Hexes and Handcuffs: A Limited Edition Collection of Supernatural Prison Stories

by Margo Bond Collins

  What a weirdo.

  I put on a clean white jacket from my Asylum assigned wardrobe and left my room, the floor cold on my bare feet. Checking down both sides of the hall, the boy was already gone. Good riddance. It wouldn’t be good to make friends with someone who causes trouble, and he seemed the type.

  I navigated through turns and doorways, hiding my face behind my hair whenever someone passed me. If they stopped me, they’d ask me if I heard the walls, and I didn’t want them to know the answer was yes. The small hum was still there, as it was every day, reminding me why I was locked up, for being certifiably bonkers.

  One of my only refuges here was at the end of my journey: the library. It didn’t have much, mostly books from before the 1980’s, but I had no idea how long ago that year was, they didn’t tell us things like that. I could only tell it had been awhile by the obvious aging on the books, the covers flaking off, and the pages turning yellow and brittle.

  The librarian, Harper, sat at his desk as usual, flipping through a cookbook. He always said he was trying to learn how to cook to please his wife, but I’d never been told if it was working or not. He eyed me with a smile as I came in, but he worked for the Asylum and would tell on me as quickly as any of the other workers, no matter our friendship.

  “Good morning, Violet,” he said as I walked past him. “Going for the books about dogs again?” I gave him a half-hearted chuckle and kept walking until I was further inside the library. The shelves were all at waist height so we couldn’t hide behind them and do something we’d get in trouble for. That also meant that Harper could see what section I was in, and under the strict orders of my doctor, I wasn’t allowed to read fiction books. I’d get lost in the fantasy, and what with me always making up things like magic is real and the walls make noise, indulging those fantasies wasn’t healthy, or so said my doctor at least.

  That meant the only thing I could read was non-fiction. Textbooks, manuals, how to fold paper to look pretty, how to sew, and everything you ever wanted to know about animals. Giving Harper a very casual glance, he was safely nose-deep in ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’, so I grabbed the giant ‘Encyclopedia of the Dog’ book and sat down at the end of the shelf, in the small spot that Harper couldn’t see. Right in front of my feet was some of the fiction section, old books about elves and dragons. I peeked around the shelf one last time before reaching for the book I’d been reading, ‘Dragonflight’ by Anne McCaffrey.

  My fingers ran over the bumps and creases on the aged cover. I’d been waiting a week to read the next chapter, I was practically chomping at the bit for more. I opened the dog encyclopedia across my lap and placed the dragon book on top of it. The advantage of the squeaky floor here was I’d be able to hear anyone coming so I could quickly flip the encyclopedia pages to hide the fiction book and pretend I actually cared about how Dutch Sheepdogs have a life expectancy of fifteen years.

  Enough workup, it was time to read more about Lessa. Last time I’d read, she was prepping for her dragon’s mating flight. I flipped the book open to my earmark and the chapter was about sending the new dragon hatchlings somewhere else so they could grow up. What? When had her dragon laid the eggs? Had I skipped too far? That was definitely where I’d last earmarked the page.

  Damn it. Why did this keep happening to me? I kept losing time. I never knew what I’d remember or what I’d forget. Maybe… I recalled Olivander’s face in my doorway. He’d displayed more emotion than a stranger should’ve had. I stood up, put the dog book back, and slid ‘Dragonflight’ into my back waistband. It was a risk, but I hoped my reputation of not stealing would mean Harper wouldn’t search me. My bare feet made no noise on the floor, and he didn’t look up as I left the room, too absorbed in French cooking.

  Adrenaline running through my system, I scurried down the halls and tried to swallow down my fear that Harper would follow me, find the book, and report me to my doctor. I knew exactly what she’d do if she thought I was fantasizing again, and I didn’t want that to happen.

