Broken Dolls

by Kitty Thomas

  Run.

  Was that why he ran so much on the treadmill? Trying to outrun his demons? Did it ever work?

  When she’d dressed, Brian led her up the stairs to the main level. The house slumbered so deep it was as if a spell had been cast over it. It seemed nothing would wake the inhabitants. All that existed were Brian and Mina—him tugging her hand, pulling her insistently through the darkened house. The lights near the floor cast an eerie, ghostly glow upon everything they touched.

  When they reached the gym, he only turned one set of lights on, the rest of the space stayed dark.

  He set the program on the treadmill and took the machine beside her, setting the same program. “Run. Don’t stop until you can’t go anymore.”

  Mina ran. She ran to him, away from him, away from everyone and everything, away from the dreams, away from Jason, away from her brokenness and the pieces she couldn’t reach to pick up.

  She didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at her. No music played. It was just the sound of shoes hitting the moving platform over and over.

  Half an hour later, she couldn’t go anymore. She stopped the program and collapsed on the floor trying to catch her breath. Brian was still going strong. How much did he run? It seemed as if his life was a string of coping mechanisms for the violence that shaped him still.

  Brian got off the treadmill and pulled her to her feet. “Shower next, then food.”

  It was a carefully orchestrated ritual. How many nights had he done this? How many nights had it been him waking from a nightmare instead of her? He was letting her into something private, and for the first time it didn’t feel like a game or an act. It felt like intimacy. Understanding. If only it was real.

  Showering was another silent ritual, both of them squeezed inside, his hands running carefully over her with the soap. But that was all he did.

  He shut the water off, toweled off, and dressed. Mina echoed him and started to put her own clothes back on.

  “No.”

  Her hand froze over the clothes.

  “Just wrap the towel around you and come with me.”

  She followed him down the dark silent hallways until he stopped at a door at the end of one hall. He punched in a code and pushed the door open.

  She hesitated. It was the medical room. She felt the panic wrap around her throat as the memories of the last time she was here flooded back. She’d been spared that time.

  “Go on,” Brian said, nudging her.

  She stepped inside as he locked the door behind them and flicked on the lights.

  He crossed to the bigger spotlights and turned them on. They sputtered to life as they slowly woke and brightened the room further. He set up the video camera and positioned it near the medical equipment, lining up what he wanted to film.

  “Drop the towel,” he said.

  “M-Master…”

  He stepped out from behind the camera. “No one else will see it. It’s just for me. If you don’t want to do it, we can just go eat. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” He’d closed the distance between them. He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Will you be a good girl for me and let me do the exam? After all, I never got the full clean bill of health from the doctor on you. I need to know what I bought, don’t you think? All the other buyers get to see this.”

  His tone was light, teasing. While he’d been kind to her, having a moment of teasing from him was a new side entirely. It made her want to do it.

  “Drop the towel.”

  Mina’s hand unclenched, and the terrycloth fluttered to the floor.

  He bent his head, and his tongue flicked across first one nipple, then the other. They hardened when the cool air hit.

  “Good. I want, hard pert little nipples in my film. Will you do this for me, Mina?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Good girl. Get on the table. Feet in the stirrups. I’m sure you’ve been to the doctor before. You know how this goes.”

  She climbed onto the table and did as he asked while he put on a white lab coat and blue surgical gloves. He snapped the gloves on. The red light on the camera blinked as it hovered over the examining table with a clear unobstructed view of her.

  He picked up a clipboard with some papers on it and made a show of studying it, even though she knew he was just making a cheesy porno with her. The only thing missing was the bad music.

  “Hmmmm Ms. Calloway, when was your last visit?” He looked up, clearly expecting her to go along with it.

  For the smallest space of time, she felt something softer for him beginning to form. It was a terrible idea to let that seed take root, but he was playing a game with her. A lighthearted sexual game—the kind of thing she’d wanted before but had never been given. How could he be so brutal to others and do this with her?

  “Ms. Calloway? It’s important that you are very honest with me about your medical history. Or else how can I treat you?”

  “Uh… about a year,” she said.

  “And how many partners have you had? I mean, I’m your doctor. Surely the exact details of your sex life are my business. I’m only trying to help you.”

  He made it sound as smug and paternalistic as possible. A laugh escaped her.

  Brian sat on a rolling stool and moved closer, his hands on her knees, pushing the stirrups wider apart. His intense gaze met hers, but it was tempered with amusement. “Is something funny?”

  “N-no, Doctor. Nothing’s funny. Fifty partners since my last check-up,” she lied.

  “Fifty!” he exclaimed. “We’ll have to test you for everything. So slutty. Nurse! I need the full panel of slut tests, stat!”

  Mina held back another laugh, afraid if she laughed too much he wouldn’t finish this. Unbelievably, she wanted him to, now.

  Before she had time to think, a cold, metal speculum was inside her. “I’m going to make you watch this video later,” he whispered for her instead of the camera, “so you can get a good look at what your doctor has been looking at all these years.”

