Chapter Eighteen
Patient Seventeen
My roar of pain ripped through the hydrotherapy chamber, making the lightbulbs dangling from exposed wires above flicker, dousing the cement-walled chamber in strobe-like effects.
The souls that sought what refuge they could in the darkness peered at me with glowing eyes from all directions, with the pulsing light.
I’d been locked in the hydrotherapy tub for two days now, at least. Time here melded together like hot wax, and the heavy dose of sedatives fogging my entire system wasn’t helping my gauge of time.
Maybe it had been longer. Weeks. Months even?
It certainly felt like it had been months since I’d seen Dr. Beckett.
The memory of her painted lips, flushed cheeks, and plump thighs parting for me was the only thing preserving the threadbare vestiges of my sanity.
Rook wasn’t making it easy, with the constant supply of fresh ice added to my tub.
Stabbing pain exploded through my gums. My teeth hadn’t stopped chattering.
My skin was rock hard, nearly frozen over in its entirety.
The rest of my organs would have shut down by now if it weren’t for the Treatment coursing through my veins like adrenaline, keeping my heart pumping.
A bag filled with a sedative hung on an IV pole beside my tub, surgical tubing fed from the bag to the needle in my jugular vein, the sedative rendering me immobile and unable to fight back.
“Scream all you want, Son. You know what it does to me.”
My eyes lifted to see Rook enter the room with three nurses following behind him. He was carrying a metal bucket in each hand.
As he approached, I registered the bulge in his pants. I wasn’t sure at what point he’d developed a fetish for inflicting pain on his own flesh and blood. Sometime after corruption had devoured every last bit of the father I’d once known.
“So, are you ready to tell me how your session went with our new doctor?”
This monster had the power to plant nightmares into my head—the one where he’d put his own face on Tuesday was the first to come to mind—but the bastard couldn’t bother with a CCTV security system?
I didn’t dare mention it—couldn’t risk giving him the idea to spy on Tuesday more than he already was.
“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Don’t have to. I have staff for that, my boy.” He sat on the lip of the next tub over as he watched two nurses peel back my tub cover to pour in the fresh load of ice, while the third got on her knees before him.
My father pulled out his dick. It was covered in a complex network of green veins that were almost aglow with the toxic Treatment oozing through his circulation like sludge. His manhood was pathetically small. Yet another thing I’d failed to inherit from the prick, thank fuck.
“What’s the end game, here?” I managed to snarl through clenched teeth. “Don’t you get fucking bored with the endless torture?”
“Sometimes,” Rook admitted, hissing as the nurse drew him into her mouth. His face twisted with pleasure. “Strange. Women these days, becoming doctors. Nurses, yes. But a shrink? You would think their brains are too delicate to understand all that’s needed to be a good psychiatrist.”
If I weren’t freezing my balls off, I’d laugh. This fucker had no idea what it took to be a good human being, let alone a good doctor. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be trapped here together, hellbent on antagonizing each other for eternity. Or however long we were condemned to this place.
“W–what about Dr. Mary Stinson?”
My father’s brows contorted with irritation, like I was the one disturbing him. “What?”
“She was the first female physician hired by an in–insane asylum in the late eighteen hundreds. Or Alice Bennett, the first woman to be admitted into a psychiatric residency. Or M–Marion Kenworthy.”
“Shut up,” he snapped, his fingers digging so hard into the nurse's scalp she winced. The other two nurses secured the canvas back over my tub and changed out my IV bag for a fresh round of sedatives. “I loathe you when you’re lucid. You spout random nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. I learned it at Brown. You went there, too. Didn’t learn anything?”
“Plenty,” my father replied with a sniff.
“I didn’t bother filling my mind with women.
I love women, certainly, runs in our family, and I think it’s one of the few things we share in common.
But I didn’t fund an Ivy League education so you could fill your mind with lady doctors.
