by Aya DeAniege
The point of the cleaning was only to get me clean, not to alter my look in any fashion.
At some point, I think they realized the dusty look to my hair was simply the colour of my hair.
Once they were satisfied that I was clean enough, they brought me a set of clothing that looked like the set I had worn into the Program building, but I knew were not. The shirt wasn't frayed at the seams. The jacket had all its buttons. The colours were just a little too vibrant. They lacked the whitewashed look of the older clothing I had worn in. They even provided a pair of underwear, which I hadn't worn in because I had been about to attempt suicide again.
You don't exactly need underwear if you're about to die.
The clothing even smelled like it had come from the slums. Which was an indescribable smell. Not the smell of stale sweat and unwashed body as some books and movies might have you believe. There was something very distinct about it, though, something that rich folk cleaned out of their homes with scented disinfectants.
I found the smell of slum on my clothing comforting.
Each time I walk into a slum that smell hits me like a wall and takes me back to that moment in the medical building. With me clean and given a clear bill of health, awaiting the judgment of a man I had never met before. Fear tingled up through my limbs and roiled in my belly as I stood there, sniffing my arm because the smell was so faint that it was only really there that I could get a proper whiff.
I was never by myself in the medical building. As I sniffed my arm, a rich woman stood to the side, gripping her clipboard tightly as she watched me with wide eyes. She looked pale and stiff, like the clipboard in her arms. By that point, though, I assumed that was how all rich folk looked. Like it was a fashion of some sort to paint their faces so that they looked deathly pale, and they just didn't move for fear of wrinkles.
The medical building had a mixture of both rich and poor folk. The easiest way to tell them apart was to look around the eyes and forehead. Rich folk had no wrinkles, poor folk tended to have a few to lots and lots of them, or had freckles, dimples, little scars, small things that marred their features in a way that made them look more human.
Rich folk looked like dolls that were kept safe until such a time as I laid eyes on them.
I looked at the woman and sniffed my arm again.
Everything else be damned, I had no idea when I'd be able to smell that again. As her hands tightened on that clipboard— eyes widening even more, as if she had just witnessed me murder a puppy—there was a familiar tightening in my stomach.
I lowered my arm and considered as another twinge followed.
I knew that if I didn't get some sort of hygiene item quickly, they'd have to throw me back into the tub and probably wouldn't let me out for three days.
“Uhm,” I said to the frightened woman in the corner, uncertain how to ask for what I needed.
“Hmm?” she asked in the sort of tone I expected to hear from someone who was worried I'd ask her to join me in puppy murdering.
“I need a, uh,” I twirled my finger in the air as it occurred to me that rich people probably didn't use rags like poor folk did.
I knew what a tampon was. I knew that rich folk used those, but I didn't want one. I was used to rags. I wanted what I was used to, not something new and weird.
“A drink?” she asked.
“No, it's, uh, for bleeding,” I said.
“You cut yourself?” she shouted, finally moving her arms.
Instead of being supportive, all of a sudden she was acting like I had decided not to murder the puppy and had tried to kill myself instead. One would think that a rich person would care more about a puppy than they did about a poor person.
“No! Are you a moron?” I shouted back, furious that the woman couldn't take a damned hint. “My period just started!”
As I shouted—at the top of my lungs no less—Mr. Wrightworth walked into the room and came to a startled and awkward stop. The hazel eyes widened just slightly as the man tried to relax, his hands slipping into his pockets as he focused on the air between the two of us.
Once he was relaxed, he glanced at me, whose face was bright red as every part of me heated up to an unbelievable point. Then he looked at the woman, who was pressed into the corner.
I felt like I was going to melt into a puddle of stupid and clothing, the temperature inside my skin was just that much. Thinking about it even, it reminded me of my mother, whose favourite saying when we did something foolish was, 'are ya a puddle of stupid, or a living breathing boy?'
Lowering his head ever so slowly, Mr. Wrightworth sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Get her a hygiene product,” the man without straightening or removing his fingers from his nose.
“Oh,” the woman said. “Which should I get her?”
“Ask her that,” Mr. Wrightworth barked, finally lowering his hand as he scowled at the woman.
The woman finally turned back to me, who struggled to come up with an answer.
“Uh, a rag?”
“What's a rag?” the woman asked in response.
“A pad,” Mr. Wrightworth snarled.
“Oh,” the woman said. “But a tampon is more discrete.”
The man's look spoke of a fury that he apparently couldn't find words for because he didn't say anything as the woman fled the room. Once she had left those eyes turned to me, the anger still there.
“You need to speak up,” he said.
The calm man of our first meeting was gone. The fury remained, though he was now stiff like a rich person. It appeared to be a different kind of stiff, though. Like he was afraid if he moved, he might hit me for being stupid. Mr. Wrightworth marched up to me as I stood stalk still, afraid to move. I bent backward ever so slightly as he stopped mere inches from me.
“Speak up,” he said.
Fear silenced my tongue. I trembled as I stared up at him.
It wasn't that I was weak, it was that I was tired. The moment my gut started going everything else just sort of shut down. I got real tired real fast. The pain just took everything out of me.
“Pain makes me want to sleep,” I said.
