He’d thrown on a white t-shirt and a pair of dress pants with no belt. I had to admit without the cocky, self-satisfied expression he usually carried on his face, he was actually pretty attractive. In other circumstances—minus the alpha personality—I might have been attracted to him.
I led him through the room on tiptoes, even though his house shoes clopped like horse hooves. My heart raced as we passed by Flora. Anything could go wrong in this moment. Flora could wake up and expose her injured arm. James might break away and approach the bed. As we entered the corridor, I began to fear that I’d missed a drop of blood, like a porn addict second guessing whether or not he deleted his browser history when his wife sits down at the computer.
In front of the Jacuzzi, I let go of James’s hand and turned around to face him. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“You must really care about her.”
“I’d do anything for Flora. Any of these girls.”
“Why?”
“Because they deserve better than this.”
James shrugged, sat on the ledge, and kicked off his house shoes. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “The Favorite Girls wouldn’t even exist if not for this company. Are you saying they shouldn’t exist?”
Still a smart-ass, even when sleepy.
“They shouldn’t,” I said, “but they do. When you kill one, you’re not removing her from existence. You’re just killing her.”
James pulled off his shirt, wadded it up, and threw it on the floor.
“See, that’s where we differ. Philosophically. You see a person. I just see physical matter.”
“If that’s how you see things, why haven’t you killed yourself?”
“Because I enjoy living.” He stood, unbuttoned his pants, and dropped them to his ankles, kicking them away. Naked now except for his socks, hands on his hips, dick pointed straight at me. His eyes went up and down my body. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-two. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“So you were just going into high school when I graduated.”
“I guess.”
“What was your GPA?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Not good, then?”
“No.”
“I was the valedictorian of my class.”
He was clearly proud of himself, but this was the first time I saw something in James besides pride.
Ambition.
“Did you deliver your speech naked?”
He laughed, dropped his head, and rocked back and forth on his heels. When he looked up again, he took two steps forward, now standing just a few feet away.
I pulled the string on my robe and let the silk glide down my arms and down my ass, dropping against the backs of my ankles.
James immediately slipped his hand behind my back and pulled me to him, reaching up to grope my breast with the other hand, then sliding it up to my neck and behind my head, pulling my face against his chest and locking his arm around my neck tight enough to scare me.
What scared me more was the fact that he was shivering.
His dick was sandwiched between us. I reached down and touched the tips of my fingers to his balls and suddenly he squeezed me even tighter and I felt him jetting semen.
“Oh God,” he grunted slowly, pushing me away. “Goddamn you.”
My vision went blurry as pain and pressure rocked my left cheek and I collapsed half-conscious to the floor, consumed by the image of cracked and chipping cheekbones. It hurt so bad I couldn’t even cry. I’d never been punched like that by a man. Slapped? Quite a few times. But the hardest slap I’d ever taken was nothing compared to this. One of his knuckles landed against the side of my nose. Now my own blood pooled on the floor.
He stood over me, a tall, blurry, naked shadow. I cowered. This was the part where your attacker usually starts kicking you in the side. Then again, he was barefoot—but crazy, all the same.
“That doesn’t always happen,” he said, all the confidence drained from his voice. “I’m coming back.”
Then I heard two pill bottles rattling on the floor, one after the other.
I woke Flora and made her take the sedative, putting a hand on her chest to insist that she not sit up. I even held the glass to her lips as she raised her head to take a drink. When her head hit the pillow again, her eyes closed immediately.
I stroked her forehead and observed her breathing pattern. Frequent and shallow at first, after a few minutes her chest began to rise and fall slowly, nostrils flaring as she exhaled, lips parting barely. Breathing out of her mouth must mean her oxygen was low due to blood loss.
Look at me, thinking I’m a doctor now.
For the first time since I watched him fall to pieces over his little brother’s death, I wished Patton was here. He would know everything Flora needed, especially how to make her feel safe and comfortable. He could probably stitch her up blind if he wanted.
Then he and I could slip off to the shower room to play doctor and nurse while our patient slept.
It must have been the expectation of sex with someone I didn’t want, followed by the relief of not having to do it. Or maybe it was thinking about Patton. Or even being punched. Whichever the case, I suddenly realized I was horny, and for a split second I was struck with the fear that I’d activated the device in my robe pocket. When I checked, it was bone dry, and I took a deep breath.
I pulled the comforter back to begin removing Flora’s bandage but didn’t stop until I’d uncovered her down to her knees. She still wore nothing but tiny athletic shorts. Completely unconscious, though I suppose the skin never sleeps because goose bumps formed all up and down her body. I touched her with my finger tips around the waistband of her shorts. Up her body, over both breasts, down again. I glided them gently and daringly over her pubis. Once more, watching her breathing, any sign that she might wake up. Then I slipped my hand down her shorts and curled three fingers over around and between her labia. Warm, soft, unadulterated.
