Chapter 13 #2
I am not sure what to do with myself, or anyone else for that matter. I didn’t want to go back to work. He made me go back to work. Now he’s telling me I’m not allowed to go to work, and I want to go. It’s very contrarian of me, really.
I can feel his darkness wrapping around me again. I am being drawn down into the void that is particularly unique to him. It has a flavor of sorts, a kind of… it’s impossible to describe. It’s like a shadow I can taste, and it is all around me even on this bright day.
It might be that I am just getting over being drugged and told what to do, and generally controlled in ways that remove my ability to make decisions for myself, which is really the only freedom I ever had.
“This sucks!” I curse to myself, stamping off to find some food.
“I’m sure it does,” a dry voice responds.
I am not alone in the house.
Dr. Black is sitting in the kitchen, with a small dog at his feet.
The dog goes absolutely ballistic the moment she sees me, shrieking at me with a small fury that is really quite admirable, or would be if she wasn’t also backing away behind his legs as she does it.
She’s got a little terrier face, curly gray coat, and small, but presumably brutal canines.
“Easy, Cerebus,” Dr. Black says.
“What are you doing here?”
“Babysitting,” he says.
“I’m hardly a baby,” I reply.
“Not you. The dog,” he says. “I have to look after it for a friend.”
“You have to look after it for a friend in Sam’s house?”
“It’s so strange hearing him called Sam,” Dr. Black muses. “The man really doesn’t seem like a Sam most of the time. More of a Lucifer.”
I laugh, but I don’t add to that train of thought. There’s a real chance Sam can hear us. I bet he has every inch of this place under surveillance. I also bet Dr. Black is not the only professional here right now. This house feels oddly full in a way it didn’t the first time.
I go to the fridge and take out some cheese.
The dog is still intermittently shrieking.
Whenever she quiets, I toss her some. After a few minutes of that she decides I am much less of a murderer than she first thought, or maybe I am a murderer, but the upsides of knowing me are worth it.
I can understand her thought process entirely.
“How long are you going to be here?”
“I’m making doubly, triply sure that you experience no ill-effects from the whole incident. You won’t, of course.”
“I won’t?”
“No, it’s completely out of your system. But I’m here because it makes Sam feel good and making Sam feel good is an integral part of staying intact.”
I can’t quite tell if he’s joking or not. He does have a very deadpan sense of humor. I do think Sam is worried about people coming for me again. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why, because apparently they just drugged me and did absolutely nothing to me.
“What is his deal?” I ask the doctor.
“Samuel’s deal?”
“Yes.”
“What are you really asking?” He asks me the question while his little dog runs around the kitchen in a chaotic sort of way. I like the way dogs make places feel alive even when the place is mostly empty.
“Is he a psychopathic murderer?”
“Yes,” he says simply.
“Oh. Is he going to murder me?”
“He’s put a lot of effort into keeping you alive, so I’d say you have a better than average chance of survival.”
“What else does he do? Is he for hire? Does he work for the government?”
“Sam does what Sam does,” Dr. Black says. “And I’m not saying that just to avoid the question. I don’t know his business. I am sure it runs deeper than I care to imagine, and deeper than you should.”
“So he’s a bad guy.”
“Good and bad are concepts that don’t really apply to Sam. He’s too intelligent.”
“So if you’re smart enough you can do whatever you want?”
“If you’re smart enough, you can’t help but do whatever you want. Rules are like fences. They keep simple animals in. But smart ones, like goats? They go through fences, under fences, over fences.”
“So Sam’s a goat?”
Interesting that Dr. Black went to a farmyard reference. Maybe he’s a country boy at heart. I feel as though I know more about this guy than the one I’ve been in bed with for weeks.
“Sam is whatever he wants to be, and whatever he needs to be,” the doctor says. “I hate to say what I’m about to say, but it’s true and you may as well come to terms with it. There is no escaping him. Not now that he has decided you belong to him.”
A chill goes through me. “That’s a hell of a diagnosis, Doc.”
“It’s the truth, and I’ve always thought it best to tell the truth, even when it is bad news.”
