The Warden’s Secret

I was comfortable in that silence. I wasn’t gonna say anything. I could tell my ward was disappointed—pursed lips and crossed arms. But I knew underneath that tough exterior, there was a soft spot for me. I could only hope that’d protect me from the higher-ups.

“What’s gotten into you?” she finally spoke, slow and controlled. “You know the protocol.”

I sat slumped over in the hallway of our medical wing. There was a three-inch bump on the edge of my forehead. Purple, painful, and bulging. Also self-inflicted. I grumbled, applying more pressure from the dripping ice pack.

“Nothing to say, huh?” She leaned in close. I could smell peppermint on her breath.

“I’m gonna have to make a report. It’d be easier… however, if you could explain what you were doing nose-deep in the lab’s pantry.”

Her eyes locked with mine. I looked away.

“I don’t want to assume.”

Turning back to my computer, I filled in the details on the incident report.

“Patient refuses to disclose cause of injury,” I muttered under my breath, hoping he would take the bait.

Peering over the ledge of my desk, I could see the bruise on his forehead taking on a sickly green hue.

I waited another moment for him to concede any more information before letting out an exaggerated sigh and rolling my chair away from the desk.

As I logged off, the screen returned to the current time: 3:17 a.m.

I bent down in front of him and felt the ice pack—not cool enough. Staving off the exhaustion of another long night, I decided the unexpected change in routine was better than another slow shift.

“Alright, get up,” I told him, deciding he wasn’t the only one who could be cryptic.

“Where are we going?” he said, finally tilting his chin up to face me.

“You’ll see,” I responded, already a couple of paces down the hallway.

She led me through a side door and down a long white hallway. My bump only continued to sting and… writhe, like something was trying to birth from it.

This was a place I didn’t recognize. A place I couldn’t comprehend existing in the center of our small facility. Yet my ward held a firm grip on my shoulder, pushing me forward. The silence between us was deafening.

After what felt like miles through this empty void, she opened another door—one built to meld perfectly with the end of the hallway. We stepped through.

“Judging by the ingredients you were tampering with,” my ward mused, “I suspect you were hoping for something like this.”

We were in a circular room of mirrored obsidian, and in the center ring, I saw an iridescent beetle atop a white pedestal, encased inside a glass box.

“Is that real?” The words escaped my mouth before I could stop myself.

I was too in shock. The steps required to make something like this were only in theory. Nobody I knew had been able to do it. Yet here one was, right under my nose.

She smiled at me.

“What do you think?”

To my surprise, his shock quickly morphed into sick pleasure.

“Exactly what I was hoping for,” he spoke softly, as if lost in a trance.

The whites of his eyes seemed to glow in the dimly lit room. I took a step back, feeling slightly apprehensive at my overly enthusiastic decision to show him this sector of the lab. It was strictly off-limits for a reason.

As if on cue, his head swiveled back to me and he opened his mouth to speak. Expecting English, I was taken aback when the sounds that poured out of his mouth were indecipherable. They left his lips with a guttural sound, almost serrated—as if they tore his vocal cords to produce.

Quicker than I could comprehend, I felt my limbs go numb with pins and needles.

As my vision began to darken, I watched the glass case open and the ancient seraph levitate toward his outstretched hand. It seemed I had been outwitted in my own sick game.

I held onto a solitary strand of hope. I had one last trick up my sleeve. The seraph would curse any being that tried to use its power on themselves. Here’s hoping that restriction stayed true.