  The thought should have bothered her, but right now it just turned her on. After a few minutes, he removed the cold metal, then gloved fingers were inside her, exploring, feeling all her most intimate private places.

  “With your prolific sexual misadventures, I think you should come in for more frequent check-ups. Don’t you agree, Ms. Calloway?”

  “Y-yes, Doctor.”

  He smirked as he withdrew his fingers. “There’s one more test I need to conduct. At some point, I’m sure you’ll wish to settle down with one man. Many husbands feel anxious about their wife’s sexual response. So we like to test that. Just so they know it’s not them.”

  He rolled the stool over to a drawer and pulled out a vibrator. Mina’s breath caught when the buzzing started. Then he turned it off and came back to her.

  “I’d first like you to manually stimulate yourself for me.”

  The game was becoming less funny and oddly more exciting as he intently watched her hand move between her legs.

  He made a show of writing notes on the clipboard while she stroked the aroused flesh between her thighs.

  “Good. Now slip your fingers inside.”

  Her hips bucked off the table, her feet pressing hard into the metal stirrups as her fingers pumped in and out.

  “Do you feel how wet you are?”

  “Y-yes, Doctor,” she whimpered, barely able to maintain a coherent conversation.

  “That’s what the husbands and boyfriends want. They want you dripping wet and ready for them. I’m very pleased with your response.”

  He turned the vibrator back on and pressed it against her clit. “Hold it there and come while I examine your breasts. If you climax, keep going. It’s necessary for our records.”

  By this point he could say any ridiculous thing in the world and she was too far gone to giggle. He put the clipboard down and stood next to her, his hands kneading her breasts in the same impersonal way as a doctor would, but then his thu
mbs brushed over her nipples, and he pinched one as she came, tears sliding down her cheeks from the force of her orgasm.

  He moved back to the stool and took the vibrator from her. “Touch your breasts. You need to know how to do it properly.”

  She stroked her breasts as he kept the vibrator pressed against her, not releasing her until she’d climaxed several more times.

  Finally, he turned the toy off and dropped it in a bin marked “sanitize”.

  Mina lay there watching him as he removed the gloves and tossed them in the trash and draped the lab coat over the counter. He turned the camera off and took out the tape. He picked up the towel, draping it over her, as if protecting her modesty.

  He pressed a kiss against her forehead. “Do you feel better?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  ***

  Mina sat in a chair beside a stainless steel island in the large kitchen behind the cafeteria. She watched while Brian retrieved milk, eggs, cheese, salt, and pepper from the fridge—then bread from the bread box. She couldn’t believe this man would ever let a carb pass through his lips.

  They didn’t speak while he made toast and scrambled eggs. Her mind kept going back to the medical room and how in the still spaces with him, everything felt unbroken. She didn’t know how it was possible for someone so fucked up to make her feel not fucked up. Tonight she’d gotten the first real glimpse of the man he could have been if not for the scars that had painted a different person. He was in pieces, like her. Tonight she’d seen one of the better ones.

  He put a plate in front of her and sat beside her. They ate in silence. She felt calmer after the running and the shower and the game. Brian finished before she did and left the room. Had he gone back downstairs?

  Jason had never taken care of her like this. He’d never held her when she was scared or made a meal for her. It had always been about him. If she dared complain, they were back to You’re not a real sub!

  So far those words hadn’t left Brian’s mouth.

  He returned and dropped a piece of paper and a pen down next to her plate.

  “Give me the names of the men who created you.”

  Mina looked up, the calm slipping away again. “I-I’m sorry? I-I don’t know what you mean.”

  He leaned in, his gaze level with hers, staring her down. “You know exactly what I’m asking for. Give me their names and any additional information that will make my search shorter.”

  “W-what are you going to do?” Deep down she knew. Something violent. Maybe something fatal. “I-it was consensual.”

  It wasn’t.

  No matter how many times she told herself that lie. Nothing with them had been consensual except on the surface in the beginning. When she’d been sold to Brian she’d known she had no real choices, and yet when he touched her, her soul said yes to him.

  “No! The response you are looking for here is: Yes. Master.” He crossed his arms over his chest and watched as she wrote down the names of the men who had broken her.

  She considered making up names—unsure if she could be the cause of whatever Brian would do to them—but she was afraid she might give him names of real people—innocent people who didn’t deserve whatever he planned to mete out.

  “I-I don’t know the names of Jason’s friends…”

  “He will tell me.”

  Mina was sure that was true. She handed the paper to Brian.

  He scanned it. “Is this all you know?”

  “Y-yes, Master.”

  He folded the paper and put it in the pocket of his sweatpants. He put the empty plates in the sink, and they went downstairs.

  ***

  Brian watched Mina undress; this time the self-consciousness had left her.

  “Back in bed. You need rest,” he said.

  She dutifully got back in, and he pulled the blankets over her. He crossed to the CD player and put in his copy of Chopin’s nocturnes. He put it on repeat just as his mother had once done with the records. As an adult, he’d listened to this disc many nights to go back to sleep. When he couldn’t hurt someone, when he’d run as far as his body would let him and it still wasn’t enough, the nocturnes helped. It was how he’d known they would somehow carry Mina through the withdrawal.

