Madness

by Kailee Reese Samuels

  I meander along the path that runs parallel with the rushing stream and spot the entrance to the underground. Disappearing in the dark recesses is tempting, and I ponder the idea, understanding there is only one reason to not go into the cavern.

  And I’ve already decided seeing Twig is a very bad idea.

  Entranced by the mystical color, I wonder with awe at the opening as the musty scent lures my mind in, and my footsteps follow. After all, I am The Queen, and these are my lands, and I can go where I want when I want…right?

  My tiny size does little to deter the notions of being incapable of this expedition as the tenebrous owls and caliginous frogs energize with a symphony in the nocturne serenade. The deep purple cavern offers a spacious hollow with plenty of room to breathe in the fog and explore the remains of bones and brain matter.

  “Shit!” I mumble a good time later as I stand at the banks of the impassable stream. “I must have turned the wrong way. It is possible, considering the altered view of my stature, that I mis-navigated. My eyes widen at the razor-sharp teeth of the piranha leaping out of the water. A massive gator stalks on the other side of the embankment, fishing for his dinner…until he spots me. “Shit!”

  I have no idea why he would want to consume me; I am not much of a meal. I pop open the tin and swallow the old, moldy lemon cake before I take off running. I expect it to take effect as I dash back for the entrance, but nothing happens. I don’t look back because I can hear his snapping jaws and the rumble of his footsteps. A predator is hunting me.

  “Why, oh, why, do you want a little thing like me?”

  I barrel smack dab into a white sneaker.

  “Ahhh!” I yell as Twig plucks my tiny body from the ground. “Help!”

  “What the hell are you doing now?”

  “Forgetting it all!” I cry, pointing and jumping in his palm. “But, there is a…”

  “Fuck!” he bellows, seeing the vicious beast approaching and placing my minuscule body on his shoulder. “Hold the fuck on!”

  Clenching onto his necklace, I let go of the fear as he dashes towards the opening. He is always my forever ride.

  But it’s too late for second chances. And it’s too late to undo what is already in motion. The tik-tok pounds deep within my chest as we’re running out of time.

  We narrowly escape.

  Not a word is spoken as he marches towards the swamp, but I am in serious trouble. His jaw throbs with anger at my stunt, and his nostrils flare.

  The house on stilts rests in the middle of the bayou. He strides up the steps, taking two at a time, as I bounce along.

  Once inside, he sets me on the kitchen table and pulls a box from the pantry. “Eat.”

  I nod, taking a bite, and returning to full size.

  “What in the hell were you thinking?”

  “My sister is gone,” I whisper, pouting.

  His mouth opens and closes as he shakes his head. He rubs his eyes, and a glimmer of despair surfaces. “Again, what in the hell were you thinking?”

  “I thought I want to be whole and home.”

  “You seem to be missing one thing—I am not there—El,” he shouts his impassioned plea. “This is it. You will never see me again.”

  My breathing shifts as anger fills my veins. “I don’t live here, Twig. I was pushed down a hole.”

  “You could…stay?”

  “This is nothing more than a figment of me, though. I need to try at least and be complete.”

  Quiet tears cascade from his cheeks. “I want what is best for you, Ellison Alicia Kingsley. If you need to leave, then go.”

  The bitter and heavy words sag between us. I can change the narrative. I can rewrite the story. This is my dream, fueled by my emotions. I close my eyes and pray for an easy way out of this. “I’m leaving, Twig.”

  “Ellis…don’t go.”

  “I love you,” I whisper, never knowing anything quite as real and unreal as this. “Forever.”

  “What if I never see you again…”

  “I don’t know,” I mutter, turning to leave. “I will cherish our time together for the rest of my life, even if it was just a silly dream.”

  “It’s not enough!” he shouts as we spin out of control. I brought this on, forcing our magic into the circumstance by the cards I played…by the emotions I felt. “It’s never going to be enough.” I slip my hand around the doorknob. “Don’t do it!”

