Owned by the Psychopath

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Chapter 6 Asthma

"Are you serious?"

Scarlett hissed under her breath, her eyes about to pop out of her head.

She stared at Celeste — the same girl who would scream her lungs out just from stepping on a cockroach — and couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Celeste was on the short side, with a soft, babyish face and big doe eyes that usually made her look like an innocent lop-eared rabbit.

But right now, that "rabbit" had a death grip on her arm and was staring at the half-open metal cargo door with something close to ferocity.

"Move it! The driver's coming back any second!"

Celeste didn't give Scarlett time to think. She shoved her hard from behind.

Scarlett had no time to react. She stumbled forward and face-planted into a pile of musty canvas bags and hard plastic suitcases in the most ungraceful way possible.

Celeste slipped in right after her, smooth as an eel.

The moment her heels cleared the door, a heavy, irritated set of footsteps came stomping from the front of the bus.

"Damn vending machine ate two of my dollars and gave me dishwater!"

The driver's raspy voice echoed across the empty platform, grumbling all the way.

Celeste and Scarlett froze in the dark, pressed tight against each other, barely daring to breathe.

The driver kicked a tire hard, then walked around to the side.

A rough, thick hand grabbed the edge of the cargo door.

The heavy metal door slammed shut and clicked locked.

The already dim storage compartment went completely, utterly black.

Then the bus engine roared to life, and the whole undercarriage started shaking like crazy.

They were moving.

"Oh my God..."

Scarlett let out a long, shaky breath in the darkness, her voice still trembling with panic.

She fumbled for her phone and lit up the screen.

The pale glow revealed just how much of a mess they both were.

Scarlett's hair looked like a bird's nest, with a smear of dirt across her cheek.

Celeste was curled up next to a giant red-and-white plaid woven bag, hugging her knees to her chest, her face dead white — but her eyes were burning bright.

"I cannot believe this." Scarlett leaned back against a hard suitcase, looking at Celeste's soft little face, and couldn't help cracking a smile.

"Celeste, you were absolutely unhinged back there. I always thought you were the kind of girl who just hides behind me. Turns out when you snap, you're even more reckless than I am."

Celeste blinked. The tension in her body finally started to ease.

"If I didn't snap, I'd be spending tomorrow morning stuck in a roadside diner kitchen, making friends with a bunch of greasy frying pans."

Scarlett stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"Fair enough! Screw that diner! Screw that leaky trailer! Screw that drunk stepdad!"

She punched the air in excitement and slammed her fist right into the metal panel above her head.

"Fuck," she hissed, sucking in a sharp breath.

"Keep it down," Celeste whispered, clamping a hand over her mouth and pointing at the ceiling.

"The passengers are right up there. You want them to hear us and tell the driver to pull over and dump us like stowaways?"

Scarlett pressed her lips together and nodded.

The tiny space reeked of diesel and burnt rubber — the kind of smell that could bring your dinner back up.

The suspension was absolutely terrible. Every time the bus hit a pothole, both of them bounced off the floor along with the luggage and came crashing back down.

This was not a comfortable ride by any stretch.

But strangely, Celeste felt at peace.

In this dark, smelly little box, there was no Quinn shrieking insults at her, no pile of bills that never got any smaller, no suffocating feeling that her whole life was already mapped out and going nowhere.

For the first time in eighteen years, she actually felt free.

But once the rush faded, exhaustion and fear began creeping in through the dark.

Scarlett turned off her screen to save the last ten-something percent of battery.

"Celeste." Scarlett's voice came out of the darkness.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think that place is actually like? The psychiatric facility?"

Celeste said nothing.

She'd asked herself that same question a hundred times.

"Three months, twenty thousand dollars — that's not pocket change. Back in our town, you could kill yourself hauling stuff at the chemical plant all year and still not make that much. Why would they pay two girls fresh out of high school that kind of money?"

The dense wall of fine print from the registration page flashed through her mind again.

[Personal injury. Irreversible psychological damage. Lifetime confidentiality.]

"I don't know. Maybe... maybe the patients there are really hard to deal with? Like, they bite people, or they get violent?"

"If all it took was a few bites and punches, this would be the easiest money ever."

"Do you remember that big guy, Tom, from the convenience store?"

"I ran into him on the street two days ago. He wasn't just skinny — he looked hollowed out. And I swear, I saw him walk past a fire hydrant, drop to his knees, and start bowing to it. He kept muttering, 'Don't look at me, don't look at me.'"

A chill ran straight up Celeste's spine. The hair on her arms stood on end.

"What did he see in there?" She pulled her knees tighter to her chest.

"Who knows. The place is on an island surrounded by water. No signal towers anywhere."

Scarlett sighed.

"Maybe it's not a psychiatric facility at all. Maybe it's some secret human experimentation base. Maybe we're going to be lab rats for a bunch of mad scientists."

"Stop, Scarlett."

Celeste was already the nervous type, and Scarlett's horror-movie theories were making her shiver.

"Okay. I'll stop."

Scarlett reached through the dark and found Celeste's ice-cold hand, squeezing it tight.

"Listen, Celeste. Whatever that place is — hell, madhouse, whatever — at least we're going in together. If something feels wrong, we run. We'll swim back if we have to. But I'm not leaving you behind. Not ever."

The warmth from Scarlett's hand slowly spread through her, and Celeste's heart, which had been sitting somewhere in her throat, finally settled back into her chest.

Right. At least they had each other.

"The bus takes about three hours to reach Darktide Harbor, with eight stops along the way. The port is the last one. We can't fall asleep, or we'll end up riding this thing all the way into the long-distance depot parking lot."

"Fall asleep? In this thing? It's shaking us like a pair of maracas."

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