“Pain makes you feel vulnerable,” Mr. Wrightworth said sternly.
“I'm not vulnerable. I can still do everything that anyone else can do," I responded.
He took hold of my neck and pulled my face upward. His fingers wrapped around the side of my neck, thumb resting against my windpipe. There wasn't necessarily anything threatening about the motion, not until his hand tightened just slightly.
I went still, cold flowing through me as I was forced to meet his eyes.
“Pain makes you feel vulnerable, say it.”
“Pain makes me feel vulnerable,” I said quietly.
Mr. Wrightworth removed his hand.
The tips of his fingers brushed my cheek, sending a tingling shiver through my face. In the wake of Mr. Wrightworth's fingers, my cheek was awash in cold. I wanted to touch the spot where his fingers had been, to reassure myself that there was nothing wrong.
“I strongly suggest you not attempt to hide how you feel. The one you are going to can read you better than you can read yourself. He will know the truth of the matter and is not looking for excuses. He will see every flaw and use it to his advantage.”
“There was no need to grab me,” I said, focusing on his chest.
“If you were mine, I would have bent you over and caned you until you wept,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “As it is, you aren't. But if you do that to him, you'll wish you were mine.”
“You know him very well,” I said, meeting Mr. Wrightworth's eyes.
“Yes, I know him very well. Well enough that I know, he'll take you on, unlike the other two that were offered up to him."
“He had a lot of people looking for him?”
“All the buildings have been looking to fill the contract for him. The others thought they found the right one but forgot to take into account an important factor."
&nbs
p; “And what factor is that?” I asked as the woman returned.
She had a small package in her hand and hesitated as I looked at her. She smiled weakly and edged away just a little bit.
“Are you sure you wouldn't prefer a tampon?” she asked.
“If I wanted something stuck up there, I would find myself a stick!” I shouted at her.
Mr. Wrightworth chuckled and walked away.
I snatched the package from the woman and marched into the bathroom to use the product. When I walked back out, the woman gawked at me as if I had grown a head. Perhaps she expected that I'd be stupid enough to attach it to my forehead instead of my underwear.
Mr. Wrightworth was leaning against a wall, watching me ruefully. A smile tugged at his lips as he stood there, hands in his pockets, ankles crossed as if he hadn't a care in the world.
“I'm not usually so cranky,” I said to him, not wanting to botch the contract before it had even begun.
“You called a teacher a ... cunt and that wasn't even the worst you said to her, or to others later on," Mr. Wrightworth said, his smile growing. "But that, too, was a condition of the contract. Pain or not, I need you to speak up."
“Okay,” I said.
“How do you feel otherwise?” Mr. Wrightworth asked.
“Fine, I suppose,” I responded. “I should have been good for another two weeks.”
The man made a small sound at the back of his throat and pushed off the wall. “I meant, do you feel unstable? How are you feeling emotionally?”
I shrugged, unable to come up with a response. “Fine, I think?”
“Don't phrase your answers as questions.”
“What?” I asked.
“I'm just trying to give you advice, when giving an answer, don't phrase it like a question. Be firm in your responses. If you don't know, or don't understand, say as much." Mr. Wrightworth hesitated. "It's been made clear that I will need to do checks because this contract isn't exactly laid out. It hasn't been laid out, to protect his interests. Can't hold something over a person when you don't know what you're holding."
“Are you trying to say that we need to be friends?”
Mr. Wrightworth was silent a long moment, his eyes on me as he considered something. Finally, he said, “Yes.”
“I'm not good with friends.”
“Nor am I," Mr. Wrightworth muttered. "As far as outside contact is concerned, I'm your only guarantee. For your mental health, yes, I would strongly suggest you, and I be friends."
“So, how do you know him?” I asked.
“His father wanted to teach him a less about humility and sent him to my father's plant to work. We met there. He was one of the supporters of the original Program and provided one of the first contracts. I took that contract and served two years as his aide. Once my contract was up, I accepted a position in the Program working as contract closer and working my way up.”
“Oh," I said, surprised. "So you really do know him."
“I really, truly do," Mr. Wrightworth said quietly. "Every action you take, every line of you will tell him exactly what he needs to know. Your body will give away your every flaw, and he will suss it all out."
“I don't—”
“You have trust issues and almost no self-worth,” Mr. Wrightworth said in a bored tone.
“How dare you.”
“You're worthless, useless, and will never amount to anything.”
I struggled to grasp what he had just said. My mind seemed to shut down as Mr. Wrightworth approached me slowly, his hands in his pockets as he almost smiled.
“Isabella,” he said steadily.
“What?” I managed to get out, though my voice trembled.
“I only said that to you to manipulate you emotionally and to prove a point,” he said quietly. “Now, I know you're not exactly going to be able to think, let alone put up a fight. So now's probably a good time to mention that we're flying out to his estate on an airplane.”
With a few well-placed words Mr. Wrightworth had revealed my deepest insecurities and caused my mind to shut down to protect itself from the overwhelming emotions attached to those words. I recognized the words. I could even rationally understand what Mr. Wrightworth had said.
