She forced images of Ezekiel from her mind, refused to see the pleading eyes, hear the guilt-ridden voice. She focused on now, because now is all he'd left her.
"And how will I be treated?"
"Re-educated."
Theda thought of nurse nasty and her fingers filled with ipecac. "Aversion therapy."
He nodded. "Yes, mostly."
She looked up sharply, thinking of the alternatives Julio had mentioned: lobotomies, electroshock therapy. "Surely--"
"Surely you thought Ezekiel's bargain kept you safe from that?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "I daresay when I agreed that you'd be safe, I neglected to mention that safety was meant for me. He should have been clearer in his bargaining language. Of course, the addict in him would protect his investment just a little longer."
She wouldn't scream. She wouldn't.
"Of course, you can change all that."
She looked around her. "How?"
"Henrik. His vision. Tell me what it was."
Back to that, then. Surely it wouldn't be so bad to just let him know. What would it hurt, after all? She'd be able to go free, she'd be able to pull herself out of this mess and maybe find some way to subsist. Find a trade. Get a job. Feed herself.
It wasn't really worth all of this, was it? Even Ezekiel had abandoned her. Ami was gone. All that was left was this shit hole and the misery within it.
"I want to talk to Ezekiel," she said.
"Impossible."
"Why? Are you afraid of what he'll tell me."
He shrugged. "There's nothing to tell that I haven't told you already. He bargained to put you in a re-education program. He gave you up and agreed to continue his duties. Even now, he's on the Promo, telling the world that we have Henrick's killer. That the threat of her religion mongering is over."
"You're smooth," Theda said. "I'll give you that."
Her bowels twisted within her belly, the last remnants of withdrawal trying to squeeze their way through her viscera. She looked at this man who was too handsome for words, perfection molded from wax and she thought of the boutique and of Sasha, of the mannequins he had dressed in costume; of how Ezekiel had saved her from the Councilman, saved her from the mayor before that, and saved her from the horsemen in Julio's apartment building.
He'd bargained for her. She didn't really understand it before. She'd thought that his consolation to instill her in this miserable place was because he was abandoning her. Now she knew it for the truth. It was his only option when his choices ran out. Keeping her alive. He'd seen it for what it was: a chance for her to live. He wanted her to live and it was all he could offer her under the circumstances. No matter what the Beast tried to make her believe, she knew the truth.
She wasn't the only one with power, not if the Beast could glamour Ezekiel. Indeed not. But at least she knew where his weakness lay. And here she was, that weakness in the living flesh right here at his feet. She could take him across the goal line; she just needed the right footwear. That meant she'd have to find her way through this. That meant she'd have to live.
"Fuck you," she said to him with a smile. And his face darkened. His manicured eyebrows scuttled down in fury.
"Indeed, Theda," he said, and added, almost as if he read her thoughts: "Let's play ball."
He pressed a buzzer and Sal hastened his way back in the room. "Take her to the showers first," the Beast said to him. "She stinks. We can't have the others thinking they can refuse sanitation."
Sal let his true sentiments cross his face as he looked at her. "A wonderful idea, Sir."
"And then let her loose with the zealots." The Beast turned to give her a quick check. "Have you heard of the zealots, Theda?"
She shook her head.
"Then this should prove to be an interesting afternoon for an addict."
Chapter 5
A shower, both a blessedly exciting idea and a terrifying one. The mere thought of needles of spray striking her bare skin made the gooseflesh rise. It would be nothing like the night Ezekiel had bathed her, she knew. And she should be grateful for that. That experience had lodged itself in her psyche so deeply she swore the thought of it brought a flush to her skin. Best she not think about it too much. She still had a lot of hatred to fuel if she wanted enough drive to fight her way out of this place, and thinking of Ezekiel would only make her soft and despondent. She couldn't afford to be soft, not at the moment. Maybe when she quit this place and took the Beast's head and the heads every of other foul human being in this shit hole, maybe then she could grieve the man she'd lost, but until then, she had work to do.
