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Before everything went black, Reese remembered the wide-eyed look on his friend’s face as they stood at the end of the hallway. How their trembling fingers passed a tranquilizer dart to the doctor, who hurriedly loaded it into her gun, cursing under her breath. He took an eager, heavy step forward. Anxiety and white-hot rage thrummed beneath his skin as he went past the corner, raking his claws against the wall. He was quicker than the doc, and bigger than her, he could end this right now—
A piercing crack of lead boomed from beside him, blasting through his skull and shredding his flesh. His face scattered across the wall, sticky and red, while new shades of pain colored his vision. Every cell in him screamed as he crumpled to the ground. Bubbles of blood gurgled in what remained of his gasping throat. Desperate fear and shrinking rage choked out of him, his remaining blue eye darting back and forth. There was Tabitha Scarlet, dark in the lightless hall, with a white-knuckle grip on the shotgun aimed at him. Why was she here? How? Her cousin rushed between him and Tabitha, blocking him with their body and hand outreached towards Tabitha’s gun. Their voices were raised but too distant for him to hear, the blast still ringing in his ears as he watched them.
They had called Tabitha here.
He didn’t hear the loud pop of the doctor’s tranquilizer gun, but his shoulder stung as steel pierced through muscle. Something heavy pulled him down against the blood-stained wall he was leaning against, his head face-down against the hard wooden floor as lead coursed through his blood. Everything grew darker, details slipping away into blurring shapes, as the doctor hovered over him. Terror thrashed inside him, fighting to stay awake. She was going to lock him away. He was almost free. But as the hall around him slipped further and further away, his too-long limbs going slack beneath the doctor’s hands, all he could think of was how stupid he was to have hoped someone would understand.
After that, there was a long stretch of nothing. Dreamless sleep held him, black and heavy, until his consciousness stirred once again. Vague thoughts swam in his fog-filled head, and heavy eyelids refused to open as unseen minutes passed by. When his eyes finally opened, white fluorescent light from above stung his eyes and strained his vision, illuminating his new surroundings.
Where was he?
Blood pounded against his skull as he sat upright, a hand resting against his aching head.
His head. Reese ran his hands over his face, feeling the contour of his cheekbones and jaw, tender to the touch but still there. He took a sharp breath, his lungs stinging, but able to breathe. What the hell had happened? But now wasn’t the time, not when he was stuck in some strange, small place.
In the room, there were no windows, but heavy brick walls that choked out any semblance of time or space. It was empty, save for the toilet and deep metal sink that were both affixed to the walls. The concrete floor was barren.
What time was it? How long had she kept him in here?
His heart pounded against shaky ribs. Maybe she didn’t know he was awake yet. He listened for any sign of the doctor, but the clinic was near-silent. All that could be heard was the distant sound of a spray bottle, a sloshing bucket of water, and creaking wooden floors.
Reese pushed himself up from the cold floor, fighting against the traces of tranquilizer that made his body wobble and sway. Fingertips traced against the hard lead walls that closed around him, searching for some sign of weakness in the smooth brick and coarse grout. Unforgivingly cold concrete was solid beneath his feet as he walked along the walls of the room. An electric hum came from the fluorescent light above, like static filling his ears. The heavy-duty door in front of him was what held him inside. He pushed and pulled against it as quietly as he could, but it would not budge. His knuckles rapped against the round window lodged inside the door, the sound muffled and glass far too thick to break. He pushed against the slot in the door. It would only open from the outside.
He was stuck here, and nobody knew. Well, except for the doctor keeping him here, and the Scarlets that had helped her.
Before Tabitha came, her cousin had handed the tranquilizers over to the doctor like there was something wrong with him, wide-eyed with fear as they shoved the darts toward his jailer. Didn’t they realize that they should have been afraid of her? She was the one poisoning her son for years. She was the one who had him holed up in a basement all this time. She was the one everyone in town trusted with their health. A trust she wasn’t afraid to abuse.
Wasn’t it obvious that she was the dangerous one?
Wooden floorboards groaned outside the room, a creaking sound that grew louder as the doctor came closer. Reese pulled his hand away from the door and stood his ground in the center of the room.
Closer and closer she came, until he could see her face in the door’s round window, peering at him. Sweat beaded down her temple, and deep, tired lines were etched around her eyes. From the little he could see, a splash of faint red paint was streaked across her forehead. At least not too much time had passed, then.