  He’d wanted to go to her those nights, hold her, help her through it. But he was unused to putting broken things back together. He didn’t know how to comfort or soothe, and he’d wanted to delay her knowledge of the monster she’d be trapped with forever. He’d wanted everything to be perfect. The music, the collar, easing her through the ceremony. So maybe she wouldn’t fear him. He’d wanted to buy her trust. But there wasn’t enough money in the world for such a purchase.

  He couldn’t begin to imagine what had come over him in the auction prep room. He’d planned to be more serious, but when he’d tested the first joke and the fear around her had melted like a block of ice exposed to sun, he just wanted to make her smile more, laugh more. He wanted to see her happy.

  He changed clothes and put on sturdy boots. She watched him silently from the bed. She wouldn’t ask where he was going. She knew better than to ask.

  “Sleep,” he said. “Everything will be okay.”

  But would it? Could it ever be okay? Had it become okay for him?

  She hesitated, then closed her eyes. He touched her face, and she leaned into him, her features relaxing. He slipped quietly out of the room and closed the door.

  Brian kept a bag in his SUV for occasions like this. The last time had been official business. He’d been sent by Lindsay to stop someone from talking. But this was personal. Almost as personal as his stepmother had been.

  He stopped by Lindsay’s office to use the computer to search the names on the list along with the scant details Mina had jotted down that might give Brian a starting point. The internet search filled in the blanks within minutes. He made some notes to add to Mina’s and cleared the search history.

  The sun was barely peaking over the horizon when he reached the first name on the list. Jason.

  It would be just about time for him to be going off to work if he worked normal hours doing normal things.

  The neighborhood was mostly empty—a lot of houses for sale in a new housing development. No witnesses. Perfect. He should have planned things out, and he would after the first one. He just needed to get one of them done. Mina hadn’t realized it, but she’d dug the pen into the paper deeper on this name. This was the one that caused the dreams—that strangled scream she’d made that had woken him from a dead sleep, the sweating, the panic. He knew that scream, that panic.

  Maybe he should wait, let Jason be last. But Brian wanted to take this one at the height of his rage. He needed catharsis. Something physical. Something that hurt… someone else.

  He grabbed his bag out of the back seat, took one final look around the neighborhood to ensure it was truly deserted, then made his way to the front door.

  Birds called each other, but stopped as he approached. A dog barked in the distance. It was unseasonably warm and sunny today, a brief pause on winter before it snapped back into bright bitter cold again. It was the perfect day to do this. An unassuming happy day for Mina’s biggest tormentor.

  Brian set the bag on the ground and knocked. No answer. He rang the bell. Still no answer. He pressed his finger on the button again, holding it down until the door was ripped open.

  “What!” a man on the other end barked.

  “Hello. I’m Brian Sloan. I’m here on behalf of Mina Calloway.”

  The man laughed and shook his head. “Cute. You must be the heroic new boyfriend.”

  “No. This is a different story.”

  “Yeah, okay, hero. Did she cry to you about how mean I was to her? She consented to all of it. Little whore tops from the bottom. But you probably know that by now. Tell that cunt when I told her to get out, I didn’t mean send her newest fuck to beat me up.”

  Keep talking, asshole.

  Jason started to shut the door in his
face, but Brian’s boot stopped it from closing.

  “I’m happy to say I’m not here to beat you up.” He picked up the bag and forced his way inside, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  Outside, the birds resumed their conversation.

  ***

  Mina had just made it to the top of the stairs when she heard shouting in the main entry hall.

  “What the fuck is all this?” Lindsay shouted.

  She moved down the hallway and peered around the corner into the entryway. Brian stood surrounded by several bags he’d hauled inside. He was covered in blood.

  “It’s trash,” Brian replied coolly.

  “Who?” Lindsay said. “We agreed we’d manage this and that you wouldn’t just go off…”

  “We agreed to nothing. I said it’s trash. It needs to be burned. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Brian…”

  He rounded on the doctor. “You use me. You’ve always used me. Do you think I don’t know that? You used me. You used Mina. It’s all about you getting what you want, what helps your bank account. I’m not the fucking idiot you seem to think I am!”

  Mina rushed down the hall and back down the stairs to the room at the end of the corridor. She should have closed the door and stayed hidden inside with the Chopin still playing on repeat. But she watched through the crack as Brian brought the bags down and took them to the hidden door behind the stairs.

  When he emerged again, he was naked—his clothes and shoes likely burning with the rest of the evidence. The look in his eyes was like nothing she’d ever seen. Nothing she wanted to ever see again.

  She backed up when he opened their door. He looked wild. Savage. As if he’d ripped some animal apart with his bare hands and teeth. No. As if he were the animal.

  “I need to get cleaned up.”

  The CD ended and went back to the first nocturne.

  “Who?” she said, echoing Lindsay’s question upstairs.

  “Jason. The rest will be taken care of. Don’t worry.”

  Her breath hitched. Jason was gone. Like God just erased his mistake.