Chapter Three （Group Therapy）

CHAPTER THREE (GROUP THERAPY)

HAZEL

"Time for group therapy," Rachel declared after my outburst. With that, she led me out of the closet-sized room and down the hall. With her two steps ahead, I took the opportunity to make a fist, slowly opening and closing my damaged left arm's hand in an attempt to help the ache I was ignoring.

The jacket hid the venom-kissed skin. I preferred covering it instead of explaining what it was a million times. Uncle Vernon, however, pushed me to show it off—use it as intimidation. Here's the phoenix that survived the basilisk.

After a moment, I shook out my hand before focusing back on what she had said about the test.

"What do you mean it said I was sane?" I asked. I answered everything the opposite way I would have, and I was completely, absolutely, one hundred percent sane . Which meant the test should have said insane, my opposite. I eyed the back of her head, considering bashing it in and leaving her in a puddle of her own blood. A murder would really calm me down. Not that I needed calming down, because I didn't have an anger problem…

"It also said you lied about pretty much the whole thing," she commented. I moved up beside her to get a look at her expression as we talked.

"It can't know that," I said with a little laugh. She was fucking with me—fucking with the new girl as her big hello to the inside. She eyed me for a moment, clearly working up to something.

"What did Doctor Stein do after I left the room?" Rachel asked as nonchalantly as possible. I smiled at her but said nothing. The weight of my father's lighter was at the bottom of my jacket pocket, reminding me of what Stein had done. She gave a soft sigh when I didn't respond.

"Would you believe me if I said I'm worried?"

"Should a man who makes you worried be running this place?" I asked back. Her head fell to the side, and she quickly straightened it with a grimace. My eyes kept noting brown spots on the wall as we walked down the hall. The little intake office wasn't the only place with blood stains. Actually, was there anywhere without blood stains?

I hadn't expected Verfallen to be this bad. The lights above us flickered, and my boots kept sticking to the floor as I walked.

I guess they had their work cut out for them trying to manage the patients. Everyone in here were the worst criminals the supernatural community had ever known. Locking them up in the same place was a recipe ripe for disaster.

"Doctor Stein…" Rachel started, trailing off with a frown. "He's odd." She stopped walking. My eyes darted around, looking at closed doors and checking down the halls—making sure no one was going to pop out.

"I've never seen him act like that," she admitted.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Interested in someone. He's hard to describe. There's nothing to fear until there's everything to fear."

"What does that mean?" I asked. Her eyes darted around.

"He's not normal," she whispered.

"Peculiar thing to take note of in a place like this," I said. Rachel shook her head sharply.

"No. The inmates are twisted. He's not twisted. He's exactly what he was born as, and it's not like you and me. He looks like a man," she said, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around my good wrist.

Most people felt cold to me because I ran very hot. Which was why I wasn't bothered by the air conditioner being broken. It felt nice, actually—like a warm bath.

Rachel felt like ice . I looked down at the fingers gripping me. They were a gray-green color. Her head began leaning to the side again, slowly falling at an uncomfortable angle as her eyes grew bigger and bigger.

Something was very wrong with her. Suddenly, I didn't want to be alone with her. She looked sick in a bad way. I imagined her coughing on me, black-green basilisk venom spraying from her mouth onto my body. My breathing picked up. I needed to calm down; that was ridiculous. She couldn't be infected with basilisk venom; she'd already be dead. Yet, I couldn't seem to calm myself entirely. I knew it was unlikely, but I kept seeing it. I kept feeling the pain I felt when I was a kid.

"The doctor is not a man," she whispered.

"What is he then?" I wanted her to let go of me. I wanted distance, but I also wanted information. I reminded myself again that whatever issue she had, it wasn't venom. And if it wasn't venom, it wasn't my concern.

"Sometimes, I wonder if he's a god," Rachel told me. I wanted to roll my eyes, but she was freaking me out too much. "A bored one looking for entertainment. One who doesn't play by mortal rules. I think you might finally be the thing he finds entertaining."

