The room I fucked and punished Daphne in was the one room that remained intact, and only because I fell asleep in the master suite last night before I could remember to drag my drunken ass back downstairs to desecrate it.
I stretch my hand out and bring it to my nose. It’s still fragrant from her scent.
Her scent that he probably knows now. Because she gave away what’s fucking mine. After she promised me, she gave it away. Like it all meant nothing.
I roar and grab the leg of the four-poster bed, ripping and yanking until I separate the tall pole off the footboard. And then I attack the wall with the makeshift baseball bat, smashing and destroying and taking out my rage until dust and drywall rains down all around me and coats my sweat-soaked skin.
I slump, exhausted, to the floor and bow my head. I didn’t sleep last night. How could I? When I’m used to her warm body, when I let myself imagine getting used to it forever— The pain sears fresh all over again but I don’t have the energy to destroy anything else. I lie down and lay my head on my arm. Cold. Uncomfortable. A shard of a vase cutting into my thigh.
And I sleep.
7 years Ago
The Quarantine Ward
“I don’t want to go in again. We flipped for it and you lost. You go.”
Pain screams through my face as their voices wake me from another nightmare. But blinking my eyes open doesn’t make it any better. Maybe this is the nightmare and I’m still not awake. Please gods, let this all just be one long nightmare and let me wake up.
But I don’t wake. Because this is real. The pain, oh fuck, the pain. How did I even sleep as long as I did through this?
It’s all real. Half my face is gone. Chewed away by flesh-eating bacteria. My life is gone. And she hasn’t come to visit once in the month I’ve been here. Does she know what happened to me? Then again, why would they tell her? They were trying to get rid of me and they did a spectacular fucking job.
Quarantine plastic surrounds my hospital bed. I can just make out the shape of the two nurses beyond, and then one finally lifts a flap and slips through.
She’s covered in a blue suit, face mask, and thick hospital gloves as she approaches cautiously. “Mr. Wulfe. How are we doing today?” Her falsely cheerful voice is grating.
I don’t answer her asinine question. How the fuck does she think we are?
“Time to change your bandage.”
That has me alert. “No,” I manage to grunt out even though I immediately regret it because it pulls on my destroyed cheek and sends a fresh hell of blinding pain throughout my body.
That’s the thing I didn’t know about pain. The wound is just in my head but nerves are a strange thing. They seem to connect all over my body. And so the pain shoots everywhere. My face is on fire but I’ll feel the pain in my belly. It curls me over into the fetal position.
“You know we have to change the bandage regularly to keep away infection,” the nurse says, still in that fake cheerful tone.
They changed it last night and it’s only ten in the morning, I want to tell her, but I can’t imagine getting out that many words. The final surgery to remove the last of the necrotic tissue and fluid was supposed to make things better but I swear the pain has only gotten worse. Maybe because they’ve dug away that much more of my face.
When I first came in, I coded twice in the ICU. It’s been a month of this hell and a body can only stand so much.
But the nurse keeps coming relentlessly forward.
I try to shake my head but fuck, oh fuck, it hurts. I can’t help the pathetic whimper that escapes or the tears that film my eyes. Dammit. Godsdammit.
The nurse reaches towards my face but I can see her fucking hands are shaking. She thinks she’s gonna change my bandage with shaking hands? Fuck that.
I reach up to block her hands. She jumps back with a shriek at the barest contact. “Call the orderlies!”
She scurries back towards the plastic flap.
“Wait,” I grate out, trembling from the pain of speaking. “Pain meds.”
But she’s already gone. The first few weeks, they gave me a morphine button but they said now I could only have pain meds at scheduled times to start weaning me off so I don’t get addicted.
I flop my head back on the pillow, exhausted.
Daphne, where are you? It’s a weak thought. I don’t want her to see me like this. She’s so young. And we never made each other any promises, not any real ones. We never even kissed. Why didn’t I kiss her?
You were trying to be honorable. You were trying to respect her father.
I cough out a bitter laugh that has me curling over in pain.
“He’s in here. He struck out at me. He’s not in his right mind.”
I blink up blearily at the voices. The nurse is back, but this time there are two orderlies with her. Big guys.
I don’t get it at first, what they’re all doing here.
“Be careful,” the nurse warns. “He’s the one with—you know. He’s the patient.”
The two big guys hold up their hands as they approach. That’s when I see the fucking restraints they’re holding.
“No.” I start to sit up in bed, then immediately collapse back.
“We don’t want any trouble. We just want to make it safe for everyone.”
What did she tell them? That the monster in quarantine attacked her?
“I didn’t—” I try to defend myself but speaking is so painful and it doesn’t matter anyway. Their minds are already made up.
“Let me sedate him first,” the second orderly says, like I’m not even in the room. He approaches with a needle.
The fuck? They think they can just knock me out and tie me the fuck up? For how long? I’m not a damned animal. I’m still a man.
But men can speak and reason and all I can do as they approach is grunt and shake my head and try feebly to hold them back. And finally thrash and scream until it takes both of them to hold me down to shove the needle in my arm until I descend into the nightmare hellscape of my dreams again.
“Logan!” calls out the beautiful girl with the green-flecked amber eyes. “Logan, where are you? I can’t find you!” She’s surrounded by fire and reaching out blindly.
I try to call for her but I have no voice and I can’t move, I’m tied down. I’m helpless as she’s burned alive, and then the fire comes for me, burning, burning, the flame endlessly searing my body from the inside out.
Present Day
I jerk awake, my hands immediately going to my face, then to my hands and wrists. Free. I’m not tied to that fucking hospital bed anymore.
Fuck, I haven’t had the nightmares that take me back to that time in months. I scrub my face as I come back to myself, then get to my feet. I look at the destruction all around me and hear my mentor’s voice in my head: Dr. Knox, who took me in when I was disfigured and broken, thrown away by everyone and anyone. Don’t expect life to be fair. This rage will do nothing but destroy you. Instead, use that energy to create. If you must destroy, destroy only those who are your enemies, not yourself.
I was alone, cast away by everyone, locked away in that quarantine ward, when Dr. Knox found me. He made everything possible. He set me on my course. And for a while everything seemed so clear. I was clear. I had purpose and drive and I knew who I was.