Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

The song ended and an announcer’s sober voice filled the room. “Is your teen troubled? Acting out? Has he been arrested? Is she disruptive to your family?”

Jules froze.

A worried woman’s voice said, “My daughter was having trouble in school and running with the wrong crowd. She was failing all her classes and sneaking out at night. I was at my wit’s end, and then I heard about Blue Rock Academy, and it changed my life, our lives, forever….”

Shay sat in a corner. Rocking. Pretending that she didn’t see anything going on here at Halo Valley Security Hospital. Acting like she was just as out of it as most of the other deranged patients trapped inside these walls. She was on Side B, where all the real loonies, the scary ones, were housed, but she knew how to deal with them.

They thought she fit right in with Alice May, the mumbler who had wielded a machete against her husband, and Sergio who never said a word, but had been found nake

d, covered in blood, in a forest near Tillamook. The blood hadn’t been his, but that of an unidentified female who’d never been found. Orville, probably fifty, sat in the corner, sucked his thumb, and watched everyone with a weird look on his face. Someone said he’d burned down his own house, with his family inside. Shay didn’t know if any of it were true or not and she really didn’t care.

Oh, sure, she belonged here. Not! God, the authorities were ridiculous. She was way too smart to be confined in the asylum. Didn’t they know she was a genius? She looked at the psychos in this ward. Homicidal maniacs.

But she wasn’t scared.

She could handle herself.

The truth was that nothing scared her.

Nothing ever had.

She stared out the window, watched a rainstorm coming in from the coast, the trees with their new leaves bending in the wind, the sky a dismal iron gray.

Another prison; no better than Blue Rock Academy.

Rock, rock, rock.

She pretended to swing.

Keep up the movement; let them think you’re lost in your own little world. Don’t let them guess for a minute you have any idea what’s really happening.

“Time for your pills,” an apple-cheeked nurse said. Jesus, she was a pain. Her name tag read: Amy Dryer, L.P.N., and she was an idiot who droned on and on about her fiancé. If Shay heard Merlin’s name one more time, she thought she might get sick.

Dressed in purple today, pants and matching V-neck top that didn’t disguise how soft her hips were, the nurse offered Shay her sickeningly plastic smile along with the cup of pills, all pre-measured, all precisely counted out.

Shay didn’t look away from the window, only saw Nurse Amy’s pale reflection in the glass as she noted the first splatters of rain drizzling down the panes.

“Shaylee?” the nurse said, her voice upping an octave as she was starting to get really agitated.

Perfect!

Swallowing a smile, Shay kept rocking while one of the aides adjusted the music that played from hidden speakers. Today: country. Taylor Swift. Again.

“Please, honey,” Nurse Amy said, “it’s time.”

Shay didn’t respond.

“Shay!” Her name was spat now, Apple-Cheeks was really pissed off. Shay slowly turned her head and looked into the consternation on Nurse Amy’s face. She kept her own eyes blank, didn’t let the fire of hatred burning deep in her soul shine through, even managed a bit of drool to show on the side of her mouth.

“Didn’t you hear me, honey?”

Oh, I heard you, you cretin, I just didn’t want to answer.

“It’s time for your meds.”

Trying to appear dull, Shay accepted the cup of pills and slowly pretended to take them as Apple-Cheeks, frowning now, moved off to the next imbecile of a patient.

Idiot!