Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
HIM
“Look at you, boy.” The familiar voice hissed in my direction. “Awfully cozy, aren’t ya?”
I dropped my cock and grabbed for the remote, increasing the volume on the tv while keeping my eyes glued to the screen as I twisted back around on the bed.
I knew it was only a matter of time before she popped up—that didn’t mean I had to acknowledge her.
I shoved a handful of pills into my mouth and washed ?em down with the glass of milk I’d left out on Jules’s nightstand.
It was slightly sour but I refused to let that shit go to waste.
Growing up broke had this way of settling into your bones, even when you had cash on hand.
“Waste not, want not, right, ma?” Fuck, I didn’t mean to say that aloud. Too late. Now there was no chance the bitch was going away. Not when she enjoyed fucking with my head so much.
“Turn it off.”
I swatted out a hand. Nothing was there but it was habit. Like trying to swat a gnat that wouldn’t stop buzzing in your ear even when you knew it was gonna be back a few seconds later.
“Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off.” Now she was chanting it over and over again. I could only assume she meant the tv. The woman hated anything that brought me joy. She also hated anything that took my attention away from her nagging.
I could only imagine what she thought of Jules then.
I glanced down at the nurse in question before squeezing my eyes shut and cupping my hands over the sides of my head.
It wouldn’t take long for the pills to kick in.
Not that they got rid of her completely, just that they made her a little more fuzzy.
Her voice a little less clear. Easier to ignore.
I wasn’t crazy but that didn’t mean I didn’t hear things on occasion. Auditory hallucinations, PTSD, fucked-up bullshit with a label… Whatever you wanted to call it, it followed me. Worse than the Ghost of Christmas Past following that Scrooge guy.
But unlike the sound of their screams, unlike all those women I’d butchered over the years, I couldn’t kill ?em. Drown ?em out. Chop ?em up and bury ?em.
You couldn’t kill things that were already dead. Even if that did little to stop me from trying.
Never told the docs that I was hearing shit, but it didn’t take them long to figure it out when they caught me talking to myself.
That was when the treatments started, the pills, the therapies that left her taunting me more and louder.
None of them cared about curing me. They cared about cutting my brain open.
They wanted to know when the voices started. If they were trauma-induced or just didn’t have the chance to develop until puberty. They wanted to know if that’s what caused me to slice so deep her hands were almost falling off.
It wasn’t. Because there weren’t any voices. Just one. Just hers. And she didn’t show up until long after I’d killed her…
I pushed myself up off the bed and made my way to the shower, stepping over the puddles of blood and bathwater still covering the tile floor. Then I slammed the door shut and turned the faucet on the hottest setting. Like if I burned my skin off, I could somehow burn her touch away too.
It didn’t work. It never worked. But the sound of the shower spray pelting against the glass did help to drown out the whispers until the meds did what they were supposed to do and drowned out the memories too.