When Patton seduced the Prototype Flora, some random, normal girl who just so happened to be heart-stopping gorgeous and as good natured as they come, how could he have resisted falling in love with her? After years and years of raising brand new, virginal Floras, didn’t he at least fantasize about having one for himself?
Flora’s breathing had become shallow and rapid again. A tiny moan parted her soft lips and I pulled my hand away, ashamed of myself, yes, but I also realized the solution to a problem I had put out of my mind.
James said he was coming back, but he didn’t say when. I doubted he would return tonight, but if I planned on testing the drugs in the device to identify them, I would need privacy during my incapacitation.
If, however, I tested the drugs on Flora, I could simply sedate her if James showed up unexpected.
My cheek still throbbed with hot, prickling pain. I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror yet for fear that seeing the damage would make it hurt worse, like when you cut yourself but don’t feel it until you see the blood.
As I stitched Flora’s wound, dabbing at the blood with a rag periodically, I started to feel queasy. It intensified each time I poked the needle through her skin, but I managed to get through it without vomiting.
I glazed the wound with antibiotic ointment, then bandaged it back up and covered Flora up to her neck again.
After putting away my surgical supplies, I crawled in bed next to her, set the alarm on the nightstand for six in the morning—only four hours away—and fell asleep almost instantly, despite my swollen, tender face.
What good is a few hours sleep if you feel like you only closed your eyes for a moment? Just enough time to blink and somehow four hours had passed and my alarm was screaming.
I smacked the alarm to silence it and dropped my head back on the pillow, drifting instantly back to sleep, only to be jarred awake again five minutes later. I’d hit the snooze button.
This time I sat up and made sure to
turn the alarm off. Next to me, Flora started moaning. She still lay on her back with her pouty, clammy face tilted toward me. I waited a moment to see if she would stir. When the whimpering tapered off, I slowly crawled out of bed, retrieved the device from the nightstand drawer, and went to the kitchen.
After putting on a pot of coffee and drinking a glass of water, I began my search. In order to test the three drugs secreted by the device one at a time, I needed something with which to plug the other two eyelets.
It took searching nearly every drawer before I finally noticed the candles on the counter.
Wax. Perfect.
I made myself a cup of coffee and then set up a little laboratory on the kitchen table. A small glass of water, a spoon, tweezers, the needle Iâd used to stitch Floraâs arm, dish gloves, and a candle.
I used the spoon to scoop out three small chunks of wax, each of which I rolled into a little ball. Next I used the needle to carve a tiny L and R on the sides of the device, to make sure I didnât confuse myself. The wax balls clung firmly to the device when I pressed them against the middle and right eyelets. Setting the device carefully on the table, I put on the dish gloves and used the tweezers to pick it back up.
Okay, here goes.
I hovered the device over the glass of water, pressed the button, and submerged it for three seconds. Then I pulled it out, pressed the button again, and carried it to the sink, where I removed the wax—it came out easily—so I could rinse out anything that had secreted.
Holding the device under the bubbly stream, I began to play out how each individual drug would affect Flora, how I would deal with it. If this first round was Libido, I needed to stay away from her but also keep her from reopening her wound.
Love, though …
With the Love Drug I could restore her faith in me. It would be a lie, but we would both benefit.
I heard a clanking sound and my mind jolted back to reality. I must have loosened my grip on the tweezers because the device had fallen into the sink. I tried to snatch it but the gloves were too cumbersome and it slipped into one of the holes of the drain screen. Thanks to a soggy tag from a tea bag, the device caught there and didn’t fall all the way through.
Shutting the water off, I leaned in with the tweezers and slowly clamped onto the protruding end of the device.
A harsh knock at the door made my heart leap into my throat and I jumped, dropping the tweezers. The device was gone, down the drain, and my supplies for this little experiment were still spread out on the table. Someone—it had to be James—was rapping harshly at the door and now Flora sat up in bed.
“Who is it, Melissa?” Groggy but mortified. Achy-sounding, too.
I spoke in a harsh whisper. “Lie back down! Pretend you’re asleep!”
She fell back onto her pillow, drawing the blanket up so far I couldn’t see her face.
Another knock, louder and longer.
I surveyed the items on the table and realized, one at a time, that if I tossed the remaining wax ball in the candle, moved the candle to the center of the table, left the tweezers in the sink, and dropped the gloves on the counter, nothing would look suspicious. I completed these tasks as I thought of them, leaving only a glass of water and a hand towel on the table. Then I ran to the door, terrified of what bad news waited on the other side but more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t answer soon.
Yesterday I was irritated to learn that James had been instructed to unlock the door but still knock. This time it saved me.
Turning the knob, I was met with another round of pounding on the door. It was enough to inflame my swollen cheek. My fear turned to anger. I threw the door open saying, “Do you have to be so goddamn rude?”
James was turning and walking away.
Before me stood Kate.
“Fuck.”
“Hi Melissa!” The sound of her voice made my fingers curl, I so badly wanted to strangle her. More so when she winced and said, “Jesus, what happened to your face?”
