THE ADJUSTERS

46

Awake

“How are we doing today, sweetie?”

I startle at the odd lilt in Doctor Agnieska’s voice. Of course, any startling is in my head. My body remains motionless, subdued by the drugs.

Doctor Agnieska is almost always cheerful when she comes in for her twice-a-week visits, but today her voice is strained. Like she is hiding something, a reticence, and underneath that reticence, a fear. You get good at picking things up from voices when you can’t see, can’t move, can’t talk. Doctor Agnieska is scared. I don’t know why she’s scared, and while that ignorance should translate into a fear of my own, the bliss that envelops me ensures that all I feel is an intellectual, almost academic, apprehension.

My name is Jennifer Hansen, and I spend my days with my body knocked out but my mind free to wander. Doctor Agnieska is the one doctor who comes in and checks up on me regularly.

The way she touches me now, the way she seems to not go through the motions she usually goes through, checking my body for stiffness, my muscles, my joints, surprises me. This is not the usual protocol, not even for those times when she’s prepping me up for one of that pig Gutierrez’s little sex parties. I wonder what sort of new game the Pig has found for me.

There are other people in the room. I was concentrating on what Doctor Agnieska was doing so hard that I missed it at first. But the sound of the room is different, the smell. I listen carefully. I’m still in my bliss cloud, and so this is more intellectual curiosity than anything else. It is not the Pig, but it is a man, one that I do not recognize. His voice is deep. He sounds like a doctor, and speaks with Doctor Agnieska like an equal, and in fact, she seems to defer to him. There is another woman in the room, a nurse, one that takes care of me once in a while. And then I feel it, the feeling of being observed, almost caressed. Sanderson, the nurse. The one bright spot in this place aside from the drugs.

Richard Sanderson. He’s been taking care of me lately, almost exclusively. He talks to me, washes me, keeps me company. Once in a while, he will slide me into a wheelchair and bring me out to the recreation room where I can sit and listen to life around me—the other patients, the nurses, the television. I cannot interact with any of them, but I can sit and soak it all in. Sanderson also has taken to reading to me, which I appreciate more than I can put into words. Though he reads to me from whichever book he is currently reading, and he tends to gravitate towards mainstream thriller novels. That’s fine, of course, but they are abysmally predictable.

So Sanderson is here as well. What’s going on?

As if she heard me, Doctor Agnieska leans over me—I feel her breath on my cheek—and tells me softly, “We’re going to wake you up now, sweetie.”

I want to tell her, don’t do that. I know what’s going to happen. Fuck, she knows what’s going to happen. She’s seen it. My body will take over, following Biff’s instructions to act like a complete slut. But why would she be waking me up, with others around? Is this some kind of test? Some kind of humiliation the Pig’s decided to unleash?

As she fumbles with the equipment around my bed, the male doctor’s voice rings out, strong, self-assured, demanding. “What are you doing?” he asks Agnieska.

I recognize him now. I think he’s called Dante. Doctor Dante. I’ve heard him once or twice in the recreation room when I was out there.

I can practically hear Agnieska cower at Dante’s tone of voice. Agnieska does not seem to deal well with male authority. As I said, you pick up a lot when all you do is sit back and process information. I swear I expect her to reply that’s what we usually do when we wake her up. But all she says is, “Mixing in saline with the cocktail we have her on. Standard protocol.”

Dante snorts.

Agnieska tries to justify herself. “Based on her condition, this strikes me as the best way to bring her out—slowly, so that she doesn’t hurt herself.”

“That’d be reasonable if we were waking her up completely cold turkey. But we’re not, right? Come on, let’s do this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He sounds assured.

I pick up on Agnieska’s nervousness. And also on Sanderson’s nervousness. Why would he be nervous? Is he involved in this? And what does Dante mean by not waking me up completely cold turkey?

“Sanderson,” says Dante, “give me a vial of 300 A.”

“Yes, Doctor.” There is some shuffling on my right side.

“Are you sure?” Agnieska repeats, sounding worried. “You were the one that said that what she had—”

“Her blood work is similar enough,” replies Dante in a tone that warrants no discussion.

I feel a hand on my shoulder, then on my thigh, and I can feel my body react to a man’s touch. My pussy juices up as is someone had pressed a button. Then I feel the stab of the needle, followed by a slight burning sensation. I have no idea what they are doing to me. But the drugs that are still coursing through my veins carry their bliss with them, and I do not care.

Besides, Sanderson is here. His presence… quiets me. It’s as if when he’s around, nothing bad can happen to me. It’s an odd feeling. It’s the same kind of feeling Daniel’s presence gave me, a feeling of… home. I wait for the usual onslaught of panic at the thought of my fiancé, and there it is, rising from the back of my mind, telling me to run, to run away, that dark fear of something evil but unknowable. I know it’s irrational, but I can’t escape it.

But then, by magic, the anxiety lessens. Not a lot—it’s still there, in the background, growling—but it has less bite than usual.

What did Dante inject me with? What did he do? And I don’t know if it’s because I am paying way too much attention to it, but I can feel my body’s cravings lessen. Whatever they injected me with is actually quieting my body down. I don’t know how to process that information.

Daniel. I miss him. Sanderson reminds me of him, in ways that I can’t verbalize easily. It’s nothing specific. It’s like asking what I miss about Daniel. I couldn’t answer. Poems, novels have been written trying to express the inexpressible. What is love? It’s nurture. It’s support. It’s picking up the other when he stumbles. It’s listening. It’s providing a safe harbor, a shelter.

Sanderson’s voice pipes up. “How long?”

“Shouldn’t be too long. Half an hour at the most,” Dante responds.

I suspect I’m the only one who hears the hesitation right before Agnieska’s next words. “I should stay with her.”

Sanderson moves by my side, and rearranges the covers over my body. “No need, doctor. I’ll stay with her, and I’ll page you when she’s awake.”

“Page both of us,” adds Dante.

I hear Sanderson’s nod. “Of course, doctor.”

Everyone leaves the room. I pick up on Dante speaking with the other nurse on their way out, and I can tell just by the lilt in his voice that he’s flirting with her, even though I don’t hear the words. I can also tell by her laughter that she responds to his presence. As usual, the thought of that flirting and what it might lead to—that doctor and that nurse, fucking in some remote room of the hospital, not even bothering to undress, unleashing their lust between two medical emergencies—makes me wet. But here as well, the reaction is more subdued than it should be. There’s no doubt about it, whatever they gave me lessens the drives of my body.

I summon another mental image of Daniel, paying attention to the fear that emerges, and it’s lesser than it has ever been. It’s more like an itch that needs scratching now, and not an overpowering feeling of doom.

I sigh, and gladly sink into my memories. I rerun our relationship together, our life, from our first meeting in that cafeteria back at Darnell to our moving in together. The teasing from my friends that I seemed to have settled into a marriage before even getting married, and my astonishing response that indeed, that was what it felt like, and it was surprisingly good. That deep-seated knowledge—that deep-seated certainty—that you had found your soulmate sneaks its way through every crevice in your body and cements everything together. I’ve always though of myself as an independent woman, raised as such by my mother. Daniel just made everything better. And I’d like to think I did the same for him.

I feel Sanderson take my hand, and squeeze it. He’s sitting in the chair by my bed, the chair in which he sits when he reads to me, sometimes, at night, after his shift. His hand feels good in mine. I expect him to say something, but he doesn’t. He just sits in the chair, holding my hand. I want to thank him. Thank him for being there, for taking care of me. For some reason, I feel surrounded by love, and it’s making me want to cry. But I can’t. Not just yet. There is a speckle of hope in my life now where there was none, and Sanderson is the tip of it.

Sanderson is nervous, I can sense it, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t let go. But his is a happy nervousness. I can tell he’s smiling. And I feel like grinning myself.

* * *

I have no idea how much time passes that way, with me motionless, my mind like a salmon swimming up the river, leaving the quiet bliss where even if I wanted to get upset I couldn’t, and working its way against the current to a place rife with emotions but where the cravings of my body are lessened, where I can feel the grip of the instructions—the orders—that Biff pounded into me loosen.

I’ve had bliss before, the euphoric feeling of entirely not caring what happens to me, and this is different. This is the feeling that perhaps, perhaps I can find freedom again. It is hope—pure unadulterated hope.

Perhaps the ordeal is over, maybe the pain, the humiliation, the fear, will fade away, and I can be myself again. Perhaps.

As I go through all of this, part of me is amazed at how calm and collected I can be about all of this. By all due accounts, I should be a mess—I’ve spent the last who knows how many months a sex slave unable to fight the degrading instructions of a monster of a man happy to use and abuse me however he wanted who left me to act as a wanton slut offering herself to anyone that cared to have her, a deep seated addiction that no one else can assuage, an addiction for sex, for cock, for cum. I remember talking about this with Serena back when—my God! Serena! What happened to her? She was taken and programmed by Biff’s frat too—when discussing one of her exposés about drug use on campus and telling me stories of life ruined because of addiction and psychological abuse and their repercussions. Yet here I am, thinking about events of my past without flinching, without getting upset. What’s wrong with me?

Is it just the lingering effects of the euphoric bliss, where nothing could touch me? Am I going to miss it? Did I simply trade craving a man’s touch for craving artificial bliss?

A man’s touch. Sanderson’s hand in mine. And then I realize that I’m afraid. Afraid that this is all false hope, that once the drugs that kept me knocked out stop working, whatever else they gave me is not going to be strong enough, and I’ll lose control, and I’ll revert to that beast that cares only for one thing. And Sanderson is right there next to me, and if I lose control, I’ll unleash at him—I’ll prostrate myself before him, willing, nay, happy to do whatever he wishes me to do just so that he fucks me and comes all over me.

Sanderson’s hand in mine. I feel the pressure of it—he’s squeezing my hand. No, he’s not. I am. I am squeezing his hand, and he’s responding. I can move! And I don’t feel like crawling at his feet and beg him to suck his cock like the desperate needy slut that Biff wanted me to be.

Sanderson nears my bedside, and runs a light hand through my hair, brushing it back from my face. My eyes open slowly. The light is soft, subdued—he must have turned it down. Or it’s always been like this, and I never noticed.