  The adrenaline was souring into pure fear and I could feel sweat pooling on my skin as I searched for Olivander. Something inside me needed to see him, an instinct I couldn’t explain. He wasn’t in the cafeteria, the lounge, or the hallways. I didn’t know his room number, and just as I was starting to panic about asking a worker for it, I pressed my face against the atrium glass and saw someone out there. I hurried to the door, yanked it open, and stepped into the enclosed space full of dead plants and depressing trees.

  It was definitely Olivander standing there, his hands shoved into the waistband of his Asylum issued pants, and he turned when he saw me. I ran to him, the last few steps before I got to him dislodging the book from my pants, and it fell to the brush covered ground as I threw my arms around Olivander’s neck.

  “Letty,” he whispered, holding me as closely as he could, and I tightened my arms around him in response. He was warm against my cold body. Warm, and safe. I stroked his long blonde hair, his ponytail coming undone under my fingers.

  “I think I’ve forgotten a few things,” I said against his shoulder. He choked out a laugh and sunk his fingers into my long hair. I pulled away, regretting it instantly, and stepped back to retrieve the book where it lay in a pile of dead leaves. I brought it up and showed it to him. “I was reading this, and there are parts I don’t remember now. It made me wonder.” He met my eyes over the paperback, the heat from them enough to warm my freezing toes. “What else did they make me forget?”

  As an answer, he closed the distance between us, took my cheeks between his two warm hands, and he kissed me, his lips as smooth as velvet, dancing over mine and drawing a groan from both of our throats. He rested our foreheads together, breath ragged, stroking my face with his fingers.

  “Everything, Letty,” he answered. “They took everything.”

  Olivander and I ended up back in my room, and I shut the door as he sat down on my bed, looking it over and straightening the pillow a bit.

  “Have we…” I started, gulping and looking away as he stared back at me. Could he see how flushed I felt? I waved a hand around to indicate what I was getting at.

  “Have we what?”

  I sighed, rolled my eyes, and crossed my arms over my chest. “Have we ever, you know…” I waved my hand again and one corner of his mouth curled into a devious grin. He wasn’t going to help, he wanted me to say it. “Have we ever had sex?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply, his eyes looking me over as if the hospital outfit I had on wasn’t there. He brought that heated gaze back to my face and my flush deepened. I let out a breath between my teeth, trying to slow my heartbeat. Well, that answered that. “Don’t worry, I never did anything you didn’t ask for. Or beg for, more like.”

  My eyes widened and I turned my face so I didn’t have to look at him. That wasn’t helpful.

  “How many times?”

  He shrugged, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling in thought. “Hard to say. With how many times you’ve forgotten me, and how long I’ve been here. Enough where I’d say I’m pretty good at pleasing you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  It wasn’t. I was just worried about the fact that I’d forgotten all of it. Why had he kept coming back if I kept forgetting him? Was he some stalker weirdo who got off on that kind of thing?

  “In case you’re wondering, our first kiss wasn’t in this place. It was before you came here. So you can stop thinking that I’m a weirdo who enjoys it when you forget about me and I have to make you fall in love with me again. And again. And again.”

  “You could stop trying,” I pointed out, and he chuckled again.

  “Not a chance. You may not be my soulmate, but I’m never going to give up on you, Letty. None of us will.” Us? My eyebrows raised with that revelation and he pressed his lips together in hesitation. “Yeah. Ahh. This story is a bit complicated, Letty. You’d better sit down so I can tell it.”

  I sat beside him, eager to re-learn who
I was, and who we had been to each other.

  The hallway floor was cold and bare, turning my legs into icicles as I stared at the Highborn Asylum sign. It was just starting to look like gibberish when someone’s shoes squeaked up to me.

  “I remember the first time I met you, Letty.”

  I looked up at him, noting his long blonde ponytail, and hopeful blue eyes. “Is it right now? And I’m not Letty. My name is Violet.”

  A deep, heavy sigh came from the boy, and he turned around, leaving the way he’d come.

  Hummmmmmmmm.

  “Be quiet,” I whispered, the squeaks of the boy’s shoes stopping when he heard me.

  “Walls being noisy again?” he asked, walking back to me.

