The Pawn and The Puppet (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 1)

My father’s face as he towers over me.

The square jaw. The dark tousled hair. His signature brown leather jacket. A boar of a man—a giant to a child.

Blood and sweat drip down across his temples from his hairline. He strikes fear in me, the way the sun rises at dawn and sets at dusk.

And it’s a flash of movement. The back of his hand. A boot plunging into my ribs. His angry tears as he screams in my face. That club violently swinging through the air as it makes contact with the back of my head.

Nightmares have come and gone since I was little. But after Jack took a club to the back of my head, they seemed to linger like an unwanted illness.

~

When I asked Suseas about the theory of talking to the patients, asking them about their trauma, about their lives—she invited me to work with Chekiss as a reminder that I can’t get through to anyone. It’s to show me the fatality of working here. That no matter what, there will always be a sense of hopelessness.

I relax into a metal-framed chair parallel to Chekiss’s bed. With a single deep breath in, I let my eyes study his features. Looking into his face is like staring into the depths of the vast sea—dark within its abyss and harboring broken ships upon its ocean floor. His head is anchored off to the side, midnight-green eyes unoccupied yet polluted with worry about the next treatment. He’s in his early fifties, although his pencil-thin frame suggests that of a teenage boy.

I’m not entirely sure what to say. I only know the bare minimum about him. He killed his wife and daughter. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.

I once found a mouse caught in a trap in Scarlett’s attic. It had been there for days, starving and slowly becoming too weak to stand. When I set it free from the trap, it didn’t move, didn’t try to run to go searching for its next meal. It blinked with a hopelessness that possessed its tiny body, and not even the honey-sweet taste of freedom was enough to motivate its tiny legs to scurry across the wooden floor.

Chekiss’s legs are caught in the same trap. Kindred souls, I think. I wonder what would happen if I were to set him free.

“My name’s Skylenna.” I slowly balance my hand in the air for him to shake. He watches it like a dog, hesitant to sniff. Then, becomes mildly uninterested and looks away.

The stream of Suseas’s stare washes over me like an ice-cold shower.

What could I possibly say right now that could separate me from the others?

“It’s cold in here,” I say, rubbing my hands over the backs of my arms. “Is it always like this here?”

The only sign of life is his chest operating like the gentle rhythm of waves in the sea. In and out. In and out.

“Of course it is.” I sigh. “Hell has a sense of humor.”

His eyes awaken, and they flicker over to me. Not coming close to connecting to mine, but hovering over my hands clasped in my lap. The soft glow from the gas lamp illuminates the raised freckles scattered over his nose and cheeks.

I don’t let the sudden tickle of hope distract me. There’s a gentle river of intuition coursing through my veins, splashing along the walls of my thoughts, guiding me through the doubt that he will ever see me. The real me. The me that has come to his aid.

“When I saw you drowning in that room… I was waiting for a strike of anger. A fit of fury to emerge from you.”

His focus leaves me again, trailing off to an empty space in the room.

“But I saw nothing. And I think that can only mean one thing. I think that can only mean you believe you are deserving of this treatment. This pain.”

Like a reflection of water in a pond, I see Chekiss gasping for air, cold water and saliva pouring from his weak body. And my heart shudders for him.

“And I know what you did to your wife and child. Anyone who could do something so horrid must be soulless—right? Feel not even a sliver of remorse?”

His unkept eyebrow twitches.

“If that were the case, then why would you believe you were deserving of this suffering? Unless—”

A long whine is released from the opening door.

“Miss Ambrose?” Suseas silently signals for me to exit the room and join her elsewhere. I look back at Chekiss before the door closes, and to my surprise, he meets my eyes expectantly, like he wanted me to finish my sentence.

Day after day, I come back. I sit down in front of him. I make casual conversation while I take his vitals and follow up with questions after daily treatments. I talk about the food, the treatments, the weather. He doesn’t even look my way. Every now and then, he huffs. I found it to be his way of letting me know he’s ready for sleep or just wants to be alone again. He struggles to breathe normally most of the time, the drownings taking their toll on his lungs. His lips—a light tint of blue. His eyes—collecting dark shadows.

Even in a controlled setting, drowning someone breaks away pieces of their psyche, of their life source. I find ways to get creative with his responses. As soon as I came up with the first form of communication, I could see it in the way he straightened his back, his algae-colored eyes became focused on me, and he watched carefully, full of curiosity. I invented a tapping game. Every time I talked about something he agreed with, he would tap my hand. It was kind of fun, like playing with a child.

Sometimes it feels like they hire mentally unstable people to perform mentally unstable punishments on patients. Tap.

Meridei and Belinda seem like they actually enjoy inflicting pain onto patients.

Double tap.

I bet you miss your old life. Nothing. That tells me much.

We tried a numbers game too. I’d ask him a question, and he would hold up fingers to tell me how much of what I asked.

How old are you? Five fingers on one side, two on the other.

How many years have you been locked in this asylum? Twenty.

You’ve been locked up since you were thirty-two years old? Tap.

After three and a half weeks, I know I have to dig deeper, search for the words he’s waiting for me to say. I vigilantly keep track of the details he allows me to know. Writing them in my hand-sized notebook that I keep tucked away in the pocket of my dress.

