by Dani René
“I’m sorry, Tom,” I whisper, and he rubs my back. He has big hands, warm and a little rough with callouses on his fingertips. I asked him about them once and he told me that he plays guitar. He promised to play for me sometime if I could spend a whole week without getting in trouble, but I think it’s been more than a year since he made that promise. He probably doesn’t even remember it, but I still try every week. When Monday comes around, I always tell myself it’ll be the week I get to hear Tom play guitar… but it won’t be this week.
Mr. Cat made sure of that.
“Go ahead and change,” Tom says. “Nina is going to behave for us.”
“Sure,” Antonio grumbles, yanking my socks off before he stands. He’s angry, or at the very least annoyed with me, and I don’t blame him. Not really. They can’t see the metal shards in the water, and they don’t believe me about the poison, so they don’t understand why showers are so terrible. Baths were bad enough, but at least at home I could stay very still. Moving in the water let the little knives cut through my skin, so all I had to do was wait for Mom to come back and tell me I could get out… but in a shower the water is always moving. It drives the metal shards into my skin too fast to avoid. Opening millions of tiny gaps in my skin for the poison to seep inside. Showers are the worst, but the Serenity Institute doesn’t have bathtubs anyway.
I pull my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around them as Tom continues to stroke my back. It’s soothing, kind of, and I keep an eye on Mr. Cat as he wanders toward the open curtain of the shower.
“This is what they do to bad girls, Nina. Dirty girls get put in the shower, they get poisoned, and you’re just letting them hurt you.” Mr. Cat shakes his big, furry head back and forth. “I don’t think you’re a bad girl, or dirty. I think you smell nice. You smell like my friend.”
Friend.
Even though it’s bad, even though I know Mr. Cat isn’t real, it feels nice to have a friend.
I just wish my friend wasn’t so dangerous… then maybe Tom could be my friend too.
“Going to fight me?” Antonio asks, adjusting the swim trunks on his hips as he moves in front of me again. I shake my head, resigning myself to the shower, and I’m surprised when he offers me a hand up from the floor. “Come on then. Let’s get this over with.”
“Can I…” I swallow as I let him pull me upright, shifting my weight side to side while the roar of the shower echoes off the walls. “Can I just use a washcloth? Please? I’ll use soap and everything, I promise, and then—”
“Not a chance,” Antonio cuts me off, grabbing my arm to pull me over to the stall where steam is already billowing out in hazy clouds. My hope dies as my feet get dangerously close to the lip of the shower. Mr. Cat isn’t talking to me anymore, his big amber eyes just follow me, judging me and my weakness as I let Antonio put the leather cuffs on my wrists. He makes them too tight, my skin pinching as he drags the strap through the fixture, but I stay quiet even though I just want to scream. I want to scream loud enough to block out the rushing water that splashes all of those tiny knives and poisonous drops against the tile.
“We’re going to make this real quick. Okay, Nina?” Tom speaks up from behind me, but I don’t turn to look at him. I can’t tear my eyes away from the dark drain where the water is swirling, returning to whatever nightmarish hole it came from in the first place. “Nina?”
“Okay, Tom,” I whisper, but I don’t follow him into the shower when he steps past me into the stream. He offers a smile, extending his hand, waiting, and I know I should just move. Step in and let them scrub me, but I can’t. All of my self-preservation instincts are keeping my knees locked tight, refusing to budge one inch closer to the dangerous liquid pummeling Tom’s chest and soaking into his swim trunks. A moment later his smile falters, his hand drops, and he nods at Antonio.
“No, no, no, no!” The words are a babbled, repetitive prayer that I can’t hold in. I know I promised to be good — all I want is to be good — but as Antonio shoves me into the shower, I can’t fight the panic. I start screaming again, sobbing, trying desperately to keep my arms against my chest as they work together to stretch them up to the hook below the shower head. It has a little piece that swings in when they get the leather cuffs over the edge, and as soon as it flicks back into place, I go limp. Locked into the hellish stream of poison, I can feel every invasive sliver of metal as the powerful stream of water forces the tiny knives into my skin.
