“You forgot my suitcase,” I say numbly, though the words sound hollow in my ears, and it takes extra effort to get my tongue to move.
“You won’t need it where you’re going,” he says, his statement punctuated with the sound of his hissing snakes.
I swallow hard. “And where’s that?” I ask.
He smiles, and that’s the last thing I see right before my head spins and the blackness overtakes my vision completely. But I swear, I hear the faintest whisper in my mind right before I blink out. It’s strange, but I could’ve sworn he said, Hell.
3
A shiver runs through me as I start to come to. Coldness leeches away the oblivion I was finding so comfy, and I have no choice but to peel my lids back and search for anything that can help me feel warmer.
My mouth tastes like someone painted it with bile and then left it to bake in the sun. My head swims like I’m just waking up from a bender, but I know that life is way in my past, and rather than alcohol, I have two mystery pills to thank for my current state. I push up into a sitting position as I blink the sleep from my eyes and try to take in my new surroundings.
Instead of finding myself in a bed in some room painted a calming neutral color somewhere in the beige family, I sit up to find something that’s better suited to a Witcher episode or maybe a clip from Fifty Shades of Grey. Although, the pain room wasn’t a dungeon, so maybe I’m off the mark there.
I’m boxed in by a stone wall and tall bars. The space isn’t very big, but the back corner has a tiny enclosure where I can see an old metal toilet and a slightly dripping sink. Beyond that, there’s nothing in here with me other than coarse stone beneath my feet and a mangled blanket tossed carelessly aside. Dungeon was right.
There are matching cages on either side of me; one looks like there’s a small pile of rags in it, and the other is draped in shadows that my adjusting eyes can’t penetrate yet.
Across the room, a medieval table makes up the center of the space, and a small fire is lit in the hearth nearby. The fire doesn’t do much to add warmth, but it does make the tools that are hanging on the wall behind the old metal and wood table glint. The fire provides the only light in an otherwise dim and ominous space, and although I can see torches hanging on the walls, none of them are lit.
Fear crawls over me like hundreds of ants, biting their way through me.
Is this my new psychiatric ward? Is this what Dr. Gupta meant by unconventional methods? It looks like this place forewent all the science and advancements that have been made in regards to treating mental illnesses, and instead just went right back to the times of the Inquisition.
I hear a slight scraping noise, but when I look in the cell next to mine, where the sound came from, all I see is darkness.
A shiver goes down my spine as I stretch my legs in front of me. My head still feels slightly sluggish, but I do my best to push it away. I don’t know what those pills were, but nothing has ever made me pass out like that before.
As my eyes adjust to the dark room, reality starts to settle in as more seconds trickle by and I really take in my surroundings.
I force myself to get to my feet, noting that I’m still wearing the same clothes as I was in Serenity, though my plain gray T-shirt and sweatpants are dirty from lying on this hard stone ground, and my white tennis shoes now have both dirt and grass stains on them.
My eyes stare at those stains for a beat as memories of Dr. Ophidian trickle over me. Did he really drag me past the tree line? Is he even real?
I force myself to look up as I pad over to the bars, my hands coming up to grip the cold metal. Doubt sprinkles down my spine like wayward rain, seeping into me until I shiver. This...this can’t be real. But I’ve never hallucinated my surroundings before. My flickers only ever focus on people.
My eyes move from the raised table to the hanging metal tools, then to the fireplace and back to the barred