One week later
Help!
Someone help!
Please help me!
“No one will help you, monster.”
I CRACK my eyes open and wince. The back of my head feels as heavy as metal.
Constant beeping. Smell of bleach and coffee. Classical music.
The moment blinding white light penetrates my eyelids, I screw them shut again.
I’m obviously at the wrong place in the wrong time.
Isn’t there a song about that?
“Reina?”
Someone’s fingers force my lids open and shove another blinding light into my line of sight. My pupils burn with the intrusiveness of it.
“Miss Ellis, can you hear me?”
“Reina, honey, open your eyes.”
Reina? Who the hell is Reina?
There’s something wrong about that name. Completely freaking wrong.
Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong name.
The voices continue drifting in and out around me. Someone calls me Miss Ellis. An older voice keeps calling me Reina. And then there’s another presence, someone I can’t quite pinpoint.
His masculine voice is like a dark forest in the middle of a starless night. It’s deep and rough around the edges as if all the ruthlessness in the world has been injected into it. It’s scary how much a voice can relay.
It’s almost crippling how much a voice can become a subject of nightmares.
All the other voices keep asking if I’m fine and telling me to open my eyes, but not him.
No.
The nightmare voice is calm, unlike them. He’s composed and speaks with chill-inducing purpose. “Wake up, monster. You don’t get to die just yet.”
His words register slowly. It’s my brain. The useless thing understands with delay.
My heart thumps loud and hard at the threat in those words, at what he called me.
Monster.
This can’t be true.
It’s a dream—no, a nightmare. Soon, it’ll all end and I’ll go back to normal.
Only…what’s normal?
I’m not Reina or Miss Ellis or whatever the hell they keep calling me. I’m someone else.
I’m…I don’t know who I am. Reina is familiar, but it isn’t me.
Wrong. Everything is so damn wrong.
My trips in and out of consciousness become exhausting. It’s like I’m playing hide and seek with the darkness; only I’m not sure if I’m running away from it or sprinting toward it.
There’s something enchanting about the darkness…a push, a pull. It’s like a haunting lullaby with ever-changing lyrics.
I keep trying to avoid the blinding light and the voices. So many damn voices surround me like audible torture.
They keep heightening and magnifying, and there’s no way I can stop them from assaulting my senses.
They’re like an unreachable itch beneath the skin.
Then, one day, when I think I’m about to go crazy, my eyes open. Or maybe my brain finally catches up to that fact.
The back of my head aches, and so do my limbs. It’s as if someone beat me up with a baseball bat.
Wait…is that what happened?
The blinding light renews the urge to close my eyes again, but I don’t. I keep them wide open—as wide as I can considering the circumstances.
If I close them again, I might never open them back up. I’ll return to the hide and seek game with the darkness.
I’ll go mad for sure.
My surroundings are blurry. Mismatched shades of white become more and more defined the harder I focus. A headache lodges firmly at my temples the more I try to make out my immediate environment.
White walls. The same bleach smell. No classical music or coffee this time, which probably means the man with the older voice who used to talk to me isn’t here anymore.
“Miss Ellis, you’re back,” a soft voice calls from beside me before an Asian woman’s kind face comes into view.
Her black hair is tied into a bun underneath her white cap, and some wrinkles surround her pulled brown eyes.
She checks something on the machines around me and nods to herself with a smile. “I’ll call Dr. Anderson. Do you need anything?”
I attempt to shake my head, but the stabbing pain at my nape stops me.
When I say nothing, she asks, “How do you feel?”
“Like hell,” I grunt in a scratchy, barely alive voice. “Have I been in hell?”
“You’ve been so lucky, dear. You gave us a fright.” She smiles and leans in to whisper, “Your fiancé hasn’t left your side the entire time.”
I have a fiancé?
No, that can’t be right. I don’t have a fiancé. I don’t have anyone.
Wrong. Everything is just so wrong.
“It’s rare to see that kind of devotion in college kids these days.”
College.
Okay, so my name is Reina Ellis, I’m in college, and I have a fiancé.
Did I mention wrong?
None of this adds up in my brain…or is it still trying to keep up with reality?
When I raise my eyes again, the kind Asian nurse isn’t speaking to me anymore. Her attention is on something—or rather, someone—over my head. “Congratulations on your fiancée’s recovery, Mr. Carson.”
“Thank you.”
My spine locks and a shiver shoots down my back, covering my entire body.
The rough, deep voice with the slight huskiness.
The nightmare voice.
