I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not—
“Sibby?” My head snaps up. Glenda is staring at me, concern etched into her wrinkles. She’s not looking at me like I’m crazy. Like the nurses or doctor would be. And especially the rotten guards that leer at us like we’re scum. She’s looking at me like she knows exactly what I’m feeling.
“Did you do it?” I whisper.
She stares back at me, an unreadable emotion flashing in her eyes.
“Did I do what, dear?”
“Did you kill your family? Because they were demons?”
She smiles—almost a tired smile.
“Honey, they weren’t my family. They were Satan’s.”
That’s all the confirmation I need.
Glenda’s like me. She sensed the rot. She knew it to be true. And she got rid of them.
“I’m glad you’re here, Glenda.”
I don’t say I’m glad I’m here because I’d rather be anywhere else but here. But I know Glenda is glad she’s here, and since I’m forced to be here, I’m glad she is too.
She pats my hand.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think what you did was wrong.”
I open my mouth—to say what, I’m not sure. But I’m interrupted before I can figure it out.
“Sibel Dubois, let’s go!” The same, greasy guard is yelling for me. Summoning me to see Dr. Rosie. I sigh, and Glenda winks and offers me a good luck.
Normally, I don’t need good luck. But lately, I do. Dealing with Dr. Rosie is a headache, and she claims every session is a new breakthrough. If you ask me, the only thing she’s breaking is my control to not fucking rip her eyes from their sockets.
The guard escorts me to her office, knocking once on the door.
Doctor Aberlyn Rosie is written on a pretentious gold plaque on the door. I want my pretty knife so I can carve the word Bitch into the plaque alongside her name. Only then, would I be able to stand to look at it.
“Come in, Sibby,” she calls. A shudder works through me. She’s not my friend. Only my friends call me that.
I shoot the guard a nasty glare, purely for just existing and it makes me feel better, before storming into the room. The first thing that greets my nose is a woodsy scent. Dr. Rosie smells like pine trees. I wrinkle my nose. I don’t like the smell of pine trees, I like the smell of flowers.
“You’re not allowed to call me Sibby,” I gripe, aiming my glare her way. Her bleached blonde hair is pulled back in a low ponytail and pink lip gloss is painted on her lips today, making her sterile blue eyes pop.
Every day, she wears a different color lipstick. She says it brings a little bit of brightness to an otherwise depressing place. I wanted to pluck her pen from her breast pocket and shove it in her throat for saying that.
She says that like it’s our fault it’s depressing. No. It’s theirs.
Crazy people are the most interesting people in the world if you’d just let them be who they are. Medicating and drugging people until they’re mindless zombies would make anyone depressed, you dumb bitch.
“Still don’t consider us friends?” she asks, her sculpted brow cocked with amusement. She doesn’t look intimidating like Zade did. She just looks like she’s trying to look cute and failing miserably.
What a miserable person.
“No,” I snap. “Friends don’t call other friends crazy.”
“Sibby…” at my dark look, she clears her throat and corrects herself, her patient tone undeterred. “Sibel. I never said you were crazy. I said you’re suffering from severe schizophrenia and delusions. There are millions of people who have the same condition, and live normal lives.”
Normal? What does normal even mean? Normal is subjective.
“I wouldn’t say they live normal lives, Dr. Rosie. Seeing things you aren’t capable of might be normal to them, but it certainly isn’t the same definition you have declared as normal.”
She smiles. “You’re right, Sibel. I suppose it's very uncultivated of me to say their lives are normal.” Before I can open my mouth and tell her about herself some more, she moves on. “Tell me about your henchmen.”
My brow lowers and my heart sinks. Everything sinks.
“I don’t want to talk about them,” I growl.
She cocks her head. “Why is that, Sibby? Is it because they left?”
I sniff. Tears burn my eyes and line the edges of my lids. I refuse to let them fall. I refuse to show any kind of weakness in front of Dr. Rosie. She’ll eat it up like a starved dog.
“Yes,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“Why do you think they left?”
I shrug a shoulder before crossing my arms and looking away. I’m sulking, and I have the right to. We promised we’d always be together, and they left me. They lied.
“Probably because they didn’t want to get caught, too.”
She writes something down in her notebook. The urge to stab the pen in her eye comes back with a vengeance. I’d really like to know what she writes about me.
Crazy. She's saying I’m fucking crazy.
“Sibby, how did you meet your henchmen?”
I sigh with impatience, but don’t bother correcting her this time. “At Satan's Affair in a small town in Ohio. I had just escaped from Daddy’s cult when I came across the travelling fair, and snuck into a haunted house after it closed down. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep, nowhere warm, so I decided to sleep in one of the haunted houses for a night. There, I met my henchmen, standing over a dead body. They told me he was evil and it was like the world aligned. I knew my purpose in life but I knew it wasn’t the right time to start until I was positive I could do it undetected. You know—by the normal people?
“My henchmen offered me that. They said I could stay within the walls and cast my judgements. Once I did, they’d help me carry out their punishment.”
I had already told her all about Daddy’s cult