"I don't play by mortal rules either," I told her. The whites of her eyes were yellow and bloodshot, thick red veins pooling in the corners and reaching out like clawed hands to her pupils. There was a thin red circle around her irises.

Nurse Rachel was seriously sick in some way. I gently tried to pull my arm back from her grip. She only tightened her hold.

"You've seen cruel little boys get bored and pull the wings off flies?" I nodded slowly, unable to look away from her bulging eyes. "They have no concept of their cruelty. They only care to see what happens in a clinical way."

"The doctor is like that?" I asked slowly. She nodded slightly, and I saw the picture she painted; me pinned down with him looming above me, a shadowy face with round glasses reflecting the light, and a scalpel in his hand. "Let's see what happens," his apathetic voice would say, sending a chill down my spine. And all my begging, writhing, and screaming would do nothing for him. It would all just be noted in the file: "She screams louder when I do this…"

"And that's when he's bored ," Nurse Rachel added. The question was on the tip of my tongue—what would he do when he's not bored—but we were suddenly interrupted by a southern belle with a smile that had to hurt. She shuffled over on her kitten heels, failing to lift the soles off the floor. The scraping sound was uncomfortable across dirty linoleum tiles, and I found myself cringing.

She had blond hair twisted in an updo and gray sprouting from her roots. Around her neck was a long silver chain with a jeweled pentagram pendant hanging from it. It would be easy to strangle her with it. Her eyes would bug as the metal cut into her throat. Her tongue would wiggle around in her open mouth as if it could harvest air directly into her cut-off lungs. I controlled the urge to lunge at her. I tried not to kill people before they posed a threat—even if it was far more therapeutic than whatever this group therapy would entail.

"You must be our newest patient! I'm Doreen." Her voice was as sweet as Splenda. "Rachel, what on Earth are you doing?" she asked, seeing her gripping my arm. Rachel pulled it back quickly. There were white indents where her frigid fingers had held me.

" They aren't coming to group therapy today, are they?" Rachel asked. Doreen's smile twitched.

"Seems not," Doreen said through her teeth, struggling to keep smiling.

"Less bodies to clean during the day shift then," Rachel said with a sigh before turning around and leaving. I watched her go, feeling unsatisfied with our conversation. There was more she wanted to say.

"In a circle!" Doreen snapped cheerfully to the group. There was a threatening bite to her words.

"Who are they ?" I asked Doreen.

"Oh hun, don't worry about that now." She walked off—well, shuffled.

"Hey there!" someone chirped behind me, right next to my shoulder. My forged instincts kicked in and I reached under my skirt.

"Woah, the new girl is going to show me something!" he said in excitement. I pulled out the knife I'd hidden there. "That's not what I was hoping to see." I twisted in place, and then I sunk the blade in his gut, grabbing hold of his shoulder so he wouldn't get away as I continued to stab to my heart's content. I could feel the stress melting away as the sloppy, wet noises hit my ears. With a relaxed sigh, I efficiently sliced his throat and smiled. Blood sprinkled on my face.

I looked down at the person I'd stabbed. He was a very polite-looking guy with his hair parted down the middle. Clutched in his fist was a "Welcome to Verfallen" picture drawn in crayons. It wasn't very good.

"Whoops," I commented, giving him a little kick to see if he was still with us.

"Who gave you a knife?" Doreen chided, shuffling over. I flung the knife in a random direction, and it slid behind a TV station in the corner. She huffed while shuffling back to her seat, pretending the knife no longer existed.

"Clean up," Doreen sighed into a walkie-talkie. Then, she rolled her eyes and settled into her chair, undisturbed by the person bleeding out beside me. Well, if she wasn't making a big deal of it, neither would I. I felt better already. I shook myself out, smiled, and looked around.