It wasn't until I was on the plane and the wheels lifted off the tarmac that my emotional reasoning kicked back in and I screamed.
Poor people didn't fly. The only driving we participated in was in the mobile carts. We didn't use cars. We didn't move quickly but for those few who worked for the rich estates outside of the slum. I certainly had never travelled faster than thirty kilometres an hour.
I probably screamed for twenty minutes and Mr. Wrightworth watched the entire time. The bastard actually seemed to enjoy watching me scream in terror, which was the only thing that calmed me down in the end. I stopped screaming, but I was still terrified at every bump and turn of the plane. My hands gripped the armrests tightly as if they would save me if the plane exploded mid-air.
His eyes were on me the whole flight.
It was the only time that I felt truly frightened by Mr. Wrightworth. The man's attention, the flush to his skin as we landed. Something was going on that I didn't understand. Something my terror was doing to him. As the plane rolled to a stop, Mr. Wrightworth sighed out. He seemed disappointed that the trip was almost over.
I was relieved, I just wanted off the flying metal contraption of death.
I needed help off the plane. My legs trembled, and my heart was beating so fast that as I stood everything went black around the edges.
Mr. Wrightworth allowed me to lean on him as we disembarked. His arm, which he had offered to me, was firm in my tight grip. Halfway down the steps, he paused and slipped an arm around me. He slipped his other arm into my hands and continued at a slower pace.
He helped me into the back of a vehicle and sat beside me, looking very smug indeed.
“What?” I demanded, my voice trembling even as I tried to be angry. “Does my fear amuse you?”
“Amuse may not be the right word,” Mr. Wrightworth said quietly. “Normally only the terror of men can do that for me. Which only reaffirms my thought as to his reaction to you. You'll do fine.”
I watched Mr. Wrightworth, the terror returning. “I don't like being messed with.”
“I wasn't doing as much, and he won't either," Mr. Wrightworth said. "I was simply reacting to the situation you couldn't help but be in. Travelling by plane is the fastest way by far. I think what you wouldn't be interested in is called mind-fucking. Where he sets up a situation that you would not be interested in and is untrue. Or it may be gas lighting. We're still debating on what the difference between the two is."
“So he won't put me in a position that terrifies me?”
“Oh, he absolutely will," Mr. Wrightworth said quickly. The man paused to swallow. He dragged in a breath. "When I first became his aide, he took me to a fairground. There are rides there, roller coasters and rides of all sort. Somewhat like the fairs that happen yearly in some of the slums except with actual rides instead of just pony rides. Anyhow, he dragged me onto a roller coaster and just like you on the plane—I screamed the entire way. I was terrified."
“I bet you didn't enjoy it,” I said.
“Then he dragged me again. And again. Third time around I realized that it wasn't actually terrifying, it was amazing fun.
“What I'm trying to say is, being terrified doesn't necessarily mean that something is bad for you. Terror comes from new experiences. He will show you many new things, most of which you will be terrified of. He's not trying to hurt you, and yes he might get off on your terror, but it's to open up your world, not to hurt you.”
“Is there any kind of terror I could say no to?" I asked.
“Absolutely. He's not allowed to, say, tell you that your parents are dead when they aren't. He's not allowed to, after the fact, tell you a lie about what was said or done. Those are very bad things, and I know he won't do it, but I want you to know t
hat he's not allowed to. If you think he's done that, you tell me right away."
“So I can say no?” I asked.
“Absolutely. Once we get there, he and I will have a quick little debate. Those will be the limits. The contract being blank was actually about protecting him. Once he approves you, we can discuss the yes and no. He will stop you from saying no to some things because he will then use those things to discipline you for stepping out of line.”
“Oh,” I said weakly, my voice trailing off to nothing as the man watched me.
“All contracts allow for disciplinary action and list out what that action will be," Mr. Wrightworth said steadily. "Because everyone makes mistakes. Those who offer the contracts are only human. They get angry when there's a hole in the rug, or things are done wrong. The point of the contract is to prevent that from happening."
“So far I get the gist of—this is a sexual contract, but you said no rape.”
Mr. Wrightworth chuckled. “If you end up having sex with him, you will be begging him for it.”
I was at a loss for words. It may have been the exhaustion and pain setting in, or it could have been a result of his manipulation of me before we got on the plane.
“I don't beg for sex,” I managed to get out.
Mr. Wrightworth outright laughed. “Oh, dear child.”
“I'm twenty-five.”
“But a child in the ways of sex, obviously. Your file said you had partners, surely one of them—” the man stopped talking when he saw the look on my face. “Please tell me that sex isn't painful for you.”
“No,” I said sternly. “Though I did use that excuse a couple of times. It's just. No. I don't beg for sex, okay? That's not a bad thing.”
The intake of breath and the shifting away said to me that was a bad thing. Mr. Wrightworth placed as much distance between us as he could in the back seat of the vehicle.
“What's that for?” I demanded, finding strength in the fact that he had told me to speak up only a few hours before.
“Nothing. No reason. Do I need a reason?”
“I can't read people the way you do, and even I know that's a problem,” I said, jabbing a finger at him.
“Well, you can't change that attitude of yours,” Mr. Wrightworth muttered.
