Adeline
Who am I?
I didn't know anymore. Life had been simple. Easy. I was a doctor, a good one – successful. I worked for more than a decade to become a psychiatrist. The one and only Dr. Adeline Violet. But somehow, somewhere I lost my way.
I'm lying.
Words are such a fickle thing. We can say them whenever we want, however we want, to whomever we want. They don't have to be true, or real, but maybe saying them makes them real, at least in the mind of the listener.
The truth is, I didn't just somehow lose my way. I wasn't just somewhere. I was with Aaron Whitman at Silent River Psychiatric Hospital for Violent Criminals down in the darkest most secret part of the hospital – Ward Z, where patients went to die.
He was just supposed to be my patient. It was supposed to be simple – but somehow it became complicated quickly and now, now I didn't who I was anymore. I wasn't Dr. Adeline Violet, no that title had been stripped from my skin by the government itself when they found out about my relationship with Aaron. A relationship I hadn't acted on in over a month – if it could even be called a relationship. It was something – sure, but a relationship? It was more than that and less at the same time. It was both everything and nothing.
I blinked. But this time the world that surrounded me was fuzzy, dim, bloated figures I couldn't make out. I blinked again. Over and over until the world finally came into focus – but it wasn't my world. It wasn't the white walls of Ward Z, the snow covered Aspen trees of Silent River that had become my home. I was somewhere else.
I moved, my body lying awkwardly across a seat.
Murmured words filled my ears and that's when I saw them. Him.
Aaron Whitman sat across from me next another man, an incredibly muscular dark-skinned man whom I'd never seen in my life. But he didn't hold my attention. Aaron did. Aaron, with the dark tattoos that covered his skin. The words And the monster stood out in stark contrast on his right jawline. The new man nudged Aaron and his twitchy gray gaze zeroed in on mine.
"Well, look who's awake." His voice was like music to my desperate ears. Aaron loved me – at least he did before I ruined everything. Before I dug around in his mind, desperate for answers, desperate for a truth that revealed the woman he used to love, Ruby. I had wanted to look inside those memories and find that their love hadn't been real – but all I found was disappointment. Through that disappointment I had spawned something else – I had triggered Aaron's darkness, sending him into a manic low, an extreme of his bipolar disorder.
"Where are we?"
"Oh, just five thousand feet above ground."
I blinked again, attempting to sit up. "We're on a plane?" But something stopped me. Handcuffs. They were hooked around my left wrist and attached to the bottom of one of the seats a laid across. "Aaron—"
"Surprised that I would chain you up, Violet?" There was something wicked in his gaze, taunting. He still wore the bloody white jumpsuit I'd last seen him in when he drug me out of Ward Z. Some of it had splattered on his face, making him appear eerie, scary, terrifying. "You shouldn't be, considering how the whole of our existence together, up to this point has been characterized by confinement – at least of one of us."
"But what does this mean?" I jerked on my wrist, feeling the metal bite into my flesh. "Where are you taking me?"
The man sitting next Aaron raised his eyebrows, he wore a puzzled look on his face as he glanced between Aaron and I.
"I'm taking you where I promised, one letter away." He gave me that eerie frowning, smiling face. "To a place of which you'll never return." He leaned forward until there was only a few inches of space between us. His face lingered over mine. His perceptive eyes seeming to burrow into me. "To run your body and soul through the shredder. I'm taking you to pain, Adeline. To the place where love and hate mix together into something ugly and broken – you."
"Well, fuck." The words came from the other man. "That's some pretty intense shit."
Aaron leaned back, but his gaze never left mine. I didn't miss the promise in them. It emanated from his irises as he began to hum his song. His fingers tapped their rhythm. He meant every word he spoke. He wasn't wasting his breath, his time.
He intended to rip into my soul, to break me, to hurt me how I hurt him. I should have been afraid, terrified. I should have been begging him to free me. But I wasn't. Instead I laid there, my body spread awkwardly across several seats on an airplane with my wrist handcuffed to the seat, headed for an unknown destination. A destination where Aaron intended to hurt me. A thrill of something thrummed under my skin – not dread or worry – something else.
Anticipation.