I put on a fake smile. “Kate, how nice to see you! You look rested.”
“Never felt better,” she said, flopping her arms and smacking her hips—they were mostly bare; a tight red cocktail dress at seven in the morning. “You look tired, Melissa. Are you getting enough sleep? I’d be sleeping all the time if I were you.” She stepped past me and peeked into the room, then looked back to me with a mischievous grin. “Or playing with Flora. Can I come in?”
I stepped aside and let her enter, closing the door behind us.
My eyes went immediately to the glass of water on the table. It sat there like a landmine, as did Flora. Not a single person in this building would fail to immediately identify Flora’s wound for what it was.
Especially not Kate.
“Looks a little shabby in here,” she said.
“I thought I wasn’t allowed contact with anyone.”
She turned and smiled. “You know me. I always get what I want.” Then she began to wander the room, inspecting for cleanliness, noting changes, like when she stopped at the busted stereo system and said, “You should see the sound system Sean has. It’s like a concert.”
After nosing around in the closet, she emerged and approached the bedside, placing her palms flat on the comforter and grinning at Flora. Flora was either really good at pretending to be asleep or she had actually dozed off again.
“Poor little thing,” Kate whispered. “She looks so pitiful.” She turned her head to me. “You still haven’t done it yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Well I’d get on it soon. You don’t have much time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She bit her lower lip and raised her shoulders. “I know how much money you have left.”
Adrenaline gushed through my veins, but I managed not to show my anger. Not yet.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She blinked twice, as if to say, Oh, really now? You don’t care at all that you’re about to die? I think I spot a liar.
She was right, of course, but pretending not to care was the only weapon I had in this battle. An empty act of defiance. No more sophisticated than the thought process of a mule.
“I’m sure you’re curious,” she said, “death being so painful and absolute. I know if I were about to die, I’d probably just … completely break down. You know?”
The more she spoke, the more her head tilted to the side. By the time she shut up, she looked like she’d had a stroke and lost the ability to hold her head up. Then suddenly it sprang back straight like one of those inflatable tube men you see in front of car dealerships.
Walking away from the bed, she began to speak at full volume.
“What I’m trying to decide is this: if I were in your shoes, if I had the option of knowing when I was going to die, would I choose to know or not know?”
Kate tripped and stumbled forward, grabbing onto a chair at the table to keep herself from falling.
What was up with her? The dramatic head jerk and now this? The coma must have taken quite a physical toll.
She pulled the chair out and sat, patting the tabletop as an invitation for me to sit opposite her. For whatever reason, I did. Her back faced the cabinets, so if this table served as a makeshift desk, this was Kate’s office and she was the boss.
Between us stood a glass of water that contained one of three drugs.
She put her hands on the table, interlaced her fingers, and leaned forward, looking mean as ever.
“What are you doing, Melissa?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you trading James sex for drugs?”
“Flora is sick.”
“With what? The flu?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell the truth.”
This was bad. James had told her everything. The fucking idiot must not have realized it was the dumbest decision he could have made for himself. When Sean found out he’d violated the terms of my confinement, h
e would be in as much shit as me.
“She’s just sick,” I said, “and I wanted to help her.”
“At the risk of getting both of you killed.”
I took a deep breath, then said, “You try being locked away. Try being experimented on like a lab rat and losing your memory once a week. See how good you are at decision-making.”
She’d covered her mouth while I was talking, but now she burst into laughter, mouth so wide I could see the back of her throat, where countless dicks had rammed their heads and made her gag. I had this image in my head as Kate succumbed to coughing and didn’t notice her reaching for the glass.
All I saw was her taking a drink.
Setting the glass down, she cleared her throat a final time and said, “The truth is, Melissa, that you’ve already run out of money. Six days ago actually. We’re just keeping you alive until the experiment is over. If we get the results we want, you get to live a little longer. If we don’t … well, then it’s a fight between a lot of people over who gets to kill you.” She paused, the corners of her mouth turning up in a slight smile. “And how.”
She closed her eyes and drew in a long breath, pushing her breasts out and arching her back in the chair.
This was it. She’d drank the Libido Drug. In a moment she’d be on the floor fingering herself.
I decided I would introduce her to autoerotic asphyxiation.
Kate opened her eyes and exhaled. “Whew, I feel better. I’ve always been a morning person, but ever since I woke up from the coma, it takes me a while to get going.”
She stood, and I stood with her.
“You’re leaving?” I asked. Where was the reprimand for breaking the rules?
“Sorry to be in a rush,” she said, “but I’m a busy girl these days. It’s not easy being assistant to Sean and supervisor of Patton at the same time. Today I’m going down to the warehouse. We have to train two of the pre-production Favorite Girls to drive forklifts.”
“What? But they’re just kids.”
She stopped at the door. “What do you expect us to do—hire from a temp agency? Taking over the world requires secrecy. A little child labor won’t hurt anybody.”
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