Page 1 of Killing Me Softly

Prologue

Killing Me Softly

Six years ago, September 16th

Ravenholm Secure Psychiatric Hospital, Dorset

Ravenholm Psychiatric Hospital was an expert in smothering chaos under the guise ofcalm. Pale beige walls, devoid of personality, drank in the light as if afraid to reflect it or disrupt the equilibrium of faux peace. And the faint scent of lavender consistently lingered in the air, enough to suggest tranquillity, but not enough to hide the sterility beneath. Everything and everyone inside here were all rotten. But it couldn’tlooklike that. If the outside emulated the inside, it wouldn’t work. And vice versa.

Appearances were deceiving.

As her mother always said.

She glared at the narrow window, a cruel slit of glass letting in fragile streams of morning light, painting the floor in deceptive ribbons of gold. It mocked her. Outside, the cliffs loomed like the jagged grin of a monster, sharp edges promising a final embrace. She’d happily dive right intothatmouth. Or, beyond, where the English Channel heaved and roared, calling her to vanish beneath its freezing surface and shatter over the rocks below, finally ending this relentless nightmare.

At least then she’d have control of her own damn life.

And how it ended.

She couldn’t say any of that in here, though. Because everything here, in the room she sat in, had been controlled for her. All laid out perfectly so as not to cause her unrest. To soothe and calm. Build trust and conversation. Make her relaxed and at ease. Because they all knew how inside, she raged like an inferno ready to explode. As she had for so many years. Keeping all that in was bound to take its toll eventually. But not today.

I’m just a little girl. Get me out of here!

Two identical armchairs upholstered in muted fabric faced each other and this was where she spent most of her time coming to terms with her trauma. And hiding every single bit of it. The table between stood like a barrier, impersonal and impenetrable, eager to absorb nothing of the confessions whispered across its surface. And the vase of flowers in the centre was neutral and forgettable.Lilies. Deliberately unobtrusive. More green foliage with white petals. Isn’t that what they have in funeral homes? Whatever happened toroses? It wasn’t ever roses. She liked roses. Blood red and thorny.

But that would be a catastrophic choice for a room meant to cradle fragile minds.

Hermind in particular.

And as she was here to prove she was ready for the outside, she had to remain just as muted. Because the person who heldthat possibility within the ink of their pen currently sat across from her, reading through the notes in her file. Dr Laura Pryce had been in her life for a while now. She’d been feeding her little titbits. Getting her ready for the outside world. So this was just a formality. She was now eighteen. No longer a child to contain within cheap walls. It would cost the government quite a lot to transfer her to a secure adult unit. And as Dr Laura always said to her,“It all boils down to money.”

Nothing boiled down to sanity. Or what wasright.

Thank God for the black hole deficit in public funding.

Dr Laura Pryce hovered her pen over her page for a beat too long. She was sorting through all her emotions. Compartmentalising them into little colourful boxes. This was an important meeting she was conducting. Could make or break her. One wrong decision and she could lose her licence. Maybe her mind! So she smiled, a brief, polite curve of lips, to put the doc at ease. Laura twitched hers in response. A small gesture, barely perceptible, but to her, it was louder than a heartbeat. She had this in the bag, and it didn’t even look like she had to let anyone fuck her.

Dr Laura was one of the good ones.

A surrogate mother, if you will.

Unlike that bastard of a so-calleddoctorwho’d put her in here in the first fucking place, detailing how she had a“fascination with control and dominance, a dissociative tendency that could evolve into detachment from reality under stress and a suppressed rage that may manifest in violent, harmful ways.”

Fuck you, Dr Kenneth Lyons. Fuck you very much.

“How are you feeling today?” Dr Laura asked, voice modulated to a steady, soothing cadence. That’s who Laura was. Steady. Even. Whereas underneath, there was something quite kindred about her.

She gave the doctor a smile so soft it felt borrowed from someone else. “Hopeful.”

Dr Laura nodded. “Good. That’s good. Hope is important.” She peered over to the mirror along the wall where, beyond, would be an array of doctors all looking on to assess all this.

She dipped forward, lowering her voice. “Is that what you need me to say?” She tilted her neck just so, widening her blue eyes to pussy cat levels.

Dr Laura cleared her throat. “There are no wrong answers here. This session is for you. For you to show us who you are.”

She crossed her legs, the fabric of her institutional dress scratching her knee. “I know, but I want to make you proud of me.”

“Is pride still important to you?”

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