Chapter 26 #2
I felt my teeth press together for a second before I stepped forward towards the man in the chair.
My hand came up before I really thought about it.
The contact itself was minimal, but the motion was hard and loud enough to drag him out of whatever state he’d been in.
His head jerked to the side as a sound left him, confused more than anything else, like his brain hadn’t caught up yet.
“Hey,” I said, voice raised just enough to cut through the fog he was in. “Wake up.”
It took a second, then another. His breathing hitched, uneven; his head lifting with resistance before dropping again.
His eyes blinking open, not focusing yet, just trying to understand where he was– where anything was.
I let him sit in it, let it settle. I crouched down in front of him, my hands moving without urgency this time as I reached into his jacket, then his pockets, pulling out whatever I found.
Keys, wallet, then a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
That made me pause for half a second. I flipped the pack open, tapped one out against my thumb. I’d never been a regular smoker.
Me and Zwierek used to steal a pack from Bartosz every now and then when we still lived there and split the cigarettes out in the woods. But something about this whole situation, about everything that had happened since then, suddenly had me craving the feeling of smoke filling my lungs again.
I pulled the balaclava up beneath my nose and slipped the cigarette between my lips while my fingers searched for the lighter.
The lighter sparked on the first try, a small but steady flame.
I leaned into it, inhaling slowly, letting the smoke fill my lungs until it burned just enough to feel something real again.
I pulled back, exhaled, and I just stayed there for a moment, watching him as he started to come back.
Zwierek moved somewhere behind me, out of my line of sight for a second, and then the house breathed back to life.
A dull click, a low hum crawling through the walls, and then, light.
Not much, just a weak bulb somewhere above us flickering on, casting this uneven, yellow glow that didn’t quite reach the corners, didn’t chase away the shadows so much as stretch them out.
It made everything look… off. Like the room didn’t belong to itself anymore.
I saw it in his face. That moment where things started lining up again.
His eyes found me first, I took one last drag before he fully came back.
I dropped the cigarette and crushed it under my boot, grinding it into the concrete until there was nothing left of it but a dark smear.
He followed every movement I made and for some reason, it satisfied some deep twisted part of me.
I stepped close enough that he had to tilt his head to keep eye contact, and I didn’t break it.
“Do you know who I am?” My voice came out lower than before, steadier too, but there was something under it. Something that not only felt, but also sounded, sinister.
He stared at me, confusion first, not even trying to hide it. And that did something ugly to my head and thoughts. My jaw clenched so hard it hurt, something hot rising faster than I could keep it contained, spreading through my chest, my throat, until it had nowhere else to go but out.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words came out harder than I intended, louder too, and they hit the room with enough force to make him recoil.
I saw his shoulders jerk before he tried to steady himself again.
”You’re one of the reasons my life went to shit!
” I snapped, the volume rising without me controlling it anymore, my hands tightening at my side.
That got through, not the words, but the tone.
Fear replaced his confusion, fast. His posture shifted, shoulders curling in like he was trying to make himself smaller without realizing it.
“Everything was fine,” I continued, the words coming quicker now, messier, like they’d been sitting there too long and finally got the chance to spill out. “I was fine, until I ended up in your fucking ward.”
Something in his expression flickered. Realization? Maybe not of me, but of what I was saying. His brows pulled tighter, eyes softening in a way that made my stomach twist. Like he understood. Like he cared.
“Don’t,” I snapped immediately, stepping closer without realizing it, my voice dropping but somehow hitting harder. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Because I’d seen that look before. In sterile rooms, under white lights, from people who said they were helping.
“You drugged me,” I continued, my voice cracking on the edge of it, not weaker but somehow darker, like it was cutting through something on its way out. “Kept me tied down for days like I was,” I stopped myself, shook my head once, like I could physically push the memory away.
“You took whatever was left of me and you,” I didn’t finish it, I moved, fast.
My fist found his face, fast and with enough force to knock both him and the chair crashing sideways, the sound of it echoing through the basement in a way that felt too loud for the space.
He hit the ground hard, limbs tangled, restrained, no way to catch himself.
I stepped forward again, already lifting my foot but before I got the chance to force it down on his pathetic face, Zwierek was there suddenly, grabbing me before I could follow through, his grip firm pulling me back just enough to stop it.
“Hey – hey,” he said, his voice carrying enough edge to make the room feel smaller around us. “Relax.”
I felt like I couldn’t. My breathing had gone uneven, pulling in too fast, letting out too quick, like my body couldn’t find the right rhythm anymore.
“There are better ways than this,” he continued, closer now, steady and controlled in a way I wasn’t. “More satisfying ones.”
That word stuck.
Satisfying.
Something about it grounded me just enough, pulled me back a step. I exhaled hard through my nose, dragging a hand down my face, letting my foot drop back to the floor, the tension still there but not exploding anymore. Zwierek let go of me slowly, like he was testing whether I’d lunge again.
He moved past me instead, grabbing the chair and hauling it upright again, dragging the man back with it like it weighed nothing, setting him back into place with a dull scrape against the floor.
The man groaned, head lolling before lifting again, his breathing uneven now, panic creeping in under it.
He looked at me, trying to make sense of everything that happened.
“Hey,” he started, voice shaky and rough.
“I’m, I’m sorry, I, I know, I didn’t,” “Shut up.” The words left me before I could stop them, hard enough to shut him up mid-sentence.
I stepped back into his space again, leaning down just enough that he couldn’t look anywhere else without turning his head.
“You don’t even remember me.”
He swallowed hard, throat working like it didn’t want to cooperate, eyes darting around the room like he was trying to calculate something, anything, that could get him out of this.
“Listen,” his voice shook as he spoke. “Whatever you think happened, whatever you remember, we – we were trying to help you. That was the whole point, we don’t, we don’t just,” I let him talk for a second.
Watched the way his mouth struggled to keep up with his thoughts, the way his chest rose too quickly, like he couldn’t get enough air in.
“We follow protocols, we do what’s necessary, sometimes it’s not – it doesn’t look good from the outside but it’s for the patient's own,”
“MY OWN BEST?”
It tore out of me before I even registered moving, the words hitting the walls and bouncing back, louder than the space should’ve allowed.
He flinched, hard. I went still after that, completely.
Just stood there, staring at him like I was trying to peel something out of him with nothing but my eyes.
You can imagine it, can’t you, little Ghost? The exact moment where something inside someone stops lining up the way it used to. Yeah… that.
My gaze drifted, slow, unfocused for a second before landing on the table with the tools lined up.
“... you know what,” I said after a while. “I don’t think your treatment worked very well.”
“I don’t think pills and straps do much long-term.”
I tilted my head a little, like I was actually considering it, like this was a conversation we were having instead of whatever this had become. He didn’t say anything.
“I used to read a lot when I was younger,” I went on, almost absentmindedly. “Everything I could get my hands on. Real things. Things that made sense.”
The room stayed still between us.
“More useful than what you gave me.” My lips twitched faintly, but there was nothing behind it.