Free Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light by Karina Halle

my head the closer
I got to the top.
    Once there, I could see Perry’s room at the
end, the door slightly ajar. I could hear his stupid drawl but
couldn’t make out what he was saying. We walked to the door and Ada
slowly pushed it open, casting me a furtive glance before doing so.
As if she was trying to prepare me.
    Maximus was standing in front of Perry,
looking down at her. I couldn’t really see her body, but I could
tell she was lying on the bed, immobile. A rope was wrapped around
one leg and down around the bed post. I focused on her foot, her
little toes, the fact that she was held down. I couldn’t even move.
I could only listen as he went on, not noticing either me or Ada in
the doorway.
    “Just get through tonight,” he said in an
overly cloying voice. “Things will turn around tomorrow.”
    “And what will you do when the men in the
white coats take me away?” Perry answered. I hadn’t heard her voice
in so fucking long. I almost collapsed right there and then, her
presence rolling through me, wanting to bring me to my knees like
she had before. “What will you say then? Will you still ask me if
I’m scared?”
    She sounded so small, so afraid. It speared
me.
    “Wherever you end up, Perry, it’ll be for
the best,” Maximus said. I couldn’t believe his fucking audacity.
“They’ll make you new again. The doctors will help you. They’ll
treat you. You’ll be given medicine and it’ll fix you. Those mental
institutions have a bad rap, you know that. But they do more good
than harm, especially for people like you. It may be scary at
first, but you’ll be fixed. You’ll be as good as new.”
    I couldn’t let this happen. He was full of
absolute shit. What the fuck did he know about being diagnosed with
a mental disorder? Nothing. Nothing.
    But I did.
    I cleared my throat, the anger boiling up.
“Are you sure about that, Max ?”
    Maximus flinched, startled, and whipped his
head toward me. His jaw came unhinged, his face pale with
disbelief. That’s right, you red nutsack. Guess who’s here? Your
worst nightmare.
    Ada brushed past me and walked around the
foot of the bed, her eyes on Perry, trying to give her fair warning
for my appearance.
    “What in God’s name are you doing
here?” he exclaimed, blinking hard as if I were an apparition. He’d
be so lucky. A ghost wouldn’t kick his fucking ass the way I
could.
    But I couldn’t concentrate on him. He was
only part of the problem. I was here because of Perry, and as he
moved over, straightening up to look at me dead on, he revealed
Perry on the bed behind him.
    And my whole world stopped.
    It barely even looked like her. I mean, it was her. Her beautiful, petite face that was so easy to cup
in my hands, her long black hair cloaking her like a shield. Her
breasts as they filled out her sweater, somehow even bigger than
before. But her eyes didn’t look the same, her expression was
shocked, just as shocked as I was, but something didn’t match
up.
    It didn’t matter though. Nothing mattered at
that moment except for the fact that the love of my life was in
emotional and physical pain, strapped to her own bed, very much
like the animal that Ada had said she was. A million things passed
between us—love, anger, regret, sorrow. They flew faster than
anyone could see, in a language all our own, between my dark eyes
and her dark eyes. No, that was it. Her eyes. They weren’t her
eyes. They belonged to someone else. My god, what the fuck was
going on here? What happened to her?
    I snapped. I charged right up to the first
person I could blame.
    “What the fuck is this?” I yelled in
Maximus’s face, throwing my arms around. “What are you doing to
her?”
    “What the fuck is this? What the fuck are
you? Why are you here? You shouldn’t be here!” the Douchefucker
yelled back, not backing down, as if he had the right to be mad and
not me.
    “You should thank your freckled ass that I’m
here,” I sniped, coming closer. Did he think