I did a quick inventory. There were twenty-five patients here—half already sitting in their chairs, the other half struggling to carry their chairs to the forming circle. Officially, there were five hundred and twenty-two inmates at Verfallen Asylum. The worst of the worst. The baddest of bad.

I decided then and there that what I needed while dealing with the biggest event of my life was some self-care. I'd thought I might so I had came prepared. I pulled out a folded piece of paper from the top of my dress before I snatched Doreen's clipboard from her.

"Hey!" she snapped. I ran over and grabbed a fallen crayon from the guy I killed and then handed it all off to one of the other inmates in the circle. She stared at my paper, reading the columns.

"Please fill that out," I said with a friendly smile.

Sometimes self-care was sheet masks and the newest Korean beauty product on the market. And sometimes, it was slowly killing off the other patients in group therapy. I pointed at the column names as I spoke.

"Name, room number, preferred way to die, and least preferred way to die. Best to cover all the bases." She began filling in the spots without question. I pulled out a sheet of gold star stickers. I slipped one on the back of her hand when she finished and passed it along.

As she stared at the sticker, everyone else perked up.

"I want a sticker!" a man with a strange hairdo yelled. He looked like Elvis, with his hair slicked back and molded.

"Then wait your turn and fill out the sheet." I glared at him, and he settled into his chair, shooting awful looks at everyone who got a gold star before him. I followed the clipboard around, reading over everyone's writing as Doreen complained and tried to start her therapy while ignoring me.

I plucked out a second sheet of stickers and ripped off one that said awesome . I put it next to the man's least preferred way to die. This enraged Elvis even more. He ripped the clipboard from the guy's hand.

"What does that mean?" he asked, jabbing the awesome sticker.

"Do you want one?" I asked. He nodded quickly.

"Well, write down your preferred murder method." He scribbled between your thighs . "Interesting." Not . "Now, fill out your least preferred way to die. Be honest," I encouraged. He scribbled in drowning, then looked up at me with excitement.

"Do I get a sticker?" I gave him the gold star, and he frowned. "What about the other one?"

"I'm afraid not," I said, snatching the clipboard up and handing it to the next person.

"Why did he get a sticker!"

"Because he listed brain eating as his least preferred way to die. I'm picturing that scene from that one movie, where the cannibal has cracked open someone's skull and eats it? God, that just sounds so funny. I've never done that."

"Wait, so I got an awesome sticker because I was creative?" The brain-eating guy perked up.

"You got the sticker because you'll be one of the first ones I kill. I love new experiences."

"Wait, that's my least preferred way to die!" He seemed nonplussed by the threat of murder and entirely concerned about the means.

"You shouldn't have written something so interesting," I explained. The person currently filling out the sheet immediately began scribbling over everything they'd put. Everyone else who had filled out the form started shouting they needed to see the clipboard again. Doreen finally had enough. She got out of her chair, clicking the walkie-talkie.

"That's it! You're going to solitary!"

I snatched the clipboard up, ripped off my paper, and gave the clipboard back to her.

"I'm sorry," I said. Quickly, I grabbed a chair and joined the pack, trying to blend in. Doreen groaned and sighed at the same time. The combination together made her sound like a dying animal. Then, she shuffled back to her chair and sat down. I folded my paper and slipped it back into the top of my dress. After a moment of blankly staring at the wall, Doreen smiled at it. Was she okay?

"We hardly ever get new patients…" Doreen trailed off, looking blankly at the wall still. Another inmate tried to sit in his chair, but fell on the floor instead, where he lay on his belly sighing against the floor. Guess it was enough to make him give up.

"Don't mind the zombies," a small woman said from her chair beside mine. Her hair was a dark shade of purple and hung limply, covering most of her face. Wide eyes peeked out from the strands. There were dark circles under her eyes.

"I'm Coral, by the way. A sea witch." Witches were people I tried not to fuck with. Some were harmless, some could perform frightening magic. If she was here, I was betting on the latter.