  “I have to,” I say, smiling through the tears. “I have to go find me, Twig.”

  Opening the door, I blink at Whitman Dare as the blast knocks my ass back. “Shit!”

  “Ellis!” Twig rushes to my side as the warm feeling rises. “I love you so damned much! Find me! Find me! Find…me.”

  11

  Post Apocalypse

  My eyes flash open as the smack of the book closing awakens me from the dream.

  The rousing scent of coffee tickles my nose. I blink several times at the sparkling tin ceiling, and the fan whip whirls around and around in the center. The crystal glass globes are etched with exquisite detail. There are no signs of rust or decay on the glorious masterpiece above; it is pristine and polished.

  The whole room smells of coffee and fresh paint.

  This place is new.

  A new start, a new awakening.

  The closed shutters offer a dim glow of the early sunrise as I try to move. The clock on the wall says seven-thirty. My hands are restrained, and a warm blanket covers my body. I stare at the tin ceiling, shiny and sparkling, and the pattern of swirls draws my attention.

  My exhausted body feels like it has been run over by a locomotive. I glance at the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, brimming with manuals, papers, and photographs. They remind me of my family, back when things were easy and complete and full of lies.

  Lies that bound our worlds together thicker than blood.

  My parents always favored Mathison, and I accepted my place as a second fiddle until I was almost four. Her bed was on fire, and I watched her burn.

  I was a child playing with matches that I should never have had. It wasn’t the first time I’d been caught with the little combustible pieces of cardboard and binder, striking one after another because I liked the sparks in the darkness of our bedroom. I stole Daddy’s lighters, swiped them off the kitchen table, and played with them too.

  But that night…many years ago…it was a black matchbook embellished with a golden J. I was at the foot of the bed on the floor because she had the flu. I was worried about the high fever mother said she had. Her blanket caught fire, and I watched the flames with curiosity, never thinking how fast it would all burn. How quickly she would burn. I was never thinking how the ashes of that very room would become my tomb.

  I walked away.

  I closed the door.

  And I let the room burn.

  My parents woke to the sounds of her screaming, her flesh singing, and her lungs filling with the noxious smoke. By the time the firemen and paramedics arrived, Maddy was dead.

  Mathison Amelia Kingsley died by accidental fire death.

  I was accused on the spot and surrendered to the psychobabble therapy my parents and the authorities insisted I have. Color this picture, play with these blocks, listen to this pleasant tune. They tried and tried to pull my mind away from the imaginary friend I talked to nonstop—my dead sister—but I would not hear of it. Maddy would be with me forever, trapped inside of me.

  With Daddy’s art and Momma’s spending habit, the expensive therapy sessions soon went by the wayside at six. The fighting turned from verbal sparring to physical wars from both sides.

  My mother was no stranger to swinging a frying pan at my father’s head, and my father routinely enjoyed choking my mother. Typically both ended in hate sex—on the paisley sofa, in the sterile kitchen, in the backseat of the car while I sat in the passenger seat with headphones on.

  Ultimately, it boiled down to their blaming me for the fire, which was all their fault. They were always too
busy quibbling over finances or fornicating without paying any attention to me.

  Maddy was the perfect daughter.

  I was the one they wished they’d never had.

  On my seventh birthday, the candles burned on my beautiful buttercream cake with roses in every color—ballet slipper pink, subtle violet, and sunshine yellow—I loved, my crying mother callously whispered, “It should’ve been you.”

  It should’ve been you.

  It should’ve been you.

  It should’ve been you.

  Any hope of separating Maddy and me at that point was gone, but my mother’s declaration would live on repeat for the rest of my life, etched into my soul, and caged within my spirit. I carried her hatred of me.

  Eventually, the fallacy spoke becomes the truth.

  I didn’t just accept the second string; I embraced the role of the bad little sister and achieved new heights, accelerating my desire to be the number one parasite my parents couldn’t rid themselves of. My mother cheated and lied, my father drank, and our once happy home became a war zone.

