Chapter 19 My Fan Club
MY FAN CLUB
Glitter shame it’s not keeping time yet.
Chicken soup, white bread, a glass of water that tasted faintly of metal. She said her name was Maggie. She told me she was here to help.
I told her I was here to kill…time.
She didn’t come back.
Now it’s day three – at least, I think it is. My sense of time is a corpse already halfway to dust. The vents hum louder, or maybe that’s just my brain trying to fill the silence. The red light above the door blinks every few seconds, a heartbeat for a building with none of its own.
There are twelve staff on rotation today.
Three guards worth a damn, two orderlies who can’t find their own dicks without GPS and spoken instructions, and seven others who treat protocols like optional reading.
I counted their meds trolley too – sedatives strong enough to down a horse, but watered just weak enough so that whoever’s really in charge thinks it won’t incapacitate me.
The security system reboots every twenty-two minutes; the cameras lag three seconds on the west wing and six on the upper corridor. If I ever wanted to end this place, I already know exactly how long it would take.
There’s a soft click and the door unlocks. Doctor Callaway walks in like she owns the air. Perfect posture, hair pulled so tight once again that it looks like it hurts. Clipboard, pen, neutral smile. The sort of woman who says “I understand” when she doesn’t and “I’m listening” when she isn’t.
“Morning, Kayla,” she says.
I grin from the bed, sheets tangled around my legs. “Morning, sunshine. How’s the incarceration business? Still pretending it’s therapy?”
She glances at the monitor by the wall, where my vitals blink like a lie detector. “How are you feeling?”
“Enlightened,” I say. “Got any more of those little pills that make me forget what day it is?”
She doesn’t rise to the bait. That’s her thing – calm, patient, endlessly professional. It makes me want to peel the calm off her face just to see what’s underneath.
She writes something on her clipboard. “You’ve been sleeping better.”
“Define better,” I say. “If you mean unconscious, sure. If you mean peaceful, not so much. Had a dream I drowned in bleach. Very cleansing.”
“You said yesterday you were hearing laughter,” she says, still writing.
“Did I? Still am,” I tell her. “Maybe it’s the pipes. Or maybe it’s my fan club.”
“Is it distressing?”
“Only when it stops.”
That earns a flicker of eye contact. She doesn’t like ambiguity; it’s harder to quantify. I stretch, catlike, just to make her look away first.
She recovers fast. “You’ve been isolated for seventy-two hours. Standard reintegration period.”
“Reintegration,” I echo, tasting the word like it’s sour. “Into what?”
“Routine,” she says. “Structure.”
“Ah. Domestic bliss.”
She exhales through her nose. “You’ll be allowed limited movement soon. Common areas. Therapy sessions. Supervised, of course.”
“Supervised.” I tilt my head. “Because you still think I’m dangerous.”
Her pen stills. “Because we both know you are.”
I like her for that – no fake sympathy. No handholding. Just the cold honesty of someone who’s seen what I can do and decided to stand close anyway.
“What do I have to do?” I ask.
“For what?”
“To get out of this room before I start peeling the wallpaper off with my teeth.” Which is ironic because there is no wallpaper.
“You follow the schedule. You engage. You cooperate.”
I laugh. “Cooperate. Christ. You sound like Seytan.”
Her eyes flick up sharply, just once. “I’m not Seytan.”
“No,” I say, stretching the word until it snaps. “You’re softer. Less blood under your nails. For now. But give it time.”
She ignores that. “Would you like to talk about why you’re here?”
“Because I’m fun at parties.”
“Because you made a deal,” she corrects.
I sit up straighter. “Ah, deals. I remember those. You keep me breathing, I play nice. Except the terms were never clear, were they? How nice, how long, how much of me you get to poke and prod before I break again?”
“Kayla—”
“No.” I stand. Her pen freezes mid-note. “You want honesty, fine. I’m bored. I’m trapped. And the only thing keeping me from redecorating these walls with my own blood is the fact that I know boredom kills slower than bullets.”
Silence. The kind that hums.
Then she nods. “Good. You’re aware of your impulses. That’s progress.”
I bark a laugh. “Progress. That’s what we’re calling survival now?”
“It’s a start.” She closes the folder, finally stepping closer. “You’re clever. You know the difference between acting out and acting smart. You act smart, and we’ll see about your privileges.”
“Privileges.” I roll the word in my mouth like a sweet that’s gone off. “Sounds kinky.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “Would you like to stretch your legs tomorrow?”
I pause. She means it. I can tell by the angle of her body, the way her voice softens half a note.
“What’s the catch?”
“Supervision. A controlled area.”
I smile. “And here I thought you were going to say a shock collar.”
“Would that motivate you?”
“Depends who’s holding the remote.” I wink.
The faintest twitch of her mouth. I file that away. She can smile; she just doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction.
“Tomorrow,” she says, turning toward the door. “Try to rest. Eat something. And no more dismantling the camera.”
I glance at the corner where the replacement lens blinks, pristine and smug. “Tell your tech boys to hide it better next time.”
She leaves without replying. The door seals with a hiss that sounds too much like laughter.
The room hums again.
Time thickens.
I pace.
I count the tiles.
I hum the kookaburra song under my breath until it turns into something else – something lower, darker.
Three days since I woke up here. Three days of observation, of pills that dull the edges, of polite conversations that mean nothing.
Tomorrow, I’ll get out of this room.
They think that means progress.
It doesn’t. It means opportunity.
And if Doctor Callaway thinks she’s the one taking notes on me, she’s in for a rude fucking awakening.