Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
CASPER
Iwas wrong. Things weren’t more interesting. The last couple of weeks were duller than the lifeless stiff Bossman was poking and prodding with the end of his scalpel like my baby cousin used to move her peas around her dinner plate—a real meat-eater, that one.
“Will you stop that…” he hissed through the panel that separated me from the operating room and all his sterile equipment.
I lifted my hand and tossed the little red ball against the glass again, watching it bounce back into my grip a few seconds later. A bunch of clattering of metal and then the bossman was glaring at me from the other side.
I grinned and aimed for the center of his forehead. Or where it would be if that panel weren’t there. Bounce. Before I could repeat the process, the door was swinging open and I was being dragged towards Bugs’s room.
Could I fight ?em off? More like I could have had his neck turned around the other way in a few seconds. But if there was one thing I learned from growing up within the walls of Briarwood, it was that broken toys ended up in the trash, where you couldn’t play with ?em anymore.
It was also much more fun to watch him huff and puff his way down the hallway. Big Daddy was getting weak in his old age. All those muscles under his lab coat turning soft and squishy.
I reached out a finger to poke at his ribcage. “Yep. Just as I thought.”
“And what’s that?” he grunted, probably outta both annoyance and the strain my full body weight was putting on those noodle arms.
“You’re gettin’ fat.”
He tossed my ass through the door. “I don’t care what you have to do. Just keep him away from my table.”
Bugs didn’t chance looking up from his screen as our self-appointed warden walked right back out, slamming the door shut behind him.
I jumped to my feet and brushed off my pants. My hand already on the knob when Computer Boy called out to me. “You’re going to land yourself on bedrest again,” he mumbled between keystrokes.
Bedrest. It was a nice way to put it. What he really meant was that Dr. Adrian Lambert was gonna hook me up to a bunch of machines and pump a shit-ton of drugs through my system—not the good kind—for how ever long it took me to learn my lesson.
Boredom. Being stuck to a bed or chair. That was punishment. And we both knew that was worse than death for some people. For me.
I cracked my neck from side to side at the thought. “I’m going out.”
“Out where?”
I twisted around, the fake bones in my spine rubbing together and clanking with the movement. That sound was better than a good nut sometimes. “Why? You coming?”
Bugs glanced up at me before returning to whatever weird code shit he was looking at on his computer. “No.”
“Yeah, didn’t think so.” I grinned, shaking my head as I slipped out into the hallway. Fucker needed to get out more. Or like ever.
The pharmacy door caught my eye and my grin widened. So wide my face would hurt if I could feel it. I couldn’t. Just a slight stretch of muscle, more like the little nerve endings knew the shit was supposed to burn but didn’t know how to replicate it.
I used the card I swiped a few years back against the panel—I mean, it might as well have had candy shop written across the door—and pushed my way inside the room.
Where I scooped up a couple bottles of pills, a handful of glass vials, and some syringes.
I liked having options, depending on where the night brought me.
And then I was skipping down the stairs of Briarwood and over to one of the spare cars we kept in the back lot.
Some of ?em were stolen, some belonged to former patients, and some just appeared and never left.
The Merc would do today. It was Lambo’s favorite.
I clicked it open with his spare fob, slid behind the wheel, and adjusted the seat.
Which was way back too far, likely because of the extra weight he was starting to carry on him.
A quick rev of the engine and I was speeding down the driveway.
Off to find my entertainment for the evening.