I think I always knew the truth of what he is saying. The moment Sam first came to me, chose me as his, and insisted that I submit to him, it was over. Nothing can save me when it comes to Sam. But nothing can hurt me either.
Unless…
“I’m a pawn now, aren’t I.”
“You’re on the board,” Dr. Black agrees. “But I wouldn’t worry. There’s no benefit to it.”
I snort. He’s so sassy for an underground evil doctor. I have to consider the source of what’s being said to me. The doctor knows more about Sam than I do, but there’s no guarantee he knows more about real life than I do. These people live in an alternate reality, where the rules don’t apply.
But they do apply—right?
At some point, something you do, good or bad, has to matter.
There have to be consequences, even for very bad men.
But maybe I am being naive. A cursory inspection of history teaches that terrible people quite often end up dying peacefully in their beds of old age.
I wonder if I will be warming Sam’s bed decades from now when his time comes.
Thinking about that fills me with a sense of melancholy and grief that doesn’t make sense.
The front door opens, and the little interview is over.
Sam walks in with a smile on his face. It’s quite an interesting expression. Triumphant and satisfied. He looks like a man who just took revenge.
Am I starting to read him better? Or has he infected me somehow, with a mind virus of sorts, or one of empathy? A connection has been forged between us, I think. I can feel things I shouldn’t be able to feel. I know things I can’t know.
“Everything good here?” He addresses the question to the doctor, while dropping a kiss on my head.
“The patient is doing well,” the doctor replies with a wink at me. “Cerebus and I need to be going though.”
“Of course. Thank you for helping as long as you did.”
The doctor leaves and Sam makes himself coffee. I watch him, while trying to form the question I want to ask, and not really knowing what that question even is.
“What now, Sam?”
He looks at me. “Hearing you use my first name so casually is interesting,” he muses. “I did tell you to call me Sir, but I suppose you’ve earned the right.”
“I have classes to attend today,” I say.
“You can go,” he says. “I was going to keep you in, but that’s because I was concerned I couldn’t control the world.”
“You’ve worked out how to do that since this morning?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He grins broadly with a satisfaction I know he can’t hide. He definitely got revenge somehow. He did something that reaffirmed his ability to punish and dominate and control the world around him. I can only imagine the horror he has unleashed.
I know I should be repulsed, but I feel some pride. I try to dissociate myself from it, telling myself that I am better than this. I am a good person. He is not.
“Where were you? Just now, I mean?” I ask, pushing the issue. I know he doesn’t want to tell me, but I also have this sense that it matters.
“I was consulting on a crime,” he says. “I do psychological profiles for the FBI when they call on me.”
“And it was a crime that made you not worry about me leaving the house again?”
He smiles again, and I just fucking know he did it.
I know it the same way I know Dave is dead somewhere.
Nobody threatens Sam. Nobody tells him what to do, or how to do it.
He does precisely what he pleases, whenever he pleases.
Using me is one of many expressions of that vicious streak of independence.
“You’ve done something bad,” I say.
He grins again, walks over to me, and kisses me deeply.
“There is no good or bad in this world, sweetheart. There’s just what keeps us safe, and what dares threaten us.”
So he’s on a vengeful rampage. For me. Well, he thinks it is for me. But I don’t really exist to him the way I exist to myself. Sam defends me because I am the most precious thing to him in the world. I am his. A thing he owns. I am his to protect, but I am also his property.
I realize in this moment of fierce possession that he is not the only one who needs his independence.
I can’t live like a captive, or a dog. I have spent my entire life trying to free myself and I know I’m on the verge of doing it.
Besides, whoever drugged and kidnapped me did it because of him, not me. So I’ll be safer on my own too. There’s literally no reason to stay with Sam aside from the fact he’s a murderous psychopath, and that’s a very poor reason.
I’ve reached a point that I knew was coming from the moment we met. If I don’t do something now, and I do mean right fucking now, Sam is going to own me forever.
It might already be too late, but I have to try. It’s the last sane thing to do. It’s the only sane thing to do.
I have to run.