Page 80 of Tempt Me

That felt so harsh, but I understood. I couldn’t disagree with him as much as I wanted to. The asylum had fucked us all up. We may not have arrived as monsters, but we certainly became them along the way.

Joe appeared, and I ignored him, writing down the words on my phone and trying to decipher their meaning.

“Ohhh, a game! Fun fun!” he hissed.

“Go away, Joe,” I growled, turning my back to him.

“Huh?”

I cleared my throat and said, “ Oh, um, a fly. I said, "Go away, annoying ass fly.”

Goliath snorted. “Dude, just kill it.”

I glared at Joe in the corner. “I did, but there seems to be a lot of flies lately.”

Goliath, not understanding me at all, just snorted again. “Whatever, man.”

“Did you get Emmy back to Hospital Thirteen, all right? Is she sedated, too?”

Goliath was quiet for a moment, another drag of his cigarette before he spoke.

“Bro, I don’t know how to say this, but Emmy was never there. I checked the CCTV footage, and she was asleep in her cell all night. All I found in that hole was a dead woman. I barely got out before the cops started throwing up the tape all over the place. Did you know you were leading me into a fucking pig pen?”

“Not there? What do you mean? I saw her! I fucking swear she was singing, she took the baby and was singing about….”

My brain short-circuited.

“She was acting just like Joe. She was singing those riddles, and she said…”

I wracked my brain for the exact wording she used, trying to make sure I wasn’t fucking insane, but no matter how I tried…It was all blurring together.

“I swear man…I…There was a girl with me. She saw everything. She saw her, too.”

Goliath was silent. His voice lowered into that calm tone bullshit he used on the fucking patients. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Maybe we all just need to get some sleep and look at things when we wake up.”

“Are you going to sedate me too, Lith?” I accused.

The dig was cold and undeserved, but I hated that he was acting like I was insane.

I wasn’t. Maybe I wasn’t exactly stellar, but I knew I wasn’t on Judas’s level…yet at any rate.

I needed to figure this out. I needed to decipher these fucked up puzzles. I had to learn what happened to Xenia. I had to fight for her. And Ariah…before I truly did lose my mind.

‘Tick-tock, my time is almost up.’

Thirty

Chronicle: Record of factual events in the order they occurred.

What is the ending going to be?

Stalking around an asylum was the last thing I wanted to do right now, especially the one my professor was part of for years…but I needed answers.

The smell of the health facility was like that of a hospital, but one scent overpowered the rest—that tangy metallic scent of blood.

I cleared my throat and approached the front desk. It sat in front of the menacing bars lining the walls. I could see people in white paper scrubs walking around with no real focus. They were like lost zombies. This could be a scene in a fucking book of horrors, and I was cast as the dumb blonde that ran toward them.

If I could figure out what caused this cataclysm, maybe I could save a few more people from dying.

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