum total of it. Do you know why I am here?”
I did not have to be good to her. She did not matter. “Because you are possessed of a spirit that makes you lie on the floor in polite company?”
She cackled. “Oh, I like you. No. I am here because I tried to leave my husband. I packed what I could carry, and I walked out in the middle of the night. He spent ten years beating me, cursing me, pulling my hair, and spitting at me. He would fly into jealous rages, accuse me of cuckolding him, of mocking him behind his back, even of stealing his manhood’s strength while he slept so he had none left when he wanted to enjoy me. And I am mad for trying to walk away from that.”
She sighed, looking up at the cracked ceiling, the exposed beams mimicking the bars across the singular window in the room. “I did the same as you for the first while. Behaved. Tried to demonstrate how undeniably sane I was so I could be released. It took me two years to give up.” She grinned, winking at me. “The last eight years since have simply flown by. So whenever you are ready to give up, there is a place on the floor right next to me.”
She patted the scratched and scored wooden planks companionably. Then she smiled maternally at my obvious horror. “Ask the other women what they are in for and you will find more of the same. Though Maude does cry and sleep an awful lot. And Liesl—well. You should be glad your husband cared enough to purchase a private room for you.” She gave me an appraising look. “Why are you here?”
I could feel my back curving, my shoulders slumping. For two years she tried to convince them of her sanity, and all she had against her was an attempt to flee a horrible marriage. For all my work learning how to be what others needed, I had not realized I was already perfectly suited to this asylum. I was exactly who they wanted me to be. Who Victor’s father and mother had groomed me to be. Who Victor had created me to be.
I was a prisoner.
All my life of surviving, of being someone else’s Elizabeth, had led me here. And what was I left with? Who was I when I was not performing for someone else?
Even now I realized I had a false, pleasant smile on my face. For whom? For what? So this woman on the floor would not judge me? So the nurses would think me sweet?
I slowly released the smile, let my face be as still and unanimated as Justine’s when she lay dead on that horrible table. Let myself default to my most natural state. Wondered what, in fact, that state would be.
The woman on the floor watched me, curious. “Well?”
“My husband,” I said, the word foul and poisonous on my tongue, “experimented on and then cobbled together dead body parts to create a monster. Once that was accomplished, he went on to murder his brother and frame my best friend for the murder so that she would be hanged. Then he tried to use her body to practice his dark science on, in preparation for eventually changing me from living to dead, and back again to a new form of being that would never corrupt or die or be parted from him. I told him I was not interested in being his wife under those particular circumstances.”
The woman’s eyes were wide, and she scooted several inches away from me, pushing herself along the floor.
“So.” I smiled, the expression that had been my instinct all these years feeling false and at the same time more true than ever as it cut meanly across my face. “We are here for basically the same reason.”
* * *
—
Over the next month, despair settled around me like snow falling on the ground, covering my dreams of vengeance. Then despair covered my dreams of life itself, until all that remained was a blank white plain of nothingness.
I would be in here forever.
But I always caught myself when I began despairing at that thought. Because being in here forever would be preferable to Victor’s alternative.
He was out there, somewhere, murdering victims to perfect his technique. I could not even count on that obscene monster to find and kill him, as it had had ample opportunity before and never followed through. Victor had been haunted not by the monster’s threats, but by his own failures.
So Victor was free, truly and fully, and I was in here. I would remain until Victor was ready for me. And then, because he was a man and I his wife, they would hand me over to him, and he would finally have full power over both my body and soul.
And no one would help me.