You should have been inspired by Freud or Pavlov. ”
Madmen, and misogynists to boot. Of course, my father would want me to draw inspiration from them.
“You didn’t answer my question, Malcolm.” I cringed at the name he’d given me. My mother had wanted to name me Benedict. My father insisted I take his name, just as he took his father’s.
“Sorry, c–can you repeat that? Busy freezing to death over here.”
His eyes narrowed at my sarcasm. He always hated it whenever I taunted him on the brink of death. Showed him he wasn’t as all-powerful as he liked to believe. “Tell me your thoughts on your new shrink. Oh, and I’m waiting for a thank you.”
“For?”
“Allowing you to be in the same room with her. I didn’t bring her here for you. She’s here for my pleasure.”
He paused, waiting for a reaction. Instead, I was fuming. My father often loved to harass the women who worked for him. Sometimes he’d leave them be, but if I showed even a twitch of interest in Tuesday…
Those dark thoughts alone had my veins pulsing with heat, making steam rise from the hole in the tub cover where my head protruded. “I’m not thanking you for something I don’t give a shit about. What do I care for her?”
“Fuck, what did I tell you?” Rook yanked the nurse’s mouth from his member with a brutal yank of her hair. “No teeth!”
He struck her so hard, she collapsed onto the concrete floor. “I–I’m sorry, Doctor.”
“Stupid girl. How hard is it to suck a cock?” With a huff, he stuffed himself back in his pants. “Perhaps Tuesday will be better at it.”
I bit my tongue until I tasted blood. But even as I put on an Oscar-worthy performance, my body betrayed me.
Every cell in my body turned molten hot as my blood bubbled with heat.
I winced at the sudden change in temperature.
The ice had already melted and, in its place, I sat in a tub of scalding water as I simmered in my own loathing.
“Ah, so you do care for her. And fuck me, I think you desire her for more than her body. Well, that’s unfortunate. Because she’s mine.”
As my anger rose, so did the water temperature. While the Treatment made my blood burn in elevated situations of duress, it didn’t save me from pain. So as the water roiled into a steady boil, my body began to cook from the outside in.
“Boiling is a long, horrible death.” Rook tapped the space where his nose would be. “What am I telling you this for? You know.”
Oh, I fucking knew all right. Just one of the many horrible deaths he’d made me suffer in my immortality.
“Tell you what. If you survive another, hmm…” He pulled his lab coat sleeve back to peer at his watch. “Another two hours, I’ll hold off on administering her the second dose of Treatment. Survive for another three, and I won’t allow myself or any other man here to touch her for another week.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?” He grinned. “Now. tick tock. What do you say?”
I tensed, then nodded. “Fine. D–Deal. But if you don’t hold up your end of the deal—if you or anyone so much as breathes on her—I’ll drink your fucking blood.”
So much for keeping my feelings for Tuesday close to my chest.
My father’s eyes gleamed. He’d been looking for a way to truly break me for years. Now, he’d stumbled upon the only thing that made me feel remotely human again. There wasn’t a layer in that he wouldn’t stoop to in order to leverage that. And I was playing right into his hands.
How could I resist?
If Tuesday was going to be anyone’s plaything here, she was going to be mine. Only mine. I’d suffer these next three hours for her, and a thousand more if I had to. Whatever it took to keep her safe from my monster of a father.
I’d endured so much more for less.
“One week.” Rook held up a single finger. “Want to buy her more time than that? You’ll pay my price, Mal. Now…I think I’ll stay and count down the minutes. To fill our time, why don’t I tell you every single thing I plan to do to Dr. Beckett once your week is up?”
The next handful of hours crawled on their hands and knees as I slowly boiled to death.
My claws detached from my nailbeds. My eyes burst and trickled tear-like ooze from my cheeks. My skin turned soft, and pustules rose while my muscles separated from my bones.
All the while, I kept death at bay, thoughts of her the only thing keeping me from succumbing to the darkness lurking all around.