Abel
For the past week, I tiptoed through the dark and dead halls of Silverwing while the other patients slept, trying to figure out how the hell we’d get out of here.
Night after night, I watched the night shift nurses, janitors, and security guards who patrol the exits.
And I learned their horrible fucking secrets in the process.
Silverwing isn’t just the bane of my existence; it morphs into a fiery damnation when the sun goes down.
The first night, one of the janitors left a stairwell door open. The same one Dr. Brown and I had snuck out of, as if it’s common knowledge that in this corner of the building, there are no sins if there are no witnesses. Between the lack of cameras and the way female nurses avoid this area, it’s fucking lawless.
I witnessed one of the male nurses dragging a female patient who is known for inability to speak anymore into the stairwell. She tried to jerk away more than once and he ignored her, eventually gripping her by her hair as she tried to claw her way out of his hold.
They came back disheveled, a glazed look of defeat in her eyes and I wanted to jump out and punch this fucker right in his nutsack for dipping his dick into the crazy pool in such a foul fucking way.
The second night, the janitor left the door unlocked again but this time, he joined a male nurse in the hallway with another one of the patients. The janitor does this every night and nearly every night, one of the male nurses takes one of the girls to the stairwell, assaults her, and returns her to her bed.
How has this been happening, right under Dr. Brown’s nose?
I think about Rose and if this has ever happened to her. Her room is on the opposite end of the wing. The only thing separating Rose from these perverts is their potential laziness. Maybe their fear of being caught, should they venture farther than they already are with mute patients who no one will believe.
Every night, I watch them around the same time, praying the nurses don’t change their bed check timing. I jump back into my bed in time for a nurse to stick their face in the small window at my door and then leave. They typically only check once during the night, which is so fucking stupid.
Then I hop back out of bed to watch the janitor again, trying to figure out what kind of time frame we’ll be working with. If we leave after the bed checks, we’ll have a lot more time to get out of the area if the male nurse doesn’t decide to get his rocks off early.
Before I head back to bed for the night, I check on Rose, picking the locks with ease since I’d found hair pins near the nurses’ station one night. The only doors requiring a nurse’s badge are the ones in solitary. The ones in our rooms have cheap little locks that I could likely kick in.
I’m careful to keep from common knowledge that the lock on my door hasn’t worked since I first moved into my room.
Rose is usually waiting up for me most nights but when she’s asleep, I just kiss her forehead and go back to my room.
Every morning feels like hell after staying up nearly all night. I try not to fall asleep and Rose helps with her presence and her questions.
“You’ve never asked me why I want to kill my mother,” Rose says to me on one of those hellish mornings after a reconnaissance. Even her statement sounds like a fucking question.
I smile a tired smile, tempted to lay my head on the table and nap, knowing that a nurse will inevitably piss me off when they wake me up. “If you wanted me to know, you would’ve told me,” I say with a shrug. Because it’s true.
Rose’s eyes sparkle with the same excitement she had the first day I got here. It makes me want to go back and relive it all over again. And who the fuck wants to do that? A lovesick tonto , that’s who.
“She’s the reason I’m here,” she offers and it causes me to perk up.
I look just past her and when I see that the nurses aren’t looking at us, I feel like I accomplished something. It took months for them to get the fuck over us. I focus on Rose again and she continues.
“I think both inadvertently and then later, with rather cruel and sinister intentions. She was cheating on my father and wanted him out of the picture. So she poisoned me against him.”
Her blue eyes are so far away that I want to remind her that I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. They’d have to pry my dead fucking body from beside hers.
“My mother didn’t pay much mind to my sister Grace and I. Other than when she wanted us to play the perfect daughters, anyway. She didn’t pay attention when I’d hit the kids at school. She was always paying off the dean, and that worked until I got to high school. The last girl was unrecognizable when I was through with her and I got expelled. Nearly got arrested but my father stepped in that time. That was when I started therapy and they gave my rage a name and medicated me. I got a tutor and continued my education with a private tutor, but they should’ve known it was only a matter of time. My mother certainly knew, stopping my medication cold turkey and whispering conspiracies about my father to me.”
I’m listening so closely that I almost miss the way her eyes start to look glassy.
“One night…my parents were fighting again, and my mother came down, screaming that she wanted to leave him. He told her if she left, she couldn’t have any of the money. They never fought about their children, just their fortune.” She shakes her head. “That should’ve been my first clue, but my mother came into my room that night and asked me…”
Under the table, I grab her hand, attempting to give her the courage to continue.
“She asked me to kill my father.”
Don’t react, don’t react, don’t you fucking react. I keep my face impassive as she continues.
“She told me no one would know, and we’d split the insurance money between the three of us. She told me he wasn’t a good man, that he beat her and made her have sex with him when she didn’t want to. That she wanted to take Grace and I and start a new life with us where we would be happy.”
What kind of maldita puta tells this to her child? I squeeze her hand.
“So, I went into their room with a silver candlestick—I’m almost certain it was a wedding gift—and hit him over the head with it until I was too tired to continue. I was covered in his blood by the time I was finished. And, of course, my mother lied. She denied ever telling me to kill him and locked me away instead. And of course no one believed me, with my violent past.”
She squeezes my hand back. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth for a moment before she starts talking again.
“She fed me lies and unleashed my anger on my father. And now she lives with his fortune, free. I always tell Joe that I don’t feel regret or remorse but I don’t know how true that is. My father wasn’t innocent, but his end wasn’t something that should’ve come from me.” By the time she’s through speaking, her shoulders seem to sag with momentary relief, in a way I’ve never really seen from her before. The drab blue of our scrubs looks like shit compared to her blue eyes when she peers over at me.