Her eyes latched on to my long red hair, and she reached for it. My death glare convinced her to pull her hand back before touching me.

"Zombies are not real," I said, eyeing her judgmentally. She laughed, which broke Doreen from her staring contest with the wall.

"We always get such pretty girls here," she said, her smile lopsided. Was her skin off-color, the same as Rachel's? "You look kind of like someone else here. Are y'all related?" I lost interest.

I looked around the circle, determining how I might kill each person if we got into a fight right this moment. The demon girl with red eyes and boots… I think I'd prefer setting her on fire. That was always a good one. Doreen? She made it so easy with the necklace—I wouldn't be able to resist that.

My daydreams halted when two swivel doors slammed open.

"Oh fuck, is it them ?" someone rasped, cringing into the chair so hard, they might have melted into it. The scraping of chairs filled the room, everyone in the circle trying to gain a few inches from the open doors. Their breathing collectively picked up, and Doreen began tugging on her ear lobe nervously. The immediate panic that washed over the room had me on edge. I felt ready to pounce up and enter a fight, the hairs on my arms raising in alarm.

The jangle of metal keys and the shuffle of feet came from the open doorway.

"Try to move faster," someone said blankly. I knew that apathetic voice already. It was hard to forget.

"You try," another man panted, "getting up and walking," more heavy breathing, "after a doctor visit with you." That sounded ominous and dealt with the man of the hour—Zero, or as the inmates knew him, the nefarious Doctor Stein.

Zero dragged a man in an orange jumpsuit through the open doors. The man's feet attempted to find the floor without much success as he was pulled along. Everyone seemed startled by the appearance of these two.

"Doctor Stein! You hardly ever come up here!" Doreen barked in shock.

The man Zero carried was tall with short black hair, cow-licked in every direction. His dark eyes swiveled around the room and then landed on me. The hairs on the back of my neck lifted as his gaze lingered.

I glared at him, and his mouth split open in a big smile. Tattoos were on a lot of his exposed skin. His short-sleeves ended, and tattoos spilled out. They crawled up his neck and even bled down to his knuckles, where letters were etched into his fingers. I couldn't read what they said.

The orange prison outfit and neck tattoos should have raised some red flags, but somehow, his pearly whites made him feel harmless, like an overexcited dog more than a Verfallen inmate.

"Look Gonzo, you made it back for group therapy," Zero deadpanned before dropping him in the chair directly across from me.

"Yay," Gonzo said sarcastically.

"Would be nice to hear a thank you, doctor . No one ever thanks me. It's always just thrashing and screaming. Trembling, crying…"

"What am I supposed to be thanking you for exactly?" Gonzo asked. Whatever Zero had done to him had been terrible. He was shaking all over, sweat was popping on his forehead, and his eyes sometimes started to roll back in his head. There was also dried vomit on his shirt.

"You'll see. You took your shots well. You were a good boy, Gonzo." Everyone's eyes bugged, and Gonzo sounded like he was choking on his own spit.

"Can you fucking stop that?" Gonzo snapped.

"Which part?" Zero asked.

"Calling me a… good boy," he grumbled, eyeing everyone eavesdropping. "It makes me think you're getting off on this." This tickled someone in the circle to no end. He started to laugh until tears sprung to his eyes.

"I've heard positive reinforcement works well. You don't like it?" Zero asked.

"No," he gritted out while smiling meanly.

"But you would like it if I got off on your experiments?" Zero asked, and Gonzo blanched.

"I'm going to kill you," Gonzo said.

"I'd love for you to try. Gruesome pain really lifts my spirits," Zero responded apathetically.

Zero pushed his glasses up his nose, and then his gaze snapped to me. I squirmed as his attention dipped to my clothes. Had he picked them out? He was looking right at them as if he had something to do with them.

Zero began walking towards me. My back pressed against my chair as he got closer. Then, at the last moment, he walked past me, grabbed the body I'd left on the ground, and began dragging it out of the room.