He’s right there beside me, looking at me, a smile on his face, but a goofy smile, like he’s nervous.

“Well hello there, sleeping beauty,” he says, his voice soft, his eyes belying the nonchalance of his words. “Don’t try to talk just yet,” he adds, caressing my cheek almost in passing. This is the first time he has touched me in a way that someone might possibly consider inappropriate. And I tense, imperceptibly. “Are you okay?” he asks.

I nod, the movement making my head spin. I don’t know how I feel. I’m happy. Scared. Relieved. Overwhelmed.

“We’ll talk later, okay? I need to call the doctors.”

Before I can summon up the wherewithal to say something, before I can muster enough focus to form words and sentences—not that I know what to say—Sanderson reaches over to a phone on the wall and keys up a number that I imagine pages Doctor Agnieska and Doctor Dante.

Agnieska shows up first, and she checks my vitals, the usual routine. She avoids my eyes the whole time, even though I am awake and getting more lucid with every passing minute. She tells me not to try talking just yet, and she examines me without asking questions. She’s nervous, even more than earlier. Sanderson is still there in the background, and wonder if she would talk to me if he were not. I wonder if she worries about what I remember about the Pig little parties, and whether I’ll say something.

I play the one who remembers nothing. That’s not too difficult, because my memory really is a sieve right now. But I know that Agnieska and many of the nurses are in on the Pig’s activities, and until I can figure out whom I can to talk to safely, I remain quiet.

Doctor Dante shows up a little while later and takes over from Agnieska, who again defer to him. Although this time I can see her, and I spy the glance she gives him. There is frustration in her eyes. And fear. I recognize fear.

Sanderson is smiling, clearly happy. He makes a sign from the door indicating that he will find me later, before leaving me with the doctors.

* * *

Doctor Dante is examining me, making sure there are no bad interactions from the new drug that, he says, he is using to “quell my urges.” Doctor Agnieska, after hanging about for maybe fifteen minutes, left, leaving us alone.

I thought that Dante’s hands on me would trigger my body’s Biff-induced responses, arouse my body and make me go insane with lust, but no. Everything feels… normal. Or as normal as I can ever recall feeling lately. His touch is arousing me, but it’s a low-level arousal, just reminding me that I’m a sexual being and that he’s a man, and an attractive one at that. If I can find a supply of this drug—maybe get a prescription?—then perhaps I can have a normal life again. Back to normal. Back to Daniel.

Dante is talking as he examines me, once in a while referring to the electroencephalogram that he had called in. He has put electrodes on my scalp, mostly on the temporal and frontal lobes. He did not have to shave me, for which I was stupidly grateful. He’s talking about the drug cocktail he has me on.

“It’s basically the same we give the others on the ward. There are some differences, because your case seems… somewhat unique.”

I want to tell him that it’s because of what Biff did to me, that he’s the reason why I’m here, that he’s the reason why I’m here, unlike the other patients, but nothing comes out. I can’t form the words. My mouth is not obeying me.

Dante misunderstands my look, and possibly the pinprick of panic that I feel rising in my gut. He thinks I’m worried about what he said. “It’s okay,” he says to reassure me. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, and make sure that we can make adjustments to the dosage quickly if anything goes wrong. But everything right now looks quite good.”

He says that with such confidence in his voice that it assuages my budding fears. I haven’t tried to seduce him, tried to fuck him, tried to offer myself to satisfy his most demeaning desires. I close my eyes, and sigh. I feel hopeful once again. Not that I ever completely gave up hope; that’s not how my mom raised me—Mom! I need to get in touch with her!—she must be mortified, wondering what happened to her baby girl!

I must have stiffened or moaned or something, because Dante stops what he’s doing and asks me if everything is all right. I open my eyes again, and look at him. He’s older by a long shot, but good-looking, in a rugged sort of way. A strong jaw, a good nose, and eyes that look deep into you, fully aware of their own attractiveness. I could fuck him, comes the thought, unbidden.

My mouth is still terribly dry, and I choke trying to speak. Dante takes a paper cup filled with water and helps me drink. My hand-eye coordination is still way off. His hand on my head holding it up feels good.

“Take it easy, that’s it. Drink up. Slowly. Now, you probably will be feeling some emotional spells in the coming days; it’s a common side effects of one of the antipsychotics that’s part of the cocktail.”

Emotional spells? Great. From bliss to crying fits.

When I feel ready to talk, I try again. I want to ask him to get in touch with my family, but nothing comes out again. What the fuck? Say something, anything. “Jennie… Jennie doesn’t know how to thank you.”

Fuck! Still with that Jennie crap! And Dante is surprised and confused by it. Who wouldn’t be?

“Who’s Jennie?” he asks, a frown on his face.

“Jennie’s Jennie.” Way to go, Jenn. That’s going to clear things right up. I close my eyes in frustration. He’s probably thinking that I came out of my catatonia brain-damaged or something. Maybe I have. That would make sense. I feel tears forming underneath my lids. Fuck!

My tears really make Dante nervous. And there’s nothing I can do to reassure him that I’m not crazy—especially since I don’t know myself. I just know I don’t want to screw this up. If people start thinking I’m crazy, I’m never leaving this place. I open my eyes and try to smile at him.

“Jennie likes to speak about herself in the third person. She’s always done that. She thinks it’s cute.” I feel I should giggle, for good measure. He’s probably thinking I’m a bimbo anyway.

He frowns at me. “Like Julius Caesar?”

I nod. He’s not dumb, that’s good. “Jennie’s always been a great fan.”

I’m not. Caesar’s Gallic Wars is an incredible bore: it’s all maneuvers and regiments this and centuries that. But I smile, and toss Dante a wink as well, as if this is some sort of big joke. “Veni, vidi, vici.” I add. I’m tempted to make a pun of it. Veni, vidi, infirmavi? Does that even work? I feel I’m losing it. I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry. Both, really.

Doctor Dante looks at me carefully, but a smile is creeping on his face. He seems to relax a little bit. “It’s been a while I haven’t read Shakespeare,” he says.

Okay, not dumb, but not up on his classics either. Not Shakespeare, but Plutarch. But I’m not going to correct him. I smile again, and this time, it’s automatic—I can feel it take root in my gut but cannot fight it, interestingly—there’s an edge of flirtation in my voice. “You like literature, Doctor?”

Dante shrugs, and I detect just a hint of self-consciousness, something I doubt he experiences often. “Oh, used to. Long time ago. I did some theater. And I did play Flavius in Julius Caesar. As I said, a long time ago.”

“Jennie thinks you would have made a fine actor—you cut a very nice figure.” The flirtation was no longer a hint. Damn. The drugs might have killed off some of my impulses, but not all of them. The instructions Biff gave me to be flirtatious and sexual with men is still holding. And I can’t seem to talk about who I am, or ask for my family.

Dante is unaware of my turmoil. He’s busy straightening up and trying to look dashing. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he declaims, his voice deep, his face serious.

I grin, and that grin is not a particularly difficult one to pull off, because he’s funny, and even somewhat endearing in his eagerness. “Bravo,” I say, trying to raise my hands to clap but not quite managing.

I can see him extremely successful with women, who must really fall for his warm brown eyes and his confidence. My pussy, as if in agreement, twitches and I’m glad of the drugs that keep me from actually throwing myself at him and offering my body to his abuse—for I am sure that Doctor Dante likes his sex hard and fast.

As all of this is going on, my mind is going a hundred miles an hour, trying to figure out what I can do and what I can’t do.

“Jennie sometimes like to act too,” I say. I want to add that Biff used to make me role-play his fantasies, back when he was using me as his sex toy, but all that comes out is “Especially in bed—it’s a lot of fun.” The subtext is crystal clear, and Dante, who is clearly the flirtatious type, picks up on it without difficulty. He smiles, but does not flirt back. I figure he must get it all that time, female patients drugged out of their mind coming on to him.

“I should probably go back to my examination, okay?” he says, sitting down next to me and reaching for a tablet. “And then you can get some rest.”

I nod, and close my eyes. And I try to calm down. Emotional spells, no kidding.

I have some thinking to do. Because I’m not out of the woods just yet. Just out of a medically-induced catatonia.

* * *

Balthazar Cusker, better known as Biff, watched Jenn on the bed, shaking his head, still having some difficulty believing that it was happening, that it was real, that she was his.

He had just fucked her. More than that, he had made her fuck him, after giving him the most fantastic blow job he had ever received, and he had been on the receiving end of some pretty amazing blow jobs in his life. The difference, the big difference, is that she had been into it completely, giving herself over to him and withholding nothing.

He stared at her. She was lying down on the bed, on her stomach, clad in her black stockings and her black high heels still, and nothing else. One of her legs was bent at an angle, exposing her reddened pussy lips gaping slightly and leaking. He ogled her ass, her tight round ass, toned to within an inch of its life. He wanted to caress it, spank it, bite it. And he would. And she would let him. Fuck, she would beg him.

He fiddled with the digital camera in his hands, the one he had used to record their encounter. He knew exactly what he would do with the recording, had known since almost before he stole the girl away. It had been one of his long-time fantasies, and he intended to savor it to its utmost. He would burn a DVD with the recording and send it to her fiancé, to show him how much his girl liked fucking her new man more than she ever did him.

And it would be the first of many movies. The girl was a natural. Biff felt him get hard again, as he stared at Jenn’s quasi-naked body, dreaming of new humiliations and new scenarios he could run her through.

“Huh, Biff?”

Biff turned his head, and nodded to the young man that appeared in the doorway. Bernard Tilling Junior, better known as Bernie, was a fellow Delta Iota Kappa brother. Smart, capable, and willing to do what Biff asked him to do: a perfect trifecta. He was the one who, the previous day, had programmed Jenn using the makeshift laboratory Doctor Cargyle had created in the basement of the fraternity house, after Biff had brought him the Rohypnol-ed body of the stunning brunette.

“I… I mean, I just came in—the door was unlocked. You said we were supposed to meet here?…” Bernie stopped, his eyes catching the female form on the bed. Jenn stirred softly, a moan escaping her lips, and Biff grinned when he saw one of her hands slowly slide between her legs and her fingers start caressing her lips.