“Do you think your mother lied about all of it?” I asked, having my own theories but unable to comment because who the fuck am I?
“No. But she failed to admit her own faults and now my sister’s stuck with her. If there’s any good I can do for Grace, it’d be getting rid of the evil woman I left her with. So, she has to die.” A swift nod of her head punctuates her final statement.
“You sure you won’t regret it?” I ask the question slowly, nervous to question her when she’s so hyper-focused on revenge.
She smiles but it’s like that fucking monster in her is doing it, eyes glittering, perfect teeth on display. “Oh, no. This is something I’ve dreamt of doing.”
I want to ask her who else is on her list, but I don’t.
I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.
I want to leave tonight.
I don’t tell Rose, but I have everything planned. I stare at her as she pushes her oatmeal around her bowl, wondering if she knows this is the last time she’ll be eating that shit for breakfast. Whether we make it out or die trying, this is the end of us at Silverwing.
She looks up and catches me observing her. She doesn’t smile coyly the way the other girls do. She doesn’t even smile. She just stares back at me like we’re having a conversation no one else can hear.
“When I first saw you, I thought you looked like a villain,” she confesses, pursing her lips momentarily as she looks at me.
It’s like she fucking knows this is it. No more Silverwing and no more shitty fucking oatmeal and no more of these damn rules where I can’t touch her even when it’s killing me not to.
“When I first saw you, I thought you looked like a goddess.” I remember it so clearly. All gold and lonely and beautiful, even with the pocked scars down her arms.
“And now what do you think?” she asks, tilting her head ever so slightly.
“Now? Now I just think you’re… mi espinita ,” I muse, grinning.
It’s then that she smiles, in a way that looks like a secret as she leans toward me. “That means rose in…”
“Spanish,” I finish for her. “And it means ‘my little thorn.’”
“If you think I look like a goddess now, you should’ve seen me before. Primped to perfection, just the way my mother liked.”
She’d look beautiful in a sack but I’m curious now.
“A little makeup doesn’t change the way you look.” Right?
She laughs with a shake of her head. “I don’t think so. But it makes me look a little more , I guess.”
“More?”
“Longer lashes, pinker lips…” Her eyes stare off to the side as she remembers.
“Pinker than they already are?” My eyes are on her mouth that already looks so goddamn perfect, untouched. If anything, they look better after I’ve spent time kissing them. Stick that in your fucking makeup bag.
I think about Rose before becoming a patient at Silverwing, and I wonder what she did in her free time. “What’s your favorite thing to do? Besides think of ways to kill people,” I say with a grin. Fucked up pair that we are.
“Well, before I came here, I thought I’d do something with numbers. I’ve always been really good with numbers,” she informs me.
“No, that’s shit. I’m talking about things that make you feel alive.”
“Besides talking to you?” Rose leans her elbow on the table as she ponders over the question.
Well, melt my fucking heart.
“I like—liked—to sew,” she answers. “Make my own clothes, blankets, bags. All kinds of things, really. And when I wore the things I made, I always felt proud. Until my mother made me stop. She said if it wasn’t designer, it didn’t belong on my body.”
Que tontería.
“Your mother sounds like a real fucking piece of work, you know.”
“If anyone knows, it’s me,” she says as she pushes her forgotten oatmeal away. She licks her hand where some spilled, and my eyes are on her mouth, wishing I could lick her myself.
Of course.
I’ve thought about fucking her more times than I’d care to admit. I’ve thought about the way she feels, how she submits when I kiss her and then I multiply that by a thousand.
I wonder what the sex would be like. Maybe I’d never find out, but I’ve jacked off most nights to the idea of it. Those perfect pink lips around my dick. Her pert little ass up as I fuck her from behind. Her fingernails leaving even more marks on my skin so when I shower, they sting, and I remember how they got there. And it gets me hard all over again because she feels just that fucking good, even the little bit I’ve gotten to experience.
My poor socks never stood a goddamn chance.
I imagine all of that golden hair between my fingers.
In my mind, she likes pain. She dishes it out because she can fucking take it.
Maybe I’d never know but my imagination grows as wild as she is.
She’s staring at me and I’m just happy she can’t see my stiff dick in these loose pants.
When she gets up to take her food to the trash and my eyes fly to her ass, following her until she turns to make her way back to the table I’m at. There is no assumption in her eyes, no notice of my perverted thoughts.
Of course.
When she comes back, she tucks her hair behind her ears and starts in on a brand new string of questions. “Do you have the same last name as your father?”
I shake my head, feeling my curls brush against my forehead. “I never wondered about it until I got old enough to know other kids’ families all had the same last name. I didn’t know the reason Yamir Perez didn’t give me his last name was because he wanted to hide mami’s existence. And mine.”
She doesn’t react, just soaks the facts in and I yearn to be more like her in that way. Because for someone’s quick to react in her rage, like a storm at sea, she’s all still water when it comes to most everything else.
This girl, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, can listen to a sorry hijo de puta ’s story and not pass judgment.
I never thought I’d see the day where I could be this fucking open with another human being, let alone a girl I’m insanely attracted to. But it’s more than attraction.
Suerte, mami would insist, her cigarette smoke clouding her previously damning judgements.
All while Rose continues with her questions, the word rings in my head.
Suerte, suerte, suerte.