Asylum Bound by Analeigh Ford

No one leaves Ashford Asylum.
Or so I’ve been told.
I grew up near the asylum. My brother Kemper and I used to sneak through the woods to try and catch a glimpse of the inmates on the other side of its high brick walls. Sometimes we would see them flicker by, dressed all in ghostly white. Sometimes we would hear them scream.
But never once did we venture inside the walls.
Until now.
I hear voices one time at my parents’ funeral, and suddenly I’m no longer suited to exist in the outside world. I’m a danger to myself and others —or so they say. The only person I’m a danger to is my brother Kemper for putting me in here in the first place.
Or, at least, until I get to know the other inmates.
This isn’t your ordinary asylum, and these aren’t your ordinary patients.
Ashford isn’t the sort of place you’re sent to get better, it’s the sort of place you’re sent to be forgotten…something I’m frequently reminded of from the moment I arrive. Long abandoned by the families who put them in here and left to run amok by incompetent orderlies, this place has had to develop its own sort of hierarchy to keep from falling apart.
And it all starts with Price, Ives, and Kingsley—the self-proclaimed kings of Ashford Asylum as untouchable as they are cruel.
They think they can bully me into submission, force me to bow to their reign…but there’s one little problem.
I don’t run from chaos. I embrace it.
I’m no victim. I’ve dealt with bullies like them all my life. Anything they do to me, I’ll do ten times worse. Let them try to bruise me, I’ll break them.
There is one thing I didn’t count on, however. The longer I’m stuck here inside the asylum, the more I start to wonder what’s really going on with the inmates. Is it just me, or does Price’s shadow sometimes look like it has a forked tail? My roommate, Adelaide, kind of has a point about drinking her own blood. And Ives…why does everyone look so scared when he starts to lose his temper?
I should be focused on getting out of here, on proving I’m not insane like the rest of them before it’s too late. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to roll over and play dead in the meantime.
Especially when the voices are telling me otherwise.