I’ll tear this place down and scream and rage until I have all the answers I need and I can purge all the horror that’s been inflicted on my soul. I want this prick to feel my fury, to spill just as much blood as I have. I want it to be him helpless on this table. I want...I want…
Hot tears fill my eyes, and if I could scream, I would. In this moment, I want to burn the world to the ground. I want to know why me, and then punish everyone who’s ever hurt me, who’s ever violated my trust and my soul and ruined me one merciless act at a time, but I still can’t move.
“Sounds like an excuse to me,” a rough-edged, gritty voice declares.
The sudden masculine voice in my head would’ve made me flinch if I were capable, but my mental torrent pauses in confused wariness as the statement settles in my mind like a feather falling slowly from the sky, its slow trajectory eventually meeting a depthless lake below.
A dark, silky chuckle vibrates through my head, and once again gooseflesh springs up on my shoulder, this time for entirely different reasons. The laugh and matching voice is pleasant. That instantly puts me on guard.
“Don’t let me interrupt. You were working up to a frothy and delicious level of vengeance and outrage, but personally, the whole I can’t move thing is such a sorry excuse,” the voice tells me as though he’s playfully mocking me.
I blink against the bewilderment welling up inside of me, but I can’t do more than that while the blackness still has a hold of me. Is my green-skinned cellmate talking to me? But no, that doesn’t make sense. Ophidian is still working me over, and I didn’t say anything out loud. This new voice isn’t familiar, and it’s acting like he can hear my thoughts.
“I can,” he answers evenly, but there’s a hint of surprise hidden deep in his timbre.
Irritation quickly works to replace my confusion. Great, just when I think things can’t get any worse, I start hearing voices.
Maybe the Ophidian finally cracked my brain, and he’s breaking me just like he said. If that’s true, though, then this voice can piss off.
I hear a dark chuckle. “Now there’s a fire a male could warm himself with,” the voice encourages, and if I could scoff or roll my eyes right now, I would.
“Get out of my head!” I snarl.
“Mmm,” he purrs. “I like you angry.”
“Well, I didn’t ask for your opinion or invite you in here, so go away,” I growl in my mind, hoping that a firm word will shove whatever this is back wherever it came from.
I feel the wing I’m lying on twitch slightly, and I don’t know if I’m grateful or despondent to realize that the blackness is receding sooner rather than later. Let’s hope Ophidian leaves before I can start feeling things again.
“You called me, Snarls, so don’t go getting all testy. Though, I have to admit, I enjoy a hot temper,” the man’s disembodied voice murmurs with wicked desire.
I don’t know how he’s talking to me, or what he is, but it’s setting alarm bells blaring through me. I internally grit my teeth. “I didn’t call you. I certainly didn’t summon a useless voice of ridicule and judgment into my head. Not one who doesn’t understand what I’m up against right now.”
The voice sighs like I’m being unreasonable or something, and irritation ripples through me. “As you can see, this space is occupied, so go find someone else to practice your Simon Cowell impression on,” I snap at him.
I feel a stroke down my mind as surely as if someone was smoothing a finger down the curve of my neck. It makes me want to shiver. “Your rage and demand for retribution called to me, Snarls. You should know how this works. Only something worthy should be able to beacon me like that. But honestly, if I had a Hellhound for every time someone whined about what they were up against, I’d have a fuck ton of Hellhounds, so you should know I’m questioning that whole worthy thing already.”
“Know how this works? I should know…” I trail off.
Part of me, the logical part, the part that tried to rule my mind as much as possible before I found myself in this hellhole, is telling me that this isn’t real. That I’m arguing with myself, and have created this voice to meet some kind