by Smith, Bryan
On the other hand, it did stir anew those unpleasant memories from last night. The inferno oven itself had been a delight. The forced immolation of all those screaming men and women was the most breathtakingly awe-inspiring spectacle of mass carnage she’d ever had the privilege to witness in person. It was just unfortunate that such an incredible experience would forever be tarnished in her memory by the way she’d been treated.
Her original intent was to return the acetylene torch to the shelf once she was finished cauterizing these wounds. However, with her anger surging back to the surface, she opted to inflict more pain on her new patient. It occurred to her this could be viewed as a kind of transference therapy, a shifting of pain from one person to another. There was an element of transformation as well, of course, mental suffering made physical.
Livia smiled as the woman wept and trembled. “Thank you for being here today. I really needed this.”
She cut open the woman’s shirt with a scalpel and then removed it, tossing the flimsy scrap of fabric in a waste bin. The woman shook her head and sniffled as she muttered more barely coherent pleas for mercy. Livia ignored them all and started the torch again, applying the flame this time to a nipple.
The woman bucked against her bonds and screamed louder than ever. On a whim, Livia stuck the flame in the woman’s open mouth. It was only in the orifice for a moment as the woman gurgled and wrenched her head away, but the look of wide-eyed, disbelieving horror that had twisted her strained features had been reward enough for Livia. She was having fun now, all thought of her wounded pride temporarily set aside.
She shifted her attention to the woman’s other breast, using the torch to reduce the nipple to a blackened nub. Once this was accomplished, she held the torch above the woman’s belly as she traced a line of fire all the way down to her waist. The next stage of this process of disfiguration would have involved the vagina, but before that could happen the double doors at the other end of the infirmary again banged open.
Livia cut off the torch and glanced that way, wincing as she saw Dr. Woronov come into the infirmary. The woman entered wearing her usual white lab coat over a dark-colored dress. She had a doughnut wrapped in a napkin in one hand and a paper cup of coffee with a plastic lid in the other, items procured from the staff housing cafeteria. As the doors swung shut behind her, she first took a bite of the doughnut and followed it up with a sip of the coffee.
She smiled when she saw Livia. “There you are, dog. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all morning.”
Livia frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
A look of mock-innocence crossed the doctor’s face as she came closer and took a look at the softly moaning patient. “You sound upset, dog. Why would that be?”
She laughed as she leaned over the bed and examined the woman’s fresh scars.
Livia’s grip tightened on the torch. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
Dr. Woronov took another bite of her doughnut and looked at her nurse. She was still smiling, but now there was a pronounced tinge of smugness in the expression. “I’ll talk to you any way I please, dog. And I’d watch that tongue of yours. I don’t like your tone. My friend the warden probably wouldn’t like to hear that you’re having attitude issues.”
“You and the warden can both fuck off.”
The doctor’s smile faded. “I’m surprised at you, Livia. I’d thought you’d finally learned a long overdue lesson about your place in the scheme of things last night.”
“Meaning what?”
The doctor smirked. “Meaning that you are not my equal, you silly, dumb little bitch.” She laughed. “Oh, there it is again. That look of hurt. I loved seeing it last night and it’s no less enjoyable this morning. For too long, you’ve assumed we’re essentially on the same level, but now you know we’re not. I’m important. You’re the opposite of important. What you do here doesn’t matter. You’re as inconsequential as a fucking janitor.”
Livia was stunned by the level of rancor in the doctor’s speech, which had grown more heated with each word. In all those months they’d spent as frequent bed partners, she’d never sensed the woman harbored feelings remotely like what she was expressing now. Either she’d hidden them well or they had developed recently. Livia’s money was on the former, because the heated words made it sound as if she’d been working herself up to this for a while.
The doctor nodded. “Speechless in the face of the hard fucking truth. You really are pathetic.”
Livia leaned over the bed and grabbed the doctor’s shirt with her free hand, pulling her across the bed. Next she pressed the nozzle of the torch against the woman’s face and triggered the flame. The doctor dropped her coffee and doughnut as she screamed and writhed in Livia’s unyielding grip. The lid of the paper cup came off as it struck the patient’s exposed belly, dumping hot coffee on recently burned flesh. This resulted in more screams. Livia welcomed the sound. The more pain she could cause this morning, the better.
The flame burned a hole right through the doctor’s cheek and scalded the flesh inside her mouth. She staggered backward as Livia let go of her, crashing into the bed behind her before dropping to the floor. By the time Livia made it around to the other side of her new patient’s bed, the doctor was making a shaky attempt to get to her feet.
Livia smashed the steel barrel of the torch against the side of the doctor’s head, knocking her down again. Before she could make another attempt to get up, Livia pinned her to the floor and repeatedly smashed the torch against the top of her head. Woronov clawed weakly at Livia as the attack continued, but to no effect. Her hands fell limp at her sides as she slipped into a state of semi-consciousness.
