Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Emily
Iwake up chained to a table in a red room lined with mirrors. My chest rises as I exhale, clinging to the thought that this is only a sick dream. But when my eyes fully open and I shift them to the side, the truth crashes into me.
A woman’s corpse lies on the table beside me.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Zeke says.
He lifts a heart from the woman’s open chest and lowers it into a glass jar filled with green liquid. The wet sound makes my stomach twist.
I scream and try to turn my head, but I can’t.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
This can’t be real.
Metal bars clamp around my skull, forcing my gaze forward. Her dead eyes stare back at me, locked into mine as if they are burning straight through my soul.
Zeke peels off his gloves and steps closer. He leans down until his face is inches from mine.
“I found out that eating liver and heart makes you live longer.”
“You’re crazy,” I shout. My throat burns. “You’re nothing but a pathetic loser who needs to cut women open to get aroused.”
His brow lifts. “You’re not wrong.” He smiles. “I do get aroused.”
Pliers glint in his hand as he reaches for my hand.
“No,” I shout. “Zeke, stop.”
My eyes follow the metal as it lowers toward my hand.
He laughs.
Metal clicks against my fingernail, locking it, then he pulls.
The pain explodes. I scream as the nail tears free from my flesh. My body jerks, but the chains hold me in place.
“No,” I cry, my voice breaking. A sob claws its way up my throat. “Please, please, no.”
But nothing stops him.
The metal clicks again. He pulls once more, tearing another nail from my flesh.
Cold sweat coats my forehead. Heat floods my body as pain pulses through my hand. My face drains of color, and the room feels like it’s closing in.
“Oh, I am hard now, Emily,” he says, moving closer to my head.
No sound comes out this time. There is nothing left in my voice to scream.
Cold metal presses against my temples. Electricity screams through my skull, blinding me.
“Oh, I won’t hurt you, baby girl,“ he whispers.
His head hovers above mine. I see the ends of the cables in his hands. Then he presses the metal back against my temples.
My body jerks violently. Muscles lock as the current surges through me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. Everything inside me rattles.
“I’ll just shake your body until you cry.”
He lowers the intensity but keeps the metal against the bars. My body still trembles as he walks away, each step dragging the vibration with him.
It doesn’t stop. It crawls through my bones.
The lower part of the table splits open. My legs are forced apart as I stand helpless, chained.
He presses himself against me. My body reacts against my will, shaking and pulling him closer as the current hums through me. I feel trapped inside sensations I don’t control, my muscles clenching and releasing as if they no longer belong to me.
He moans, standing still, letting my body work around him while the electricity does its damage. My breath comes in broken gasps. My mind slips somewhere far away.
If this is hell, I am already in it.
If he is the devil, he wears my sins like a crown.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” he sings softly.
“Dead girl is listening from the ground.”
He giggles.
“Close your eyes, don’t ask why,” he continues.
“Good girls stay quiet. Bad girls cry.”
The cables pull away. My body finally stills, but the vibration still stays, running through my nerves like an aftershock.
“Hush now, darling. Count to ten,” he sings.
“If you’re still when it ends, we can start again.”
My eyes close, but I still feel him inside me. His weight pins me down as he moves. His hands grip my hips, forcing me to take every thrust, deeper inside, while his breath breaks into low sounds above me.
This time, he doesn’t pretend. He doesn’t touch me gently or whisper lies meant to calm me. He only uses me, moving until it’s over, until he pulls away and leaves without a single word.
Tears slid down my temples, soaking into my hair. My body still remembers him. The aftershocks ripple through me, refusing to fade.
I close my eyes again.
This time, with the hope of not waking up.
I wake up again, this time locked inside a plastic cage hanging from the ceiling.
I lie facedown, my body pressed against the hard surface, suspended eight feet above the ground. And below me, Zeke moves calmly, cutting pieces from the bodies of the women he has killed.
They are positioned to face me.
Their eyes are wide open. One of them is still alive. A cloth is stuffed into her mouth, muffling her screams as he cuts into her. Her body jerks weakly, fighting what she couldn’t escape.
A voice recorder plays in the background.
It is the voice of Dr. Alistair Cermer Morrell.
“I figured if we take cells from the lungs of the same blood type and make them consume it, we could actually make them work as a defense mechanism and let their body fight the disease,” he says.
