Page 56 of Evelyn's Enforcer

Which was why I grabbed the gun, and promptly made a run for it. Of course, running through an abandoned psychiatric hospital wasn’t any less creepy, but at least now I had adrenaline on my side.

After running down what felt like an endless corridor, I finally found a map on the wall, seeing for myself the strange layout of the place. It looked like two stars connected by a bigger building in between, with what looked like a huge room attached at the bottom. One that looked like it could have been a hall or gymnasium.

Well, one thing was for sure, it didn’t take a genius to know that if there was some kind of shit show about to happen, then I would bet my skills as an escape artist that it was being held there. And with people selling illegal stuff, including actual people… well, I needed to stay as far away from that place as possible.

So, I started running in the opposite direction to where I hoped I would find an exit. I tried not to think on the rooms I passed and the poor souls that had spent their unfortunate lives in them. I tried not to think about the treatment room I passed, and words like ‘Shock therapy’ and ‘waterboarding’ went through my head. I only thought about what horrors awaited me in a place like this, one I was starting to feel trapped in. It was a bit like being a rat in a maze put there by some mad doctor conducting experiments.

And as if my mind was already on its way to being lost, just like the inhabitants of this forsaken place, I suddenly found myself seeing the impossible. A ghost of my past, and the one that I knew would forever haunt me. A pair of double doors opened at the end of a hallway and an impossible sight walked through them, making me skid to a frightful stop before falling on my ass. I scrambled back, saying over and over,

“No… no, it can’t be… I… I killed you!” I shouted, making the man smirk back at me as I continued to drag myself across the floor. Fear outweighed all common sense other than telling me to run.

So, I finally managed to get to my feet, before pointing the gun at him as I continued to walk backward.

“Now is that anyway to greet me after all these years?” a voice I knew only in my nightmares said to me, making me shake my head again.

“You’re not real… not fucking real!” Then I raised the gun in his direction at the same time walking back to the corner I had just come from. But just like that night, he looked unconcerned by the threat. It was a lesson learned seconds before his death.

“Then if it’s a ghost you see, Evelyn Leucosia, perhaps you deserve to be in a place like this,” he said in that same tone he had spoken to me that night. I was just about to open my mouth to say something when he nodded to something behind me. However, I was too late to react as I suddenly felt the blow to the back of my head, knocking me down and, more importantly, knocking the gun from my hand.

I cried out as I hit the floor and just before the world went black once more, there was still one last sight of my ghost left for me to see. A dark figure now standing over me, just like he had done that day my world had ended and, with it, my mother’s life.

I was once more living a nightmare, as he told me…

“Hello again… my dear daughter.”

23

A SIREN’S CALL

Iswear, my life currently felt like a never-ending nightmare of passing out and waking up to find myself still living it. It was like I didn’t know what was real anymore and what wasn’t. But I had to confess to being hazier than the last time I had been knocked out, remembering only snippets of it.

I think I had been running, having managed to get away but after that, I must have been found shortly after because what happened next couldn’t have been real. It was that or I had been seeing a ghost. Perhaps I could have even been hallucinating. I just didn’t know the answer, only that it couldn’t have been real.

However, what was real was waking up as I was being carried somewhere, and from the pain in the back of my head, I could only hope at this point it was back to my cell. All I wanted to do now was lie down and sleep. I had to wonder if I was suffering from concussion, because I was feeling very sluggish. As if all fight to try and escape had been knocked right out of me.

Although that was until I saw where they were now taking me, it looked like a fucking big fish tank! Now, normally, this wouldn’t particularly have been seen as threatening, but considering I couldn’t swim, having a very real fear of water, I quickly started to panic. Because despite it not having water in it yet, from the looks of the pipes leading to it, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what their plan was.

There were two tanks, side by side, being no bigger than ten foot wide. But as for the height, they were at least twelve feet tall with a barred latch above the enclosure. Inside them had been made to look like a human sized fish tank, with sand on the floor and a single plastic rock that I gathered was put there for us to sit on.

As for the rest of the room, this view had been cut off. There was a large red curtain that hung from a metal pole above, separating me from the villains I gathered were here to bid on me. I didn’t even need to wonder how they were going to get me up into that thing because the big metal staircase on wheels was a dead giveaway.

Which was when my fight or flight response finally kicked back in, and I started to struggle enough that the man holding me had to let go. I fell to the floor, ignoring the pain and quickly scrambled to my feet before trying to make another run for it.

However, this didn’t go so well this time, and I was grabbed from behind and tossed toward someone ready to catch me. Neither of which had any faces to speak of, because both of them wore masks as if I had been dragged into some kind of cult meeting. And unlike Ryker’s mask, these were cold and featureless, being just plain matt-black.

Then I was taken by the arm and practically dragged up the steps and toward an open grate at the top.

“No, you don’t understand! I can’t fucking swim… I will drown if you put water in there!” I shouted, making the man chuckle as he roughly handled me, the tight grasp of his fingertips bruising my skin.

“Then you better hope you get bought then… and quickly.” Then I saw him wink at me through the eye hole before pushing me inside and making me fall to the bottom. The landing managed to knock the wind out of me, so I could do little but curl up on my side and try to catch my breath in the sand.

“Bring in the other one and, unlike this bitch, let’s hope she wakes when inside the tank. It will be less fucking hassle that way!” he said, sneering down at me.

“Ass…holes!” I shouted between breaths, now trying to drag myself up and feeling the pain in my hip where I had fallen. But his response to this was to turn a lever attached to the pipe while blowing me a kiss with his hand. I, in turn, gave him the finger but then the second the water came flooding in I quickly got to my feet, nearly falling because of my hip.

I then hobbled over to the fake rock in the tank and started to climb up it as the water level started to rise. I looked over to the other tank next to mine and saw the water rising in that one too. The sounds of laughter at my expense came from behind me; they obviously enjoyed the sight of my panic. The bastards!

Thankfully, however, the water eventually stopped, and I gripped onto the perch of the rock in an utter death grip. Taking a bath was one thing but this, this was like my private version of hell! Memories of being nearly drowned as a kid came back to me, along with the abuse I suffered… the feeling of not being able to breathe… my lungs burning and crying out for me to just take that last deadly breath…