Once she finally ceased smashing the woman’s head with the torch, Livia let out a breath and studied her slack, drooling features. The enormity of what she’d done hit her after just a few moments. This wasn’t some low-level employee she’d attacked. It was an apparent member of the warden’s inner circle. Covering up what she’d done wouldn’t be easy. It might even be impossible.
Beginning to panic, Livia got to her feet and backed away from the doctor’s slumped form. Dr. Woronov was sitting with her back against the wall, blood leaking from numerous gashes in her scalp. The torch wasn’t quite heavy enough to effectively bash the woman’s brains in, but she was definitely hurting. Deciding on a believable cover story would have to wait. The job of killing the bitch needed finishing first.
She hurried out of the infirmary, glancing both ways down the hallway as she came through the double doors. No one was around. Spying a large, overstuffed garbage can sitting against the wall opposite the janitorial supply closet, she ran in that direction. Once she got there, she removed the lid from the can and plunged the blood-stained torch deep into the mass of refuse.
After replacing the lid, she hurried back to the infirmary and noted with a sigh of relief that Dr. Woronov was still sitting slumped against the wall. She was semi-conscious but insensible, moaning weakly as she struggled and failed to utter coherent words. This was good. She wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight for this last part of it.
Livia fetched a fresh scalpel from her supply cart, seized the doctor by the collar of her lab coat, and dragged her out into the open space between the rows of mostly empty beds. She flipped the woman onto her stomach, planted a knee in the small of her back to hold her down, and cut her throat with the scalpel. A rapidly forming pool of blood spread out around the doctor’s head. Livia was on her feet and backing away before it could touch her.
The doctor was dead.
Livia allowed herself a single moment of primal satisfaction. Then she started freaking out a bit, muttering to herself as she paced back and forth. She hadn’t been thinking straight through any of this, instead acting on instinct and allowing raw hatred to steer her actions.
Now she was rethinking some things. Not the murder itself. That was done. Nothing she could do about it and good riddance to th
at cunt, anyway. Instead she was wondering if there’d been any point in taking the time to hide the torch. Wouldn’t a missing blunt instrument be more suspicious than one that’d been discarded on the floor?
She didn’t know. She’d never had to hurriedly cover up a messy crime scene before. With the patients, it was so different. She could torture and kill them all she wanted and there would never be any adverse consequences. It was just her job, after all. If anyone doubted whatever story she concocted, she could get in serious trouble for this. An understatement of massive proportions.
I don’t want to die, she thought. Not now. Not ever.
The situation was further complicated by the knowledge that someone might come along at any moment. They would demand an explanation she didn’t have yet. She looked at the bloody scalpel still clutched in her hand and felt stupid. Being caught with the instrument of the doctor’s death in her hand would be tantamount to suicide.
She was about to dump it in a biohazard bin when she belatedly noted that Lenore Flanagan, aka Spider, was awake and watching her.
Fuck, Livia thought. Now I’ve gotta kill her, too.
The warden would be extra pissed about that, having requested that extraordinary measures be taken to save her life. But she had no choice. She had to assume the woman had seen everything.
She had to die.
Livia took a step in her direction, carefully avoiding the still spreading pool of blood.
Spider lifted her head off the pillow and stared evenly at the nurse. “The Frauenschaft did it.”
Livia stopped in her tracks. “What did you say?”
Spider nodded. “The Frauenschaft did it. I saw everything. I can even describe the bitches who did it.”
Livia held the woman’s gaze for a long moment. The wheels were spinning fast in her head. She had no reason to trust this woman, but something in her expression—in that unwavering gaze—caused her to take an impulsive leap of faith.
She veered off toward the biohazard bin, dumped the scalpel in it, and calmly approached Spider, folding her arms beneath her breasts as she came to a stop at her bedside. “Tell me what you saw. Every detail.”
Spider smiled.
And then she began to spin a story.
26.
The screen went dark and the warden stared at it for several moments with a mounting sense of frustration and worry. Upon returning to her quarters the night before, she’d sent an encrypted request for a special video session with the shadow council. This morning she learned the request had been granted.
She appeared promptly before the hidden monitor at the appointed time with the expectation of receiving the full and immediate backing of her superiors. Something was wrong at Prison 13, something that had come about with shocking swiftness, and she needed their help in getting a handle on it before the situation spiraled out of control.
The council listened to her account of the insolent behavior of a top-ranking member of the Frauenschaft in silence for roughly a full minute before cutting her short.
“We are aware of what’s happening,” a robot-like voice intoned, crackling through the speaker. “We are monitoring the situation from the inside. Rest assured, we have everything under control. There is nothing to worry about. Good day, warden.”
And that was when the screen went black.
Ms. Wickman couldn’t believe it. She’d never been treated with such extreme curtness by the shadow council. The sheer lack of basic courtesy and respect was galling. Worse than that, it did not bode well for her future at the prison. The abrupt and dizzying turn in her fortunes was mind-boggling. She couldn’t begin to fathom what was behind it, knowing only that it was, in fact, happening. She didn’t care for this hard truth, but denying it would do her no good.
