Nothing.
“I’m stumped,” I said. “Where does the conversation usually go from here?”
Flora took in a breath, still lying on her back. “This is where you give up and take my clothes off.”
What was more shocking than what she said was the fact that she looked like she wanted me to do it. I saw innocent seduction in her glossy blue eyes, a more virginal variety of the look on my first Flora’s face when Mr. Moses opened the box in Ted’s bedroom. She even tugged at the waistband of her shorts with her thumb. Awkward though she was in her attempt to look sexy, it only made her all the more desirable.
It didn’t occur to me to find it odd that Flora now suddenly wanted me, even though she’d expressed fear of this moment earlier and had avoided me and my bitchiness most of the day.
My curiosity was getting the better of me. What had stopped me from pressing Flora’s button the first two times? Would this Flora feel different from the last one? Would we survive with no one around to pull us apart?
This would be suicide by sex.
Fuck it. We’re dead anyway.
I put my hand on her thigh and let me fingers glide up over her stomach, between her breasts, and finally to the nape of her neck. I gripped her small shoulder, ran my thumb down her bicep until I felt the tiny line of scar tissue where her device had been implanted. I could feel the lump of the button, like that of a retractable ink pen, only embedded beneath human flesh.
“Push it,” Flora said with a tone that made me fear I already had.
A drop of Libido and a dash of Love.
How did I stop myself before?
“Just do it,” Flora said, a hitch in her voice. “Please Melissa.”
“We’ll die.”
She nodded, wincing, her cheeks now wet and red.
“At least it w-won’t h-hurt.”
As opposed to what? What was she so afraid of that death seemed the better option—albeit a painless, in fact pleasurable death?
It struck me all at once, and I knew immediately Flora was thinking the same thing, which meant I’d had this revelation twice before.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Flora covered her face with both hands and turned over, sobbing so hard her body trembled.
The last night I remembered was so clear in my mind—probably because I hadn’t gained any new memories since, today’s aside—that I was able to recall Judy’s confession word-for-word:
“Did I tell you about the Love Drug? What it can do? Its manipulative capacities? Brian thought if he contaminated the city’s water supply, everyone would be affected, even Sean. Then he could talk Sean into letting him have free reign over Level E. He would have won, Melissa. Brian would have taken over this company. I couldn’t allow that. So I switched it.”
She’d switched the Love Drug, which Brian would have used to contaminate the city’s water and brainwash first Sean, then Mr. Shriver, with the Libido Drug.
“If you love someone, you’ll do anything they ask,” Judy had said.
They were experimenting on me with the Love Drug. With it, they could convince me of whatever reality Kate whispered in my ear.
“I’m sorry, Flora. I can’t believe I haven’t done it already.”
She turned over to face me but her eyes remained glued to the bed. I could barely see her face behind her curtain of hair. A tear streaked down her nose, formed a bead at the tip, and then dropped.
It took her a moment to calm down, but then she said, “You backed out quickly the first time. Last time you almost went through with it.” She looked up at me. “Are you gonna this time?”
I nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you, Flora, but I have to cut it out.”
After consoling her for an hour, stroking her head, cuddling her, whispering promises I knew I couldn’t keep, I finally came to the task of prepping for my first-ever surgical procedure.
The first thing I needed, of course, was a scalpel, and the only alternative was obvious. I used a fork to break the pink plastic of a twin-blade disposable razor and carried both blades on a small plate back to the kitchen, where I’d put on a pot of water to boil. I’d seen enough movies to know a little about sterilization.
Across the room, curled up on the couch, Flora refused to look at me and wouldn’t respond when I asked if she needed a belt to bite down on.
I knew this was dangerous. I was the girl who refused to dissect a frog in high school. Instead, I berated my teacher, accusing him of enabling animal cruelty, and he gave me a C for the assignment just to shut me up.
This was no rubbery, formaldehyde-soaked frog corpse pinned to a blue mat. This was warm, soft, living human flesh.
This was Flora. A beautiful, good-natured, warm-hearted girl who had no concept of life outside this facility.
And I knew as much about surgery as she knew about the outside world. Veins and arteries and tendons and muscle tissue. Anything could go wrong. She could bleed to death, I would have to sit there and watch her die, and then I’d be all alone, a murderer sitting on death row with nothing to keep me company but my own guilt.
Well, that and enough Libido Drug to kill myself.
Who knows? Maybe I’d get to fuck the Grim Reaper before my sentience dissolved into nothing.
My first idea was to stretch her out on the bed and tie her to the bedposts and headboard. Inhibiting her movement would reduce the chance of severing something vital, but I quickly came to realize James might notice a big blood stain on the sheets and comforter.
There was only one logical option: the shower room, where all evidence could be washed away at the turn of a knob—and also where people were less likely to hear Flora scream.
As I prepped for surgery, my thoughts were drawn to images of a heart beating inside a chest cavity, pumping blood through an intricate network of veins, arteries, and vessels, lubricating and moisturizing organs and tissues.
Then a thin, sharp metal blade sinking into and slicing through that delicate system. Burst pipes gushing blood.
