Assuming I was right about the land surrounding the house.
Of course, theyhadmade me well again. Which meant killing me would be silly.
The steel wall-mirror showed a pink line through my eyebrow and the swelling and bruising was gone. It almost seemed too fast for those bruises to vanish. The memories were both fading and an ever-present nightmare.
I wanted them gone. I wanted them to stay to remind myself to kill someone in revenge.
I had a limp, though.
They might have fucked with my sense of time more than I knew.
And what of Emme? Asking too many questions of the cleaners or guards resulted in punishment: no food or being blindfolded and gagged the next time they entered. They never answered me, anyway. I took to annoying them when I was bored, which was almost always. I asked for books, for their names, for more books, for the latest news, for lessons in martial arts.
The latter made one of the guards snort, laugh, then shake his head. Score one to me.
I asked and asked, and subsequently dieted more than I should, and wore a ball gag a few times. They soon learned that I could mumble around those.
Even if this were better than being assaulted, this treatment was unnatural.
If they kept me silent, speechless, and in the shadows for too long, would I peter out and soak into the floor? People needed the company of others. It was how we worked.
Watching TV was never going to be like breathing the same air as someone else, as exchanging kisses, words, and skin-on-skin contact.
The third time the doctor visited, when he left, he told me I no longer needed his attention. I was healed physically.
“And am I healed mentally?” I asked him, too angry to hold back my scowl. That brought me a flicker of his mouth, then a grunt.
“Answer me!”
He still left.
The door clicked shut.
Fuming, I threw a shoe at the door, then every object I could find in reach.
I began scratching marks on the wall with a sharpened toothbrush end, to mark the passing of time. I had a notepad, but damaging the wall was more satisfying. They took away my toothbrush, for a while.
The hours, the weeks, dragged by. I nagged the helpers and guards, just to get a response. Punishment said I was real, and they didn’t do much to me, not really.
How long had it been since I felt the sun on my body? That question was niggling me the day I heard his voice again, outside in the hallway. On one arm, I propped myself off the bed, swung up to sit on the edge. I’d only ever glimpsed the hallway, because an anonymous voice on a speaker ordered me to lie face down on the bed whenever a cleaner or guard was about to visit. The speakers were well hidden, as were those cameras I was sure existed.
His footsteps approached, then the lock and the handle were manipulated.
He entered with the familiar gray case in hand and held open the door with his foot. I remained seated, wondering what to say and what that open door meant. I crushed my piddling dream of freedom. It would not be that.
What to say? Nothing had worked before.
Obi-wan, you’re my only hope, skittered across my thoughts, and I half-smiled to myself. If only I had a jedi to call on.
He wore a weary yet impenetrable expression. I’d come to expect a certain ignorance of my existence except for those rare times when a frisson swept him. Had I said something, or had I winced at an injection, or moved in a way that drew his attention? Whatever I did that triggered him, the universe swam whenever he pinned me with a dissecting, heart-stopping stare.What have I here, I imagined was his thought.
A shimmy of matching awareness would consume me. I loved those brooding moments, for they meant I was a woman again, a person who was not just a victim.
Was it shallow to need someone’s attention to see myself as real?
Totally, Charity, you idiot.And talking to myself was a sign of insanity.
“Come with me.” The doctor beckoned, crooking his fingers.