  I continued studying the sign. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t hear the walls. Walls don’t make noise. That’s magic, and magic isn’t real.”

  Sighing again, he sat down next to me, splaying his legs to match mine. “You’d think I’d be tired of this after all this time.” I let him talk, I didn’t much care. This was a loony bin, after all. People talking about spaceships and elephants as they ate breakfast was a normal day. “Sometimes I wish I had Saul’s excuse. At least he’s your soulmate. I’m just one of the boys who fell in love with you.”

  I sighed too, letting all of this roll over me like the floor cleaning machine. “Why aren’t you my soulmate then, if you love me so much?”

  He turned his head to look at me, searching for something that he wasn’t going to see. “Wish I was. It’s not really that simple, considering what we are.”

  “Freaks?” I offered, and he gave a half-hearted laugh.

  “That’s one word for it. Most people just call us witches.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Don’t be absurd, magic doesn’t exist.”

  As if on cue, someone approached us, shoes squeaking, and I kept my eyes down, giving the person one quick peek that showed they weren’t one of the Asylum workers at least. He came closer and his face looked familiar, drawing me back to the boy beside me in alarm.

  They looked the same. This other boy had black hair, but their faces were the same.

  The boy beside me scrambled up and let out a shriek of surprise, running up to the black-haired boy and hugging him for dear life.

  “Guy! I thought you’d never find us again.”

  ‘Guy’ the black-haired one, let the other boy go, staring at me like I was a ghost. “Letty?” He came at me, falling over my body and pulling me into his arms. “Oh my god, Letty! I’ve missed you so much. Are you okay? Olivander, tell me she’s okay! Did they hurt you?”

  An uncomfortable whine curled out of my lips and he let me go, straightening and watching me scurry down the hall on my ass until he was a safe distance away from me. The blonde boy helped Guy up and gripped his arm.

  “Guy, she doesn’t remember us. They took her memories.”

  What were they talking about?

  I mean, sure, I’d indulged the boy’s insane monologue about me, but that was the crazy talking, right?

  Guy’s eyebrows knit together and he studied my confused expression with increasing anger. “What about you, Oli? You good?”

  “Not that I would remember if I wasn’t, but yeah. The spell you put on me let me keep my memories every time they tried to wipe me.”

  Guy nodded and he stalked towards me, ignoring my attempt to get away, picking me up and slinging me over his back. I sucked in air to start screaming but found nothing was coming out. “I’ve removed your ability to speak, Letty. Just until we get out, I promise. You can’t alert the guards that we’re here.”

  I’ll alert your junk that my foot is going to kick the shit out of it.

  Guy laughed under his breath, hauling me down the hallway with Olivander behind us. “You kick my junk and then I can’t use it on you later, so you’d better decide which you prefer. Vengeance or sex.”

  I stopped short, certain he’d read my mind, then sent him a quick thought back. I’ll take vengeance, you psychopath! Your junk isn’t getting anywhere near me without you losing it.

  He grunted, adjusting me on his shoulder. “Disappointing.”

  “Stop flirting and get us out of here,” Olivander hissed.

  Guy took me back the way he’d come, past the library and into a part of the building I’d never been to. How were all the doors unlocked? Shouldn’t there be someone stopping us? I didn’t want to have to explain this to my doctor. She’d definitely give me a treatment as punishment. I whimpered at the thought and caught Olivander’s eye over Guy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Letty,” he assured me without stopping our trek down the hall. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  Out? Out of the Asylum? But I’d never been out of the Asylum. I didn’t even know what was out there, what the world looked like, or anything like that. Still, his words answered my long-lasting question about whether or not the Asylum was the only thing in existence and there was nothing else.

  We veered off to a room and Guy’s arms loosened before he set me gently on my feet. I stepped back and smack him across the face. He snorted out a laugh and felt his jaw.