  I’d had enough the night I saw Daddy with the gun. He was going to eliminate our continuous pain in the world, but I couldn’t let them kill Maddy twice. So, I did what needed to be done.

  Because I always do what needs to be done.

  With no family members willing to take my insane, reckless, and wild child, I became a ward of the state. I was checked into Littleton Juvenile Psychiatric Facility for the Wayward. I didn’t speak for years, but dissolved into the pages and created the worlds inside of my head with Maddy.

  The facility was less than ideal, understaffed and overrun with miniature hellions trying to survive. We were like an ant colony, full of cannibals, where the strong dined on the corpses of the weak. It was feast or famine. The strong rendered the frail to an immobile state as they drifted off one at a time. Some went to prison; others went to the ground. I was determined to have neither happen to me.

  I was somewhere else, in another world, when he crawled into bed with me.

  I was a princess in a castle, high up on a hill when he hurt me. I was waving and smiling and happy with a handsome prince by my side as he touched me.

  Again and again and again.

  Night after night after night.

  And I could do nothing.

  Who would believe me? After all, I was the girl who killed her parents and absorbed her sister. I was a schizophrenic, catatonic mess, for which no amount of pills or gentle therapeutic techniques could return my sanity. I knew the world I lived in—inside my mind with Maddy—was a much safer place than the world outside.

  But…I had a trick up my sleeve, or a full deck of cards, I was crazier than a loon.

  I could bring Maddy’s light demeanor and composure to the surface with a blink of my eyes as her sweet smile would grace my lips. Or I could choose to bring myself—full of venom—screaming at the nurses and scaring them with my bullying curse words. I was caught between the two—the fallen angel and the demonic devil no one wanted to meet.

  I threatened those committing infractions with a sharp tongue, lashing out, and promising to slice their own from their throat and swallow it whole. One gulp. Mmm. Tasty.

  I never did it.

  But Ellison Kingsley was feared by many. I never told anyone of the harm he caused in the darkest night or that he was the reason I couldn’t find the ground in my gray, looming clouds. I never admitted how much I welcomed the anguish in his touch, the punishment of my crimes. And no one recognized the differences in my personality…no one but one.

  Him.

  I never let my playmate hurt Maddy, and it was only by coincidence that he even knew of her existence. I self-soothed by rambling on to myself. He overheard one of my conversations, and immediately, he had the upper hand.

  Lack of funding booted my ass out the door at eighteen and into his arms. I did so many things wrong as a child. I believed I deserved his chronic torture. Dr. Witter-Ratrow never said a foul word against him because she knew the importance of keeping the piranhas fed. The sacrifice of one butterfly was worth the entire floor staying calm.

  “I was the butterfly.

  And my wings were never perfect.

  They frayed with a jagged edge dusted with bitterness to…save me.”

  Taking a breath, I realize I don’t even know his real name. But he will always be a monster, creeping into my bed, and encouraging my departure from civilized society. I couldn’t exist in the real, so I chose the only way to cope that I could.

  Until that night in the trailer…

  …when Maddy and I unexpectedly split in two. I could hear her in my head as he achingly violated me. I didn’t want to play his games anymore, spiraling, spinning, colliding, upside down in his hell house of fun. He was a never-ending labyrinth of disgust, vile, and despicable, with only one goal—keeping me in his jar.

  I was tired.

  So tired.

  I caught a glimpse of the golf club beneath the bed, latched my fingers around the metal, and swung with all my might for his head as he begged for me to tell him how much I loved it when he was rough...how much I loved his control...and how much I liked it when he made me come and cry out his name.

  No more.

  I would never speak his name again.

  I clobbered his head and back several times until he sloughed from my blood-soaked body and rolled onto the floor. I took a shower. And I dressed for the party.

  Maddy’s harsh ridicule was ever-present as it always had been during her life. She was born in the image of my mother. And I…I bore the brunt of my father’s psychosis. I would never fully heal and would forever remain one step away from crossing the line.