Starting with Sal, here, who seemed to think she was no more than a ragdoll to be flung about at his whim. In truth, she did feel pretty much like a rag, seeing as how the last of the godspit was flushing out through her pores and leaving her cells whimpering for more. It sapped almost all of her strength, but she managed to find enough energy to slapfoot her way behind him down a desolate hallway wide enough only for two anorexic people to walk abreast. Even in her withdrawal-addled state, she could tell the hallway wasn't one used very often. Dust webs dangled from the ceiling, like an old man's beard hung from the limbs of a dead tree, and there was frigidity in the air that meant it hadn't been heated in a long time. The back way to the showers, she figured. Keeping her out of sight of the other inmates. The Beast obviously needed her suitably mollified and complacent before he put her in with the general population. She could comply quite well if she worked hard enough. A girl didn't live a dozen and a half years with an evangelical preacher so fanatical that he would try to exorcise demons out of his own wife; oh no, a girl didn't live with that for so long and not learn a thing or two about compliance. She had an act that would put Theda Bara to shame. Now she just needed to pull it out of the deep dark recesses of her long locked compartment labeled 'give a fuck'.
Sal stopped in front of a wide industrial-looking door. It had a latch handle that he twisted downward until it clicked and then pushed it to a yawning open. The room inside was nothing but white tile from top to bottom; lined on one wall with rusted looking showerheads craning over equally rusty looking drains. A shiver passed over Theda's skin. She thought she saw the remnants of hair clots thatching the top of the drain closest to her. Her resolve weakened.
"You're going to give me some kind of flip-flops, aren't you?" She asked him.
He looked askance at the drains. "What for? You're not going there."
"I thought you said I was getting a shower."
"Oh, you are." He yanked on her elbow, pulling her off to the right where, squatting at the side of the room was a broad metallic looking box. It reminded Theda of '50s cartoons where men and women would steam themselves, with just their heads poking out.
"You're putting me in there?" She braced her feet, heels digging down, trying to find some sort of grounding.
"We've made a special kind of steam bath for the inmates who might have come to us from, how should I say... Less fortunate settings."
There was a smirk on his mouth that Theda wanted to rake off. She had to repeat to herself that she was becoming Theda Bara. Woo, cajole, play-act her way out of this place. She smiled at him.
"Bring it,"
Without waiting for further permission, he placed his hands at the neckline of her jersey and pulled it down, exposing her skin to the frigid air. She felt the goose bumps rising on her skin and, involuntarily, she started to shiver. To disguise the fact from him, she crossed her arms over her chest while he continued pulling down the rest of her clothing. She noted he took no pleasure in her skin, or her curves. When he did look at her, he might as well have been looking at a mouse he'd discovered chewing the cereal out of his favorite bowl. She realized then that she was not a woman to him, not even a person. She was a mung, as he'd called her. A spitter. Two things that obviously disgusted him.
Without further comment, he lifted the cover of the steam bath and pushed her in. Theda looked down at the ancient black plastic
covered seat with splits in the Naugahyde showing a moldy cotton cushion.
"You can't possibly--" she started.
"Sit down."
She did as she was bid, trying to find a spot where the cracks of the material didn't pinch into her buttocks. She could hear her heart in her ears and it sounded as though it was singing off key in a strangled half tenor. She chewed her lip as she waited for him to close the case around her. She squeezed her eyes closed, thinking the strange sense of claustrophobia would dissipate if she couldn't see that she was closed in up to her neck.
In her mind's eye, she was just stretching out of her grotto into the warm sunlight, peering this way and that to make sure she had a quiet walk to the survivor's station. Imagined herself finding the thermos of coffee that Ami left for her every morning, tipping it over to find a cellophane wrapped smear of her favorite distraction. She opened the lid of the thermos, inhaled in the dark aroma, let the steam warm and wet her face.