“It’s okay, man,” replied Biff. “I was waiting for you. Pretty, ain’t she? And a great fuck, lemme tell you. Tight educated pussy that knows just how to treat a man’s cock. And a mouth that’d put a whore to shame.” He let his words sink in, watching Bernie stare at Jenn with his mouth half open and his eyes trying to take in every detail. “Did you bring the stuff?” He raised his voice. “ Bernie? Did you bring the stuff?”

“Wh… What? Oh. Right. Yes. Yes, of course.” Bernie opened his backpack and pulled out a pouch that looked like an overgrown pencil case. “May I?” he asked Biff, indicating Jenn.

“What do you think?” Biff was happy, and thus could afford to be patient, but sometimes, he just wanted to slap the bespectacled nerd upside the head.

Bernie sat next to Jenn, and turned her over. He tried not to be distracted by her perfect breasts that were exposed by his actions. He tied a band high on Jenn’s left arm, and pulled out a syringe and a small vial from the pouch. He filled the syringe, knocked out the air bubbles from the needle, and injected the content in the brunette’s elbow.

Biff watched, curious. “So that’s all we gotta do? Stick’em with this and they’re puppets?” He had not wrapped his head around the details of what Bernie had done to Jenn the previous day, or in general what Cargyle did to the girls that were made into what everyone called DIK girls—really sluts that would spread their legs for the brothers in the fraternity because, frankly, they had no choice and were programmed to do so.

Bernie shook his head, as he checked Jenn’s temperature. She had stopped moaning, and was now breathing regularly, looking as though she was asleep. “Can you hear me, Jennifer?”

“Heeeaaarrr…” came the response.

Bernie turned to Biff. “No. You saw what we did yesterday? As I told you, we need to hook them up to those computers when we inject Cargyle’s drugs. The drug by themselves are not enough the first time. We need the neurocortical stimulation. That’s what took so long.”

“And you don’t need that today?”

“Today’s just a refinement. She’s still within the time period where her programming can be easily adjusted. We did it a bit too quick yesterday. I just need to put the finishing touches.”

“I thought about a few more things to program into her.”

Bernie nodded. “Huh, sure. We can do that.”

“I want her to be a stupid brainless bimbo.”

Bernie gave Biff a quick glance. “Huh, okay? I mean, if that’s what you want.” He looked uncomfortable.

“Oh yeah. Drop her IQ down there, you know. I want to see her barely able to survive on her own, barely able to take care of herself. I want her to live for one thing and one thing only, my cock. I want sex to be the most important thing for her—no, the only important thing for her—how to please a man, how to please me.”

Bernie smiled nervously. “Sure, Biff. Whatever you say.”

When Bernie started speaking to Jenn, working through a script similar to the one he had used the previous day—running through sequences of numbers, free associations—Biff tuned him out. He watched the recording he had made earlier, watched as he fucked her on the small screen, pounding between her legs as she welcomed him and encouraged him and kissed him as though he was a cherished lover, watched as he flipped her onto her stomach and grabbed her hips and pulled her up to her knees before thrusting his cock back inside her and taking her like that, like a little bitch in heat.

He was ready to do so again by the time Bernie called his name and told him it was his turn. “Just run through your instructions like yesterday. You want to reinforce them. And don’t forget the trigger sentence.”

Biff shot Bernie a glance as a reminder not to take him for an idiot, and then he sat down next to Jenn as well. “Jennie,” Jennie was a good bimbo name, he figured, “I am your DIK master.”

“Maaasssteeerrr…”

Biff loved the way she said that. He ran quickly through the instructions he had given her the previous day: that she would be devoted to him, that she could not talk about what was done to her, that she would not seek to contact people to help, would not seek to contact her family, or her friends, or her fiancé. He told her again that her role in life was to be seductive, was to think about sexual things, to think of herself as a sex doll, that she would be flirtatious and sexy with both men and women, that she would act to attract attention to herself and her body, and that all of that would turn her on and make her wet. He wanted her to be a flirt, to be a tease, but not to act upon it unless he told her to specifically. He wanted men to want her, but she would be inaccessible unless he, Biff, decided otherwise. He also reminded her that she was to do anything he told her to do, without questioning it, without hesitating. He was her master, he was the source of all wisdom.

Then he moved on to the two things he wanted to add to the previous day’s instructions. “Okay, doll,” he told her, “the only time where you will be able to talk about what is happening to you, in some way, is when you are writing. You will be able to write stories about what is happening to you—although not detailed enough that you reveal information about me or about where you are.” He wondered if his instructions were precise enough. He wanted her to be able to write down what was happening so that she could send them to her fiancé. Biff wanted the guy to suffer knowing what he, Biff, was doing to his beloved girl, how he treated her like a slut and how much she loved it.

“And now,” he added to himself, “the bimbo stuff.”

Before he could say anything, though, Bernie coughed. “Huh, Biff. I’m sorry, but…”

Biff shot Bernie a glance that almost shut the poor young man up. But Bernie swallowed hard, and continued. “I mean, if you want her to write and create stories, then you probably don’t want her IQ to drop too much. In fact,” Bernie added, when he saw that Biff was actually listening, “she’s probably much better as a lover with imagination if she’s still got her head, you know. Then she can really use her smarts to make the experience even better. It’s like those stories you like so much. It’s not just wham-bam-thank-you-mam, right? There’s stuff going on, psychological subtleties, devious plotting, etc. She can’t do that unless she’s got her head.” Bernie suddenly looked uncomfortable with what he had said. “Just sayin’, really…” he added softly.

Biff frowned at him, and then turned to look at Jenn. She was still out of it, her eyes fluttering underneath her eyelids. God she was beautiful. He wanted to fuck that pretty mouth again.

“Shut up, Bernie,” he said, not looking at him.

Bernie was right. It sucked, but he was right.

Biff grinned. Maybe he could not actually turn her into a bimbo, but he could do the next best thing. Beside, if it wasn’t enough, he could always plug her back into the computer later and turn her into a drooling giggling bimbo then. “Listen to me, doll,” he told her, “from now on, you will always refer to yourself as ‘Jennie,’ never as ‘me’, or ‘I’, or any of that. It’s always ‘Jennie,’ or ‘she,’ or ‘her.’ You got that?”

“Gooot thaaat?…”

“You will talk like a bimbo, doll. And bimbos talk about themselves like they’re talking about someone else. You got that?”

“Gooot thaaat?…”

“You’re a fuck doll, Jennie. Just a pretty little fuck doll. My fuck doll. Now, tell me what you are?”

“Jeeennniiieee is a fuuuckkk dooollllll...”

* * *

I’m alone in my room. Doctor Dante left a few hours ago, and I think I slept for a while. Dante said that he would look into moving me to another room. The one I’m in right now is meant for someone under sedation, and does not offer much either in terms of view or space.

I asked him for reading material, and he agreed to arrange for me to get my own computer tablet. He talked about the Institute’s extensive online library, trying to emphasize the classics. He told me that he wanted me to rest first, though, to recover from the shock of switching medication regimen.

A computer tablet would provide me with Internet access. I wonder if I could use it to get in touch with Daniel, or really, with anyone from my life, but I doubt it. The drugs they gave me stomps down on whatever the hell Biff did to me. But not all of it.

The fear and panic at any thought of Daniel—Daniel, where are you? Are you searching for me? Or did you put me behind you, after watching all those videos Biff sent you of me fucking him, repeatedly, enthusiastically, vocally? Did you abandon me? I couldn’t blame you really, could I?—is gone, or at least, so reduced that I can easily ignore it. Same thing with that drive to act like a wanton slut for anyone, and with that cum addiction, and that drive to get fucked over and over again that Biff cursed me with it I were to be away from him for too long.

But the rest is still there. I still talk about myself in the third person—my bimbo talk, Biff called it. I’m still driven to flirt and be sexual with any man I meet. And I still can’t tell anyone who I am and where I come from and what happened to me. I tried to talk about Biff to Doctor Dante earlier, and nothing would come out. When he asked me my name, I said Jennie, but could add no other information. I wanted to tell him to contact my mom in Maine, but nothing; Daniel, my friends, my advisor at Darnell. Nothing.

I’m sitting up on the bed, and I slowly fold myself into a Half Lotus, propping myself up with two pillows. It’s not great, and what I’m wearing is not ideal, but I need to center myself, and I don’t want to strip. I’ve spent too much time naked, or dressed up as a walking sex doll. Biff wanted to see me all the time in four-inch heels and lingerie or clothes that said little more than come fuck me hard I’m just a slut. My pussy moistens at the thought, as it is wont to do now, but I can easily ignore it.

As I take a deep breath and let my thoughts flow like a river, unimpeded, but also unexamined. I try to be, just be, for a few minutes.

The silence, the stillness, the practice does wonders. Because I think my subconscious has figured it out. There is one thought that resists being gently pushed aside and ignore, and when I do in fact look at it, it all falls into place. The drugs they have given me and that tone down my body’s cravings only affect what Biff programmed into me initially, when he was with his friend Bernie in that house back in North Alexandria, which I remember well, and presumably before that when he first got his hands on me, which I don’t remember so well. Feels like a lifetime ago. Stuff he told me later has faded away, but what he programmed into me at the beginning, well, that seems to be anchored deep, too deep for the drugs to get to.

Alone in my room with the light of the day disappearing, I let the tears that have been aching to come out pour forth. I’ve never been one for self-pity much. Grin and bare it, the way my mom did it. But not today. Not now.

I’m not even sure why I’m crying. Pent-up frustration, slamming into me full force, after the reprieve of the bliss, I floated into only just a while ago—artificial bliss, granted, but bliss nonetheless—what did Baudelaire call it, artificial paradise? I’m also realizing something: what Biff did to me might just be permanent. I may never get back to the people I love—my family, Daniel, my friends. That bastard Biff took it all away, and I’m left to deal on my own, unable to talk to anyone about what I’m going through, unable to fix it.

I’m alone.

I tell myself that over and over again, own it, my way of dealing with anything difficult, how I’ve always done things. No hiding from the pain, the difficulty. That’s what my mom taught me.

