1. Chapter 1 #2
But then, through the open doors, I catch a flicker of colored light. A pulse of a bass, distant but present, like a heartbeat behind walls. Purple and blue spill into the night, mixing with the floodlights, making the entrance look less like my damnation and more like the mouth of a club.
And that makes it easier to breathe.
“See? It’s a party.” Imogen soothes, following my gaze.
“A party in an asylum,” I deadpan.
She shrugs. “Best kind.”
I laugh a little at that and follow the line as it shifts forward again so that we’re at the front.
A staff member gestures for me first without words. Just a hand in a black glove, palm up, waiting.
I pass over the invite because I can assume that’s what they want.
The staff member takes it carefully, like it matters, and like this piece of card stock is important as any passport.
They flip it over and run it under a small handheld scanner.
I purse my lips, getting a strange sense of nerves at the very real chance that the guy Imogen has been dating at the clinic had given her fakes.
The scanner emits a soft chirp.
Approved.
My lungs deflate in relief and the staff member holds out their other hand, palm up again.
I blink. “Right, phone,” I mutter, more to myself than them, and pull mine out of my jacket.
It feels wrong handing it over. Not because I need it—God knows I lived most of my life without anyone to call—but because it’s a tether to the outside world, and I didn’t realize how much I liked having the option to reach for it until someone demanded it.
I place it over into their hand and watch as they set it into the lockbox and slide the key to me.
I pocket it without looking and am immediately drawn to the next staff member in the lineup.
They reach for my wrist and I don’t bother to pull away, but my muscles do tighten out of reflex.
Their gloved fingers wrap around my arm just enough to steady me. They bring the same bracelet on others in line around and clasp it with a small, decisive click. Cold metal biting into my skin for just a second before it warms.
Then, finally, they speak. “Welcome to Pitch.”
No smile or flare, not even a theatrical pause.
Just that ominous as fuck sentence.
Imogen giggles behind me like she’s thrilled and steps forward to do the same process, handing over her invite with a flourish. I hear the chirp. The lockbox. The click of her own bracelet being clasped.
“Welcome to Pitch,” the staff member hums low again.
Imogen bounces back to my side, lifting her wrist and showing off her new jewelry. The silver chain looks obscene against her gold bangles that already dominate her delicate wrist. “We’re official,” she snickers.
I finger the chain and the lack of charms, wondering which I might find inside and if I will even get any at all.
The man in front of us—the one who’s been twice—catches my gaze. He lifts his wrist again, charms clinking softly. “Don’t lose it,” he says, and his voice turns almost serious. “Some of them are hard to earn.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I ask, wary.
He smiles, and for the first time since we started talking, it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It means, don’t act like you’re invisible just because you walked in.”
Right, because that’s not weird.
I watch in bewilderment as he turns and disappears through the doors like he didn’t just drop that strange nugget in my lap.
Imogen sighs in irritation. “He’s just trying to spook you.”
“Maybe,” I mutter, and I don’t like that my voice sounds steadier than I feel.
The staff at the door holds out a hand, as if offering entry.
I take one step, then another, and the air changes the moment I cross the threshold. It’s warmer, thick with the smell of incense and electricity and something sweet that could be cheap perfume or expensive smoke.
The bass hits harder inside, vibrating through the floorboards and up my legs. Colored lights washing over the entry hall and reminding me once again that it’s not exactly what I expected, but not far off from it either.
It really does look like just another rave.
The front section has been transformed into something almost celebratory; black drapes hung over cracked walls, LED lights casting purple and blue across peeling paint, bodies moving in clusters, laughter spilling in little bursts.
A bar has been set up along one wall, bottles arranged like a real club, and the line that was so tense outside dissolves into a crowd that looks—at first glance—like it could be any underground event in any warehouse.
People mingle. People dance. People touch.
It would almost be comforting if the building wasn’t still the one that it is.
If the ceilings weren’t still too high and the corners too dark even with the lights.
Imogen exhales like she’s been holding her breath. “See? It’s fine. It’s literally a rave.”
I let my eyes roam, taking in the bracelets all over again. Dozens of them that glint silver at wrists in the dark. Some are bare like my own and others heavy with charms.
A woman near the makeshift bar raises her drink, and the charms on her bracelet swing and catch the light in small, polished metal shapes. A door. A key. Something that could be a tiny bell.
A group of men laugh loudly, and one of them has a charm shaped like a ring.
A couple sways together under the purple light, and the woman’s bracelet is empty. The man’s own has one charm—a smooth disc stamped with something I can’t see.
The bracelets are everywhere.
“Come on,” Imogen grins as she tugs on my hand. “Drink first. Then we explore.”
I follow her because I’ve got nothing else that comes to mind to do. She bumps my shoulder, grinning under her gold-and-white mask. “Live a little,” she repeats tonight’s mantra.
I look at her, then at the crowd, then to the strange doors beyond the rave-lit front where the light thins into shadow.
“I am,” I say.
And I mean it.