Chapter Four Elliot #2
He sets his phone on the table and turns on the camera. Records everything, always. For posterity, he once joked. For the Board, more likely.
He stands in front of me, hands behind his back, and starts in on the lecture.
“Do you remember why you’re here?” he asks. Voice so soft, so reasonable. I shake my head, because there’s no right answer.
He tilts his head, a look of disappointment. “Let’s review.”
He approaches, takes a swab, runs it along my thigh. The cotton stings from the antiseptic. I try not to flinch, but my leg jerks anyway. He looks at me, mild and patient.
“Today’s lesson is about obedience,” Moore says. “You have failed to obey three times. Do you remember what happens to failures?”
He waits.
I try to answer but the words stick. He reaches up and pinches my nose shut, forcing me to gasp through my mouth. Then he shoves in a rubber gag, biting down hard enough to almost split my lips. The taste is chemical, bitter. He tapes it in place, then strokes the side of my cheek like I’m a child.
He starts with the needles. Always the needles.
One in each thigh, just above the knee. The first one bites sharp, then turns to a dull ache. The second, the same, only deeper. He slides the needles in so slow it feels like being pulled apart in segments. He narrates every motion.
“Femoral insertion,” he says. “See how the skin resists? See how it adapts? The body is remarkable.”
He presses a button on the chair. The needles electrify.
Not enough to kill—just enough to make the whole world boil down to the legs, to the hot, vibrating current running up and down the bone.
My hands clench so tight I feel a tendon snap in the palm.
I focus on the hairline crack in the ceiling, count the milliseconds between zaps.
He leaves the current running and moves to the tray.
He picks up a glass rod, holds it to the light, and admires the rainbow refraction. It’s blunt at one end, rounded and thicker than a finger, the other end shaped to a flare. He runs it under warm water, then comes to kneel between my legs. I try to close them, but the bar won’t let me.
He doesn’t warn me. He never warns.
The first push is cold, a pressure that makes my vision white out. He moves it in slow, then out, then in again, twisting every time. It’s too much, the body’s own defense clenching down, but he just waits it out, humming a little tune under his breath.
“This is for calibration,” he says. “You’re going to be tested by many men after this. I want you to be ready.”
He keeps working the rod until my body stops fighting. The current from the needles makes everything more intense, like every nerve is raw and stripped down.
He sets the rod aside, wipes it clean, and writes a note on the clipboard.
He turns off the current. The aftershock is worse than the pain—legs gone limp, muscles jumping on their own. My head lolls to the side and I see the other vials, the ones with red liquid.
Moore picks one up, swirls it, and pops the top. He draws out a fat needle, the kind they use for livestock. He goes for the inside of my upper arm, pushing the tip in until the skin puckers. He injects the whole thing in one slow, steady push.
“Stimulant,” he says. “Helps with attention.”
The drug hits fast. Everything gets louder. The pain, the cold air, the sweat rolling down my chest. My heart slams like a fist against a door.
He comes up behind me, both hands on my shoulders, and whispers, “Now, you thank me.”
I can’t talk with the gag. He takes it out, careful not to tear the skin. I cough, spit, and then the command comes again.
“Thank me for teaching you your place.”
I want to scream. I want to say nothing. But there’s no option. I hear myself whisper, “Thank you.”
He’s not satisfied. “Louder.”
I clear my throat, voice shaking. “Thank you.”
He presses the tape over my mouth again, and resumes.
He moves to the next tool: a curved metal hook, shiny and thin. I have no idea what it’s for, but when he presses it against my hole, twisting, it sends lightning up my spine. He rotates it, slowly, pulling it out in a spiral.
He does it again, and again, each time the pain worse, each time the voice in my head gets smaller.
At the end of every violation, he makes me thank him.
After the third, he’s finally pleased.
He leaves me there, body burning, mind spinning. The drug won’t let me sleep. I count every breath, trace the stains on the floor, hear every sound—the hum of the fluorescent bulbs, the metallic clink when Moore tosses the tools into the sink, the drip-drip-drip of the saline bag.
After a while, I stop thinking of myself as a person. I am just a thing that can be used, a chair or a table or a medical dummy. I let the ceiling suck me up and hold me there, far away from the body in the chair.
He comes back, pulls me upright, slaps my face until I look at him. He says, “Look at me when I love you. That’s the rule.”
