38
BLOOM
I was floating. Or falling. I couldn’t tell which.
Everything was hazy, my mind a fog where nothing was clear. I wasn’t awake. I couldn’t be. The world around me shimmered and danced, the edges blurred and wavering like heat waves rising off asphalt. The pounding of my heart was dramatically slow, as though time was barely moving.
A boy stood in front of me. Small, frail, his torn clothes hanging off his bony shoulders. His face was hidden, but I didn’t need to see it to know who he was. It was years since I’d looked anything like this, but it was unmistakably me.
I tried to call out to him, to speak, but my throat was paralyzed, my tongue heavy and useless. My body wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t respond. I was trapped, a prisoner in my own mind, forced to watch as the boy cowered, his small hands trembling as a shadow loomed over him.
“No,” I whispered, but the sound didn’t reach my lips.
The shadow moved closer, its outline shifting and warping like something out of a nightmare. It bent down, faceless and menacing, grabbing the boy, shoving him against the wall. He screamed, a sound so raw and broken it shattered something deep inside me. My chest burned as if I were the one being crushed, and I tried to fight, to thrash, to do something , but I couldn’t do anything.
I wanted to close my eyes and block the image out, but even that was stolen from me. I had to watch. I had to see the boy—me—cry and plead as the shadow hurt him, tearing at him until his cries faded into nothing and he was a crumpled, naked heap on the ground, eyes soulless, longing for death but too ignorant to know it.
A chime sounded, just a tiny sound that pulled me out of the hole I’d fallen into. My whole body jerked as reality slammed into me. My heart was still racing, my chest heaving as I sucked in air like I’d been drowning. The room was dim, sterile. I was sure I’d never been here, and yet it was somehow familiar.
I tried to move, but my arms didn’t respond. Panic surged. They were tied, bound tightly to the arms of the chair I was in.
I was naked. Completely exposed.
A choked sound escaped me, half a whimper, half a gasp, and I looked around the room. In front of me sat a man.
Dr. Simms.
Next to him was a camera, mounted, the red recording light blinking on and off. He was filming me. I struggled against the ropes binding me to the chair.
Dr. Simms smiled, his face calm and composed, but something glimmered behind his eyes—something cruel. My stomach twisted into knots, and bile rose in my throat as his gaze swept over me. I wanted to barf.
“Good,” he said softly, almost soothingly, as if we were having a normal conversation. “You’re back. You’re one of the most responsive patients I’ve ever had under hypnotherapy. Did you know only ten to fifteen percent of people are responsive to hypnosis?”
“Stop… please.” My voice came out hoarse, trembling. “Where are my clothes?”
“Stop?” His smile widened, a mockery of kindness. “Why would I do that, Bloom? We’ve only just started. I tried to ease you into it gently with our previous sessions, gaining your trust, but then you started acting out, refusing to come to your appointments. You left me with no choice.”
“What are you talking about? What are you doing to me?”
“When I’m finished with you, the very touch of Dr. Collier’s hands on your body will make you violently sick. That sex you enjoy so much will be the most horrific thing you will ever experience. It’s already started, hasn’t it?” He got up from his chair and came over to me. He ran his hand down my chest, and I recoiled from his touch.
“I see why he’s taken with you,” Dr. Simms murmured. “Your body’s a work of art. But as much as I would have loved to spread you out beneath me and take you over and over until you forget about him, the only thing I care about is the science of your mind, so your virtue is safe with me, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
That was what Logan called me.
I closed my eyes tightly. “I—” My voice broke as I tugged at the restraints, my skin burning where the coarse ropes dug into it. “Please, just stop.”
“The very opposite, my dear.” He crouched down in front of me, and my eyes flew open. “I’m not finished playing with you yet. You’ve been such a fascinating subject. A real masterpiece of trauma and survival. But there’s still so much more I want to explore. So much I want to do to you. My colleagues have doubts when I tell them about you, so I hope you don’t mind me recording our sessions from now on. This way they can watch our progress. They’re watching you now. Why don’t you say hi?”
For the first time, I noticed the computer screen facing me. He seemed to be on a conference call with several people. I was too far away to see how many were in total. All their cameras were off, but my image filled the screen.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I cried.
A hand cracked across my face. “I will not tolerate your disrespect in front of my esteemed colleagues.”
