Chapter 37 Famine Without End #2
“We’re starting out with Electroconvulsive Therapy, due to the nature of your delusional disorders. This helps to reset your disturbed neuropathways. Your illnesses are a combination of your nervous system misfiring and being weak-minded, which allows the devil to influence your thoughts.”
I’d laugh if I wasn’t so terrified.
“And how will we feel after this?” I ask.
“Memory gaps. Disoriented. Docile. But the confusion you feel will help break up the scaffolding of delusions.”
Memory gaps? I look to Niklaus with a surge of panic rupturing through my calm, meditative state.
“We could lose our memory?” Niklaus glances back to me without moving his head.
“Why?” There’s a smile in Meridei’s taunting voice. “Are you afraid you’ll forget about the lack of intimacy in your marriage?”
My breathing comes hard and fast.
We can’t forget! I can’t afford to lose any memories of where we’re really from!
“How bad are the memory gaps?” I say breathlessly.
“I’ve seen wives forget their husbands. I’ve seen mothers forget their children.” Meridei adjusts her circuit board, taking great interest in my sudden rise in panic.
My eyes dart to Niklaus again as they fill up with tears.
Krimson. DaiSzek. Grandpa. Mom. My father. Uncle Warrose. Aunt Ruth. Aunt Marilynn. Uncle—
I gasp, suffocating on the tears. “Uncle Niles!”
Niklaus stiffens.
“We can’t forget him! Oh god, we can’t leave him there!
” I’m blubbering now. Unable to focus on a plan to get the hell out of this mess.
Unable to calm myself long enough to think of a way out.
The sobs rack my body uncontrollably. I’m scared like a child left alone in the dark.
I’m in a small boat, drifting into a cloud of fog and mist over the sea, knowing I’ll never return to shore again.
“Spitfire…” Niklaus whispers.
Doesn’t he care?! Doesn’t he want to save his dad from Vexamen before Aunt Ruth made it a better place?
“Patient Two exhibiting severe hysteria. Check menstrual cycle,” Meridei says as she takes notes on a clipboard.
“Just wait a second, please! I don’t want to forget!” I try my best to shake my head and clear my eyes of the rush of tears. “Please, I’ll do any other treatment. Please!”
Krimson, please don’t let me forget you! I can’t forget my twin.
I gather the memories like a trove of sacred gems in my mind.
I see the rabbit Krimson got for his fourth birthday.
I threw a fit when I saw him hug that white rabbit, and all I got was a silly porcelain doll.
Uncle Warrose made a white rabbit for me, and Aunt Ruth stitched my name into its lucky foot.
I remember the day I fell on the cobblestone street and cut open my knee trying to keep up in a race between Krimson and Niklaus.
I dropped my head back and screamed. Uncle Niles scooped me up before I could have a full meltdown.
He cleaned my knee in a nearby boutique, patched me up, and kissed the bandage.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he held me until I fell asleep.
His shirt smelled like soap and candles.
I read my mother’s journal once after I told her I wished she was in the coma instead of my dad. The page was stained with tears. She told my dad in her letter to him how much she loved me, and she knew I didn’t mean what I said…but my words still cut her so deeply.
“Please, please, ple—” A folded cloth is shoved into my mouth.
My screams are muted. The room spins. The sconces flicker.
Tears gush down my temples. And I see her face, the black eyebrows, pursed lips, powdery white face as she glowers down at me.
Prongs slide along the sides of my head.
And even though I buck like a wild stallion, I don’t move through time.
I’m stuck here.
We’re stuck here.
And because of me, I could lose the most precious moments in my life. I could forget my home. We might never make it out. We might stay here until the place burns down.
“…two, three!” Meridei counts down, flipping a switch that cuts my thoughts off.
I see the room in flashes as the world erupts in white.
Blackouts occur in pulses. A sharp iron rod impales me, from my skull, through my spine, down to my toes.
I’m levitating off the chair, back arching, neck curling backward.
My veins bulge into my throat, pumping something thicker than blood back to my arteries.
It feels like hours.
Neverending.
No oxygen coming in and out.
Indescribable pain.
I’m turned to stone on a bed of hot coals in this humming, buzzing, quaking room around me. A fierce web of lightning threads itself into my brain, burning through my thoughts, feelings, memories, soul.
I am a puppet convulsing under unseen strings.
And as my spine bows upward a little harder, I worry my ribs will snap under the strain—that cage of bones cracking clean apart.
“Very good!” Meridei purrs.
Emptiness. The lighting flickers off in my brain. The noise falls flat. And I collapse against the chair in a sweaty, heaving, aching mess of copper hair and a white gown.
Faintly, over my own heavy breathing, I can hear Niklaus grunt next to me.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to rest,” Meidei says, walking toward the door. She pauses and looks back at Niklaus. “Unless you’d like to me stay and help you recover?”
I don’t have it in me to feel the rage I felt before. I’m exhausted. I’m petrified. I’m completely empty and confused.
“No,” he grits out.
“Very well.” The door opens, and she steps out.
As I close my eyes, I attempt to summon the last few minutes. But there’s nothing there besides the bolts of white sparks that ricocheted across my skull. I focus on my limbs straining against the leather straps digging into my skin. Where was I before I sat in this spot? Who was I just talking to?
I want to remember. I know that much. But what was I trying so hard not to forget?
A pair of fingers tickle my knuckles.
“Tell me your name,” a deep, scratchy male voice commands.
It’s muscle memory. “Sapphire.”
“Your full name.”
“Sapphire S Valdawell.”
