Page 18 of Madness

“Does it matter who we are? One is Desmond, and the other is Dusty.”

“It matters because we need to know where to put each of you.”

Fear grips me, and I see the same panic on Dusty’s face, which is almost identical to mine.

If they separate us, we will lose our minds, only having each other when others did not want us.

Dusty has always been my anchor, abandoned by our parents here and left with only each other.

The thought of being torn away from him again, but this time not being able to see him, is unbearable.

“But you cannot!” I speak out loud, so unlike me.

You should never show your hand before you have dealt it, and yet here I am, showing them that they can use Dusty against me—he is my only weakness in this horrible place.

“But we can. So, names? I will not ask again.”

“Dusty,” he sighs, pointing his finger towards his chest, then to me, “Desmond.”

I stay silent, and when the guard presses the button to release the doors, I’m moving forward before they have even begun to open.

The guards follow us but continue to keep their distance until we enter our new ward.

“Are we being kept together?” Dusty asks.

“You can thank the warden for that one, but yes, you have a shared room with an ensuite,” the second guard says, nodding his head for us to continue forward.

The hallways seem to bend and twist up here, and even the guards accompanying us seem to lose their way a few times, but finally, we reach our room.

A piece of paper is stuck to the door with Sellotape, and I smile at the all-too-familiar writing that decorates it.

“Is that?”

“It is.”

“I did not know…”

“Me either, but let’s go,” I say, pushing open the door and heading into our first shared room since we got here.

The rabbit hole only had single rooms, but beds were pushed against a joint wall, and we could sometimes talk through it when Dusty wasn’t drugged up to his eyeballs.

The guards don’t stick around to chat, having done their job of escorting us here. They turn and leave the moment we are both in the room, leaving us to figure out this new ward on our own.

At least we have each other.

Dusty falls into his bed, not even sparing a glance at the rest of the room, and his snores soon fill the space.

I chuckle but know that he needs this – what I need is a shower.

There are few options for what door in this room could lead to the ensuite, and when I open the door to the bathroom, I marvel at the space we are giving up here.

It’s spacious, bigger than the measly one down in the rabbit hole, and the walk-in shower looks like it has enough room for more than two people to stand inside of it.

There’s soap and shampoo provided, and I practically weep when I see that the temperature isn’t capped like it was down there.

Turning the water to scalding, I submerge myself under the hot stream and sigh blissfully as I feel the years of grime from never feeling clean enough wash off of my skin.

“Des?” Dusty’s concerned voice, heavy from sleep, comes from the room, and I curse myself for disappearing without warning him.

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