The monster roared louder, ripped at her own hair, her clothes, tore her shirt, scratched deep red welts into her own chest.
Her voice became a furious, deep growl.
Her vision sharpened as colors brightened and sound intensified.
She heard footsteps rushing down the stairs, coming to see what all the commotion was about.
She heard the mad patter of rain on the roof, the crack of thunder, the sound of Eric sleeping softly in his bed, the squeak of the metal wheels going round and round in the basement.
She heard it all.
She felt it all.
And she understood, just then, what it meant to be a god. The voices of the gods who spoke to her, told her what to do, guided her every day were just her own self all along.
And now she didn’t need the gods.
She knew what must be done.
It was the only thing left to do.
She let out another roar, stepped around Iris moaning on the floor, went down the hall to the procedure room. She smashed the ECT machine on the concrete floor. Pulled bottles and vials of medicine out of the cabinet and threw them down, stomping on the broken glass and spilled liquid, dancing her own strange monster dance.
No more, no more, no more.
“Violet?” Gran was there in the doorway, hair mussed from sleep, clothes thrown quickly on.
Sal lurked behind her, a great gargoyle in his blue scrubs, a man solid as stone.
“What the—” His voice trailed off.
Gran scanned the scene, saw the smashed electric-shock box, the glass bottles and vials of medicine crushed in damp puddles.
Sal took a step toward Vi.
Gran put up her hand in a stop gesture. “You may go, Sal.”
“But, Dr. Hildreth—”
“I can control my granddaughter on my own. Leave us.”
“But—”
“Don’t come down here again. And keep the rest of the staff away too.” Her I’m the boss voice, edgy as a knife, the words annunciated with perfect clarity, perfect calm.
Sal slipped away looking regretful, as if rounding up an out-of-control teenage girl would have made his night.
Gran took a step closer to Vi, her shoes loud on the cement floor. Click clack, like the hooves of an animal. A monster.
“I remember,” Vi said.
The worst sort of monster: the kind who hid in plain sight.
“What is it you think you remember, Violet?”
“I remember everything.”
“Do you?” There it was, that sly forced smile, which wasn’t really a smile all, just a loose facsimile of one. It was all wrong. Grotesque, even.
“I remember the sound of your shoes on the floor down here. Clip-clop, clip-clop. How I would wait for you to come, watching for that little window to light up, for you to pull back the cover and look in at me. How sometimes, you’d bring me candy. And sometimes, you’d give me shocks, shots, put me into the cold tub and leave me there for hours.”
It was all coming back. And the rage was building. Rage not just over what had been done to her, but over what had been done to the others.
“And it wasn’t only me you did this to. It was Iris. It was all the others.”
Gran said nothing, just stood, playing with something in her hand.
What did she have?
A needle full of tranquilizer? Something to manage the monster back into submission? An amnesia drug of some kind?