“And I’m Niklaus Charles Demechnef.”
A tear falls from my cheek. Every nerve is fried. I can’t tell if I’m asleep or awake. Dying or alive. Swimming or sinking.
“It hurts,” I rasp.
My jaw throbs and swells as claws sink into my back. I want the pain to go away. I can’t remember why, but I know I’ve been in physical pain for days on end. Why?
“I don’t want to fucking hear that,” he growls. “Now, say it again.”
I sniffle. “My name is Sapphire S Valdawell.”
“Niklaus Charles Demechnef.”
“I’m so scared,” I admit.
He exhales through his nose, trying to gather the patience.
“Again.”
“I am Sapphire S Valdawell.”
“I am Niklaus Charles Demechnef.”
“Do you think she’ll do it again when she comes back?” I ask, voice wavering from holding back tears. I am so unbearably tired.
“Tell me the names of your parents,” Niklaus instructs sternly.
“Okay.” Deep breath. One, two, three, four. “Skylenna Ambrose. Kane Valdawell.”
“Marilynn Blackforth. Aurick Demechnef.”
In the pit of my stomach a mix of sadness and hatred spill out everywhere.
“No. Say his name,” I say through grinding teeth and labored breathing. “Don’t you dare forget him.”
The only sounds that can be heard in this deathly quiet room are Niklaus’s wrists twisting in his leather restraints and shackles.
“Niles Offborth.”
“Niles Offborth,” I repeat.
His knuckle brushes mine once more. It’s oddly the only bit of comfort I can find.
“Tell me—all your father’s alters,” Niklaus pants.
“There are too many. I don’t know them all.” I push my brain to see past the fog and draining exhaustion. “My mother doesn’t even know them all.”
“That’s okay. Name as many as you can.”
It takes everything in me not to close my eyes and drift off to sleep. I want to, fuck I want to so badly. Even to escape for a short amount of time.
“Dessin, Kane, Greystone…” I pause, come on, come on, come on… “Bloom, Aquarus, Kalidus, Sophia, Young Kane, Dai.”
My eyes droop shut. Every breath sinks deeper, lulling me further away.
“You know more than that,” his deep voice booms into my throbbing brain.
“…Syfer. Fuck, I don’t know. What were we talking about?”
“Which alter would you want to meet the most?” He’s going to fall asleep too. His voice is normally so sharp and direct. But right now, it’s sluggish, warm, thick.
“Kane.”
“Why?”
“My mom told us she grew up with him. He was her best friend. He’s the one who’s kind and patient. She was closest with him and…Dessin.”
“Kane isn’t the one you want to meet the most,” he argues.
This wakes me up. “What?”
“You want to meet the infamous Patient Thirteen the most.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
“Not as a stranger, but as his daughter. You want him to know you.”
I’m too tired to feel the full force of rage pressurizing in my chest, but I know it’s there.
Who the fuck does he think he is? Telling me which one of my father’s alters I want to know the most?
The vicious psychopath? No, I want to meet the kind man who has loved my mother since she was a small child.
“You don’t know anything about what I want,” I rasp.
The circuit board hums back to life. And the door locks clank and click as it slides open.
“No,” I utter. Please, let this be over. Please!
Meridei closes the door behind her, leaning against the door with a thoughtful look. “I know it must feel like I’m leaving the electrical current on for a long period of time, but I’m not.”
Despite the trembling in my bones, I am unable to keep myself from dozing in and out.
“I trigger a strong electrical current. The pain you experience after that is seizures. Or, as the high priest believes, the convulsions are the demons leaving your body. It only lasts about sixty seconds.”
In no way does this make me feel better.
“Does this conclude our session?” Niklaus asks.
Meridei smirks, walking to the foot of his reclined chair, massaging his bare feet without breaking eye contact. “Ready for me to walk you back to your bed already?”
I close my eyes.
“Or you could walk me back to my wife’s bed,” Niklaus, though his inflection is weak and slow, maintains his cold edge.
She stares at him, long and aggravated. Her eyes are the essence of a grand, gothic, haunted estate. A compound of massacres, gore, and insidious intention.
“I think you both need one more round. Resisting a woman’s hot, soaking cunt to have a dry fuck of a wife is surely more delusional than I originally thought.” She speed-walks to the circuit board behind us.
And my eyes snap open.
Meridei shoves the clothes back in our mouths as I scream.
She’s seriously punishing us because he won’t fuck her? Desperation claws at me to find a way out of this. Can I travel again in this weakened state? Can I open that unpredictable Nightlung to send us home?
Prongs on my temples. Electrodes smear the jelly on my skin.
And a white blinding heat fills my head.
I have no control over the thrashing that comes next.
Against the restraints, I jerk like a wild animal.
There is no time. It’s gone. Dissolved. Blackened from a wretched moment of eternity where this suffering never ends.
Then a crushing emptiness fills the burn.
My bladder empties, saturating my gown with a spreading heat. The raw eggs bursts from my esophagus, spewing from my lips with a faint mixture of bile. I gasp and release a surge of fresh tears.
All that’s left is confusion.
As they take us away, I can hear Niklaus whisper, “Tell me your name.”
Sapphire S Valdawell.
But there isn’t much else. I’m surrounded by locked doors, checkerboard floors, and screams that erupt violently across this vicinity. Drool hangs from my lips and chin. How did I get here? Why am I in so much pain?
Tell me your name.
I am Sapphire S Valdawell.
I am Sapphire S Valdawell.
I am Sapphire S Valdawell.
Someone…please help me.