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" He had failed. He had failed in every possible way with every possible choice he had ever made. Jack was still crazy. He was alone. And he was in a prison of his own design. The embarrassment and regret were choking him from the inside out, and all of a sudden he was screaming.
It started small, but it bubbled bigger every minute. Rising black and ugly through the veins in his feet, up and up, bursting his cells and filling his lungs, encasing itself around his bones and finally spilling from his eyes, tacky like tar. It tumbled from his mouth in a howl of rage so deep it shook his teeth. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.
It was a shout of pain so pure and hot, he could have sworn it was burning out his eyes.
And then, like a living nightmare, his howl roused the other patients to noisemaking. Like a battle cry. It soared above the symphony of their screams of confusion and fear, the banging on the doors and the weeping. Soared above all. A phoenix that burned and fell to ash before it could set alight the room at the very end of the hall where the dreammaker lived, imprisoned by his visions. Unanchored and unnoticed in the dark. "
― K. Ancrum , The Wicker King (The Wicker King, #1)