“It’s okay, Nina. You’re safe. You’re fine.” Tom’s warm, calloused hands lather the soap and start to scrub me as Antonio does the same.
“They’re lying. They just want you to let the poison in so you’re easier to control.” Mr. Cat is still outside the shower, cleaning himself with licks on his front paws, swiping them back over his cheeks. He’s not even looking at me anymore, and somehow that makes this worse. “You should listen to me, Nina. If you don’t, they’re going to kill you before we ever get out of here.”
“I don’t want to die,” I whine, ducking my head to my chest to try and keep the water from my face. I can’t let it get into my eyes, or my mouth. That’s the worst.
“It’s a goddamn shower,” Antonio growls, sliding the soap over my stomach. His hands are smoother, callous-free, and they dip between my thighs, sliding higher until his fingers find my folds, stroking between them to seek out the button that has my hips shifting. “You have to be clean. All of the patients have to be clean, Nina, not just you.”
“She knows that, she’s just scared of the water.” Tom runs his soapy hands up my arms, tracing each of my fingers before gliding back down, tickling my underarms as he focuses there for a long moment. “But it’s not so bad, right?”
“Can I get out now?” I ask, but I already know the answer.
“No. If you’d just shower yourself then we wouldn’t have to do this,” Antonio replies, crouching down to brush the bar of soap over my legs and the bottoms of my feet before he returns the bar to Tom. “Get her hair?”
“Yeah, I got it.” Tom tilts my head further forward, massaging the water into my scalp, and I feel the tears surging again because he doesn’t understand that he’s pushing the poison deeper. Letting in more of those tiny knives that only create more openings inside me. Letting in more of the poison that they’re drenching me with. A second later he tilts my head back and I clench my eyes tight, biting down on my lips to keep them sealed tight against the onslaught while he works the shampoo through my long hair.
I yank at the cuffs on instinct and Antonio grabs my hip, his grip so tight that I’m sure he’s leaving bruises behind, but I can’t say anything. Speaking would require opening my mouth and that would let the water in.
“Do you want us to tell Dr. Nickelsen how you’re behaving?” he growls, so close to my ear that I almost open my eyes to look at him, but I stop myself and shake my head instead. “Then behave.”
Antonio’s fingers glide between my legs again, but this time they don’t stop with a stroke through my folds. No, this time he slips them inside. Two fingers pushing in and out, thrusting, and I can hear Mr. Cat laughing in his strange, purring voice as the heel of Antonio’s hand grinds against my clit. I want to gasp, to speak, but the dull scream of the water in the pipe reminds me of why that would be suicide.
“See? It’s not so bad,” Tom says, and I’m not sure if he can see what Antonio is doing. He’s busy working the shampoo through my hair, then rinsing it away with all of that fucking poison, and even though it’s wrong I find my hips rocking to meet the dull flickers of pleasure that Antonio is giving me.
“Yeah. I think she’s starting to like it,” Antonio replies, a low chuckle in his voice as he tries to work a third finger inside me. I lift onto my toes, whining against my sealed lips as the burn strips the pleasure away for a moment. “She’s definitely behaving better. Dr. Nickelsen will be happy to hear about her progress.”
Progress?
Words like that are keys to locked doors. If Antonio
tells Dr. Nickelsen I’ve made progress, then maybe I’ll get to sleep without the cuffs. Maybe I’ll get to go to the art room again. I cling to that idea as Antonio forces his fingers deeper, his knuckles stretching me to the point of pain, but I don’t speak. I don’t let the water in my eyes or my mouth… and I behave.
I have to be good for them so they tell Dr. Nickelsen how well I’ve done.
Maybe Tom will even forget about Mr. Cat.
Maybe they’ll say nice things about me.
“Don’t be stupid. They just want you clean,” Mr. Cat growls. “Washed in all that poison. He’s even shoving it inside you right now, and you’re letting him.”
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
You’re not real. Tile, cuffs, fingers — those are real.
“I’m as real as the poison that asshole is finger-fucking into you, Nina. Just wait, you’ll see I’m right. You always do eventually.” His last words come out in a rumbling growl, and then the sound fades away slowly, and I know Mr. Cat is gone again.
He’s mad.
