Contract Broken (Contracted #2)

by Aya DeAniege

I had heard enough conversation in the Program building to know that a person wasn’t supposed to return from time off looking worse than when they left. I still wasn’t allowed to ask questions, however. All I could do was explain what had happened and hope he would agree to sit down. Or at the very least let me call a doctor.

  “I got on the elevator, and it brought me here,” I said, motioning towards the elevator.

  The man sighed, closing his eyes with a shake of his head before he stepped to the side and motioned me into the apartment. I stepped in, and he closed the door, only for there to be a knock a moment later. Again, he opened the door, took the container from the person on the other side and then slammed the door on their face.

  “What do you want, Isabella?” Mr. Wrightworth asked, sounding irritable.

  He shuffled to the kitchen and dropped the container on the counter. I watched as he snapped open a drawer and tugged too hard. The whole thing tumbled to the floor, and Mr. Wrightworth just stared at it like he was confused as to what had happened. After far too long, he bent and picked up a fork from the items scattered across his kitchen floor and opened the container to eat.

  I moved into the kitchen and reached for the drawer.

  “Leave it,” he said through a mouthful of food.

  I shifted backward, looking him up and down critically. Mr. Wrighworth was wearing a sweatshirt and pants, which covered him wrist to neck to ankle. His feet were bare, though.

  Besides when he was wearing a suit, I had never seen Mr. Wrightworth’s arms covered. In his apartment that had never happened. He seemed to prefer the t-shirts or to be shirtless while in the comfort of his home.

  I stood awkwardly as the man ate most of the food, then simply left the kitchen.

  The food was left on the counter, open. Which was not something many poor folks would do while in their right minds. We were very much a waste not, want not kind of people. Food and consumables were to be seen to before we fell asleep, collapsed or died.

  My mother had said that to my brothers and me. If she had ever come in to our dead bodies and wasted food on the counter, she’d kill us again.

  I glanced deeper into the apartment and listened as the bathroom door closed. Then I went about putting away the food and cleaning up the drawer of utensils. Mr. Wrightworth’s entire apartment was immaculate, so I didn’t think twice about putting all the items back into the drawer, even though I probably should have put them in the dishwasher.

  Almost an hour later I realized that Mr. Wrighworth probably wasn’t coming back.

  Gritting my teeth and trying to steel my resolve, I went to the bathroom door and knocked. There was no answer to my knock. I tried the handle, only to find it locked. Kneeling, I peered at the knob and smiled.

  Mr. Wrightworth might have been living like a rich person, but his bathroom door still had that little hole on the one side, to pick the lock. It took some searching, but I found a toothpick and stabbed the hole until I felt the pressure of the lock mechanism. I turned the knob at the same time and walked into the bathroom.

  Where I found Mr. Wrightworth passed out on the floor. I rushed to his side and pushed his shoulder. He didn’t seem to react at all. I found his pulse, but it wasn’t right.

  “What do I do, what do I do?” I repeated, tapping my forehead with my knuckles. “Recovery position.”

  Except I had difficulty recalling how that position went. I did eventually remember. I turned Mr. Wrightworth onto his side. Once he was on his side, he groaned and slipped the rest of the way on his own, as if that position was a particularly comfortable one that he slept in.

  Not certain he’d be all right, but believing he’d at least survive if he did happen to vomit or whatever else might happen, I left the bathroom and looked around. I had no idea where Mr. Wrightworth’s phone was, let alone how to unlock it or who to call. While I could have stuck my head out the door and shouted, somehow that seemed like a bad idea.

  Like the kind of idea someone who was in the community would get beat for even considering.

  Nicole was a nurse. She had said that if ever I needed treatment from accidental damage during play, she was the one they would call.

  I left the apartment, headed for the elevator.

  “Nicole,” I said, a little louder than I meant to because I had never requested a particular place before. “Nicole, Nicole, Nicole.”