Except the steam wasn't imagined; it was all too real, and it didn't just burn. It stung. She felt as though someone was peeling strips of flesh from her body in slow agonizing lengths. The tenor of her heart raced out her lungs and met her ears with a garbled cry. Inside the tank, she struggled, pounding against the inside, screaming to be let go. Every inch of her resolve disappeared in the face of this new agony. It hurt too much to even vomit. What little bit of energy she had left in her muscles wasted away like gelatin dissolving to liquid. She dissolved to tears. There was nothing anymore. No sanatorium. No Sal. No Beast. There was only the desire to let go her misery.
"You bastard," she sobbed. "How is this even humane?"
"Humane implies you have humanity."
She whipped her head back and forth, trying to distract her body, transfer the pain.
He pushed a button on the wall and gratefully, the feeling of steam disappeared, but her flesh still stung. It felt raw and open.
"But you ingest this stuff every day," he said, peering at her with a peculiar interest, as though he couldn't work out what his senses registered.
"I don't understand why a little bit of drain cleaner could be considered so inhumane when you put that shit into your body every day; of your own choice."
He flipped a switch and the tank groaned open; Theda fell forward onto the tiles as she tried to escape from it. He toed her shoulder as she lay on the tiles.
Looking down at her with his grim, detached face he said, "Get up."
She stared at her fingers, splaying them open on the tiles. Yes. Eight fingers, two thumbs. For a moment, she had thought they'd been eaten away.
"I said get up. If you won't walk on your own steam, I'll put you in the straitjacket again and then I'll leave you that way with the zealots."
Theda had no idea what that meant, but she understood the word straitjacket. She found her way to her knees and palms, her head hanging so that she could see the tops of her thighs. Her skin was crimson, as though she'd been exposed to several hours of strong sunlight without benefit of sunscreen. It even felt like sunburn, one that went straight through every layer of her epidermis. The muscle tissue screamed for level 50 sunblock.
"Give me a minute," she groaned.
"One minute."
She nodded, grateful. All she had to do was take a few breaths. Fuel her muscles with whatever oxygen she could pull in. Blotches of ink mottled her vision. She shouldn't still be dizzy. Not this long after a godspit smear. The withdrawal should be easing off by now. She should be starting to come around. But then, she had no idea how strong the smear was that Daniel had given her, back in the Beast's torture chamber. And she had no idea if they'd fed her smears repeatedly while she lay unconscious in that infernal room where Ezekiel had been waiting for her to wake up.
A dangerous bit of niggling went on behind her frontal lobe, trying to wrestle some lovely but painful memory back into her consciousness. She elbowed it behind the rational processes of figuring out how long he'd been waiting. He didn't say how long he had sat next to her; that bothered her because, without knowing that, she couldn't truly know how long she'd been out. Ezekiel. Tightness strangled her heart as it tried to patter out its rhythm. She remembered his face, the greenish gaze blinking from behind a wash of blood spatter, and she had to squeeze her eyes closed so she wouldn't think of him. That way lay madness.
"Time's up," Sal said.
Theda pulled one foot forward beneath her and then the other. She drew in a long breath and pushed herself to a rolling stand. She teetered in front of Sal, the frigid air nipping at her fevered skin, making the goose bumps draw her skin even tighter against her frame. She whimpered without meaning to.
"Good, mung," he said. "Now put these on." He tossed her a pair of cloth booties and a lime green hospital johnny. She decided that she would put the johnny on backwards so that she could wrap it against herself rather than tying it backwards and letting her ass flap about. At least if the ties were in the front, she could have some control over how much gaped open. It was a small thing, but it made her feel more in control.
She put the booties on last, bending down and slipping them over her toes and across her soles to the heel. Then she straightened up and glared at him, meeting his eyes as bravely as she could.
"Ezekiel will kill you."
He snorted. "You think he cares about a stupid mung, whoever he is?"
He didn't know. He was a mere pawn in the Beast's chess game, an enforcer in a hockey match. No more. She should feel pity.