When I felt I was as ready as I was going to be, I went to the corridor and called to her. She appeared at the entrance, a shadow in the low light, pulling her shirt off as she approached, hair falling over her breasts. Drawing closer, I could see she was tiptoeing on the cold tile, shivering, now naked except for those tiny athletic shorts. I was reminded of every girl’s locker room porn video I ever found in Ted’s browser history. In this scenario, I was head cheerleader and Flora was a new recruit submitting herself to initiation, or any other ridiculous fantasy contrived by the minds of artless men.
Flora stopped and awaited my instruction, but I was stalling. For the first time since I regained partial consciousness with Kate whispering in my ear, I felt the real me returning, like I’d slithered out of a thick, dead layer of skin. It felt refreshing—but only for a moment. Once the anger dissolved, sadness and anxiety quickly stepped up to fight for its place as my dominant emotion.
I threw my arms around her only to hide the fact that I was crying, but she joined me, and there in the cold, damp corridor we held each other, me drawing comfort from Flora’s feverishly hot skin.
When another’s skin is warm to the touch, to that person your hands feel like ice. So my comfort became Flora’s discomfort.
“Promise this will work?” she mumbled into my shoulder.
“Yes,” I resolved to myself, and this time I meant it. Pulling away from her, I cupped her face with my cold hands. “I’m going to save you, Flora, I swear.”
“All of us?”
“All of you.”
“Us,” she said.
I wiped a tear from her cheek with my thumb. “Us.”
She smiled. “Good. I know you can do it.” Then she took my hands from her face and held them. “I’m ready.”
I’d put down five or six layers of towels angled on the gentle slope of the shower floor where she could lie in relative comfort with her bicep close to the drain. Now here she lay, a sacrificial lamb
, too terrified to jump up and run.
I had my sterilized blades on a small plate along with a pair of tweezers for extracting the device. It probably wouldn’t do either of us any good if I stuck my fingers in there. Besides, the scar was only about an inch long, which meant the device had to be pretty small.
Just an inch. A small incision. Doctors do it every day. It was no big deal.
Yet when I picked up one of the blades and pinned her arm down at the elbow, my heart started pounding.
Responsibility has real weight to it, as though it contains some metaphysical composition that amplifies gravity. If you’ve ever stood at the precipice of a decision that could change your life forever, you know what I’m talking about.
Flora’s breathing had turned short and rapid.
I shushed her gently. “Close your eyes.”
She did.
Still holding her arm, I made a pass over the floor to quickly inventory the supplies. Clean washcloths, peroxide, needle and thread for stitching, antibacterial ointment. What was missing—besides anesthetics and a medical degree?
Just get it over with already.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath, “here we go.”
I wasted no time. The corner of the razor sank easily into the scar tissue, at once producing a hot, thick stream of blood and a deafening scream that momentarily caused me to loosen my grip on Flora’s elbow. Flora must have interpreted this to mean the cutting was over, though I’d only broken the skin, because she jerked away, this time screaming even louder.
“Oh my God.”
I closed my eyes and sobbed.
I’d sliced her open all the way to the elbow. She was bleeding profusely, two streams first formed in the tile grout now overflowing and spilling into the drain.
I grabbed a fistful of rags and pressed them into the cut.
“I’m so sorry, Flora.”
“It h-hurts!”
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to! You—you jerked away.”
She tried to sit up, but I put my hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down, dropping the rags in the process. In the struggle, I caught a glimpse of the deepest part of the incision. It was opening and closing with Flora’s movements like a fish’s gill, and in it I saw something black.
Flora tried to sit up again, but when I tried to keep her down, she turned her head and vomited. I let her go so she could roll over and grabbed the tweezers. While she dry-heaved and spat bile, I came in close, gently parted the incision, spied the device, and extracted it.
Again, Flora recoiled, and I lost my grip, but now the device was sticking out.
“Be still!”
She froze only for a moment, enough time for me to snatch the device.
I sat back and inspected it. Two inches long, about as thick as a pencil, with three tiny metal eyelets like the tips of syringe needles evenly spaced along the side. That was how it released the drugs. On the opposite side was the button.
Luckily I hadn’t accidentally pressed it.
Flora was crawling away from me, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind her.
The towels were miraculously unsoiled. I discovered this as I quickly gathered up the supplies and beat Flora to the door. I hated myself for what I was about to do, but I felt I had to get control of her before she tracked blood all through the place. She was a healthy young girl with adrenaline pumping through her system. What if she decided to fight me?
At the door, I flipped the switch that activated the shower. Flora stopped on her hands and knees and let her head fall between her arms as hot water pattered her bare back, washing the blood from her right shoulder, arm, and side.
I waited for most of the blood to clear—all except for the new blood still pouring out of her arm—and then hit the switch again.
Dropping everything but the rags, I went over and made a temporary bandage out of them.
“Come on, let’s get that cleaned up.”
I helped her stand and led her to the edge of the Jacuzzi pool, where I poured peroxide over the wound and made her hold the rags to it while I threaded a needle.