  I kept repeating the name as the elevator moved. When the doors opened, I found myself in Medical. I stepped out and went immediately to the desk, asking for Nicole. The woman behind the desk gave me an annoyed look and paged Nicole. Then she went about filing her nails as I paced.

  Nicole appeared and blinked at me, then frowned ever so slightly.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  I finally stopped pacing, aware that I couldn’t just tell her what I had seen.

  “Timmy fell down the well?” I asked, hoping Nicole would come close enough to ask what had happened.

  The nurse responded by blinking at me several times. “Right. Let me grab my bag, just in case Timmy needs help.”

  She left and returned minutes later. She dragged me into the elevator and made a small, annoyed sound when the elevator opened on Mr. Wrightworth’s floor. Then she pulled me to his door and into his apartment.

  “What in the fuck did you do?” she snapped under her breath.

  “Nothing, I didn’t do anything,” I hissed back. “I got on the elevator to go to work, and it brought me here. It’s not my fault. I don’t control the elevator because no one’s even told me what floor I work on!”

  Nicole pressed a hand against her forehead, growled through gritted teeth, then dropped her hand. The woman took a moment to shake her head before she turned those startlingly blue eyes to me.

  “Where?” she asked.

  I took her into the bathroom. She went immediately to Mr. Wrightworth’s side. Nicole tapped his cheek, then found his pulse.

  “Okay, it was smart to get me,” she said. “He’s clammy and pale. If he asks, you didn’t find him, I did.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, just a problem,” Nicole said, opening her kit. “I’m going to give him something and prescribe antibiotics. How was he behaving before he passed out?”

  “Pulled a drawer out and dropped it on the floor, left food on the counter and snapped at me,” I said.

  “Good, probably won’t remember,” Nicole said, jabbing Mr. Wrightworth with the needle. “This never happened.”

  “I thought it was closed in here, that the controllers didn’t have access,” I said quickly.

  “He gives them access when he’s not here, to make certain no one breaks in,” Nicole said. “He wasn’t supposed to be back until noon, which means he arrived back early, and they saw. They should have called me, not contacted you.”

  “Are you even allowed to prescribe antibiotics?” I asked. “I thought only doctors could.”

  “I’m in the middle of doing the schooling to be a doctor,” she said. “Do all the work anyhow, might as well get paid for it. We’re going to leave him here, but only because we can’t lift him. You’ll have to skip work and stay here. I’ll call in and let them know he’s taken sick. It usually only takes him a week or so to recover, he’s a lot sturdier than most.”

  “But he’s...” I said.

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “But—”

  “For Christ’s Sake, Darling, he beat you nearly senseless and then left you in pain when it was revealed that you weren’t at fault,” Nicole said. “A day on a cold floor isn’t going to...” the woman trailed off and sighed. “If you want to tuck him in and get him a blanket, I’ll understand.”

  I went to the bedroom and took a pillow and blanket from the bed.

  On the way back to the door I spotted his rumpled clothing. Glancing through the open door to make sure Nicole wasn’t headed my way, I knelt and picked up the shirt. There were spots of blood all down the back. Dr
opping the shirt, I stood and left the bedroom.

  I had to take a moment just outside the door of the bathroom to compose myself.

  Then I walked back into the bathroom. Nicole took the pillow from me and placed it under Mr. Wrightworth’s head. She draped the blanket over the man’s still form. Nicole stood and took me by the arm, pulling me out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom.

  “You aren’t supposed to snoop!” she snarled, jabbing a finger at me.

  “I didn’t snoop.”

  “You saw the blood, it’s all over your face. They taught me all I know. You can’t pull one over on me, missy. Don’t snoop. He practically killed the last one to start snooping.”

  “What happened?” I demanded, deciding to give up the premise of having done nothing wrong. “Why is he bleeding? Does this have something to do with him never being a sub to anyone else?”