“Reese,” the doctor said, eyeing him with concern, “how are you feeling?”
“How do you think?”
All this time, she had asked him how he was feeling, knowing what she was doing to him. He was always sick, and it was because of her. Something whirling and wrong rose in his chest at the thought, a suffocating cacophony of feelings that made him want to throw up, want to scream until his lungs burst, that made him want to cry out. He felt sick, and it was still because of her.
“What did I ever— how could you—” the words came pouring out Reese, any semblance of calm evaporating as his voice trembled, “why would you poison me?”
Memories between a mother and son raced through his mind, turned inside out and upside down with uncertainty. When he ran out on the soccer field and she cheered for him, had she already planned it then? What about the arguments between them, his teenage voice raised and raw as he told her to leave him alone, was that what made her do it? Hunched over a toilet bowl one late night, her reassuring hand on his back as he spewed until his stomach squeezed tight like a fist, how could she see that and keep doing this to him?
Did she even love him? Had she ever?
The doctor frowned, raising a dry and paint-stained hand to her forehead in exasperation.
“It wasn’t poison. Not really,” the doctor sighed, “if it was, you wouldn’t be here right now. Maybe I should have been more upfront with your medication, but I’m sure you’re beginning to piece some of it together now—”
“If you mean that you want to keep me locked up, then yeah, I’m definitely piecing it together,” Reese snapped, his head jerking away from her.
A tense silence filled the space between them.
“Do you remember what happened tonight?” The doctor asked, looking at her son for some sign of recognition or shared understanding he might have with her.
The silence deepened between them as echoes of the night came into focus, growing sharper in Reese’s mind. How close the ceiling was to his head, forcing him to hunch over as he searched for the doctor. Hallway walls closing in on him as prowled through the clinic. Wallpaper that tore with ease beneath his jagged nails. His heaving breaths as the bear tranquilizer pierced his ribcage, slowing him but not stopping him. Moving paintings that eagerly smeared the walls and floors as they followed him, every vile feeling he breathed into them coming to life, the sight of them spurring him further and further to—
“I don’t want you in there. But you became… something,” the doctor said, firm yet gentle, “You tried to kill me, and I can’t let that happen. Not to me, and not to anybody else.”
Those were supposed to be hallucinations. She told him they were hallucinations. When his neck was too long, or his hands looked wrong, or the room felt too small, all of it was real—
“If someone saw you like that,” the doctor sighed, “they wouldn’t understand. I am trying to keep you safe. To keep everyone safe.”
Was this what she really thought of him, all this time? He wouldn’t hurt anyone; he didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Just her.
Even if everything was real, this could still be some new control tactic of hers. If he wasn’t sick, then the new narrative had to be that no one would understand him. That this was all for his own good. If she could turn him against everyone, she could control him again, but then—why did they help her…?
Weren’t they in this together? How could they have learned the doc was poisoning him and been fine with that? Didn’t they want to get out, get away from her, before she hurt either one of them?
Something raw and wrong flared up deep inside him, like an infected wound that had always been there, buried beneath bandages that were now ripped away. He had tried to hide it in canvases, and she had tried to push it down with poison in places where no one could see it. Now it was torn open, and with it, all the rot that had festered inside. Flashes of heat shot throughout his body, like fire dancing across his skin.
“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind up, then.” Reese muttered bitterly, a low growl rumbling deep in his chest.
Reese paced inside the empty room, trying to stave off the anxiety mounting within, every part of him trembling as the walls closed in around him. Fluorescent light from above crept closer, coming down from the ceiling and thrumming on the back of his neck and top of his head. Muscles stretched and throbbed like a beating heart throughout his body.
Something was writhing beneath his skin, trying to push out from inside of him.
“I haven’t,” the doctor reassured.
“Then let me out.”
The room was getting smaller.
“I’d like to get to that point again,” the doctor said, “and maybe we can get there. But for now… I need you to trust me. I’ll get you some of your things—”
“Trust you?”
Strength raged within him as he slammed against the saferoom’s door, startling the doctor. She backed away from the door as he threw himself against the only obstacle between them. Taloned fists pounded against the solid frame again and again. The door shuddered against his weight, its many locks rattling with each slam, but it would not move.
“YOU WERE KILLING ME!”