I’m alone.

I’m alone.

My tears flow freely, and I sob, grabbing a pillow and hugging it tight, wishing it was Daniel, wishing that he were there to wrap his arms around me and tell me that everything would be okay.

It takes me a while to calm back down, but eventually my tears dry up, and I’m clutching the pillow, breathing in and out, slowly.

I straighten up, and close my eyes. I resume my meditative stance. I try to deepen the stillness, try to cement my being. I try to be a rock in the middle of the stream of my thoughts, watching them slide around me. I offer no resistance. I do not fight them, do not stop them. I only watch them go, watch them slide around me and continue on their way.

Another thought refuses to flow down the river, one that I feel is important. I should be a lot more messed up than I am. I don’t understand. For the past who knows how many months—I suddenly realize I don’t even know today’s date—I’ve been a mind-controlled sex slave, programmed to be a pleasure doll. Biff got into my made head and fucked me up, and found a way to make me do whatever he wanted. And much of what Biff wanted involved sex and humiliation.

I’m a modern woman. I grew up in a world where sexual assault was understood and talked about—my mother raised me by herself, and she has always made it very clear what I should expect from the world. And there is no doubt that what I went through was sexual assault, of a particularly deep and scaring kind. Yet despite that ordeal, I don’t show any of the signs you’d expect, like some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, or some generalized crippling anxiety.

Of course, while I was with Biff, while he made me dance around like a little puppet on strings, a little slutty puppet happy to satisfy his basest urges, I felt that anxiety big time. I was trapped inside my own head, forced to witness my own debasement. Biff wanted it that way. He got off on it. And then I ran away that night, after that party at the frat house, and soon all I could think about was that crazy mind-wiping craving for male flesh that overwhelmed me, and there was no room in my head for anything but that one single thought: to fuck, and to fuck long, and to fuck hard.

When I ended up here at the Gallery, sometime, somehow—my days between running away from the frat house to waking up here I cannot conjure up but once in a while I will get a flash of an image, out of the blue, triggered by a color, by a smell—they blissed me out of my mind and there was no worry, no anxiety, nothing.

But now… what about now? I feel that anxiety, that dread, that panic, lurking underneath it all, ready to pounce. Doctor Dante said my pulse was elevated. Is it because of the drugs? Or am I going crazy? Who knows? I should ask someone. But who? And I have to be careful. Last thing I want is to seem I’m crazy. I need to get out of here, and somehow find my way home. I feel this pull inside to head… somewhere? The Midwest? But it’s muted, like everything else. I want to go home. I can’t contact anyone, or anything. But I can try.

And then I become aware of it.

There is someone behind me.

I couldn’t say how I know it, but I know it. There is someone behind me, lurking, getting ready to jump on me, subdue me, ravage me. Without thinking, and almost tearing up a calf muscle in the process, I flip around on the bed, my hands automatically, albeit slowly, lifting to a defensive position. My heart is hammering in my chest, my blood thumping at my temples. I know my eyes are wide, and I hate myself for being so fearful, but I can’t help it.

“I’m so sorry,” says the small woman in front of me, her voice so low I have to strain to hear her. She looks at me before casting her eyes down.

Her clothes tell me she’s a patient here; she sports the same blue-toned lounge wear that I’m wearing now.

“I did not mean to scare you,” she continues, her voice still low.

I breath to calm my racing heart. I’ve never had such a strong fight-or-flight response. Maybe something is wrong with me after all. As if on cue, I feel a dull pain behind my eyes. The beginning of a headache. I don’t typically get headaches. Daniel gets them—migraines, really.

I focus on the woman who just entered: short brown hair, small, thin. She looks beautiful, in a fragile porcelain doll sort of way. Her demeanor is that of one who tries to make herself appear smaller than she actually is. I have seen her before. The picture in my mind is fuzzy, broken up, but sexual, definitely sexual. As if my body had a memory of its own, I feel a lingering arousal toward her.

“Hello,” say, carefully. “Jennie’s sorry, but…?”

“They call me Mouse,” she says, looking up quickly, a hint of a smirk on her lips. I may just have imagined it.

“Jennie,” I respond, finally relaxing. I don’t try to the Jennie’s Jennie line again.

“I know. It’s good to see you awake but not so… crazed.”

The way she says the word crazed says much without saying anything. I would bet my right ass cheek that she’s seen me in the throes of mind-wiping lust at one of the Pig’s parties. That explains why I vaguely remember her, and why I feel like grabbing her pretty little head and push her down between my thighs and let her eat me out until I come. I close my eyes, and sit back on the bed.

Crazed. It’s a good word.

“Thanks,” I say. “Jennie’s feeling… okay.” There’s a hint of surprise on her face when she hears me refer to myself as Jennie, but she doesn’t comment on it.

I appreciate that. I want to smile to her, but suddenly I feel exhausted, and tears well back up in my eyes.

Mouse comes and sits next to me. She hardly makes a sound when she moves. She does not hug me, does not take my hand, but merely sits beside me.

I look up at her. She gives me a small shy smile. She sits tucked in on herself, as if expecting a blow.

“You’re different,” she says, after a long silence.

I’m surprised. “How so?” I ask. I know I’m different, of course. I want to talk about Biff, about what he did to me, but I can’t.

Mouse shrugs, and it’s a barely noticeable motion of the shoulders. “You are. Just don’t tell… Just don’t tell anyone.”

“Why not?”

Mouse shrugs again, and shakes her head. She doesn’t answer my question. When she speaks again, her voice is almost a whisper. “We all heard they were waking you up.” Another long pause. The rest of her words I almost miss. “Gutierrez is pretty upset about it.” It looks like it cost her to say that.

I finally place her voice. It has been bugging me ever since I’ve heard her talk. But I remember times when the Pig was in my room, pawing me, or fucking me, and Mouse would show up, and Gutierrez would treat her like he did me. And why not? She was so quiet, so submissive, that even a coward like him could dominate her.

“Jennie’s sorry,” I say, squeezing her hand.

Mouse shrugs again, and that shrug breaks my heart. There is something so pathetic in it, an acceptance of her lot in life. “It’s not your fault,” she says. “But we’re all excited you’re awake.”

I’m not sure who’s we, or why they would be excited that I’m awake, so I say nothing. I just hold her hand.

“Well, it’s a good thing that Doctor Dante decided to wake up Jennie, then,” I say, trying to lighten up the mood somehow.

A tiny smile responds to mine. And a memory flashes through my head. There was this cat we adopted when I was just a kid, after my dad left. I was seven at the time. It had found its way to our doorstep one cold Maine morning, mewing piteously. It took us forever to gain its trust; it sneaked around to eat the food we left it, and then it was off to hide somewhere. I was too young to understand. But my mother told me to give it time. And she was right, of course: the cat eventually warmed up to us, and would come and cuddle up to me when I watched cartoons. And slept beside me on my bed for many years. But it remained skittish around strangers, especially men.

Mouse was that cat all over again, her nickname notwithstanding.

“It wasn’t the doctor,” Mouse whispers.

“Pardon?”

She takes a breath, but never looks up. “It wasn’t the doctor that woke you up.”

“Then who?”

“The nurse. The nice one. Sanderson?” She glances at me from the corner of her eyes, as if to judge my reaction. “He talked about it to that other nurse, the pretty blonde? I overheard him. I… I sorta blend in the background and people sometimes don’t notice I’m there.”

I’ll say, I want to respond, still remembering how she frightened me a few moments ago.

Richard Sanderson. He managed to get them to wake me up. But how? And why?

“He likes you,” Mouse whispers. “A lot.”

“Who?” I’m mostly buying time.

There’s that little smile again.

I smile as well, mine larger. “Jennie knows,” is all I need to say. “He’s her hero.”

At least until Daniel comes in and sweeps me up and finds me. And I have to help him do that, somehow.

Mouse squeezes my hand, a response to my own squeeze a moment ago. Something passes between us.

And then she stands up, and gives me a meaningful glance. She’s waiting for me to follow her.

Time to go meet the other patients, is my guess.

* * *

My head starts spinning as we make it to the recreation room, and I have to hold on to Mouse the last bit, a task to which she submits dutifully. She hardly said a word since we left my room.

The few nurses we cross on the way give me big smiles and say hi, and they obviously know me and genuinely seem happy to see me up and about—news of my recovery have made it through the ward, clearly.

When we make it to the rec room, I stop and consider it, seeing it with my eyes for the first time. I’ve been here before, but always in that catatonic state that left me unable to open my eyes or speak or interact with others, only hear and smell and feel the breeze on my skin. I had a mental image of it, of course, but the real thing is larger and more colorful. It also feels less noisy, but that may just be because I can see now, and don’t have to rely on my ears quite so much.

A thought that would run through my head when I was blissfully lying in bed in my room does so again: I’m not sure what I’d do if I were blind. It’s always been a deep-seated fear of mine, not being able to see. So much of what I feel makes me me depends on my eyes—reading, writing, observing the world.

There are patients sitting all about, all women, all beautiful with that unmistakable aura of sex that I am so attuned to because of what happened to be, because one consequence of Biff’s fuckery is an overly sexual outlook on everything, my body, if not my mind, recognizes the girls in here as my brethren, my tribe—my people. Which depresses me something fierce.

Not that the women in the ward are themselves depressed, or even downcast. Many are quietly read or watching videos on tablets or typing away on a few laptops, while others are sitting about in small groups and playing or talking, while another group is sitting in one corner watching what looks like a Spanish soap opera on a high-set television. There is a feeling of—I don’t know, peace?—floating all about, and I bask in it.

A few of the women look up and see me, acknowledge me, take me in. There is whispering and glancing all about, and several of them come up close—they have seen me before, of course, whenever Sanderson would put me in a wheelchair and bring me out here to be exposed to more stimuli. Where is he, anyway? Mouse’s words from earlier still bounce about in my head.

As women swarm around me, Mouse tries to shrink away, but I keep her close. “Don’t go,” I tell her. I still need her for support, and I also don’t want her to feel she has to disappear because others are interested in me. I will not let her feel alienated, not if I can help it. She has been nice to me. She deserves better.

