Hybris didn’t even have a moment to gloat. She jumped into the act immediately, looking terrified as Erato’s coffee cup spilled its contents across the floor. “My sister!” Hybris shrieked. “Oh no, someone help me! She’s fainted again. I need to get her home. Please, can you help me?”
Several people jumped up to help lift Erato out of the chair. “Our car is just outside! Oh my goodness, she’s been so much better lately! She’ll be okay once I get her home, she just needs her pills! Oh thank you, you’re so kind,” she continued her litany of praise and worry until Erato was strapped into the passenger seat of her car, and they were on the road.
“Hahaha, idiots,” Hybris grinned. She switched on the radio and sang loudly, rolling the windows down as they headed out of the city.
Long Island was known for its asylums and sanatoriums. Most had long since closed, but the structures, hulking and dark against the sky, remained. Hybris was pleased that she had happened to find a nicely intact asylum, small and isolated, still full of all the old equipment. It hadn’t had power, but she had fixed that over the last few weeks, and now the place ran on a ramshackle generator. She actually liked the way it made the lights flicker, dim and dreary.
It was there she unloaded Erato into a rusty old wheelchair and pushed her inside. There was a large room which might have once been a sort of gathering place, but Hybris had kitted it out with most of the equipment she had found in the rooms. There was a gurney bed there, complete with intact leather straps, heavy duty and ready to hold Erato in place.
Of course getting the muse up there took some doing, since she was alone. But Hybris managed it, getting Erato’s arms and legs strapped down with plenty of time before the drugs wore off. Enough time for Hybris to go find a beer from her little fridge she had brought in, and recline in the wheelchair, waiting for Erato to wake up.