The Institute: A Dark Anthology

by Dani René

  “Fuck you.” Iuan smiles, and I let out chuckle—my defiant lover to the end.

  I’m no fool. I know I can’t save him, considering the state I’m in and with so many people surrounding us. This must have been our destiny all along. I’ll watch him die, and then I’ll join him in peace forever. I won’t let him go without showing my pride in him, though. Pushing up slowly on weakened legs, I get to my feet and start a round of applause, ignoring the pain in my hands as I clap them together due to those lost fingernails.

  “All hail the great Laird of Duncan. He faces death bravely and will haunt all your souls for eternity for the wrong you do him,” I announce.

  Iuan chuckles, “You’ve got it wrong, Marbh. I can’t be bothered to haunt them. I’ll be too busy fucking you for eternity in hell.”

  “Or that.” I shrug.

  “Enough,” the man supposedly in control of the proceedings orders.

  “Seriously, you need to get laid,” I mutter half to myself but loud enough for people to hear. “Might improve your mood a bit.” I snap my fingers together, even though it sends a sharp spasm of pain through me. “Damn, I forgot. Small dick, so it’s difficult to fuck.”

  “Do it,” the man orders and the executioner swings the axe upward.

  I look toward Iuan.

  “I love you.” I mouth.

  “I love you.” His last words come as the axe slices his head from his shoulders.

  I can’t stop the scream of anguish that escapes from my lips. I don’t want to show them any more weakness, but it’s involuntary. Stumbling forward, I reach for my betrothed’s head as everyone around me celebrates. I close his eyes, lean forward, and kiss his lips.

  “I love you,” I repeat and look up at the executioner. “I’m ready.”

  A deep timbered cackle comes from behind me, and the man I was supposed to kill grabs my hair. He pulls me up, so I’m forced to look at his face. I stare into the dark hues of his dead eyes.

  “Oh no, it’s not going to be that simple, Marbh. I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of a life in the ever after with your lover. You’re not dying, not today anyway. I’m going to find you somewhere where you’ll remember this day forever. You’ll live with what happened here constantly on your mind, twisting it until you’re completely insane. That’s my punishment for you. Enjoy it.”

  I’m thrown to the floor, weeping. I reach for the axe of the executioner, but he pulls it away from me and removes his mask. I see his face for the first time…it’s familiar. I recognize it from somewhere.

  I don’t know where.

  Or do I?

  The room around me starts to change. The old fashioned wall coverings and straw on the floor vanish. In their place, a plush carpet stained crimson with my husband’s blood appears and clean white walls with modern appliances surround me. Iuan, my husband, lays lifeless on the floor in front of me. There’s a gunshot wound in the center of his head.

  I don’t understand?

  Where am I?

  What’s happening to me?

  Is this the insanity the man spoke of?

  I shut my eyes again, hoping all the pain disappears.

  Chapter 7

  Present

  “It was you.” I walk into Dr. Miller’s office, my arms folded across my chest. I remember it all now. “You killed my husband.”

  I unfold my arms, and shutting the door behind me, I take a seat across from him and wait for his answer.

  “Yes, it was me. What do you remember?”

  “He was a mafia leader—a man who took money from people to fund his vast empire. He dealt in drugs and anything else that would make him wealthy. He was powerful and cruel, but he was always kind to me. Iaun loved me and treated me right when nobody else would. He married me and took me under his wing. I looked after him when he needed it. He was faithful and loved me. My husband was a bad man to the outside world, but to me, he was perfect.”

  Tears prick in my eyes. They feel alien, painful. I’m experiencing too much emotion—it floods my body.

  “He had to be taken out. It was the only way,” Dr. Miller responds. “I don’t agree with the way it was done, or the way you were treated. Which is why I arranged to get a job here. The guilt planted itself in my head, and I couldn’t shift it.”

  “I remember it all now—the torture, the rape. They took everything from me and left me broken.”

  My hand slides to the place on my ass where I once had a tattoo of Iuan’s signature. It’s not there anymore. It was burned off. I remember reality now. It’s no longer mixing with the dark stories in my mind.

  “They did, and they got what they wanted—Iuan dead.”

  “You killed him.” Dr. Miller nods. “But you didn’t kill me, because I didn’t know who or what I was anymore. I was beyond help. There was no point in ending my life.”