There’s a cacophony around me, although no one raises their voice: “Oh! My God! It’s true!”—“You ARE awake!”—“How does it feel?”—“I’m Allison! You’re Jennie, right?”—“Does it hurt?”—“I’m Bonnie, can you help me?”—“How did you do it?”

I can’t keep track of who’s who, as they all speak at the same time. I can’t really believe I’m such a big deal. There’s a redhead beside me, shorter than I am, with large breasts that I bet guys just drool over and with bright red lips on a beautiful face—everyone around is beautiful, and that’s a bit freaky to be honest, especially since I know exactly what it reminds me of—but anyway, that redhead—Allison?—is telling me that I’m the first of the goners who’s ever woken up, and that’s a big deal.

Everyone around me has their own perspective on that, and they are speaking one over each other, and some are getting excited and agitated, and I can see the nurses in one corner giving us a glance and wondering whether to intervene, and I don’t know what a goner is and when I ask I don’t think anyone hears me.

I’m wrong.

“A goner’s one of those poor chicks that’s so far gone that her meds don’t do shit for her anymore and she’s gotta be put down like a bitch.”

The voice is female, hard, and self-assured; it shuts everybody up the moment it rings out. The women gathered around me part to let a tall dark-haired woman through, another patient, her face burdened with dark makeup. Her eyes are ringed with black, her lips a dark burgundy. She’s beautiful, of course, but it’s her presence that’s astounding. She’s the alpha dog here, there is no doubt.

I feel Mouse stiffen and shiver next to me, but I’m not entirely sure that it’s out of fear, or what. Fuck, if she’s even halt reacting like my pussy is to that woman, Mouse must have drenched her panties.

The dark-haired woman strolls closer, and even though she’s wearing the soft-soled runners everyone around is wearing, she walks as though she’s perched on platform heels.

Unbidden, the supremely clear picture of that woman in a tight leather corset and tall boots flashes in my mind, and my head spins for a second. I know, deep in my bones, that I’ve seen that woman before, that I’ve felt her hands and her lips on my skin. And when I look up at her and see that she’s looking right back at me with a half-smile on her pouty lips, I know that indeed she knows me. And when her eyes slowly dip down to my chest, I feel my nipples stiffen, and a ghostly desire for them to be suckled, nibbled, pinched shoots right through me.

The flash of lust through my body is so intense, though it vanishes quickly, that I have to close my eyes and lean on Mouse in order not to fall to my knees. And I don’t trust myself on my knees before that woman. Are the drugs failing? Did my hopes rise only to get slapped back down?

“How does it feel to be awake?” comes the voice, now caressing, soothing, with a blade’s edge to it.

The woman’s half-smile has grown to a full smile, and one with little glee in it. She can probably smell my arousal from where she is.

I’ve heard that voice before. And not just from those ghostly memories that I’m pretty sure right now come from one of the Pig’s parties. I also remember the voice from those times where I’ve been in this very room.

“She was a goner, Cassandra,” says one of the women in the group around me, unable to contain her excitement. “But she’s back!”

Cassandra.

“So I heard,” Cassandra says, but looking at me, not at the pretty tall blonde who spoke. She then glances over at Mouse, and I can’t for the life of me interpret that look—Mouse can, though, because she squirms in place and I feel her hand clench in mine, her nails digging into my palm.

Cassandra.

Those few times when Sanderson wheeled me to this room, when all I could do was listen to the life buzzing about me, Cassandra was there. Whatever went on, Cassandra was in on it, not contributing much by way of conversation, but controlling everything nevertheless. And now I can see exactly why. The woman exudes such a raw domination that it makes me gush. Whatever Biff planted inside me reacts strongly to her presence. Probably because she is sex personified.

Biff. He would have loved to get a chance to subjugate that woman before me who’s staring down into my soul. He would have found a way to make her kneel before him and force her to worship him, just like he did to me—turning me into his little cock-sucking whore…

I take a deep breath, to try to calm my nerves. That woman is getting to me, and she knows it. She smiles, and for a fraction of a second her facade falls and the hungry craving woman behind is revealed naked. I can’t say why I know, but it’s clear to me that Cassandra, proud Cassandra, strong Cassandra, would come like a screaming banshee were Biff to push her down on all four and mount her from behind the way he used to do with me, using her long dark hair as reins to pull her back against him.

Cassandra takes a step toward me. “Never had a goner come back before, Sweet Cheeks,” she says, eyeing me from up close.

I can smell her, and it’s driving me nuts. But I have to concentrate.

“Goner?” My voice feels raw.

Cassandra nods, while extending a hand and running a finger along the side of Mouse’s face. It is erotic, but also strangely affectionate. Although I keep expecting her to grab the smaller woman by her short hair and pull her down into her own chest to suck on those breasts of hers that I keep seeing in my mind’s eye pushed up by a leather corset and presented as an offering to be slobbered over.

“Goner,” Cassandra repeats, and she sweeps her eyes over her audience, a look that scatters everyone, as if she uttered a threat. Mouse has moved next to Cassandra. Seeing them close like that, it strikes me that they must be about the same age, in their late twenties, although the way they act makes it seem like Cassandra is much older.

Cassandra smiles back at me. Her eyes hold a permanent challenge. “A goner’s what we call those of us whose disease has reached the point of no return, Sweet Cheeks. When that crazy thing they tell us we got in our blood, in our bones, in our nerves, stops responding to those drugs they feed us—when the crazy finally makes its way to our brains and starts messing us up even more than we already are. Eats us up from inside.”

Cassandra’s looking at Mouse as she says this, her hand still caressing the shorter woman. Mouse’s eyes are closed, her lips parted, her breathing rapid. She’s turned on, I can tell. Fuck, just watching Cassandra’s fingers dance over the lithe woman’s skin is making me hot.

The look in Cassandra’s eyes is difficult to interpret. It is playful, dominant, yet at the same time gives one sense of pity and even fear.

I’m pondering all of that when Cassandra looks back at me, and her eyes harden, as if she knows that she has let me glimpse something I should not have.

She thrusts a thumb between Mouse’s lips, who does not hesitate to start to suck on it.

We are at one end of the room, and while other patients are still stealing glances at me and talking to each other excitedly, they do not dare approach. Cassandra has warned them off.

The nurses are hardly paying any attention to us. They glance in our direction as well, once in a while, but I guess the news of my being woken up despite my being a goner has already made the rounds, and beside, maybe they know something the patients don’t. They are part of the medical staff after all. They must know what’s going on, and what’s best for us.

Then I think of that pig Gutierrez. What’s best for us, my ass.

The large male nurse in the corner, the man I would later learn is named Rasmussen, looks at us a little bit more frequently than the others. He clearly has eyes only for Cassandra, who quite purposely ignores him while talking to me.

I struggle to pay attention to Cassandra, who’s describing the Syndrome, the affliction that landed us here and that’s killing us slowly, but surely. There is still that pain in the back of my eyes, threatening to break out into a full-fledged headache. Is that part of the Syndrome? Do I even have the Syndrome?

“Except for you, Sweet Cheeks. You were a goner, and yet here you are, up and about, fresh as a daisy.” Cassandra manages to make that sound dirty. “You see what that tells them, right? That there’s hope. That they haven’t necessarily come here to die. That there’s a future.”

Thoughts flash through my mind in a jumble. Cassandra is talking about the others getting hope, not herself. As if she knows something. Either about what hails them, or—or about me. I can’t have the Syndrome. I’m not sick. Biff did this to me. Gave me drugs and hooked me up to a computer to turn me… what he turned me into, his slave, his toy, his thing. Unless…

Unless the way Biff managed to control me was to give me that Syndrome thing? Is that what Biff did to me? Infect me with something? No—I’m not a goner! I’m awake. I’m here. I’m fine.

Still, my eyes have teared up, and before I can look away, Cassandra is wiping a stray tear with one of her black-nailed fingertips.

“Don’t cry, Sweet Cheeks.” Her voice is caressing. Despite myself, I stare at her lips, wondering how they would feel wrapped around one of my nipples, teasing, sucking, biting. Or on my clit.

I shudder.

Cassandra smiles, and runs her thumb over my lips. It takes all the willpower I can muster not to open them and suck on the trespassing digit, the way Mouse did earlier, the way I know Cassandra wants me to. Her smile widens when she sees the resistance I put forth.

“I can see why Slimy is fascinated by you, Sweet Cheeks,” Cassandra says in a whisper. “And why he’s pissed you’re awake. I bet you’re all wet down there, just begging for me to stick these fingers up your stupid tight cunt. Soon. Very soon. We’ll play again. And this time, you won’t be hiding behind that crazy lust of yours. We’ll get to see the real Jennie now, won’t we?”

I can’t process everything she’s saying—her fingers on my skin have left trails of fire. We’ll play again? Crazy lust? She knows. She was there. At one of the Pig’s parties. Saw me act like a debauched wanton slut. Who hasn’t seen me?

Before I can say something, anything, Cassandra spots a nurse headed our way, and she disengages, extending a hand toward Mouse who takes it after throwing a quick glance in my direction, a glance into which I read apology and submission in equal measure.

I’m left standing, alone, cold, and still aroused.

* * *

An hour later, I’m finally calming down.

Things are a little bit more in focus, just a little. Even the pressure behind my eyes has gone. I think all I needed was a bit of time by myself, which I found by sitting in one corner of the rec room, cuddled up with a book that was lying about on one of the tables. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I had to stifle my laughter with a pillow; people probably thought I was crying, and to be honest, my laughter almost turned to tears right there on the spot. Who brings a book about an insane asylum into an insane asylum?

I still can’t believe it. An insane asylum. I landed in an insane asylum. They think I’m crazy. And for good reason, too. I am crazy. No—let me be fair. Biff made me crazy. It isn’t anything I’ve done. It isn’t me. Biff came, saw, pounced, and fucked me up. Fucked me up bad.

I read a bit, then close my eyes and think, and then continue reading, and think again. Over and over. And reading does its magic, the way it’s always done. Biff wouldn’t let me read. He said fuck toys had no business reading. He barely tolerated me writing, and that was only because he made me put down in writing the sick stuff he made me do, stuff he made me email Daniel. He wanted to torture him, and got off on the remote humiliation.

