by Paul Kater
sheets of paper. The noise they made was like lightning bolts to her. Finally she sat up and covered her ears with her hands. She knew that if this would persist, she'd go crazy over the sounds that seemed to come from everywhere now. She just wanted it all to stop. The thought had not even fully developed in her mind when the noises indeed stopped.
Carefully she removed her hands from her ears. She heard nothing special. Still there was the doctor rummaging through his papers but somehow the lightning-like noise had gone. Lily relaxed.
The doctor turned to Lily, a few papers in his hand. "I must admit, Miss Marin, that your quick recovery pleases me tremendously."
There was something in his voice that should not be there, Lily noticed, even though she had no idea what it could be.
He walked up to the bed where she was still sitting. "Would you mind showing me your arm? I would like to check your pulse, before we... uhm... yes, thank you."
"Before we do what, sir?" Lily asked. As she spoke, she saw the doctor make a swift move. She saw how an injection needle landed on her arm, she felt the sting of it - and then watched the needle break. It was obvious he did not want to check her pulse. "Sir!" she yelled out, even though the needle had not done her any harm. Instinctively she yanked her arm away.
Doctor Drosselmeyer stared at her, then at the broken needle. "Miss Marin," he started, while Lily got off the table. "You can't leave!"
"Oh yes I can!" Lily said, abandoning most of her courteous behaviour. The man, after all, had tried to stab her with a needle without warning!
The doctor grabbed her arm with both hands. "You will stay, Miss Marin, the procedure is not finished yet!" His voice had lost all of its charm and niceness.
Lily looked the man in the eye. "Sir, I request that you take your hands off my person, or I will be forced to do that for you."
Doctor Drosselmeyer, much taller, wider and heavier than Lily, could not suppress a grin as he tightened his grip on her arm. "You will stay." Each word was accompanied by a strong squeeze of her arm.
"I shall not!" Lily pulled her arm free of the hands that held it, and with her free hand she gave the big man a shove. The effect of this startled her so much she clasped her hands over her mouth: the doctor literally flew through his office and landed just short of his big wooden desk. The thud that resounded when he hit the floor, made the lamp on the desk tremble, its glass cap making threatening sounds of an impending demise.
After a moment, the doctor moved and sat up. He first needed to confirm where he was, and then he looked at Lily again. There was terror in his eyes. "Miss Marin. Please." He worked himself to his feet.
"I am so sorry, sir," Lily said. She was relieved the man was standing again. He appeared to be well.
Suddenly the man charged at her again, throwing his entire weight onto her! Lily screamed, closing her eyes, tensing her muscles - and the doctor almost bounced off her. The impact of his body hitting her made her stumble backwards, her eyes flying open as she fell back onto the table. From there she heard the man groan as he rolled over to get onto his knees.
"What is happening?" Lily asked, half in a scream. She looked at her hands. They shook. So did her voice. She could not remember ever having been in such an floundering situation. "Tell me what is happening, doctor. This is not normal. What have you done to me?"
"I just want to improve your voice," the man on the floor said. "Trust me."
Lily was halfway tempted to do that, when he jumped up with an ease she would not have believed possible for such a big man. He landed on top of her, pressing her down on the table. Before Lily had understood the situation, the doctor had grabbed a small flask from his pocket and sprayed something in her face. The world went fuzzy, and then black...
...until she woke up again. Lily was instantly aware that she was on the table again. Tied to it. And the doctor had not taken that lightly this time. A heavy chain was wrapped around her and the table several times. She could not move her arms nor her legs, and she could barely lift her head high enough to see all these things, as a big metal ring around her forehead effectively restricted her movement.
"Doctor Drosselmeyer?" she asked, blinking her eyes. Whatever it had been the man had sprayed in her eyes, it still stung. There was no answer to her calling out his name.
"Doctor!!" Lily threw all politeness overboard. Still no answer. She strained her ears to hear something. It was all she could do; the ring on her head made it impossible to look sideways. Then she heard it. Breathing. Breathing and a slow thumping. His breathing, she suddenly knew, and his heartbeat.
"I know you are there," Lily said. "Come here and release me."
The thumping became faster, the breathing too. Then she heard a creaking sound and the loud rustle of... clothes? Puzzled, Lily tried to understand this as footsteps came closer, until the face of Doctor Drosselmeyer loomed over her.
"Miss Marin. Welcome back to the living." His voice was cold now, very different from the gentle and understanding tone she was used to from him. "I have taken the opportunity to make sure you will not become violent against my person again, as you may understand."
The man's first words had thundered in Lily's ears. Very quickly her hearing seemed to react by itself, the noise the voice had made was gone.
"I assume you are not willing to let me complete the procedure that we started..."
"Certainly not!" Lily fumed, yanking the heavy chain..
"I thought so much. That is why I proceeded without your approval. Oh yes," the man said as Lily's eyes grew large, "the third part of the procedure is done by now, and it all went very well. I am sure you are going to be thrilled with the result, Miss Marin."
"How dare you! Without my consent!"
"Oh, I beg to differ," the doctor grinned, as Lily noticed a red mark on his face that had not been there before. "Before we started the procedure, you agreed to it. As you were not able to respond when I was ready to continue, I went ahead and completed the procedure."
"You are going to regret this, sir," Lily hissed, "I will report you to the authorities."
"I am sure you feel that way, Miss Marin, but by the time you reach the authorities, I will have gone. Yes, the procedure I performed was slightly outside of the law, but I needed to do this to complete the preliminary experiments."
"Preliminary..." Lily's voice failed her as she understood that she had been used as nothing more than a test-person. And one for illegal experimentations too!
Calmly the doctor held something in front of her face. It was the same spray he had used before.
-=-=-
Lily woke up. It was dark in the room, and cold. Her eyes stung.
"Hello?"
There was no reply. No sound. She strained her hearing, the way she had done before. There was no breathing, and also the thumping heartbeat was missing. There just was the loud ticking of a clock somewhere.
"Hello," she tried again. It was hardly surprising there was no reaction. "Think, Lily," she told herself. "You have to get away from here, and nobody is going to help you." After a while in which she tried to decide what to do, she told herself: "You will have to break the chain."
It sounded so stupid and impossible that she almost had to laugh at herself, were it not that she had broken chains before. Even when these were thinner than the massive one that lay over her chest and stomach now.
She had, Lily understood, no other choice than to try it. She took a deep breath, tensed her arms and started pushing against the chain. To her surprise there was some movement. She pushed harder. A cracking sound told her that parts of the table she was on were about to give up their support.
Lily yanked one more time. Something gave way and she tumbled down -
Lily found herself on the floor of her bedroom, her blanket and pillow on top of her, the sheets of her bedlinen wrapped tightly around her.
She'd had the dream again.
Slowly she curled up, pulling the blanket over her head. Underneath that she was alone,
with her tears.
###
About the author:
I am an IT consultant who loves reading and writing.
I've been an amateur-author since years, writing SciFi, Fantasy and lately also Steampunk. My home is in the Netherlands.
I hope you liked "Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories".
All books I published so far:
Hilda the wicked Witch series:
Steampunk:
If you want to connect with me online:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pagan_paul
My website: https://www.nlpagan.net