“Fuck you and your respect.” I spat in his face. “You’re sick. You killed—you killed Max. I’m gonna fucking gut you if Crowe doesn’t get to you first.”
His smile faltered for a fraction of a second, and then his expression hardened. “Gentlemen, if you would excuse me. I will keep you up to date on his progress, but now I must tend to my subject and get him back in line.”
He slammed the lid of the computer down and spun to face me. “Do you have any idea what we are doing here? You should be honored that you were chosen to be a part of this monumental study.”
“You kidnapped me.”
“A necessary evil. You see, I’m willing to do anything to ensure this happens. Nothing can stop me.”
He reached behind him, and something metallic clanged. Before I could process what was happening, the world around me tilted again, the ground falling out from beneath me.
I was weightless, spinning in a void, and then I wasn’t alone.
The touch was sudden, invasive, cold fingers brushing against my bare skin. My breath caught, panic surging as I tried to twist away, but I couldn’t. The voice followed, soft and insidious, slipping into my mind like poison.
“You fear this, don’t you?” it whispered. “You hate it. Because of them. Because of what they did to you. They fucked you when you couldn’t do anything about it, and now you hate anyone who touches you that way, don’t you?”
“No,” I gasped, but the word echoed hollowly, lost in the emptiness.
The boy was back, younger, smaller, and crying. And the shadow was there too, bigger than before, its hands reaching, tearing, hurting.
“No!” I screamed in my mind, a desperate plea. “This isn’t real!”
Was it? It felt like memories but also so distant. Yet not distant enough. The little boy’s cries were gut wrenching, and it came from deep inside me. I felt his helplessness. His fear and pain were my own. The mirage shattered like glass, the sharp edges piercing my mind as I was pulled back to the room. My body convulsed, and I opened my eyes, tears streaming down my face. Dr. Simms stood over me, the camera’s red recording light blinking steadily in the corner. His smile was gone now, replaced with something cold and satisfying.
“See, Bloom? You’ve always been broken. All I’m doing is showing you the truth of what they did to you.”
A noise sounded outside. Motorcycles? Were the bikers here? I opened my mouth to scream, but Dr. Simms slapped his hand over my mouth. He dragged me back along with the chair across the floor to the table where he’d left the gag he’d used earlier. He forced it into my mouth and tightened the strap until it dug painfully into my cheeks.
“You make a sound, and I will shoot your precious Logan if he walks through that door.”
He shifted over to the blinds and pried them open enough to survey the commotion outside. The roar of motorcycles got louder until they purred to silence.
“Dammit, how did they know?” he murmured. He picked up the gun he’d used to shoot Max and waved it at me. “One word, and I’ll kill you. I can always get another patient, but you only have one life, and you want to live it with Logan, don’t you?”
The threat hung heavily in the silence. I hated him. I hated what he was doing to me. But the thought of Logan dying in my stead was unbearable.
Dr. Simms continued his surveillance, his body a rigid line of tension as he looked out the window.
Footsteps marched to the door. I closed my eyes, the gun pressed to my temple. The door handle rattled, and his finger flexed on the trigger, but whoever was on the outside walked away.
Dr. Simms was sneakier than any of us could have ever thought. Although they were in the right building, they would never find us. He hadn’t brought me to his office. We were a few doors down.
For what seemed like an eternity, I waited with bated breath, a part of me hoping the bikers would break through the door, and the other part not wanting anyone else to be hurt. My heavy, muffled breaths were absorbed by the gag. Dr. Simms’s gaze never wavered from the door, his hand still gripping the gun.
After what felt like an eternity, the footsteps passed the office again, then faded into the distance. Dr. Simms lowered the gun and moved toward the window. He raised the gun, pointing at whatever it was he saw.
“Bastard ruined my whole plan,” he muttered. “I should kill him on the spot. He’s the reason everything is such a mess.”
No, please, don’t.
He let the blinds fall to a close. His face was drawn in a tight, cold mask, the corners of his lips turned downward in a tense scowl. “After they leave, we’ll wait an hour. Then we’ll get out of here. It’s not safe being in Smoky Vale anymore.”
My heart sank. I couldn’t let him take me out of Smoky Vale. Then the chances of being found were even less. I had to fight him. Logan and the bikers had come and gone. I would need to rescue myself.