  “Partly, but depriving you both of a future in the afterlife was a big point of interest to my boss. He lost his wife at your husband’s hands. He wasn’t going to give Iuan anything in life or death.”

  Dr. Miller reaches into his drawer, pulls out a folder, and hands it to me.

  “This contains the information I was given. It will tell you everything you need to know. The truth about who you really are.”

  “Why are you giving this to me?”

  I shift forward in my chair to take the folder. Opening it to the first page, there’s a picture of Iuan and me on our wedding day. I stroke my fingers across it, trying to remember the details, but they don’t come. I’m not even sure I want to remember them now.

  “My boss may not have wanted you dead, but I’m more merciful. This is no life for anyone. The psychosis you’re experiencing is a result of the trauma of losing Iuan and the torture you endured. This isn’t the first lifetime you’ve lived through in your mind since your husband’s death.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “There’s a lot of history and many lifetimes in five hundred years, Marbh. You’ve lived through them all—wars, kings and queens, even the roaring twenties and swinging sixties. But the story and outcome is always the same—you’re an assassin who betrays her lover and watches him die while she’s left alive. You’ll never leave this place. Tomorrow morning your memory of what happened will be gone, and you’ll be back in some new fantasy world.”

  I shut my eyes. So many memories come flooding back. I know the doctor is telling me the truth. I’ve lived this life far too many times in my head with the same outcome each time. The tears flow freely now.

  “Who are you? I can’t keep calling you Dr. Miller.”

  “You can because it’s who I am, who I’ll always be to you. The man who killed your husband.” He reaches into his desk and this time pulls out a gun. “No more fantasies, Marbh. It’s time to finish this. To put the memories to rest and join him. I’ll probably be joining you soon enough when my boss finds out what I’ve done, but I didn’t become an assassin to watch torture of this kind. The cruelty of it goes far beyond anything else I’ve ever known, and believe me, I’ve experienced most of your fantasies in the real world.”

  He keeps one hand on the gun but reaches out with his other and touches where the nail of my middle finger is missing.

  “You were right about one thing, though. You didn’t scream once.”

  He picks the gun up and cocks it before placing it down in front of me. I stare down at the metal weapon. My hand tentatively reaches out and touches it but springs back with fear.

  I can die here today.

  I don’t have to live this life any longer.

  When I look up Dr. Miller is at the door. He opens it, but before he leaves, he turns back to me.

  “Goodbye, Marbh. Iaun really did love you. Go and join him. It’s been five hundred years too long he’s been without you.”

  The door shuts, and I look down at the gun again. It torments me. If Dr. Miller is the assassin, shouldn’t he be the one to do it? My eyes flick back to t
he photo of Iuan. While I have lucidity, I could tell one of the other doctors about all of this…maybe Dr. Anselm. He’d listen to me—I’m sure of it. I stroke down the picture of us on our wedding day again. We had our whole lives ahead of us. A future that was cruelly ripped away because of the life we both, not just Iuan, chose.

  I remember it all now. He wasn’t the only devil in the relationship. The torture, the killing, I was right there at his side.

  I was just like him.

  A devil in the darkness.

  Twisted—no longer human.

  I don’t need to think about it anymore.

  Reaching for the gun, I pick it up and pull the trigger.

  The End

  Whether Marbh and Iuan rest together in heaven or hell is up to you, the reader.

  Afterword

  Dear reader, thank you for choosing my book to read. I’m more grateful than you know.

  Anna

  About Anna Edwards

  Anna Edwards is a British author from the depths of the rural countryside near London. When she has some spare time, she can also be found writing poetry, baking cakes (and eating them), or behind a camera snapping like a mad paparazzo. She’s an avid reader who turned to writing to combat her depression and anxiety. She has a love of traveling and likes to bring this to her stories to give them the air of reality. She likes her heroes hot and hunky with a dirty mouth, her heroines demure but with spunk, and her books full of dramatic suspense.

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  Prologue

  Evermore…

  Cruelty and all its power

  Why am I the game of each hour?

  Every pain, every slice…

  It was not only me in this deadly vise

  As I lie here, life draining from my body, there is a clarity present that is bringing me cherished peace. I smile in relief, knowing that there is truly an Evermore…

  The trees above me bow and bend to the wind that rushes through. A few leaves surrender to the grand force and fall from where they once belonged. I watch them float downward as if dancing in celebration for my choice.