Too many times that brute fucked me while telling me about Daniel reading over what I wrote and thinking I was such a fucked up slut good only for whoring out. I wouldn’t believe if I wasn’t living it, but my body still reacts to those memories, to the idea of Biff having his way with me, and the arousal that hasn’t left me since Doctor Dante examined me earlier spikes slightly. Even though I hate Biff with all the vitriol I can muster, my body is attuned to him, is programmed for him, craves his touch and his cock. I have to close my eyes and concentrate and breathe. I am learning to control and ignore those sensations. They are muted, thank God. Otherwise, I would go crazy for real. Those drugs they have me on are working wonders.

I feel like myself for the first time in, well, what feels like forever. I’m still off, evidently, unsure of my footing. It’s like I’m on the edge of an emotional cliff, wobbling in the wind, just a misstep away from falling off and collapsing into a heap of heartache on the floor, curled upon myself to protect my body from kicks that are as much in my head as in my heart.

After all I’ve been through, it’s not surprising I’m messed up. Let’s face it, I’ve had friends back in high school that were raped and they took a while to recover, if they ever did. And what I’ve been through, well, sorry girls, but I think it’s worse than rape. Being forced to do something against my will but still made to act like I wanted it, forced to feel my body crave something that my mind rejected, forced to confront the betrayal of my own body and much of my mind—I still have difficulty wrapping my head around any of that.

It’s the kind of thing that Daniel and I would have debated late into the night, half-naked on the bed, me going into flights of fancy, calling upon the various philosophers I know, and him with his slightly more pragmatic arguments, happy to follow my more theoretical meanderings but at the end of the day basing any judgment on the rock-hard certainties of reality and common sense.

My eyes tear up. Daniel. I would give anything to have him close, to feel him close, to touch him. I wonder what he’s doing, whether he even think of me still. I wonder if he found my story, the one where I tell him to find me. I sent it to this magazine that I know Radhu reads—once we were at his place and he had a tab open on his browser that pointed to the magazine’s site. Did he or Daniel find my story? Did Daniel even understand it was from me? J. Dumas. A callout to the many conversations we had about Dumas and his musketeers, that first summer we spent together.

I can write another story! The possibility had not occurred to me until now. It seems I can’t get in touch with Daniel—Biff’s programming is still holding strong—but if my theory is right, that the drugs attenuate Biff’s latter instructions without affecting his early ones, then I can still write stories, and that might allow me to point Daniel to where I am. It’s just a matter of writing again, and getting the story out. Once Dante gives me my tablet, I can get started.

I’m at that point in my reflections, my book on my lap, my eyes staring out in the distance, when Cassandra drops down on the couch diagonal from mine. Mouse sits next to her a moment later. Cassandra’s hand immediately drop to Mouse’s leg, in a gesture that is clearly proprietary. Mouse is looking down, the way she always seems to do.

Cassandra does not talk, simply leans back, her round breasts on display even through the shirt she’s wearing. She glances at my book, but does not comment on it.

Mouse is silent. She seems relaxed, like she belongs there by Cassandra’s side, like it fulfills her, and for a second there, I’m jealous. Jealous because that’s how I want to feel: warm, safe, loved. The spike of longing is almost enough to make me cry. My eyes tear up again. Emotional spells, the doctor said.

“That book got to me too, when I read it,” says Cassandra, nodding at the book on my lap. She has a smile on her face, and I have no idea if she’s mocking me or not. The smile seems genuine this time.

I shrug. I have no desire to tell her what’s really going on in my head. If she thinks I can’t deal with the pathos in Kesey’s novel, all the better. I don’t trust her.

Cassandra seems to have no such compunction. She starts talking to me as though she’s known me for years, telling me how she feels about this place (it’s decent as far as prisons go, but the food’s good), about sex (it’s all about power), about gender equality (third-wave feminists have it all wrong), about books (Stephen King is, well, king). She’s not a blabbermouth; but she says a lot without using many words. And when she’s not trying to dominate, she is incredibly charming, seductive, with a hint of being above it all. Almost reluctantly, she draws me into a conversation about insanity, and I find myself telling her about what I remember of Foucault from my Modern Philosophy class (not much, sadly).

At some point, she grins and leans toward me, a complicit glint in her eyes. “Don’t look now,” she stage-whispers, “but your boyfriend’s here, Sweet Cheeks.”

I’m confused, and when I do in fact look around, I see Sanderson watching me from the other side of the room. He looks happy, in that way people have when they have been relieved of a burden. He gives me a little wave before resuming his conversation with another nurse.

Cassandra of course missed nothing of this exchange. She leans back, and whispers something in Mouse’s ear. They both stand, and Cassandra turns to me before leaving. “You know,” she says, “there’s a room on the second floor—they’re renovating the wing, something about a fixing the wiring. It locks from inside.” She winks at me.

She definitely sees me blush before she turns back around and leaves with Mouse.

* * *

I’m distracted at regular intervals by Sanderson’s eyes finding me. I’m still reading, while in the back of my head pondering how I’m not going to go insane in this place. How do people pass the time in insane asylums? Kesey does not offer me any useful pointers, unless you count organizing deep sea fishing trips as an interesting occupation.

Sanderson is helping another patient, but he sneaks quick glances in my direction, his intense gaze alighting on me before moving on and leaving me a little puddle of goo.

Why is he affecting me so much? I’ve been horny since I woke up. Not crazy horny. Just an underlying buzz, a hankering for sexual release. Maybe I should just go back to my room and play with myself. I wonder if the staff make dildos available for us sex-crazed patients.

But the way Sanderson is looking at me, with eyes filled with… with what? Longing? Desire?… Mouse said he’s the one who arranged to wake me up.

I’m lying. I know exactly why he affects me so much. It’s exactly that: the way he looks at me. It’s the way Daniel looked at me.

He even resembles Daniel. A bit. Physically. The same body type: long and lean, not muscled but toned, with naturally broad shoulders, and a laid back but still intelligent air about him. The aura of someone not taking themselves too seriously. Short hair, though blond to Daniel’s light brown, handsome face, a mouth a girl wants to spend way too many hours kissing.

And the eyes just nail it. Daniel looked at me sometimes with love and lust fighting it out, with a palpable incredulity that he could ever be with me. I always mocked him for it, of course, telling him that he had no idea what he had gotten himself into hooking up with a crazy chick such as I, but deep down inside, I drank up those looks like ice wine.

My dad left when I was a kid, and I never saw him after that. My mom was an independent woman, and she took to the independent woman’s lifestyle when I was growing up. So I probably have a bit of what armchair psychologists call daddy issues, and Daniel’s adoration fed right into them and went a long way toward filling up the gaping hole that every now and then I could feel inside of me.

And Richard Sanderson was looking at me in a similar way.

Whenever Daniel would look at me that way, it didn’t take long for us to end up down on the floor with my legs wrapped tight around him as he screwed me silly and made me come over and over again.

And my pussy, already aroused, already primed, reacts to Sanderson’s glances in exactly the way it has reacted to such glances in the past. I could feel the delicious tingles of arousal spread from my groin all the way to my fingers and my toes.

Biff’s programming does not help. That bastard turned my sexuality up to eleven, to coin a phrase, and there is no chance I can resist.

I have a momentary flash of guilt.

Daniel. For all I know, he has forgotten about me. Or has given up on me. I can’t blame him. Given how I behaved, what Biff made me do, he’s probably sitting somewhere, disgusted with me, angry. He’s probably found a new girl by now—Daniel’s always been popular with the ladies, and for good reason. He was a catch.

I wonder if that little blonde floozie that used to hang around him—what was her name, Cindy?—made her move. She seemed so eager to part her pretty legs for my man, I bet she didn’t wait for me to be out of the picture before pulling down her panties and beckoning him inside her slut hole.

And just like that, the mental picture of Daniel, naked, on his knees behind a girl, also naked, pounding into her from behind, comes up to my mind, unbidden, unwanted, unavoidable. My guts clenches—jealousy, the one emotion I have no right to feel, but that I can’t control, and it’s really messing me up because jealousy is one thing that I’ve never really felt before—but also a wild rush of lust.

I close my eyes, and wallow in the feeling. If I were alone, I’d have my hands down my pants in no time. The images come fast and clear. Daniel’s taking the girl roughly, slapping her round ass; her fat tits jiggle under the assault, bouncing about, and her groans are loud. She sounds like a pig being stuffed. And Daniel is slamming into her harder and harder and eventually reaches over and grabs her long blonde hair and pulls hard and the slut arches her back impossibly, her mouth open, her tits slapping about on her chest. And then she looks at me and suddenly it’s Cassandra with a broad smile on her face, barely distorted by the fact that Daniel, my Daniel, is fucking her hard as she looks at me with a snarky grin and reaches her hand back as Daniel leans down to kiss her neck and she moans as he grabs her round tits and squeezes them hard as their mouths meet and they kiss like lovers finally reunited.

I jerk my eyes. The book slips off my lap and falls with a thud on the floor. No one notices. I shake my head to clear it. When I look up, Sanderson is staring at me. And just like that, I know what I must do.

Fuck you, Biff. Fuck you all the way back to hell.

I maintain eye contact with Sanderson a moment longer, just to make sure it’s meaningful, then I stand and walk out of the room. I can feel Sanderson’s eyes following me.

* * *

I find the room Cassandra told me about, tucked away in one corner of the west wing, in the only hallway not covered with tarp. Richard Sanderson shows up maybe five minutes later, looking tentative as he steps through the door and closes it behind him.

“Hi,” he says, and then just stops, though he seems to want to say more.

“Hi,” I reply back. It’s almost awkward.

We’re standing facing each other, maybe two feet apart, and I’m acutely aware of the bed to our right. It only has a bare mattress, but it beckons me, and I want to sit back upon it, and let Richard come to me.

He gives me another his panty-soaking looks, the one that says I’m the most beautiful girl in the world.

In a flash, I think back to that kid in the Virgin Islands, when Biff took me there, the one who used to look at me like I was Heaven-sent.

