Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
She’s not even using them! Torri thought resentfully, watching the older woman with the bedraggled hair stroke the two condiment bottles as though they were made of gold. In the past, this might have made her angry—now it just made her tired. It was just another day in hell—a hell she couldn’t escape.
After lunch was Art Therapy. Torri looked forward to that—it might be pathetic but it was the one bright spot in her day. She had always been good at two things—math and drawing. Since it was the more practical skill, math had won out—which was why she’d wound up working at a bank. But she had always wished she had more time to pursue art.
Well, here at St. Elizabeth’s, she had all the time she needed.
They weren’t allowed to have sharp writing instruments like pens or colored pencils but there were crayons and charcoal and pastels—the latter were Torri’s favorites.
She had a scene she’d been working on for a while now. It was a picture of the big maple tree in the corner of the recreation yard, all bedecked in its bright Fall colors. The picture was done on a thick cardboard canvas that could be framed if she liked the finished product, Torri thought. And so far, she really did.
The scene was sort of abstract—the vermillion and gold and crimson of the leaves smudged artfully together so that it almost looked like you were seeing the tree through a wavy pane of glass. They really stood out against the deep blue sky.
It was possibly the best thing she’d done since college—when she’d managed to sneak in a few art classes as electives between her business and finance courses. Torri had been working on it for weeks and had enjoyed every minute of creating it—it was the only joy she’d had since coming to St. Elizabeth’s.
Now she went to her art cubby—every patient had one—and pulled out the 11 by 7 canvas, intending to work on it some more. Though really, she was almost finished. She just needed to add a little to the shading under the tree and touch up the deep Autumnal blue of the sky—
Torri’s thoughts stopped dead as she stared at the canvas. To all her hard work, someone had added something.
A crude hangman’s noose had been drawn in brown crayon, hanging from the lowest limb of the tree.
Torri just stared at it. Who would do this? And why? She had worked so hard on this picture—it was the only joy she’d had for three months—the only thing that brought her any small measure of relief from the horrible monotony and the dreadful guilt—not to mention the utter terror that consumed her when it was time for lights out.
Who would do this, she wondered again?
“You better be careful with that,” a nasty voice hissed in her ear. “Caretakers see you with any kinda suicide shit like that, they’ll throw you in the rubber room or put you in restraints.”
Torri whirled around and found herself face-to-face with Tanya. Her old roommate wore her dishwater blonde hair in limp cornrows and had a ghastly collection of demonic tattoos all over her body. A gargoyle grinned from between her breasts and upper chest and she had a pentagram on her left cheek. 666—the mark of The Beast—was tattooed in blaring red and black right across her forehead and a tiny red devil lurked just above her right eyebrow with an evil smirk.
In addition to her tattoos, Tanya wore a vicious smile on her face—the smile of someone who enjoys ruining something beautiful that someone else has created, just because she can.
“Told ya, better be careful with that,” she sneered, pointing at the crudely drawn noose defacing Torri’s lovely picture. “They’ll send you to the loony bin if they see that. Oh wait, I forgot—you’re already there!”
She cackled at her own joke, sounding—to Torri’s ears, anyway—exactly like a witch.
A murderous rage came over Torri. She wanted to kill the evil little bitch standing there, sneering at her. This wasn’t the first time Tanya had done something nasty to her. The first night they’d shared a room, the other girl had actually left a used tampon in her bed. Torri hadn’t realized it was there until she crawled into bed and felt something wet squishing against her skin—disgusting.
Tanya played other nasty pranks too—like stuffing Torri’s spare scrubs in the toilet or peeing on her pillow—which the staff all turned a blind eye to, because they weren’t actual violence. It was one reason Torri had been so glad to get a room of her own, away from her evil roommate.
But all the other nastiness seemed to pale in comparison to this.
Torri felt her jaw clenching and her fingers itching to wrap themselves around Tanya’s throat. But no, she reminded herself—no violence. No matter how much she was provoked, she couldn’t give in.