  I exhale… Choice. It is finally mine.

  Chapter 1

  Finding Vera

  Parallel lives, side by side

  Not knowing why I want to hide.

  Murky shadows, distant memories

  Will they ever become one?

  How do you outrun something that doesn’t exist? I see them. I feel their hatred toward me, yet I am told, over and over, they are merely illusions my mind has created.

  With the ultimate kindness he always offers, my psychiatrist, Doctor Vincent Landon, asks, “Are they still behind me, Vera?”

  Wondering what my true name is, I stare at the four faceless dark figures looming behind his chair. Their shoulders project a strength I’m eerily concerned can bring harm. I can’t be positive, since I don’t know who they are, but I sense their malice. Unfortunately, I don’t even know who I am. Doctor Landon was gracious when giving me the name Vera so that I would have something to hold on to. And I am grateful. But, still, I feel so alone with no past to refer to.

  With my arms hugging my bent legs to my chest, I sit in the soft, cushiony office chair that is supposed to help relax me. Nothing can calm my fear. It is all-consuming. There is no calm when I am always sensing danger lurking. My armpits are dripping with sweat, and it’s hard to inhale. My lungs are constricted with terror. My bare toes keep trying to shelter one another, but there is nowhere for any part of me to hide.

  I am exposed and feeling defenseless.

  In his office, Doctor Landon sits across from me. He observes my thumb nervously rubbing along the impressive scar on my left forearm. Every time I use my left hand, I see it and get upset, not understanding why the scar unnerves me. Doctor Landon lets me wear long-sleeved shirts because of it. The slight curves at the bottom and top of the leathered skin almost make the defilement resemble an S, making me feel labeled. Just the thought has me shuddering…

  “Are they saying anything to you?” asks Doctor Landon.

  Attempting to hide my face against my covered knees, I whisper, “No.” It’s moments like this that I feel like a child, not the young woman I appear to be. Doctor Landon suspects I am approximately eighteen years old. I apprehensively add, “They’re laughing.”

  With a needed calm, he asks, “Do you know why they are laughing?”

  Pulling at my short, unevenly cut, blonde hair that I sense was once long, I start to rock, desperate for relief from the unknown panic threatening to knock me unconscious. It makes no sense. I don’t even know who the shadowy figures are, yet they endlessly terrify me.

  “Vera, you are doing so good. Try to remember—”

  My spine straightens. “R-Remember?” He knows I hate to search for a memory that has epically failed me.

  Doctor Landon exhales a steady breath as if buying time to determine his next approach. He does this often. “Yes. It is imperative that we learn how you arrived here.”

  My voice wobbles in fear, repeating what he already knows. “I walked.”

  The Serenity Institute has been my home for the past couple of months. It's a very old building that reminds me of a castle that has been long forgotten in the countryside. The ceilings are tall, and the woodwork announces history and skillful craftsmanship. There is a grand, sweeping staircase that leads to the third floor where my room is located. Doctor Landon’s office is on the first floor.

  Police have been trying to le
arn my identity since I arrived here. I have no memory of where I came from. All I can recollect is stumbling through a forest, my clothes tattered, dirty, and bloodied.

  Wounds. I had wounds everywhere.

  That is how Doctor Landon found me. He had been walking to the institute’s parking lot when he saw me tripping past the trees surrounding this facility.

  I was lost, hungry, and beyond confused.

  “Vera? Can you try and tell me what happened before we found you?” Doctor Landon sets his pad of paper on the little wooden antique end table that blends perfectly with the setting. He easily reaches with his long arms that balance his six-foot frame.

  Daring to search my memory, although it is always with the same result, I feel my face wince as pain travels throughout my body. Sharp stabs of pain start in my thin left thigh and creep upward. Denying myself the sensation of feeling the raised, tough skin, my fingers don’t touch the scar down the left side of my skinny neck either.

  When I was found, I remember Doctor Landon yelling for help as he ran across the vast front property of Serenity. Two orderlies then came barreling out the front door, all showing signs of horror on their faces.

  After having my physical wounds looked after in a medical hospital, a judge gave Doctor Sterling, the owner of Serenity Institute, temporary guardianship over me. Police stopped asking me questions once they believed my memory was nonexistent. Doctor Landon doesn’t agree. He says I have hidden my past to protect myself.