He’s not real, but he’s mad at me, and even as my body adjusts to the invasion of Antonio’s fingers, pleasure creeping up my spine once more, all I can feel is a growing sadness. An emptiness. If he’s really gone this time it might mean I’m getting better, but I haven’t been alone in so long that I don’t know how to feel about it.
Is this what being good is like?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe it doesn’t matter at all because I’m supposed to know that Mr. Cat isn’t real, which means he can’t be mad. It’s all so complicated, and I wish I had the answers like the doctors do.
I wish I had the instruction manual to my brain.
I don’t, but Dr. Nickelsen will know what to do, and he’ll be happy if I tell him Mr. Cat is gone. It’s what he always asks me about. I just have to fight the poison seeping through my organs long enough to tell him.
Chapter 3
“Bingo!” Elisa shouts, slapping a handful of playing cards onto the table in front of her, and I just shake my head as the others at the table argue with her about whatever game they were trying to play. Whatever it is, it definitely isn’t bingo.
Turning back to the window, I trace the metal lattice that keeps us away from the glass. There are so many little diamond shapes, probably millions of them scattered across all the windows in the Institute — but I never get to enjoy the window in my room. I don’t get to look out at the forest, or the mountains in the distance, because I’m always tethered to my bed.
Only the well-behaved patients get to sleep without restraints, and no matter how hard I try… I can’t get Dr. Nickelsen to let me be free when I’m alone in my room.
So, this is where I always sit when I’m in the Rec Room. It’s my corner of this couch, and the other patients let me have it. I like to watch the birds flying by, to see the branches of the big maple shifting in the breeze. I remember what the wind felt like before Mom brought me here.
I used to love being outside.
If I could go out right now the sun would help dry the water from my hair. It might even kill off some of the poison currently soaking into my scalp. Scientists use light to sterilize stuff all the time, and the sun is the most powerful light available. If they’d let me, I’d lie out on the lawn naked. Let the sun bake the lingering moisture from my skin and hair so that I could at least avoid some of the damage.
“Meds!” Nurse Hawthorne calls out as the metal trolley rattles over the lip of the nurses’ station and into the main room. There are a bunch of little plastic cups filled with a rainbow of different pills, each combination meant for a different patient. A different cocktail of chemicals to change our minds, dull us, shove us further and further away from the world as we experience it.
“Just more poison,” Mr. Cat says from the floor, his soft fur brushing against my leg as he glides by. Maybe he’s forgiven me for letting them put me in the shower, for not fighting harder. Still, I keep my eyes out the window. I don’t look at him. I don’t respond.
I have to be good.
“Nina.” There’s an edge to Nurse Hawthorne’s tone, a warning, and I turn to see her holding up the cup meant for me. A mix of antipsychotics and sedatives that I hate taking. They make the walls stop breathing, and Mr. Cat can’t talk to me as easily, but I stop feeling real when I take them. It’s like my skin turns into plastic and the plastic spreads until everything around me looks like it’s meant for a dollhouse. Close to real, but not real. Those pills leach the color out of the world, the texture.
“Don’t take them, Nina,” Mr. Cat urges, tail flicking against the edge of the couch as he sits, glaring at the nurse.
Nurse Hawthorne sighs as she walks away from the cart to bring over my meds along with a paper cup. “You’re meeting with Dr. Nickelsen in fifteen minutes. Do you want me to tell him you’re refusing your meds again?”
“No,” I answer, and I can hear the sour edge to my tone.
“Well, bottoms up then. I brought you apple juice, it’s not water, I promise.” She rattles the little plastic cup, making my meds clatter inside, and I take it from her with a sigh, tossing them into my mouth. When she offers the juice, I take it and turn toward the window so I can tuck the bitter pills into my cheek, up next to my top teeth before I toss back the apple juice. I crush the paper in my hand, watching a group of birds swoop through the air, but Nurse Hawthorne taps me on the shoulder. “Show me, Nina.”
I open my mouth wide, letting her see my tongue before I lift it to show there’s nothing under it. Like a magician pulling up his sleeves. Nothing here, nothing there, where do you think they are, Nurse Hawthorne?