There is a pause.
“But this is just a theory for now.”
The recording continues. A child cries somewhere in the background. Footsteps approach, and a woman’s voice enters. I knew that voice. Music hums in from a distance.
Dream a Little Dream plays faintly.
“Stop working,” the woman says. “It’s time for lunch.”
My chest tightens.
“Mom,” I whisper. “It can’t be.”
Zeke laughs below me. He removes the white mask from his face, picks up a severed hand, and lifts it into the air. The fingers sway as he waves it slowly.
“Hello.”
My stomach twists. I gag, bile burning the back of my throat.
“In 1987, he got a daughter,” he says. “I have no idea if you are actually made from his little swimmers or if you are a clone of someone else.” He laughs. “But when I started digging for more tapes so I could listen to that genius mind, I found a file with your name all over it.”
“This can’t be happening,” I say, staring down at him.
He stuffs severed limbs into black trash bags.
This felt wrong. He always wanted to be seen. This didn’t make sense. But just as thought creeps in, he answers it for me.
“It’s funny how methods change,” he says. “When I worked with Zayne, I wanted to be seen because he was always the best.” He chuckles. “Now, with him trapped inside the Institute and no one to get him out, I prefer not being seen. Not being found.”
He turns toward the woman who is still alive.
She jerks as he slices into her chest. Her scream dies inside the cloth stuffed into her mouth. Blood spills over her skin, and her body goes limp as she passes out.
He forces her ribs apart. I can hear bones cracking as he reaches in and pulls out her heart.
It’s still beating.
Its drumming feels like a clock on the wall.
“I like to taste it while it still beats,” he says.
He bites into the heart.
Flesh tears as his teeth pull it. Blood spills down his chin as he looks up at me, his eyes bright and rolling as he moans. My stomach finally gives in. I retch, vomiting against the inside of the plastic cage, my body folding in on itself.
He rolls his eyes and ignores me. Calmly, he walks to a shelf and turns on the radio.
When I lift my head again, I see jars of cloudy water lining the shelves.
Jars were filled with organs and parts of severed limbs.
Pieces of people suspended like specimens.
Among them is a severed head of a woman, her skin so pale, her hair still recognizable, and her eyes still wide open as if she was still able to see the horrors that came through this room.
I recognized that face. It is a woman who has been missing for two years.
My stomach knots tighter.
This is not the answer I wanted. This is not the truth I was meant to see.
Music begins to play.
He keeps working.
I swallow hard, fighting the sickness rising again, but it doesn’t stop.
Zeke moves to the woman lying motionless on the table.
He spreads her legs and presses some device to her clit.
Electricity runs through her body, forcing her to twitch, turning her on as if she were some machine. Then he stops.
He steps closer, his gaze lifting to me.
“I’m thinking of you,” he says softly. “I’m thinking how you would be fucked next.”
“You psycho,” I shout, my voice cracking.
He doesn’t react.
His movements are frantic now. He is shoving his cock inch by inch inside the woman. Moaning as he holds her legs in the air. His head tips back, eyes rolling deep in his skull as he loses himself inside, never once looking away from me.
My stomach twists again.
Before I can gag, smoke suddenly pours into the cage.
I cough, lungs burning as I gasp for air. The smoke grows denser, fogging my view. My chest feels clenched, and every breath becomes more difficult.
As my eyes start to close, the only thing I hear is Zeke’s laughter.
“This is just a dream, Emily,” he shouts.
Then everything goes dark once again.
This time, I woke up in bed. I am back home.
Am I dreaming? It feels like a bad dream, and I was jumping from one to another.
The door closes.
He stands in front of me.
“Zayne?” I whisper.
He only nods.
He comes closer, but I can feel something is wrong. He is laughing, and as he holds his hand towards me, a spider is curled in his hand.
“What’s that?” I ask.
My lips part as I gasp for air, my chest burning while fear locks me in place.
“Do you trust me?” he asks, still moving closer.
I squint at him, my head shaking on its own.
When he reaches me, he takes my hand and places the spider on my palm.
I scream.
It’s black and white, its long legs crawling over my skin.
Panic explodes through me.
I scream again and fling it onto the bed, jumping back, my heart pounding as I lose sight of it.