  “None of your business, because he’s hurt, and...” Nicole hesitated and frowned. “Maybe. They shouldn’t have told you about this or showed it to you. If they weren’t in trouble before, they sure as hell are now. Unless they wanted to be in trouble. It has been a while since he visited them.”

  “What, Mr. Wrightworth visits the controllers? Couldn’t they just ask for a visit?” I asked.

  “Not visit. Visit, they’re a triad.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  “A triad,” Nicole said slowly as if that would explain it. “Three people in a relationship. They control the entire building in exchange for absolute privacy and access to certain things, your fuck toy being one of those things.”

  “So the controllers are all male,” I muttered.

  “And see the same thing in you that Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth see, apparently. They sort of act as substitute subs for him. When they fuck up, he fucks them. Or if he has to write them up. Though he literally just wrote them up the last time they did something.

  “Great, that’s a needy you and a cranky triad messing up everything. When they want attention, things go to the shit pile.”

  My mind was reeling as I tried to wrap my head around the whole idea. Nicole stiffened and looked at the bedroom door. I turned at her look and skittered out of the way as Mr. Wrightworth shuffled past us, blanket in one hand, pillow clutched in the other. The man collapsed face first onto the bed and groaned, ever so slowly dragging the rest of his body up into the bed.

  Nicole motioned to me, then out the door.

  “Nikki,” Mr. Wrightworth groaned, lifting his head. “Nikki, what’d I tell you last time?”

  “If you caught me in here again, you’d beat me black and blue, no matter what Nathaniel said.”

  “Maybe I should beat him instead,” Mr. Wrightworth managed to growl, almost sounding like his usual self.

  “I’m sorry, Master,” she said. “I’ll be sure to present myself when you feel better. I’ll book the time off. Will three days be enough.”

  “Four,” he grumbled, dropping his head to the pillow. “I’ve been fantasizing about something I want to try with you.”

  “Yes, Master,” Nicole said.

  She waited a moment longer, watching Mr. Wrightworth pointedly. Then she rushed towards me, grabbed hold of me and yanked me out of the bedroom.

  Ever so carefully, she closed the bedroom door, then shoved me towards the living room.

  “Good God, I hope he doesn’t remember that,” she said quickly, cringing as she shook her hands. “Has a fantasy? Girl, what have you been doing to him?”

  “Just what he asked,” I protested. “You’ve walked in on him before?”

  “Yes, I did. He beat me so bad I had to take six weeks off. Which is why he can’t know you were here. Me being here is one thing, I already know, I’ve already seen. You can’t be involved in this in the least.”

  “Then shouldn’t I get myself to work so he doesn’t question why I took more time off?”

  Nicole thought about it for a moment, then swore.

  “You’re right, damn it. But I don’t want to be the only person here while he recovers. All right. Fine, go to work, come over after work, we’ll watch movies, and you can keep me company.”

  “Nikki!” Mr. Wrightworth shouted from his bedroom.

  The nurse sighed. “Never mind, you have to go. He resumes control at noon, and they’ll erase the past week, but if you’re here when he calls out, he’ll know you know. He’s not stupid. He’ll put it all together.”

  “Nikki!” Mr. Wrightworth shouted, louder this time.

  There was a thump and Nicole swore. “Get out, he’s up and moving but like a bad drunk.”

  “But what about you?” I hissed back.

  “He’s no threat to me,” Nicole said quickly. “Get out, now.”

  “Stay safe, Nicole.”

  I’m only a little ashamed to say that I fled from the apartment, and that I didn’t try to talk her out of it. I left Nicole to it and rushed away to my job, to the safe choice because I couldn’t face my Master not being perfect all the time.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of him being in pain and acting inappropriately.

  I probably should have asked what would happen if Mr. Wrightworth decided to watch the video of the hallway outside of his apartment.

  Chapter Twelve

  I went to the archives and glumly sat around for twenty minutes or so before I recalled that I was being paid for my time. So I got up and started searching for a new contract to audit. No one told me which contracts to audit.