The one who called me a monster and…something else.
There was something else, but I’ve forgotten what it was.
Hell, I’ve forgotten a lot of things.
I don’t even remember why I’m here, my age, or my damn name.
Everything is a blur. It’s like I can reach the answer, but the moment my fingertips brush against it, it turns into fog.
The nurse says something else, but I miss her words—again, my brain has trouble keeping up. Everything happens too fast, like in some futuristic show.
Wait, are we in a Black Mirror episode?
How do I even know Black Mirror and not my own life?
The last thing I focus on is the door hissing open then closed behind the nurse.
My throat chooses this exact moment to become scratchy and sour. I glance to the side, searching for water.
A bottle sits on a small table, and I reach my arm out to grab it.
Huge mistake.
Something in my right shoulder pops and pain explodes in my muscles. I groan and bite down on my lower lip to stifle the sound.
Pain is temporary. Pain is temporary.
Mom’s words echo in my head like a mantra.
I blink twice. I remember having a mother.
That’s the first thing I’ve remembered since waking up in this sterilized room.
“Look who returned to the world of the living.”
My movements freeze as that same voice echoes around me. I forgot he was still in the room in the first place.
I don’t hear the sound of footsteps or feel him approaching.
The attack is silent and fast. One moment I’m thinking the nightmare is a reality, and the next, a broad, tall figure looms over my bed.
You know that color a tropical forest has when it’s raining heavily? That’s the color of his eyes. Dark green, almost black.
Harsh.
Emotionless.
There’s something about those eyes that pushes me into a high-alert mode.
I want to run.
I want to hide.
But I can’t. Something tells me it’s not only because of my physical injuries. I’m unable to run from him.
He’s wearing a simple white T-shirt and a black leather jacket along with dark jeans. His hair is the color of a moonless night with a bluish hue. It’s short on the sides and long enough in the middle to be tousled.
The straight, chiseled jawline and the thick brows give him a fatally attractive edge—the kind serial killers have.
His broad shoulders and lean waist increase the intimidation of his already dark exterior tenfold.
Well, the physique is understandable. After all, he’s an athlete who slaves at the gym and practices constantly.
Wait—how do I know that?
His upper lip lifts in a cruel smirk as if he injected all the shadows in it. “I knew you would come back.”
Unlike the nurse, he doesn’t seem relieved about that. No. He’s like a hunter who’s closely observing his prey right before the attack.
A lightning strike right before the thunder.
The click of a gun right before the shot.
Suddenly, I wish I’d surrendered to the darkness of unconsciousness. That type of darkness is better than this one.
Don’t they say some monsters are better than others?
His hand reaches out for me and I instinctively push against the pillow. Pain explodes in my head and my upper shoulder, but I don’t stop.
I need to stay away from his hold.
Run.
Run!
My instinct has caught up with my slow brain and is now shouting at me to get the hell out of here.
In my condition, it’s impossible to move a muscle, let alone run.
I glance behind me at the emergency call button. Maybe if I ask the kind nurse, she can remove him from my side. Maybe someone can help me.
Because I need help right now.
I can feel it in my bones and taste it on my tongue.
He releases a tsking sound that gets past my ears and embeds under my skin. “No one will save you. It’s just you and me.”
Like doom coming closer, his hand reaches for me, and he clutches my chin between his thumb and forefinger.
It’s a soft touch, so soft it shocks my warm skin. The emotionless look in his dark eyes is anything but gentle, though. A sadistic smirk lifts the corner of his lips.
A shudder emerges from deep within my soul.
It’s the look of someone out to destroy, to maim and mutilate—and he’ll do it all with a smile on his face.
“L-let me go.” It’s the pleading of the dying, my voice. The last murmur of the dead.
His grip tightens on my jaw until I wince. “That’s not how it works. Remember the rules?”
“W-what rules?”
“Break willingly and I might let you collect the pieces.”
My heart thunders until the machines erupt with sound. “What—”
My words are cut off when he leans closer until his breath tickles along my skin. Another involuntary shudder slides down my spine, and goosebumps form along my limbs.
I don’t know if it’s because of fear, or if it’s something else.
This close, he’s even more fatally gorgeous and dangerous. A flicker of connection grips hold of me.
I know him from somewhere, but where?
He runs his tongue from under my eye to the corner of my lip. Something violent and out of control takes over my body, and more goosebumps erupt.
I stare at him with trembling lips.
“Welcome back to your custom-made hell, monster.”