Don’t think about that, I chastise myself. Don’t go there. You’re here. You’re now. You’re not Biff’s, not anymore.

“You look well,” he says, finally. “How are you feeling?”

“Jennie’s feeling okay,” I reply, and it’s not untrue. As I speak I realize that I’m really worried how Richard’s going to take it, my… speech thing. Which is pretty much the time that I realize that I actually care what Richard thinks. “She’s still… a little bit fuzzy-headed.”

Richard brings up a hand to the side of my head, touching the side of my forehead with two of his fingers. What he tries to establish with that gesture completely escapes me, but I don’t care because the touch feels good, too good. This is what I want, right? I ask myself. This is what I want, and not what Biff wants?

Richard’s look is a mixture of the caring and the clinical. “Any lingering… desires? Cravings?”

What is he asking?

“No…” I reply, still affected by his touch. “Jennie can control what she’s feeling. It’s… manageable.”

“Good, very good. I’m… well, I’m glad.” He seems strangely hesitant. Between the two of us, we’re a fun pair. The thought makes me laugh, a nervous laugh halfway between a snort and a giggle.

I take his hand in both of mine, and bring it up between us, and I can’t help but be aware they’re just a few inches from my breasts, and there is this underlying rush of desire coursing through me. My nipples harden. I want to know what his hands on my breasts feel like.

I didn’t lie to him. It’s not a craving, it is controllable. But there is this promise that it will feel good, that it will be pleasurable, that it will make me come. I’m horny. Not in a out-of-my-mind-with-lust ready-to-hump-anything-vaguely-phallic-until-I-coat-it-with-pussy-juice horny. But horny nonetheless.

I look up into his eyes. This is important. “Jennie wanted to thank you. Thank you for pulling Jennie out. Thank you for… well, for everything. For being there. Jennie doesn’t know why you did it, any of it, but it doesn’t matter. Jennie’s thankful.”

For a second, Richard looks slightly embarrassed, then he smiles. “You’re welcome. But to be honest, you asked me to help. What was I supposed to do, I mean, just forget about it?”

He looks so cute, all puppy dog eyes, as he tells me this, that I almost don’t pick up on what he’s really saying. I asked him to help me?

“Jennie asked? When?”

He takes my puzzlement in stride, as if we’re playing. But when he sees it’s genuine, he stammers a little bit. “You know… after… well… you know… when Agnieska was giving you your meds, after… after… well…” He can’t meet my eyes, and I swear he’s blushing.

That’s when it hits me. He’s seen me! Oh God! He’s seen me at one of Gutierrez’s parties. He’s seen me while my inner slut was unleashed, craving cock, craving release, unable to do anything but salivate and beg to be pounded over and over again, hard. He’s seen me!

I’m a turmoil of emotions, a roller coaster, a black hole. I turn around, and without a conscious thought, I hug myself. I want to cry my eyes out, cry my pain out. I want to hide somewhere and disappear. I go from riding the high of arousal to crashing into… something.

He’s seen me! What must he think of me?

I do think I start crying. I don’t know anymore. He’s seen me, seen what Biff turned me into, and he’s going to toss me out and reject me—just like Daniel will when he sees me again, when he learns what I am now, who I am.

I’m a slut. A cock-craving fuck-me-out-of-my-mind slut. Get me going, and there’s nothing—nothing!—I won’t do.

Who would want to be with someone like that? Who?

For a second, there, I want to die. Sink into oblivion. Or bliss. Just put me under again, and give me bliss. Please!

I feel arms around me, and I shiver. “Hey.” Richard’s voice is soft in my ear. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

I can’t hold it in anymore. Daniel used to say that to me whenever I’d go crazy hard on myself because of something or other. Daniel, always level-headed, always ready to calm me down and bring me down to earth. I miss him so much, and I can’t even say it!

And if Daniel were here, he’d probably spit on me.

Richard holds me as I collapse, letting out I don’t know how much pent-up pain and frustration. Emotional spells, no shit.

Richard, still holding me, whispers who knows what in my ear. He sits me down on the bed, his arms around me, one of his hands slowly rubbing my upper back between my shoulder blades.

It takes me forever to calm down, while my face remains pressed into Richard’s shoulder, his arms around me, his lips in my hair.

I can’t even focus on what’s going through my head; I’m just a maelstrom of emotions that cry to be let out. And I do. I have no choice.

“Jennie’s sorry,” I eventually have the energy to say, after my tears have dried and my breathing has returned to something halfway normal. I feel cold, dreadfully cold, and I shiver against Richard.

“It’s okay,” he says, rubbing my shoulders, as if trying to warm me up. His body is burning hot. “I can’t really imagine what you’re going through right now.”

I need to explain to him what I’m feeling, why I’ve collapsed like that. I don’t want him to think I’m an emotional cripple. I also don’t want him to think I’m a completely unrepentant slut.

“You saw Jennie,” I state. I’m staring straight at his chest, for I don’t have the courage to look him in the eyes, not yet. I couldn’t deal with the disappointment or even the revulsion that I fear to find there. I look at the Rorschach wet spot my tears made on his uniform.

He gets what I mean immediately. Maybe from my tone of voice. It takes him a long time to answer. “I did.” His tone is serious.

I swallow hard and squeeze my eyelids shut. I don’t want to lose it again. What must he think of me? How much did he see?

“I…” he hesitates. I feel him fidget nervously. “We… I have to tell you. We…”

“Oh God!” The whimper escapes me. “Jennie fucked you, didn’t she?”

“I… Well, you… we… Yes.”

“Oh God! Oh God!” I clench my fingers on his arms, holding on to him, pressing my face against his shoulder again. This is so much worse than I thought. I forced myself upon him—jumped him in my craziness and did Lord knows what to him. This is all going to shit. Everything is going to shit.

“Jennie, it’s okay. I mean, I’m sorry.” He pushes me away gently, and lifts my face up to look at me. He seems anguished, which makes no sense to me. “I… I should have known better, I should have been better, more mature, more together. I’m so sorry, I’m so so sorry.”

I can’t understand what he’s saying. Why is he apologizing? I want to say something, I feel my mouth open, but no words come out. I’m crying. But I see tears forming in his eyes as well.

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asks, almost imploring me.

“What?” It comes out as a croak.

“I know that what I did I had no right to do. But can you forgive me? I’ll make it up to you. Somehow. But I need to know you’re not mad at me. Or scared. Or something.”

I stare at him for a long minute, trying to process everything he’s saying. And then roller coaster of my emotions goes in a tight loop, and with tears still rolling down my cheeks, I start laughing. It’s mad, hysterical laughter, completely uncontrollable, the kind of laughter that probably would land me in the nut house if I wasn’t there already.

Richard doesn’t quite know what to do with me, and holds me as I laugh into his shoulder.

This is nuts, I tell myself. This is so completely utterly insanely nuts.

When I take a deep breath and I pull out to take a look at Richard, he’s looking at me with a mixture of apprehension and eagerness.

I don’t think. I feel the impulse, and follow through. I kiss him.

My lips press against his, my eyes open. I see his widen, but he doesn’t pull away, and his lips respond to mine. The kiss is tentative, tense.

When we separate there’s silence. His apprehension fades a bit. “Does that mean you’re forgiving me?” he asks.

I don’t actually know what it means. So I don’t answer him, and kiss him once more. And this time he responds more forcefully. His lips dance over mine, and our tongues meet. I feel a shiver of arousal run through me.

I’m doing this. Me. I’m not controlled to do this, not forced to do this, not driven to do this. This is what I want. Me. Not the slut inside of me. Just me.

The kiss is long and wet, and it warms up the ice cubes that seem to have accumulated deep inside my chest.

When our lips part, I find myself blushing, and try to brush my hair over my ear. Suddenly, I’m embarrassed. My emotional roller coaster is going for a corkscrew this time.

“Jennie’s a mess,” I say, to break the ice, to release the tension, to somehow apologize for looking like I’ve spend God-knows-how-long in a catatonic state.

“You’re beautiful.”

I snort. Beautiful is so far from what I feel.

“Jennie’s a slut.”

“No you’re not. That wasn’t you.”

“Wasn’t it?” That’s the question. It didn’t used to be me, but maybe that’s what I am now, maybe that’s the real me. A cock-craving slut. I hear those words with Biff’s voice echoing in my head

“It wasn’t you. It was the illness.”

I look up at him. “You don’t even know Jennie.”

He half smiles, and shrugs. “Not yet.” He makes it sound so simple.

Sometimes, someone will say exactly what needs to be said at exactly the time when it needs to be said. There’s hope, is what I hear. There’s a future, is what I hear. You’ll get through this, is what I hear. Unspoken, underneath it all, is the wild undreamed of possibility that Daniel may not spit on me outright, that he might accept me back, despite all the terrible things I’ve done.

A dam bursts, and in one motion that I hope to go is as fluid as it feels in my heap, I jump on Richard’s lap and I kiss him, hard.

I am Jennifer Hansen.

I am me.

And I will get through this.

Hope surges through me, and hopes turns to lust in my emotionally garbled psyche. Tension and lust and fear collide and merge and transform, and I need release. And I know exactly how to get it.

Richard responds to the kiss, of course. I can feel his dick harden beneath me, and his hands crisp on my back.

“Jennie, I don’t know if…”

“Shut up.” I kiss him again, hard, deep, my body pressing against his. I want to be naked in his arms, warm myself up at his hearth.

I still feel some amount of reticence from Richard, but when I grind my ass against him, he moans and then I know he’s mine. For all the misery Biff brought me, he did teach me how to turn a guy on fast, whether I wanted to perfect that particular skill or not.

I break the kiss long enough to pull off his shirt. His sparse chest hair is soft and blond like his hair. I kiss him again, this time pressing my ass down on the hard shaft I feel through his pants. His hands go down my back and slide themselves between my shirt and my waistband, and the touch of his fingers on my skin is electric.

This is me. No one else is in control, no one else is driving. This is all me.

Richard goes to pull off my shirt, but I stop him. I get off his lap. “Take your pants off,” I tell him, as I shuffle down my own pants and panties alongside. I want him. I want to feel him inside of me. I want to be again. My pussy agrees completely, twitching in anticipation.