  “Yeah, I deserved that. Not the first time you’ve slapped me, kinda feels like old times.” I lifted my leg, ready to make good on my promise to punish his junk, and he held out his hands to protect himself. “Now, now, Letty. We still have to escape. You want that, right?” I nodded. “Then lay off my tackle, feel me?” Another nod. He grinned at me, twisting my stomach into knots, and snapped his fingers. The air in the room grew warm, a burst of it coming from behind me and tossing my hair around.

  I turned to see… well, I didn’t really have the right word for it. I searched through my limited memories of the fantasy books I’d read. Portal? That seemed accurate. A piece of the room wasn’t the same anymore, it showed grass, mountains, all tinted orange. I stuck my hand into the portal and felt warmth, in complete contrast to the never-ending chill of the Asylum.

  Noises down the hall brought me back to the boys, and Guy had his head tilted as if listening to them. “We have to go.” He grabbed me again, lifting me into his arms, and we stepped through the portal. The Asylum disappeared around us until we were standing in fresh, green grass with the mountains in the distance. Guy put me down, turning back to the portal that now showed the dreary Asylum room, and he snapped his fingers again, making the portal disappear as if it had never existed.

  With it gone, I twisted this way and that to stare at our surroundings. The air was so warm. The smells were so intoxicating. Everything felt fresh and new. I knelt down and ran my fingers through the green grass.

  “It’s not dead,” I whispered, noting my voice had come back. “Is this what grass looks like when it’s not dead?”

  “How’d you know the grass was dead if you’ve never seen it alive before?” one of them asked me. Their voices were so similar, I knew I’d have to be looking directly at them to see who had spoken. I shrugged, because I never knew how I’d know the plants at the Asylum were dead.

  I sat down on the grass, reveling in the coolness of it, the way the ground felt underneath me, and I stared up at my rescuers. “How do you two look the same?”

  Guy raised an eyebrow at me and ran a hand through his black hair. “We’re twins. You don’t know what twins are?”

  Shrugging, I danced my fingertips over the grass. “I’ve lived in an Asylum my entire life. They didn’t exactly have a class on ‘things you should totally know.’”

  “But you haven’t been there your entire life. You’ve been there for three years.” My hands stopped, my eyes shooting up to their faces. Three years. I had a vague understanding of time, but even with that, I knew three years was a very small number. “We found you a year ago,” Olivander continued. “I went inside to get you out, but Guy never came back.”

  Guy reached a hand up to grip his brother’s shoulder. “At the precise moment I’d planned on going in, the Asylum was
n’t there anymore. We didn’t realize it changed locations, and it took me all this time to find it again.”

  But how? None of this made sense. How could a building change locations? How did that portal show up?

  “Magic, Letty,” Guy answered, reading my thoughts again.

  I scowled up at him. “I don’t appreciate you reading my thoughts like that.”

  He shrugged. “Can’t help it.”

  I rolled my eyes and stood up. “Magic isn’t real.”

  “We literally just went through a damn portal and you’re still going to believe that?”

  “I have to believe it. Because if I don’t, then that means…” I stopped and looked away, my stomach turning with fear. “Then that means I really am crazy. It means I am a freak, just like they told me.”

  “If you’re crazy, then I’m a chicken sandwich.” I rolled my eyes and watched Guy hold his hand out, a flame bursting from his fingers. “You’re not crazy. You never were. You’re… and I say this with complete irony, by the way. You’re a witch, Letty.”

  The twins answered every question I had as we walked across the grassy field, including every facet of our relationship, because apparently I’d been working up to date both of them before I was taken.

  “Is that normal for… witches?” I swallowed the bitterness in my mouth over saying that word like it was completely normal. I was fighting my programming, as Guy had called it.

  “Quite normal,” Guy answered in front of me. “The magical world is much more accepting of all lifestyles, even if you were with Saul as well as both of us, if your connection to him wasn’t platonic.”

  Saul. They’d mentioned him several times but hadn’t elaborated enough. The man who was supposedly my soulmate, but also apparently it was completely platonic. What was the point of a soulmate if you weren’t romantically connected? Did it just mean we were destined to be BFFs forever? That sounded boring.