She had to start thinking about self-preservation. A rapid exit plan would have to be crafted. Thinking about it now, she was angry at herself for not already having one in place as a basic contingency. It just hadn’t seemed necessary. She’d felt so secure while wrapped in her illusion of total control and authority and now she was paying the price for that complacency.
But before starting work on how to get out, she would make one final attempt to somehow turn the tide and bring things back under control. To this end, the first thing she needed to do was talk things over with Helga. The vice-warden might be the only person left she could still fully trust. Perhaps together they could brainstorm a solution. If not, they could collaborate on an exit plan. About one thing Ms. Wickman was absolutely certain—if flight became an absolute necessity, she would take her perfect Aryan goddess with her.
She left her quarters and returned to her office, where she used her desk phone to summon the vice-warden. Helga was still in her room at the time of the call. She sounded distracted on the phone. When asked about this, she claimed she was still fighting off the effects of last night’s drinking. She took a moment to respond when informed Ms. Wickman would need to see her in her office immediately. The brief hesitation made the warden frown until Helga broke the silence by saying, “Yes, of course. I’ll see you soon.”
“I need you here within fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be there.”
Helga broke the connection. Ms. Wickman frowned as she replaced the receiver and stared at it.
The knock on her door came almost precisely nineteen minutes after the end of the phone conversation. Ms. Wickman knew because she’d been watching her desktop clock the whole time.
“Come in,” she said, trying not to sound too peeved.
The door opened and Helga came into the office. A guard in SS black pulled it shut behind her. Helga was dressed in her usual full Nazi regalia, though the warden was sure no actual Nazi officer had ever worn stiletto heels and sexy stockings with the uniform. Despite her claims of being hampered by morning-after hangover effects, she looked as stunningly put together as always. Even the age lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth were invisible, so she’d had time to apply makeup with expert care rather than haphazardly.
Ms. Wickman frowned as Helga settled into the chair directly opposite the desk and crossed her long legs in her usual elegant way. “You’re looking well this morning.”
Helga shrugged, smiling faintly. “I’ve felt better. I actually feel kind of like crap, but…” Here she paused to wave a hand in front of her face. “I’m a master illusionist when it comes to cosmetics.”
Ms. Wickman nodded. This was an acceptable explanation that fit the facts as she knew them. There was still no good reason to doubt her one true confidante.
“What I’m about to tell you has to be kept in the strictest confidence. I mean it, Helga. Can I trust you?”
The vice-warden shifted slightly in the chair, leaning forward as she said, “Of course. Always. You know that. What’s going on?”
The look on her face was sincerity itself, but something about the expression felt a little too studied. A little too…precise. The look on her face was a mask. She was hiding something, but this in itself wasn’t sinister. It might only be that she already had a strong inkling regarding what her boss was about to say. The truth was almost certainly as simple as that. She couldn’t allow paranoia to get the best of her.
“Does anything strike you as odd about recent developments?”
Helga leaned back again, lacing the fingers of her hands together in her lap. “Odd?” She tilted her head a moment, arching an eyebrow as if thinking about it. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Ms. Wickman’s eyes narrowed to puzzled slits as she stared back at the vice-warden. “You don’t?”
Helga shrugged. “I suppose you’re referring to the shadow council’s recent Frauenschaft directive.”
“Of course that’s what I’m referring to. What else?”
Helga shrugged again. “It’s a change from previous policy, but I don’t see it as odd.”
“You don’t?” the warden asked, deadpan.
&n
bsp; “No.”
A silence stretched out after that, one verging on uncomfortable as the two women stared at each other. Uncomfortable for the warden, that is. Helga’s expression remained somewhat guarded, but there was something weirdly serene in her tone.
Ms. Wickman cleared her throat. “Helga, I need you to be completely honest here. Do you know something I don’t?”
Another puzzled expression crossed the vice-warden’s face. Again, the confusion the look was intended to convey did not seem genuine. “No, Evelyn. I don’t. I have to assume there’s a good reason behind the shadow council’s directive.” She shrugged. “What choice do we have but to trust them?”
Ms. Wickman stared at Helga another long, silent moment. She sighed. “I need you to do something for me.”
Helga smiled. “Of course. I’m happy to help any way I can. As always.”
Now it was Ms. Wickman who smiled, an expression that belied a deepening inner frostiness. “I don’t require any help at the moment. In fact, I’m sure you’re probably right about everything. There’s nothing to worry about. Thank you for reassuring me on that count.”
The vice-warden’s expression turned somber. “Good. And I hope you know you can always confide in me. But…you said you needed me to do something for you? If you don’t need any help…”
Ms. Wickman nodded. “What I need you to do, Helga, is remove every stitch of your clothing. Do it now and be quick about it.”
Helga’s smile was back. “Of course. It’s been a while since we had some time alone.”
She rose from the chair and began to disrobe. She took her time about it, doing it teasingly, the way she knew the warden liked it. When she ceased removing garments, she was still in her heels and stockings and the SS hat was still perched atop her head. Again, she knew this was as her boss normally liked it when they were about to have sex.