“Thank you,” she says, and the smile that slides across my lips is unavoidable, but I can’t help it when she nods at me and takes the empty cup away. It’s really too easy to fool her into thinking I’ve swallowed them when they’re slowly dissolving against my cheek and nowhere near my stomach.
Still, I have to be careful. Getting rid of them takes finesse, sleight of hand. Even if Nurse Hawthorne isn’t watching, even if I wait for Antonio to get distracted by the card game again… someone might see me. Some of the patients like to tattle. They think it makes them special, better than the rest of us.
Mr. Cat doesn’t like those people.
Those are the people Mr. Cat hurts — but I’m the one who always get the blame and I don’t want to be in trouble today.
It takes a few minutes for me to work the pills into place, just behind my lips, and then I pretend to sneeze, spitting out the trio of pills into my hand before I palm them, using the back of my hand to wipe my nose. I lean on the couch, bracing my cheek against it so I don’t give away what my hand is doing between the cushions. Crushing the pills into powder, spreading it in the dark crevices of the furniture until no one would recognize it even if they did bother to check.
“That’s good, Nina. They already poisoned you once today, you can’t risk a second dose of that stuff.” Mr. Cat bumps his head into my knee, and I can remember Winky doing the same thing when I was little. Mom used to call it a cat hug, and I hate how much it comforts me to know that Mr. Cat doesn’t hate me. I know I should ignore him, that I should block him out until he goes away for real… but the truth is I don’t want to be alone.
Or, really, I don’t want to know what might show up if Mr. Cat really did go away.
The toaster was mean. Scary. And even though Mr. Cat can be scary sometimes, he usually tries to protect me, which is better than the alternative. Looking down, I drag my powder-tainted thumb over the scar on my wrist. The toaster made me do that. The toaster wanted me to die, but Mr. Cat wants me to live. Mr. Cat wants me to escape… and I want that too.
Even if he’s not real, even if he’s a hallucination, the metal grates on the windows are real. The locks on the doors are real. The leather cuffs on my bed are real. I really am trapped here, unable to leave until Dr. Nickelsen says I’m sane.
But there’s a way out.
&
nbsp; If I can be good for Dr. Nickelsen then maybe he’ll let me go home.
“Session time, Nina,” a chipper voice says from behind me and I twist to look at Tom. He’s waiting patiently and I drag my fingers over the cushions of the couch to hide the evidence of my pills before I stand to follow him.
“Did you talk to him?” I whisper, almost too quietly, and Tom shrugs.
“I gave him the update when he asked.”
My stomach twists into knots and my fingers work at the hem of my shirt, tugging and rubbing as I build up the courage to speak. “What… what did you tell him?”
Tom sighs, turning a corner as he escorts me to the doctors’ offices. “I just told him about your morning, Nina. That’s all. It’s okay.”
“Did you tell him that I was good in the shower?” I ask, slightly hopeful amidst all the anxiety.
“I told him that you’re still afraid, but that after a rough start you behaved.” Tom stops outside Dr. Nickelsen’s office and faces me. His warm brown eyes slide over my clothes, and then he surprises me by stroking my cheek. “I didn’t mention Mr. Cat, if that’s what you’re worrying about. I know you’re trying to ignore him.”
“I was just trying to protect you,” I whisper, and the edge of his mouth quirks up in a small smile.
“You don’t need to protect me, Nina. It’s my job to keep you safe.” Tom’s hand slides down my neck, squeezing my shoulder, and for a moment I feel like he wants to touch me more… and I want that too. He’s never been this casual with me. Like we’re… friends? It’s almost too much to hope for, but I can’t miss the chance to see if I’m right.
I lean forward, closing the gap between us — and then the door opens.
Tom jerks back, both of us spinning toward Dr. Nickelsen who smiles warmly, his eyes moving back and forth between us. It’s good that he doesn’t look upset, or disappointed, but I can tell he’s thinking. He’s always thinking, and I think it’s the intelligence in his face that makes him so handsome. Dr. Nickelsen is older than Tom, not quite as tall, but just as fit. He’s just more slender, more elegant, where Tom has always reminded me of a football player. Big, broad, muscular, strong.
