Page 86 of The Misfits
You saw it too?
Of course! How could I miss it?
Pretty fireflies.
I laugh at the immaturity of the final voice. He’s the childish, naïve one I’m confident could convince the rest of the rowdy bunch that there’s no fun in corruption and that conformity is the jam.
He’s also the one who misses Megan the most.
I’m not allowed to think about her, ask about her, or act as if I knew her.
I’m not allowed to do anything except sit in my chair and pray like fuck one of the nursing staff wipes the dribble off my chin before it soaks into my prison jumpsuit.
With my arms and legs being the weight of concrete, and my head double the heaviness of their combined weights, changing outfits in the middle of the day is a task a braindead idiot can’t undertake alone, and since most of the staff here are males, you can be as sure as fuck that I’d sit in soiled undergarments before I’d let one of these fuckers stare at my periwinkler.
My eyes cross when a firefly sits on the tip of my nose. A voice at the very back of the loud horde yells that it isn’t real, but I’m too out of my mind to care. I’m doped up on the good stuff. As high as a fucking kite, but despite this, still an inmate at the number one hospital for the criminally insane on this side of the country.
They know a master when they see one.
Well, they would have six-plus months ago. Now my brain is nothing but mush. I’m one prescription away from a permanent vegetative state. I can’t even move my legs, much less my cock, which is a real disappointment when the faintest whiff of an inexpensive perfume lingers in the air.
When I roll my head to the side, which is the weight of a bowling ball, the firefly flutters away, and another angelic image takes its place. Skinny, freckled cheeks, ruddy lips, and hair that’s almost black enough to seep through the haze making my vision blurry is an enticing image for a man who’s been starved of both touch and visual contact for months on end.
She looks like an angel.
A demented angel if she’s locked up in here with us.
I don’t argue with the voice when the faintest murmur whispers in my ear, “Can you see the fireflies, Dexter?” When I nod, she mutters, “I wonder if they’d still be pretty without their glowing butts?”
I stop hunting one of the many bugs in front of me with my teeth since my arms and legs are restrained to my wheelchair when something jabs me in the neck. It feels oddly similar to the prick of a needle, but before I can determine why the nurse didn’t insert my medication via the cannula in my arm, another cool object brushes the same area. It’s a tad lower but has the same coolness of the saline they squeeze through the lines each morning to make sure every drop of my medication is administered directly to my veins.
A temporary state of paralysis could be confusing me. I had a lot of issues with muscle spasms and functionality of my limbs the weeks after I was shot. The bitch who mimicked Isaac’s cocky strut so well I didn’t spot her behind him shot me three times. Two of her bullets embedded in my stomach, her intended zone, but the third one scorched through my forearm.
It is the arm that’s signaling a difference in temperature between my wheelchair and me.
“W-w-what—”
“Shh,” whispers the voice again before she dabs up the dribble that arrived with my one word, then pivots away from me.
The voice the others forever shove to the back of the pack finally makes it to the front when the scent of recently washed hair wafts into my nostrils. It’s fruity and dirty, proving without a doubt that it belongs to a psycho.
I told you,he screams, his voice as loud as the wallops of my heart.It’s her! It’s fucking her!
I try not to let excitement get the better of me, but when my fingers brush the edge of a cool steel material that’s sharp enough for the scent of my blood to linger in the air seconds after being nicked by it, it is almost impossible not to scream in hysterics with the other nutters on this half of the asylum.
Little Ms. Skitzo could be making a comeback, but instead of relishing the idea that she isn’t dead, all I’m wondering is where has she been the past ten months if not in a shallow grave?
It better not have been with him.
“Shut up for just a minute,” I snap at the childish voice stealing my focus from the task at hand. My limbs have been too weighed down with medication the past six months to attempt to pull them out of the restraints holding me hostage to my bed, but tonight, my brain is nowhere near as sludgy. I’m almost lucid—almost.
When my wrist pops out of the leather handcuff tethering me to my bed, I shoot my eyes to the door, certain it is seconds away from being kicked open by one of the two guards who monitor the camera in the corner of my room every single night.
Once several minutes pass with the silence of an inmate in solitary confinement, I use my free hand to remove the shackles from my wrist and ankles. The switchblade stuffed into my wrist cuff earlier today would make quick work of the leather straps tethering me down, but with my head nowhere near as murky as it’s been the past ten months and my heart throbbing fast enough to dissolve the drugs in my veins at double the speed of normal dispersion, the three-buckle design on each restraint isn’t baffling me as it did only yesterday.
With legs dangling off the bed along with the cuffs, I grit my teeth before attempting to bear weight on my feet. They’ve been so unused the past ten months, my toes are wilted, and the arches of my feet aren’t close to natural, but just like I was born to be a killer, my feet were designed to walk, and that’s exactly what they do when my ass leaves the mattress with a breathless grunt.
After holding my finger in the air, wordlessly demanding for the voices in my head to be quiet, I press my ear to the door separating my room from the corridor guards roam at all hours of the day and night.