He undoes the straps, and for a second, I think he’s done.
But then he bends me over the table, face pressed to the cold steel, and uses his hand instead. No tool this time, just skin on skin, his grip around the base of my neck like a leash.
The first strike stings the skin. The second bruises. The third is dull, almost tender. He keeps going until I lose count, until the numbers start to blur.
When he finishes, he wipes his hand with a towel, dabs antiseptic, tapes the skin, then leans down close enough that his mouth brushes my ear.
“You will remember this lesson,” he says. “You will thank me for it.”
I try to answer, but the words stick. He waits. The silence is a threat.
“Thank you,” I say.
He sets me upright, puts a cup of water to my lips, and makes me drink until I choke.
He stands back and admires his work, breathing heavy but not out of control.
“This is what you’re for,” he says. “You exist to be improved. To be refined. To serve.”
He leaves the room, lights still bright, body still burning.
I am somewhere above the scene, detached and floating. There is no body, just the memory of one. A catalog of pains, an inventory of violations, each neatly numbered and filed away.
The timer on the table goes off. In the distance, I hear the clack of Moore’s shoes on the tile, the brush of his gloves against the stainless steel. He’s coming back.
But I am not here. I am not anywhere.
I am no one.
And everyone.
I focus on the crack in the ceiling. The single flaw in a world that expects perfection.
If I don’t look down, maybe I’ll never have to come back.
I stay there, staring at nothing, as Moore prepares the next lesson.
Somewhere in the white void, the lesson changes.
I am not in the chair anymore. There are hands on my arms, but different from before: these are thicker, rougher, unfamiliar.
The smell of sweat is overpowering, mixed with aftershave, cheap cologne, the bite of whiskey evaporating off breath.
Voices now, not one but several, layered over each other in a constant, vicious commentary.
“Look at the eyes on this one.”
“Moore says he’s a crier, that true?”
“He can be made to cry.”
“Hold him down, he’s twitchy.”
Someone laughs, a short, barking sound that’s louder than the rest. It’s followed by a wet snort, and then the hands on my legs shift, pushing my thighs wider.
I want to close them but the bar is there, locked in place.
Hands grab my face, squeezing my cheeks until my jaw pops.
A finger pries into my mouth, hooking the inside and holding it open.
I try to count the number of men, but the voices blur together. Four, maybe five. One is very close, his breath hot on my neck, the stubble on his chin scraping skin raw. Another stays back, narrating the scene for an audience I can’t see.
“Senator’s got good taste,” says one. “Too pretty to last, though.”
Someone else says, “Not our problem.”
Hands explore, groping everywhere, searching for new angles of pain. One man goes straight for the wounds Moore left behind, shoving a finger into the bruised spot on my rib. Another laughs and cups my balls, squeezing until I choke on the pain.
The world is hands and mouths and teeth.
They turn me on my side, then over, face pressed to the cold tile. My arms are wrenched up behind me, shoulders screaming. I smell blood and spit and latex.
I go somewhere else. I watch from above, like a drone hovering over a battlefield.
The men are shadows with bright mouths, their hands the only things I can see in color.
I see my body, naked and pale, pinned by four men.
They fuck me in turns, no hesitation, no attempt to hide the violence.
My face, eyes squeezed shut, tears running sideways toward the floor.
My mouth opens and closes, but I hear no sound.
Each man marks me: one bites the back of my neck, hard enough to draw blood. Another leaves handprints on my hips, the bruises already rising purple. The one at my face grips my hair, yanks my head up, and says, “Watch.”
I watch.
Time stretches and folds. At some point, I realize Moore is there, standing back with his arms crossed, making notes on a clipboard. He doesn’t intervene, just records. For data. For posterity.
Eventually, the hands let go. Someone wipes their cock on my back, then flicks my ear. Another tucks himself away, zipping up with a slow, triumphant sound.
They laugh as they leave, a ripple of casual cruelty. Moore steps forward, kneels beside my head, and peels open my eyelid with a thumb.
“You’re still here,” he says. “That’s good.”
He lifts my head by the hair, holds it suspended for a moment.
“Thank me,” he says.
I can’t. My mouth is full of blood, or spit, or just the memory of both.
He slaps my cheek, not hard, just enough to focus my eyes on his.
“Thank me,” he says again.
I do. I always do now.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He lets my head go and it thuds to the floor.