Page 137 of Phobia
“What are yo—”
My words were lost in the scream that erupted from my throat when something sharp stabbed into the sides of my forehead. Pain like no other, like nothing I had ever felt, rushed through my head. As if on cue, my eyes closed, the world around me died, but the pain remained.
When I was a kid, I accidentally put my finger in the power outlet, and I could still remember the little shocks that ran through my hand after that. This—this was so much worse.
A thousand little shocks slammed through my head, going through my body. I felt myself shaking, my body lifting, but it was as if I watched somebody else going through it. My throat hurt, my lips suddenly dry, and I had no idea when, but someone put something in my mouth, having my teeth latch on to that instead of my tongue.
I couldn’t see anything but the black dots dancing in front of me. I couldn’t hear a thing but a loud ringing in my ears.
The memories I buried a long time ago started coming back, erupting from the little chest of wonders I created in the back of my mind. The first time my parents fought. The first time I screamed. The first time they sent me to the doctor.
The first psychologist who looked at me, asking questions, asking what my urges were like. The first little bird I found just behind our house with a broken wing. I remembered my little hand holding down her broken wing, pressing it to the ground as she cried and cried and cried.
The voices.
The whispers.
The need.
The need.
Lazarus Morass and the first time I saw him. The first time I smiled at him and the first time he really looked at me. The first time my mother brought me to the Morass Asylum, leaving me with Lazarus’s late father.
The first time I walked through the forest, only to see a boy not too much older than me, standing above the corpse of a girl that went missing just a couple of days before that. The pressed finger against his lips and the shouts behind me as I left, nodding after he urged me to keep quiet.
And shortly after that, the pain; so much fucking pain, that I couldn’t even remember my own name. The darkness, the wind, the tree canopy above me as I woke up in the ditch close to my house, and the blood dripping down the side of my head.
The hospital, the screaming, the tears in my mother’s eyes as they reminded me of who I was and where I belonged.
I couldn’t remember a single thing—not until now.
And just as the pain stopped, the silence ensued. The world stilled as the first real smile slipped onto my face, opening my eyes. He was still there, standing right above me, that little frown very much present on his face as he held two electrodes in his hands, breathing heavily as if he'd just run a marathon.
“That was too much!” Judah screamed from somewhere, but I didn’t want to hear him. He needed to leave. To be gone.
To fucking disappear.
I knew what Lazarus did so many years ago.
I knew what I did, only to forget who I truly was thanks to that accident that hurt my head, erasing most of my memories in one night.
All those visits to doctors, my mother’s worried face, the constant pushing to keep taking my meds even when I had no idea why I had to take them, there was always a reason.
Lazarus Morass and I were more similar than I initially thought, and what happened in Seattle with that man, with that motherfucking piece of shit who tore through my body like it belonged to him, only for me to gut him in the end… That was what I was supposed to be doing all along.
Death fascinated me more than life. The fear people had in their eyes when they knew that there was nothing left for them to hold on to, as you held the knife at their throat, siphoning in their life force.
“I remember now.” I grinned, looking up at him. His eyes widened, understanding washing over his face and something akin to happiness, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but it was there. As if the weight was lifted off his chest, and the deep breath he took as someone removed the chains from my arms was all I needed to keep pushing.
Judah wanted me for something, that much was obvious, but as Lazarus pushed me up into a sitting position, and as I looked at the man in front of me, I vowed that he would never have me.
“Is she fixed?” Judah asked Lazarus, looking over my head. I relaxed all of my muscles, barely holding myself upright. “Is she gonna be able to do this?”
“I don’t know,” Lazarus answered, rubbing little circles over my back, soothing me while the man who now stood between us spoke. He had such an annoying voice. Such a fucking spoiled brat, and I couldn’t wait to do to him what he tried doing to me.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Judah approached. “She’s barely sitting, Lazarus. I don’t fucking need a corpse.”
“I told you this might not work.”
