The Pawn and The Puppet (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 1)

I have time to spare before the demonstration of the new treatment.

To keep the tears from springing to my eyes in front of other conformists pacing the halls, I duck into Chekiss’s room. The second I face him, all it takes is one look for him to understand that grief is holding me hostage.

He gently pats the open space next to him on his bed, and the look of a caring father softens his eyes, opening his hand for me to hold. And we sit there, absent of words or pleasantries, staring at his wall while watching the sconces flicker.

He showed me an ugly truth today, Chekiss.

I want to tell him what happened, not only with Dessin but how Aurick has been treating me. But the story is far too long, and I don’t have the strength to hear myself acknowledge any of it.

~

There are approximately fifteen of us gathered in this new treatment room. It’s the same size as the others, except without the tiled floors. The patients’ rooms resemble it the most, with one giant eyesore in the middle of the room.

Meridei stands in front of the group, trying to hush the women on my left from guessing at this new treatment that will be implemented for patients that need a change to better correct their inconsistencies.

“I’ll wait until you’re finished interrupting,” she barks at the three girls that are currently the loudest. The group settles down for her to continue. “I know you’ve all heard the rumors that there will be a new treatment to help some of us change it up with our patients. This is accurate. Suseas showed it to me a few days ago and briefed me on the protocol.”

Meridei lifts a black sheet from a mounted object behind her, revealing what looks like a metal coffin. I shudder at what it is supposed to do. “This new treatment is called the isolation tank. It is used to keep the patient in isolation for at least eight hours. It is so tightly sealed that the tank is completely black. This will deprive them of sight entirely. There will be an oxygen tube on the side.”

“That’s it?” The strawberry-blond orderly asks in disbelief. “They sit in the dark for a little while?”

“If you’re not going to let me finish, I suggest you leave,” Meridei says, cheeks turning red.

The orderly motions his hand forward to continue.

“The oxygen tube also expels a new gas that will induce the patient into hallucinations. But not just any hallucinations, this gas triggers the part of our brains, the hippocampus, that recalls memories, and the amygdala, that adds fear and terror. This will, without a doubt, cause a trained response for your patients to fear you, and therefore, do whatever you say. I cannot say how I know this, but I heard from a reliable source that this new drug was brought to us directly from Demechnef.” Meridei smiles smugly, crossing her arms and awaiting the uproar from her excited peers.

“Straitjackets will be available before they enter the tank to keep them from hurting themselves.”

I hear words like finally and incredible.

I look around the room in horror. How can so many people not see the wrong in all of this? Am I really the only one? I catch Meridei’s narrowed eyes while I scan the room.

“I need a volunteer for the demonstration,” Meridei announces over the excited voices. A few hands rise, but her eyes are pinned to me. She nods her head at two orderlies on either side of me. Hands press against my back, driving me forward.

Instinctively, I take a step back, fighting the force the way one would stiffen against an ocean wave. Heat prickles my skin from inside my body, and I shake my head at the dozens of eyes waiting for me to comply. No. But they’re nodding with encouragement, and I’m coaxed to step up to Meridei’s side.

“I’m not comfortable in small spaces,” I tell her quietly. Surely, she understands. After all, she’s already tried to poison me. Wasn’t that enough to satisfy her thirst for causing me pain?

“Set an example for the others,” she says with obvious mischief tightening her smile. “It’s only a demonstration.”

Once, playfully, I shoved Scarlett in the coat closet after she stuck my nose in a blueberry pie. We were having fun, running around the cottage with gooey, blue sauce in our hair and chasing each other around the furniture. But I made the mistake of not knowing the details of her abuse, not knowing the ghosts that still clung to every closet. I was caught in the moment, devious with giggles and floating about like the feather from a pillow. I tricked her into thinking I was in the closet, and when she opened the door—I pushed her in.

I’ve never heard a scream quite like that one.

She was taken back to a time when she was only seven, lying in her own fecal matter, eating the drywall of our mother’s bedroom closet to stay alive. And her fits that enraged those walls I tricked her back into were monstrous. Once I realized that her panic was real, I opened the door, but it was too late. Those one, two, three seconds she had to relive her trauma were enough to trigger a week’s worth of nightmares, sobbing in corners and destroying our belongings in a storm of fury.

What is to come of me if I’m forced to relive my own trauma?

“Help her in,” Belinda instructs behind me. But before I can turn to her to argue, two orderlies lift me off my feet by my elbows and hover me over the tank.

“No, I can’t!” My voice rises in volume, terror sounding off alarms in my mind. I flip my attention down to the open vessel below me, and my stomach twists like I’ve just taken another sip of the poison tea again.

Three girls stand on the tips of their toes to look out of the small window to keep watch. Oh God. No. No. Please. I can’t be left in the dark.

“Put me down!” A breathy order is all that escapes my lips. Air rushes in and out of my mouth. The panic courses through my body, jabbing into my ribs and flaring through my chest like a tunnel to circulate all negative energy.

Despite my rigid body as I hover over the tank, the stares from the small crowd in the room are wildly amused. Anticipating the demonstration of my destruction. I can’t go in there. “Please, don’t!” I scream again as they lower me into the metal coffin. My motor functions are flipped on, and my arms and legs thrash about, kicking at nothing in particular. Blood rushes to my face and scalp, and pulses of heat radiate through me like an oven, roaring with untamed flames.

My bottom hits the metal floor first, then my back as I’m pushed downward to lie down. I brace myself for an episode to send me into an epileptic shock or even an aneurysm to put me out for good.

“In you go!” grunts an orderly.

“I said no!” I scream now, like a banshee burning at the stake. Frightful tears are released from a dam behind my eyes. Someone has to hear me—anyone outside of these doors. Suseas? Judas?

“Once you close the doors on the patient—”

“No!” I choke out with fresh tears running down my cheeks. I throw my hands up to stop the metal top from coming down on me, but the orderlies hurl their body weight onto it, driving it shut.

I blink over and over again, waiting to see a light that will not come. “Let me out, please!” But I’m suddenly convinced that my lungs are out of oxygen. Convinced I’m in one of my nightmares.

I hear Meridei instructing the group on how to turn on the contraption. A muffled voice. A few metal clinks and a humming sound rumbles on the left side of the tank. I remember what she said about the oxygen tube. The drugs that Demechnef provided. In my next breath, I can taste it. Oddly enough, it’s familiar. I can’t remember where I’ve smelled it before. Like bleach and saline. My silence encourages a wave of laughter.

“Please don’t do this to me!” I bang on the walls of the tank once more. Not able to see my own arms moving to make contact with the metal, unlocking a new sense of dread, a detachment to reality, ultimately sending me into a monstrous panic attack.