All the color had drained from her face. She was no longer crying. Instead, she stared blankly at the needle, eyes a little droopy, and every thirty seconds or so she shuddered violently.
“How much … blood have I lost?”
“I don’t know.”
“A lot?”
I tracked the red dots on the floor leading back to the shower room. “Not a dangerous amount, I think.” As though I had the first clue.
Flora pulled the rags away just enough to peek at her wound.
“It’s just oozing. I don’t think you—an artery got severed.”
Even flayed open—against her will, by all legal standards, I’m sure—Flora still hesitated to place blame where it clearly belonged. To her, that would be mean.
Too nice. There very much is such a thing.
“I want Patton,” she said. She was growing more and more calm. It was starting to scare me.
“You’re gonna be okay, Flora.”
But now that I had the needle threaded and ready to go, I got a good look at her. Pale, shivering, maybe not fully conscious. There was no way I could stitch her right now. I’d have to knock her out, or else I’d spend ten minutes pricking her, making her heart rate increase, which would speed up the bleeding.
I put the needle aside for now. If I was going to stitch her up, it had to happen within eight hours. I remembered that from cutting my leg open in a bicycle accident when I was thirteen. I successfully hid the injury from my parents most of the day by wearing sweatpants, but when they wanted to go out to dinner, I had to give in and tell them. That or deal with blue jeans rubbing against a raw cut in ninety degree weather. My parents had to skip dinner to take me to the hospital. They were so mad they left me alone with the doctor while he stitched me up—a failed attempt at punishment, because the doctor was young and gorgeous.
Until he spoke, at least.
The cut was so high on my leg, he made me pull my pants down. After he put his hand on my leg and leaned in close to inspect the cut, he said had I gone two more hours without stitches, I’d be stuck with an ugly scar across my thigh for life. A shame, he told me, since I was such a pretty girl.
When you get creeped out that bad, the memory sticks in your mind. You have an eight hour window to receive stitches, and if that doctor had been nice to me I would have fallen in love with him instead of taking home the requisite to forever be wary of men.
I made Flora a fresh makeshift bandage with new rags and led her back to the room. I lay a garbage bag across the bed and then put a towel over it. That way if more blood seeped out it wouldn’t stain the sheets or mattress.
In bed, she quickly developed a throbbing pain in her arm. I rummaged the kitchen for any overlooked narcotic, bottle of liquor, or pinch of weed and came up with nothing. All I could find was a box of organic tea with valerian root, which was supposed to have sedative properties.
I brewed all eight of the tea bags in two cups of water and poured half of it in a big mug, adding a few spoonfuls of sugar and a little honey, then tasting it to make sure it wasn’t disgusting.
To my delight, it was amazing. I’d made enough for both of us, because if I was about to do what was on my mind, I wouldn’t mind being half-conscious myself.
The tea worked. Flora fell asleep in a matter of minutes, and half an hour later she hadn’t so much as whimpered.
I inspected the device under the bright bulbs where Kate’s marijuana plants used to stand, trying to guess which eyelet leaked which drug.
I would have to test each one by plugging the other two and hitting the button, then trying it myself. That could take a while. The Longevity Drug would have no noticeable effect, from what I understood, but I would need at least a day to recover from the Love Drug and the Libido Drug consecutively. I only had eight hours to get Flora stitched—and maybe not even that long. What if she bled out
and died?
This had to happen.
I put away and cleaned up every shred of evidence that a half-assed surgical procedure had taken place, from the blood on the Jacuzzi pool ledge to the box of garbage bags I’d left on the night stand, stopping to pull the comforter up to Flora’s chin, covering her bandage completely.
Next I changed into a silk bathrobe that barely covered my ass, tying it loosely so a little cleavage showed. I tossed my hair into a mess and looked at myself in the mirror to see if I had a convincing just-woke-up look. The valerian tea had made my eyes a little droopy. Perfect.
When I called James, I spoke in a breathy whisper.
“I need to talk to you.”
“It’s late,” he said, sounding like I’d woken him.
“Flora is sick. She needs medicine.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Flu, I think. She needs antibiotics. And a sedative. She finally passed out, but I’ve been up with her all night.”
“She’ll just have to tough it out. I gotta go.”
“Wait.” I only hesitated for a moment, for fear that he would hang up. “I’ll fuck you.”
He chuckled, a little more alert now.
“You’ll fuck me,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“Tonight.”
“Bring me an antibiotic and a sedative, and I’ll do whatever you want.”
Silence for a moment. Then, “You know I’ll be reporting this to Sean.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Just bring me the medicine. I’ll deal with the consequences.”
“If I do this, there’s no turning back. We’re fucking when I come through that door.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
James breathed into the phone. Then he hung up.
This is the part where I quickly come up with some scheme to get myself out of the corner I’ve painted myself into, but in the ten minutes it took James to crawl out of bed, get dressed, find the drugs, and come to my door rubbing the grogginess from his face, I merely sat at the kitchen table, mind blank and body frozen.
When I opened the door, I put a finger to my lips.
“Don’t wake her,” I whispered, taking his free hand—after spying the pill bottles in his other hand.
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