Richard strips without getting off the bed, though he seems distracted by the sight of my legs, something that’s bound to warm a girl’s heart. I’m horny, and I’m feeling slightly naughty, and so I run a finger through my labia, noting how wet I am, looking at Richard the whole time.

His pants are off, and his cock, hard and straight, beckons. My eyes on his shaft, I press a finger inside of me, feeling my knees buckle, and a moan escape my lips.

Richard watches me with fascination, his eyes riven to my pussy and my exploratory finger, one hand reaching for his shaft and starting to stroke it, slowly, pulling the skin up and down, squeezing slightly.

From deep inside of me, this desire to drop to my knees and suck him off arises, and I have to resist it. It is not what I want. It might be what my body wants, it might be what the slut inside wants, it might be what Biff wants. But not me. It’s not what I want.

I take the two steps that separate us, and Richard watches me approach with an expectant look on his face and a question in his eyes. He’s waiting for me to say how I want to do this, how I want him. Just for that, that acceptance, I want to thank him and hug him and fuck him.

I simply climb back onto his lap. I drop my hand between us and grasp his cock. It is hard and hot in my palm, and it jerks and twitches as I squeeze it and gently stroke it. Richard presses his hips up to further the contact, and he closes his eyes.

I rise and move forward, guiding his cock to me. The head is against my pussy, and it feels good. The slut inside is screaming at me to drop down onto the cock and impale myself, over and over again, shouting how much of a slut I am, how much I want him to fuck me until he tears me apart.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I press down, feeling every inch of my pussy give way and welcome the hard shaft within. Richard looks at me, and lets me do it my way. We look in each other’s eyes as I descend upon him, my pussy stretching around him.

“Fuck this feels amazing!” he groans, his hands on my hips.

“Uh uh,” I simply say, pressing down further until I feel his upper thighs against my naked ass—he’s all the way inside me, filling me up completely. I’ve got his cock deep inside my pussy, and it feels good, so good. I’ve got his cock deep inside my pussy because I want it there. Me.

Richard groans as he feels himself bottom out, and his hands roam over my back, pressing me down further. I can feel him wanting to push up and start fucking me properly. I can read it in his eyes.

“Don’t move,” I say, softly. “Jennie wants to feel you filling her inside.”

He nods, and I lean down and kiss him again, and the kiss is softer this time, a kiss more like that of lovers than that of fuck buddies. Because it’s all I’ve had lately, kisses from men that were fucking the slut inside. This is a kiss for me. Me.

I start moving my hips, back and forth, not rising up, simply moving about to feel him inside of me. It feels good, very good. Like I have a heated log in my inner core.

“Fuck, Jennie—you’re driving me crazy here,” Richard says, his voice rough. He’s so very controlled, so willing to let me go at my own pace. Does he even know why I want to do it this way? Probably not.

“Good,” I whisper in his ear.

And I start squeezing my pussy around his cock—one, two, three, pause. One, two, three, pause.

He groans, and I feel his hands clench on my back, before dropping down to my naked ass to squeeze it. That feels good too.

Gently, I start fucking myself on his cock. My rhythm is slow, leisurely. I don’t want this to be rushed. I want a steady buildup to release. I pull up just enough to give myself room to drop back down, squeezing Richard’s cock along the way. He’s groaning and nibbling my neck as I do this, something that drives me wild.

I want to laugh, for the first time in a long time. I feel… free. Hopeful. Alive. That it’s happening as I have a cock inside of me is ironic. Or crazy. Probably both.

I can’t reason things out. All I have to go with is how I feel right now.

Richard has started to twist his hips and thrust into me to meet my downward strokes, and it feels good too. I know he wants to grab me and throw me on my back and pound into me, over and over again, until he explodes inside of me. And the thought, the image, does make me hot. But I resist. I need to do it this way this time. I want to come while riding him. I want to come while being held, on top of him. And Richard will go along with it.

“You like fucking Jennie, Richard?” I whisper in his ear.

He groans in assent. “Fuck yes. You feel incredible. Just… incredible.”

I can hear what he’s not actually saying. You feel better than last time. It pleases me to no end, of course. But it also turns me on even more: he’s comparing me to me, comparing fucking me now with fucking me when I was crazed and lusty and depraved. I know it’s sick, but it’s a huge thrill. For a second, I wonder if it’s the slut coming out and taking over, but no—I used to like stuff like that since forever, since I first discovered sex, since I first discovered that I liked my sex tinged with power play.

“Better than before, Richard? You like fucking Jennie better now then when you fucked her before, Richard?” I’m still whispering in his ear. I can feel his cock twitch inside of me.

He hesitates. The poor boy doesn’t know what he’s supposed to answer. He doesn’t want to upset me, clearly. “Jennie—” he begins, but he never finishes. He groans as I press myself hard upon him, twisting my hips, pushing my covered tits into his face. I’m quickly building up to an orgasm, I can feel it.

“Come on,” I continue, punctuating my whispers by tiny licks into his ear. “It’s an easy question. Do you prefer fucking Jennie like this, as she slowly milks you, riding you deeply, grinding into you, dancing on your lap, squeezing you with her tight little pussy, working herself up to a huge cum with your cock?” And I act out my words, my ass pushing and twisting and grinding on Richard’s lap.

“This is so fucking nice,” he growls out, his hands on my ass pressing me harder against him, his hips pushing up and fucking me despite the uncomfortable position.

It feels good, very good. This is me, I can feel it. This is all me, enjoying the ride. And I don’t know why, but I want to tease Richard, drive him crazy. Because it turns me on, too. “But do you prefer Jennie the little slut? She’s a good fuck too, isn’t she? All wild and crazy and dripping for it. Did she beg you to let her suck your cock? Did she beg you to fuck her? Did you fuck her hard? Did you make her scream? Or did you gag her with her own panties—forcing her to taste her own juices while you pounded her?” Richard is groaning loudly now, and his hands are gripping my hips tighter, and he’s using them to guide me up and down on his cock, pushing deep on every thrust, stretching me out wonderfully.

I’m so close. Part of me can’t believe what I’m saying. I hate the slut, I hate her with the blazing heat of a million suns. And I want her punished, trashed, destroyed. And all of it comes together into this ultimately masochistic frenzy of lust and anger.

I’m starting to shake. I grab Richard’s head to steady myself because of his pounding and his manhandling me on his lap, and I tilt his head up and I stick my tongue in his ear, breathing hard.

“Did you fuck her ass, Richard? Did you fuck that little slut’s ass? She loves it up the ass, Richard. She loves a thick hard cock punching her ass dry, tearing her open like a little fuck toy.”

Richard grunts, and he holds me tight as his hips shift upward faster and faster. He’s not strong enough to pull me up, or he’d probably unleash on me like he’s probably doing with the slut in his mind.

I’m so close. I can feel the buildup right there, deep in my belly, just waiting for the dam to burst. I tilt my hips so that on my downstroke, when Richard’s cock sink into me, my clit rubs against its root, sending delicious chills up and down my spine, and getting me ever closer to my goal. Just a little more…

“She’s just a little slut, Richard—you fucked a little slut that only had one thing on her mind, to get your big fat cock into her little cunt. You liked that, Richard? You liked her cunt? You liked her tight cunt? Biff’s cunt, Richard—you fucked another man’s cunt—you fucked another man’s cunt because she was too fucking hot—“

I don’t know what did it, but Richard suddenly moans out and goes stiff as I feel his cock throb and then blow up, the sensation of his cum shooting inside of me bringing me over the edge and I don’t even know what it is that I shout out as I clutch his shoulders and press my face into his neck and come in an explosion of stars.

* * *

We’re on the bed, Richard and I, in each other’s arms, holding one another. Richard has found a blanket in a closet to cover us, and I listen to him breathe. We’re silent, both of us. I don’t know what he’s thinking about. I’m coming down from my high. I’ll have to think about what happened, how I behaved. Was that really me?

“What is she like?” I ask him.

“Who?”

“The girl you see when you look at Jennie.”

He looks at me, trying to gauge what to say, surprised that I could read him so easily.

“Jennie’s not upset,” I tell him. “She understands.” More than you’ll ever know.

Richard remains silent a long time, staring at the naked wall in front of us.

“Her name’s Felicity,” he says, finally. “She’s… she was my girlfriend. Back in high school, and my first year of college. My first love. Maybe my only one. She… You… She was a lot like you.”

“What happened?”

He shrugs. “Life? I don’t know. I went away to college and she stayed behind because she was still a senior, and then one day she called me and said that she couldn’t do it anymore, that she was sorry. She broke up with me.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. I tried to get in touch with her, but couldn’t reach her. I tried her parents—I got along well with them. They said Felicity had left home and had found a job in Philadelphia. They were nice folks, but not the most engaged in their daughters’ lives. Joy, her older sister, also left home young. I tried to find her in Philadelphia—her parents gave me her contact information, a dance studio of some sort, but there they said that Felicity had left after only a few weeks. I never managed to get in touch with her.”

“Wow. That’s pretty sad.”

“Yeah, it is. I really liked her.” He pauses a long time. “I think she was the one.”

I smile, trying to reduce the pathos in the air. “Aren’t you a bit young to talk about that sort of thing?”

He looks at me, serious. “Some things you just know.”

I pause at that. I know exactly what he means, of course. I feel the same way about Daniel. And I’m not that much younger than Richard.

“Anyway,” he says. “What about you? What’s your story?”

I want to tell him about Daniel, about Biff, about what happened to me. About my life before all of this. But I can’t. Instead, I just shrug, and put my head on his shoulder. I can feel his heartbeat through his skin.

Richard waits for a beat to see if I’m going to answer. When I don’t, he lets out a little laugh. “Fine, keep your secrets. But I’ll find out, you know. Jennie.” He rolls the name around his tongue, as if tasting it.

I want to tell him I hate that name, but I can’t.

“We have to figure out what to do now,” he says after a long silence. His voice has changed.

I look up at him, not sure what he’s talking about. I can’t read his face, but he’s clearly bothered by something.

He looks back at me, his eyes now serious. “We have to find a way to get you out of here. I think Gutierrez wants to sell you.”