"He'll be a zombie now too," Coral whispered beside me.

"There's no such thing as zombies," I whispered back. She laughed again. Everyone else remained completely silent, watching Zero move across the room, dragging a body by the wrist.

Finally, he went back out the swivel doors, and everyone turned back around to the circle.

"Who fucks who?" a burly guy asked Gonzo. There was a moment when it appeared Gonzo was going to rip the man in two, but then he swallowed down the anger and smiled.

"That's for me to know and you to find out." Gonzo winked at me like I had been the one to ask. People who looked harmless, despite all the evidence they weren't, were always the most devious. It was best to steer clear. I didn't want unnecessary complications.

Though, I did wonder what Gonzo was. He could be a shifter; he sure was big enough to be one. Gonzo smiled wider as I kept eyeing him.

"Hazel, since it's your first group therapy, I'm going to explain to everyone why you're here." Doreen looked down at her empty clipboard and frowned.

"Guess that will remain a mystery," Gonzo quipped before he nearly fell from his chair. "Shit," he hissed, regaining his balance. What was going on with him? I needed to stop looking at him. I wasn't here to look at smiling conundrums who wanted to flirt and couldn't handle sitting in a chair. I was here to kill my brother.

I cleared my throat, and everyone turned in near unison to look at me. Did they all have gray skin? It had to be the lighting.

I worked the words over, trying to figure out how to ask about Baz without making it obvious I was looking for him.

"I'm a phoenix," I admitted reluctantly. There was a long, drawn-out moment of silence where several people blinked one eye at a time at me.

"You're from Phoenix?" someone finally asked.

"No—" I sighed.

"Can you really cook an egg on the sidewalk in Arizona?" someone else asked. I tried to remember what name they wrote down on my paper so I could get to them faster.

Gonzo suddenly doubled over, groaning in pain. His muscles expanded and rippled, threatening to split the skin keeping him together.

When he looked up, his eyes were glowing yellow, twin lights of power. The people in the seats next to him looked around for help as they leaned away from him.

"What's happening?" Doreen gasped.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Gonzo gritted out. "I'm shifting," he said in shock. Everyone in the circle went still, their eyes widening and zeroing in on Gonzo with pointed interest.

"Gonzo, stop that right now!" Doreen yelled frantically, like he was a dog humping the couch. "You need to stop, or we'll call Doctor Stein back," Doreen threatened. Gonzo leaned back and laughed.

"Invite him up then," he hissed through his teeth. The teeth kept growing, far too big and numerous for his mouth. Then, they quickly receded. Something moved under his skin, pressing against his forearms like it wanted out.

Gonzo's eyes suddenly snapped back to me, and he grimaced. In the next moment, he fell to his knees, struggling and fighting until he was a pool of sweat but no longer shifting uncontrollably. It looked painful. Everyone knew you weren't supposed to stop a shift unless you wanted to suffer. So why had he?

"I'm really going to fucking kill Stein," Gonzo said with an exhausted voice. While most everyone was freaking out, a few of the shifters leaned in close to each other and began whispering.

Suddenly, the brawniest shifter in the circle stood on a chair and nearly started a riot.

"Shifters are going to rise! Doctor Stein's suppressant can be reversed!"

The demon girl with red eyes suddenly stood up on her chair and started screaming at the shifter.

"Fuck Rabids! Long live Infernals!" Other demons rose to their feet. I leaned back as demons and shifters began fist-fighting each other. Doreen army-crawled towards the exit, stringing together slurs that she hissed into her walkie-talkie.

"Hex never gets in these brawls. You aren't a witch, are you?" Coral asked beside me.

Rabids, Infernals, Hex—Fuck. This place had gangs. And, apparently, Zero had invented a way to suppress certain powers, which was… disturbing. As far as I knew, that wasn't possible. Adding genius at biological manipulation to the list of his other charming traits didn't help my growing paranoia.