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The second floor is based on recreation and ‘providing equal opportunities for all.’ Even crazed murderers that the world would prefer to remain locked away and out of sight. And that leaves us on the top level, the best one for jumping to our deaths, if I could only master picking the locks to the windows and dislodge the exterior bars.
Dragging back the old-fashioned grate covering the elevator which came with the antique stately home, I wait for the Terminator to grace the mounted pad with an electronic key card. Sure, they couldn’t replace the disintegrating showers, but keypads and motion censored cameras, no problem. The retractable cord snaps the card back to his belt and would have done some damage if he’d had a dick to speak of.
The doors peel back, coaxing me into a shell of gold paneling and soft jazz leaking from invisible speakers. My toes scrunch against the freshly shampooed carpet, a lemon scent drifting to my nostrils.
“Ready, and go,” I tell the Terminator as the doors close the two of us inside. Snatching the baton from his side, I raise it high and freeze with the blunt end an inch from his forehead, my stance open and posture filled with intent. The Terminator rolls his good eye, plucking the baton from my grip and placing it back into his belt. Still, I remain in position, my teeth gritted.
“Don’t move or you’ll ruin the fun,” I grit through frozen teeth. Mocking me, he reclines on the railing, checking his nails.
Sighing miserably, I slump into a pissed-off, relaxed pose for when the doors reopen and we exit without an entourage. That trick has never been as good as the first time, when I had one of the newbies frozen in fear and security thought the cameras had glitched. A whole squad was braced outside the elevator when we arrived at the bottom and I laughed into the next day. To be honest, nothing entertains me around here anymore.
Rushing over to the white, secured door, I peer through the peekaboo window to spy the lobby beyond. An extension on the front of the building, complete with domed glass ceiling that fills the opulent interior with bursts of blinding light. It doesn’t help that the waiting area furniture and half-moon reception desk are white too, accented by hints of gold from the chair legs to the specked countertop. The only color slicing through the entrance appears in gigantic potted plants, stretching higher than the revolving glass door exactly opposite.
“Come on,” the Terminator nudges me when I linger too long. I don’t move yet, waiting for the young receptionist to sense my presence and bat her long lashes my way. The instant our eyes meet, I squeal at the top of my lungs and hammer my fists on the glass.
She kindly joins my screaming symphony, clutching a hand to her pristine bloused chest as the Terminator drags me away. I chuckle to myself, giving up on walking for the rest of today and allow him to heave me along via his meaty arm hooked around my front. Only fools walk to their own death via boredom.
Long strips of light pass overhead, the hallway disinfected to high heaven of all bacteria and color. My nose tingles, my eyes longing for the dark corner of my cell. I mean, rehabilitation suite. Planting me down outside visiting room three, the Terminator receives a whispered message from a mousey woman who ducks back into the observation room next door.
“I don’t know what sick game is being played here,” the Terminator grunts, roughly yanking me to a halt when I try to enter the room anyway, “but try to keep it together.”
I twist my head to look at him through the veil of my blonde hair. We’ve developed a strange relationship over the years to the point his asshole can almost always gauge my reactions, which is unacceptable. I need to up my game. Yet he’sneverstopped to warn me before.
With a quirk of my brow, I twist the door handle, waiting for him to press his key card to the pad with a sigh and let myself in. A pair of blonde heads swivel my way and the breath hitches in my lungs. Dropping their shades in freakish unison, vibrant green eyes spear me like twin daggers to the chest.
Aside from their perfectly styled quiffs and chiseled jaws, matching striped vests clinging to their muscled bodies. The material is thin enough to see their nipples through and I can trace the ridges of their abs to where the table cuts off my view. Purple braces hook over their shoulders, drawing my attention to the only difference I can see in the pair. Their tattoos.
From shoulders to fingers, their arms are coated in ink. Swirling, black designs that bleed from one into the other without visible joins. I peer at the richly illustrated drawings, yet my attention keeps being brought back to their chests. In mirror image, each displays a suit of choice on their peck. One a red heart, the other a black spade.
Standing at the same time, I take a tentative step back into the now closed door. Whatever fucking prank is being played here, it twizzles my patience within a thread of snapping. I’m well aware of the walled mirror and the attendants behind watching closely for my reaction. These assholes aren’t lawyers. They look more like fantastical strippers from my dreams and I’m not playing this game. The one furthest away braces his long fingers on the metal table, his voice sliding through the air like a melodic massage to my ears.
“Happy birthday, Alice.”
A moment passes where I calculate the day and month before I utterly lose my shit. The nearest chair bounces off the impenetrable glass first. The table is flipped second. Reaching for the other chair by its legs, I wheel it around towards the fucker that dared to speak my trigger word, lining the metal up with his flawless face perfectly. He grabs it with ease, halting my assault and twisting it free just as the door bangs open for a second time today.
Without hesitation, the attendants rush in, wrenching my arms behind my back as I scream blue bloody murder. The sharp stab of a needle in my neck takes effect almost immediately, my legs giving out as my chest is slammed against the wall.
“Fucking condescending…prick,” I heave, my vision swimming. “Thinks he’s…funny.” One of the blondes tiptoes into my eye line, tilting his head almost upside down to get one last curious look beneath my hair before the lights go out.
2
Ishoot upright with a gasp, my rise interrupted by the fastenings at my wrists. Yanking on the cuffs securing me to the bed, I shake my legs to find my ankles in the same predicament.Again.
Screaming at the fluorescent lights, I fuel every seed of anger into the noise. Someone thought they’d be funny and send me a pair of tweedled strippers on the birthday I was adamant to forget. Why would I want to celebrate another year of mockery, another year of living in a world that doesn’t deserve me? Worst of all, turning twenty-seven only reminds me it’s been twenty whole years since those in Wonderland forgot about me.
After my body is free from every shriek, howl and frenzied hissy-fit I can muster, I slump back against the unbelievably thin pillow. What even is this - a fucking leaf? Whose neck is this supposed to support? A man-sized playing card and nothing else.
Between the harsh lights, I settle for tracing the lines of the polyester tiles with my eyes, like a maze across the ceiling I can’t get lost in. Up, right, down, left, just like the crow flies, muttering to myself all the while.
If I were to slide a needle
Into my very eye,
Would colors burst through the universe
Or would only my vision die.
If I were to ease a nail