  Carefully, I sit up and spot the bindings on my wrist. I smile, understanding the presence of them isn’t to keep them safe, but me.

  I wonder whose office this is because it is far too exquisite of a library to be Littleton with the crumbling sheetrock and rusting fixtures. And if it is a prison, then I must be in the warden’s office.

  Slightly scared, I feel my eyes fill with tears, blurring my vision. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. The last thing I remember was running away as someone shouted my name.

  “Ellison Alicia Kingsley!”

  I close my eyes, and the droplets drift from the corners to the soft pillow cradling my head. I remember…everything.

  Sprinting in the dark, I found repose in the darkness. I was content in the night air with the sticks and twigs anchoring every step as I dashed towards my freedom.

  I killed the monster in my ongoing lifetime nightmare. He was the terrorist, inhabiting my spirit and shattering any hope of healing. And I killed him.

  Or so I believed.

  The stickiness of blood clung to my inner thighs, slowing my stride, and confronting me with the obvious. He raped me for the final time. I detoured towards a creek and felt the sharp sting of a needle puncture my skin.

  Looking around, I wiggle my bare toes on the plush white rug as I attempt to stand. I bump into the mahogany coffee table and wobble to the bookcase filled with psychology books, forensic texts, and trafficking binders stacked deep.

  I glance at the old pictures of smiling faces on a boat...holding up a fish...and mud-covered on a four-wheeler. An eerie feeling runs through my veins at the sight of a knife collection trapped beneath the glass, along with a few bones and a beautifully preserved blue butterfly.

  I tiptoe to the next shelf with the dragon sculpture and strange foreign script emblazoned on a katana. All sealed behind the wall of glass, suffocated from the air and relished for posterity.

  The wall displays a haphazard collection of missing posters, pictures of girls just like me, and scribbled notes on each one. My eyes drift over the magnificent crystal lamp to the massive L-shaped desk, pregnant with the burden of papers and files.

  “Wor—k.”

  “I do,” he says, smiling from the doorway. “How are you feeling?”


  I shake, fraught with anxiety, and fear about what is to come. With a raspy voice, I muster out, “El...”

  “Yes, your name is Ellison,” he says, filling in the void of my dissonance as he slowly takes a step forward. His confidence emanates from the solid stance and acute awareness. I demurely angle away from his view. “Ellison Kingsley.”

  I glimpse down, observing the pictures on the desk—the wedding with the bride he adores and the two children—with faces like her and curly raven hair like him.

  Happy children. Smiling children. Joyous children.

  They could’ve been me.

  They should’ve been me.

  I point and mutter, “Pic...”

  “... Pictures?” he gently asks. “My wife and children.”

  “Lo...” I stutter, growing frustrated, and crying. “Lov—e?”

  “Very much.” He cautiously moves closer, knowing I’m not entirely stable. “You’re safe now, Ellison.”

  “Dea—d?”

  Stroking his beard, he shakes his head. “No, but I swear I’m going to find him.”

  “Sisy...”

  “Sisyphus Mott.” His dark brows furrow into a distinct line. “Did he tell you his name?”

  I twitch, glancing around the room. “No...drea—med.”

  He strokes his scruff and informs, “We raided Littleton shortly after you left. We were looking for another girl when we found evidence concerning Mr. Mott.”

  “Fr—om?”

  “Dr. Nellie Witter-Ratrow.”

  Tears spring out of my eyes like a joyous waterfall, overflowing with abundance and life. “Ellison, how long have you been…silent?”

  “Fir—e.”

  “... Fourteen years?” I nod, pointing at my crotch and lifting my brows. “You need the bathroom?” He opens the door, clicks on the light, and pulls out a knife from his pocket. He severs the band from around my wrists. I give a wide smile and skitter back to the wall as the rush of true freedom quakes beneath my feet. I am not well, but I’m free. “Here. You can leave the door open if you need to. You are safe now.”