  The first two contracts I reviewed had been completed within the previous year and had been for a gardener and a maid. All involved had been quite pleased with the result and the rich person had offered a second contract to the maid.

  For the third contract I wanted it to at least appear like the audits were random, so I went searching for a contract that hadn’t been completed in the past year.

  It was Kathy, of all people, who helped me find what I wanted. After listening to her prattle on for an hour—about how it wasn’t fair that Mr. Wrightworth got two weeks off every six months and no one was ever interested in giving her time off—she pointed to the back corner of the archives and said that anything pre-government grant would be found in the cardboard boxes.

  I went off immediately, chose a box by reciting the “Eenie Meeeni” children’s rhyme. They have it all on camera as I lifted the lid off of the box and, in a very professional manner, closed my eyes, stuck out my tongue, and waved my hand over the box before I slapped it down and selected a random contract.

  The box I had selected was marked on the side for storage in an off-site warehouse. Many of the boxes in the archives were marked in such a way. It was my understanding that the Program had never done such a purge before. Once it was complete, all records from the first five years of the Program would be in storage and only available through the database.

  Before the government grant that helped the Program get off the ground, rich folks were using contracts. There was simply no Program to be the watchdogs and keep an eye on everything, to make certain it was fair. What resulted was borderline slavery. Mr. Wrightworth had spent years fighting for the rights of those poor folk to free them from some of the weirdest contracts one could imagine.

  The contracts had been entered into the electronic database. Any of these contracts could be chosen from the online archives and read on the computer, but I found that I didn’t pay attention when it was an electronic copy. I always ended up with the hard copy.

  And there always had to be a hard copy for contracts.

  Reading hard copies made it more difficult for me to find terminology I didn’t understand. I would have to bring up the search engine and type in the word. The archives had a built-in dictionary, so all one had to do was right-click on a word and up would pop its meaning and even some helpful law terms.

  That wasn’t the case if I used the search engine instead of the electronic archives.

  The contract I found was old, almost pre-Program altogether. F
inally, I thought, I could see the real life repercussions and long-term effects of a contract on both the rich person and poor person.

  I might have only been there as an interim solution, but I took my job seriously.

  All contracts were assumed to use the same terminology. For the most part, they did, though the streamlining of the legal contract terms didn’t start up until the Program hit its stride. As the foundation was being set up and coming together, the contracts got stranger instead of more simple. Rich folk trying to hide what they were using poor folk for, from the group meant to protect poor people.

  Contractor meant the rich person offering the contract. Contractee was the poor person. Sum typically was used in reference to how much the poor person would be paid and the term was laid out in the first few paragraphs of legal jargon. Then there were usually pages of addendum and additions, some few contracts had revisions to them, but these were often added when it was discovered that the contractee was allergic to something or had a medical condition suddenly pop up.

  In the really old contracts, no one was listed by name until the signature page. I suppose that was because the contract was written up and then a poor person was found for it, without ever altering the contract.

  Throughout the contract, on the hard copies, one might find initials in the margins, and I found them this time. Here was an N.E. There was a shaky ‘X.’ The X’s were usually a poor person marking off that they had seen and understood the terminology. Typically that meant that the contract had been read to them, not that they had read it themselves. It was Mr. Wrightworth’s idea, to protect a poor person.

  Once everything started to be recorded, there was no need for the initials because everyone could see themselves agreeing to the terms.

  Over the course of that next week, I threw myself into my work and read the contract, struggling to understand what I was reading because it was the weirdest one yet.

  It also distracted me from the pins and needles sensation I had in my backside, though it was almost healed, and the pressure building under my skin.

  The contract would run the course of eight years. During that time the contractor was permitted to take possession of anything of either of the contractees—yes, there were two contractees—as long as the law allowed. As in, as long as that possession was not a wife, or under the protection of a particular contractee.