There had to be a way out. Adrenaline pumped through his system, racing through his veins and pounding in muscles that stretched and shivered. Reese’s claws buried into the edges of the door, prying and pulling against the sturdy frame. Maybe he could tear it off its hinges. He planted his feet firmly into the solid ground as he pulled, his growing weight battling against the door’s own as his long nails sunk deeper into the frame.
Crack.
Fingernails snapped in half against the unyielding door and too-large hands lost their grip, slipping away from the doorframe. His fingers curled, talons burying into his palms as he recoiled. Lightning jolted up his arms, while a dull pain throbbed in each hand. Blood blossomed across his palms as he pounded against a door that would not open, and streaked red along a window that would not break.
“YOU’RE GOING TO KEEP ME IN HERE UNTIL I’M DEAD, IS THAT IT?”
“No,” the doctor’s words felt far away from this place, blurred and beyond understanding as she spoke, “…not what…love you…figure something…”
Fear tied tight around his throat. His lungs ached as he gasped for air in quick, shallow breaths. No one was coming for him. The only people who knew were the ones who put him in here. Stella and Kaneeka hadn’t seen him in months before yesterday, and they’d never see him again, if the doc had her way. Would they question why he wasn’t answering his texts anymore? Even if they did, would they fall for whatever lies the doc was going to tell them? They had their own lives to worry about, while he had been stuck here, all this time. It’d be so easy for them to just—
The fluorescent light burned against him now, and he realized it hadn’t gotten lower, but he had grown taller. He strained against the door like a cornered animal, his blood smearing the exit, until it hit him—
“Stop,” the doctor urged, struggling to control the thickness of her voice, “you’re not getting out. Not right now. So… stop hurting yourself trying.”
— this room wasn’t the only cage the doc had in mind for him. It was his body, too. Choking on his own burning nausea, his head swimming through fog every day, while his body felt as if it were on death’s door. All of that, from just a couple of pills. But he wasn’t sick, not yet. She couldn’t push pills down his throat if his head was a bloody pulp, and he was stronger than he’d ever thought if he could survive shotgun shells scrambling his face. Now was his chance. Use what you got to get what you need. He’d do what had to be done, do whatever he needed to fight for his own freedom, his own survival.
The doctor’s blue eyes met his own with an all too familiar look of concern. He’d always thought it was her worrying for him, but now, he wasn’t so sure. But maybe there was somebody who cared about him, maybe, buried deep down. Someone who would remember that he was her son, and open the door to stop him from doing what he was about to do.
It’d be the last thing she ever did.
“Then let me out… ‘mom.’” the bitter words strained against shaky breaths and his dry, tightening throat. It was getting harder to talk. His teeth and tongue felt strange, as if they were no longer the right size or shape to speak.
“I can’t do that.”
Reese wasn’t surprised. Biting back the flood of emotion roiling within him, he dragged a jagged nail against the wound in one of his hands. The gash in his hand, which had been knitting itself back together, bubbled and burst open again as it split beneath his talon.
“You can’t or won’t?” the artist questioned, burying a claw deeper into his wounded hand and watching for her reaction through inhuman eyes.
“I want to, Reese,” the doctor hesitated, a shaky sigh escaping her, “Christ, of course I want to... but I can’t. And you doing this is not going to change that.”
She would never let him out of here. He’d have to fight for his freedom.
Frantic energy vibrated in every cell of Reese’s body as he dabbed his fingers into the throbbing tear in his hand. He took a deep, trembling breath, and brushed his fingers across the walls of his cage. Sweeping streaks of red guided by clamoring thoughts and feelings, a slow build from fear into white-hot rage as his swipes grew wilder, sharper, blood stuttering across coarse walls.
This was different than painting, a new medium, and not the same solution as acrylics, but if it worked—
He was the paint, the palette, and the brush.
The motions came with clarity, festering feelings rising to the surface, meeting and smearing against the walls. He only had to give them shape.
Flesh peeled further and further back as he painted, the incision wet and red, as the artist searched for more pigment. It had started in the palms of his hands; the doctor’s shouts a blurred backdrop as the talon-tipped need for paint slowly stretched the incision down his hands, then his wrists, and finally to his shaking arms. Pain inside and out squirmed against the brick wall, writhing in anticipation of the artist’s escape. All they needed was a crack in the door, or for the doctor to slip, and then he’d be free.
He’d given up for so long, but now? He wouldn’t let her keep him here, sick and dying and alone. Not anymore.