She smiled at him, the first real smile she'd felt in days. "General Eazy," she said, remembering the nickname she'd heard one of his soldiers call him back at Julio's apartment. "The man who brought me here. General Ezekiel of the Beast's Horsemen. You know: the Pale Rider."
He had the decency to squirm in his scrubs. "Why would he bother with me?"
Her knees bowed back, finding the strength to lock in place as she faced him, drawing her shoulders back. "Because he would kill for me," she said. "He's made for it."
He sucked at his teeth, but he didn't seem as composed. "You're dreaming, spitter," he said. "Why would he kill for you?"
"Because he's my lover," she said, hoping he wouldn't hear the hesitation that crept into her voice that would betray the lie. "Because he's my lover and he has killed for me already. Dozens of people. Just ask your boss."
True fear stole into his eyes, and for a moment, Theda believed she'd gotten to him, but then he shook it off as visually as a dog ridding itself of water, and the moment was gone. She was left with shaking knees and a shuddering chest, residual effects of speaking the name and remembering the truth of his spree.
Sal cursed at her and reached for her elbow. "If he cared about you at all, he'd have been here by now." His fingers dug in to her elbow. "Now come on, you have a much more interesting date waiting."
Chapter 6
Zealots. The Beast obviously knew very little about her past if he thought he could cow her with that small word. She'd seen her fair share of zealots, lived through her fair share; thank you, very much. Now, she stumbled along behind Sal, trying to distract her mind from the images of all those she'd known who tried to knock their way through to conscious thought. There were better times to think about that shit... like, maybe never.
The cloth booties kept twisting up onto her instep because the elastic bands had been stretched past their elasticity too many times to stay put. They bunched up beneath the middle of her soles as she shuffled along behind the orderly, twisting and turning down several hallways before he stopped in front of a broad double-doored common room. She was out of breath and weak by then and took the time to stoop to readjust the booties in order to catch her wind.
"Re-education Phase One," Sal said.
She straightened up. "I thought the shower was first."
"Ho, no. That was just a shower. This is Stage One."
"Bring it," she said.
He nodded tersely and pushed her from behind, using his other hand to depr
ess the lever of the door and throw it open. He shoved her inside and with a little flutter wave, closed the door behind her. She looked at him through the glass. His jaw seesawed back and forth; making his sallow complexion cast pitted shadows in his chin cleft. It looked like a hairy ass in the fluorescent light. She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but clamped down on the impulse. Instead she focused on his eyes, watching his gaze as it began to roam over her shoulder and she turned, deciding to face whatever was there.
Scattered about throughout the room sat scores of 70s plastic chairs, a few old sofas with no cushions, and a couple of tables holding various types of clichéd art projects. Theda did a quick count of the bodies within. A trio of women to her right, standing staring at each other, saying nothing. Several men gathered around a corkboard as though mapping out a military strategy.
But past that, to the triple-paned wall of windows, she could see outside. A short courtyard ran the length of the room, closed in by a tall brick wall. Mounted on the wall, obviously scavenged from one of the electronic billboards from the middle of the city, flickered a Promo. She couldn't stop herself from wrapping her arms around her waist. Oh, to be back outside, to feel the air on her skin. She'd even bear seeing herself scowling on the Promo if it meant breathing something besides disinfectant.
It took about 30 seconds for someone inside the room to realize that the new person was the girl on the Promo. It was almost as though they had been primed for her visit. Too late, Theda realized that these were not residents of the sanitorium, but employees. Her mouth went dry as two of the men from the corkboard came toward her, pausing at a coat tree to lift white lab jackets from their hooks and shove their arms into the sleeves. She felt energy on the side of the room where the women stood, but they didn't move.
Even so, every instinct told her to run. With nowhere to go, standing still was probably the hardest thing she'd ever done. She refused to turn around to see if Sal was still behind the door with a smirk stretched across his disgusting face. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction.
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