Suddenly, his hand is at my neck. He pushes me down onto the mattress.
“Fear is for the weak,” he says, his nose brushing my hair as he inhales me.
He shoves me farther up the bed, his knees forcing my legs apart.
“Are you weak, Emily?” he growls against my skin. His voice reaches my ear and pulls a gasp from my throat.
I shake my head.
He pins my wrists above my head. His mouth finds my neck, kisses turning slow as he moves downward. I am already naked beneath him, nothing in his way, nothing to stop him from taking me again.
He leans into me, twisting his head as his face rubs against my skin. He trails lower, his breath ghosting over my stomach, every nerve ending screaming as I wait for what comes next.
I gasp as my eyes fly open, the spider crawling back toward my face. I squeeze my eyes shut, trapping my scream in my chest as his laughter fills the room.
He gets up, plucks the spider away, then places it on my chest. It crawls over my skin, and I gasp, my body shaking.
He nudges it with two fingers, guiding it as it moves across me while I remain frozen. His voice drops to a whisper against my skin.
“Itsy-bitsy spider, up and down he goes.”
He moves it closer to my face, whispering against my ear.
“Itsy-bitsy spider, up your face he goes, counting every shiver, nice and slow.”
He chuckles and guides the spider back toward my breast. In the blink of an eye, he slaps my chest, and the spider is gone.
He grabs the sheet and wipes my breast clean as he sings softly, “Itsy-bitsy spider, got killed by a big bad wolf.”
My body trembles. I am not sure if it is from the sting of the slap or the relief that the spider is finally gone.
I close my eyes, swallowing hard as Zayne leans closer to my face.
“What’s wrong?” he whispers. “Scared?”
His eyes lock onto mine, his mouth curling with a quiet chuckle.
I nod, my body still shaking.
He doesn’t give a shit.
He giggles as his head lowers between my thighs.
“You are the poison that makes my mind sick,” he says, tapping his forehead with his palm. He leans closer to my throbbing pussy and looks up at me. “You are the food that feeds my sick psyche.”
He laughs softly, then looks down again. “And I want to eat you up.”
He pulls me lower, spreading my legs wider, and buries his mouth against me. I gasp as he opens me fully, his tongue tracing slow circles from my clit down to my slick flesh. His teeth drag lightly, consuming me completely.
I swallow hard as my fingers tangle in his dark hair, gripping tight.
Every promise he made, he kept.
He spreads me open, searching for his treasure, treating me like one.
“Oh God,” I gasp. “Please.”
“Don’t stop.”
I arch my back, lifting my hips, pressing him closer as I rub myself against his mouth.
“Fuck,” I moan as his tongue curls inside me, licking deep, teasing my inner walls as they start to tighten around nothing.
“Shut up,” he says against my pulsing pussy. He slaps my clit, then whispers again, “Didn’t your Daddy teach you not to speak while someone’s eating?”
“No,” I whisper through a moan.
“Then I will,” he says, spreading me wider.
He drags his tongue up slowly, circling my clit, licking left and right. My thighs shake as my slick coat his face. His fingers curl inside me like hooks, pulling me open. My inner walls tighten around him, and another moan slips out from my mouth.
He thrusts his fingers faster now, keeping me locked on him, not letting the ache fade for even a second.
Then he stops.
He moves back up my body and hovers over my face. I look at him, breathless.
“Zayne,” I whisper.
“Zayne?” he repeats, laughing softly. “You really think he would eat you like this?”
Fuck.
“Zeke?” I whisper instead. A tear slips down my temple, shame burning as it hits the sheet.
“Yeah,” he says. “And you better fucking remember that name, because you’ll take it to your grave, you needy little slut.”
He slaps my cheek and gets up.
I curl into the mattress as the drugs finally start to wear off.
My mind betrays me, filling the empty spaces with fantasy, stitching scenes into something I want to believe. Something softer. Something that helps me survive the abuse.
And I feel done.
Like it can’t get worse.
I am so tired. Too tired to fight. Too tired to push.
I want someone to save me. To tell me this is just a bad dream.
But life is not a fairytale.
Life is not a book you can rewrite to your liking. It’s a chapter that repeats itself, over and over, until maybe the plot twists toward something better.
And even then, it might not.
Because not every story gets a happy ending.