When I walk the halls of the asylum, I hear whispers and bouts of laughter, all directed at me. I’m frowned upon for attempting to communicate on a personal level with Chekiss. They gawk at me like a child with a deformity. But I’ve practiced ways to ignore them. I visualize myself entering the thirteenth room, placing each step cautiously, wondering if that room knows that I aim my sights toward its opening.

But I must get through Chekiss first. If I’m to ever be taken seriously, if they are ever to take my word for gospel, it must start here.

I hold out a bowl of fruit, examining the colors that blossom within its perimeter. Strawberries, apples, and bananas. Chekiss shakes his head. Trying to get him to eat is like trying to break a tree trunk with your bare hands.

I’m tired of watching the orderlies shove a tube down his throat to force-feed him raw eggs.

I shrug. “All is well. I really brought it for me—they don’t like women eating around here. This is the only way I can get away with it.” It’s not entirely a lie. I’m starving.

Chekiss winces, furrowing his brow at something I said.

I set a banana slice on the tip of my tongue, pushing it against the roof of my mouth, its creamy sweetness filling my tastebuds with delight.

“I’m ready to finish our conversation if you are,” I say.

He watches me snag a strawberry curiously.

“Our first conversation. I told you that I sensed you believe you deserve what you’re getting in here.”

He pauses to remember, then nods once, his eyes droop, the color like a cluster of seaweed. His fingers scratch on the side of his head, fingernails digging through his short gray hair.

“If you were truly a monster… you would have fits of anger during your treatments. You wouldn’t feel sorrow for what you’ve done. And you do, don’t you? Feel sorrow for what happened to them.” I hold an apple slice over my lips, waiting for his reaction before I take a bite.

He stares at me, as solid as concrete, as focused as a lion on the hunt.

I nod, understanding. “They think I’m mad—the other conformists. They laugh at me for wanting to spend my time talking to you. But I ignore them… Because I have a theory. An idea I’m not ready to give up on yet.”

Chekiss reaches his hand into the bowl and scoops a handful of fruit into the palm of his hand, taking a piece at a time into his mouth. I resist the urge to smile at this small feat.

“You loved them. You—still love them, don’t you? And maybe you didn’t mean to hurt them. Maybe it was an accident. I can’t seem to let go of this idea. I can’t move on until I know the truth,” I say slowly. Carrying my heavy notions and tossing them into his lap.

“It wasn’t an accident.” Thunder without sound. A whip of energy bolting through my veins.

He. Speaks.

Like the crunching of dead leaves and the echoes of a growling bear, Chekiss speaks.

My pulse races under the skin of my throat, like tiny fireworks igniting over my pores. I can’t blink. I can’t even close my mouth.

“You didn’t want them to drown me,” he says, looking off to a distant memory. “When they brought you to see me in treatment. You wanted it to stop.”

I think back to my queasy stomach. Focusing on remaining perfectly still while Chekiss thrashed about like a wet, rabid animal.

I tap his hand twice. I can’t answer. I know I’m being watched.

He closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh, like, after many decades, he can finally breathe. “I do still love them. But I meant to kill them, and I’d do it again.”

“You meant to?” I say with an unhinged jaw.

Chekiss tells me that the lady-doll regimen had driven his wife and daughter mad. The obsession with starvation and sinless skin was all-consuming. It was like a virus in their brains, chewing away at them. They became erratic in public, vomiting up small bits of food in the streets to show their self-control and keep their figures intact. The societal standards had ruined them. And all Chekiss saw were shells of the people they once were. It was only a matter of moments before their behavior granted them their own rooms in the asylum. It’s not unheard of—women and children often lose their wits and are forced out of society because their chaotic presence makes them a problem.

So, he granted them a quick death. Smothered them with a pillow, then took their bodies to the Dellilian Castle. He stripped them down so that the world could see what their rules had done to his family.

“So if you hadn’t done anything… They’d be where you are now. Enduring this—fate.” The cold, clammy hands of despair grip my shoulders. He protected them from enduring this hell.

I glance back at the window and not only see Suseas’s confused giant eyes but also Meridei and a few other people I haven’t met yet.

Chekiss offers a tight smile. “I hope you were worth my silence and my truth. They won’t take this lightly.”

I start to stand up, then stop myself abruptly. “Wait,” I whisper. “There’s something else… Do you know what’s in the thirteenth room, at the end of the hallway?” His small, supportive smile is suddenly replaced with a slight fog of fear, which sifts its way into my chest.

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Please.”

He nods in defeat. “I’ve only heard rumors.”

I urge him to go on with my pleading eyes.

“I heard there is a patient in there. This patient is feared by the council. They’re the most dangerous person here.” I hear the voices outside grow in volume and quiver for him to talk a little faster. “There used to be a conformist here named Sern, and she was their primary. The rumor is, she was paralyzed from the neck down by the hands of her patient. Of course, healers could fix her, but her mind never recovered. She’s now in this building as a patient, not in our department, but somewhere less intense.”

Chills fall over my back. If that rumor is real, I definitely want to know who sleeps in that room every night.