Page 33 of Say You're Mine

The machine, the insidious device they've used to pry into the darkest recesses of my psyche, to plunder my memories and fears and secret shames... of course it would betray even this, the last desperate refuge of my battered soul.

Faulkner begins to pace, his hands clasped behind his back as he circles me like a shark scenting blood.

"Cara, Cara, Cara," he sing-songs, his tone mocking and cruel. "The whore you can't seem to quit, even as she drags you deeper into the muck of your own depravity. Tell me, Juniper... do you really think she'll still want you, after all this? After we've strip-mined your mind and hollowed you out until there's nothing left but a shell, a husk of the man you once were?"

I remain silent, my jaw clenched so tightly I can feel my teeth groaning under the pressure. I won't rise to the bait, won't give him the satisfaction of seeing me crack.

But Faulkner is relentless, his words worming their way into my ears, my brain, like insidious parasites burrowing beneath my skin. "She's forgotten you, you know. Moved on with her life, her belly swollen with the bastard spawn of your rutting. And why wouldn't she? What woman would wait for a pathetic, broken thing like you?"

"Shut up," I grit out, the words slipping past my guard before I can bite them back. "You don't know anything about her, about us. Cara loves me, we'll be a—"

"She pities you!" Faulkner roars, his composure slipping for the first time. "Pities the wounded dog you've become, whimpering and mewling for scraps of her affection. But even that pity will turn to revulsion, to disgust, when she sees what we've made of you. When she realizes the man she loved is gone, replaced by a drooling, obedient husk that dances to his mother's tune."

Breathing heavily, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small remote. "But I'm feeling generous today, Juniper. I'm going to do you a favor, free you from the shackles of this poisonous obsession once and for all. By the time I'm done with you,"

Dr. Faulkner's laugh fills the room, moving to the panel then presses a button.

And the wall in front of me flickers to life, revealing a large screen. My heart seizes in my chest as Cara's face fills the frame, her storm-grey eyes wide and luminous, her lips parted on a secret smile meant only for me.

"No. Not my Cara Mia, please." I whisper, the word dragged from my throat like shattered glass. "No, don't do this, don't taint her, please..."

But Faulkner is deaf to my pleas, his finger jabbing at the remote with vicious glee.

Cara's image warps and twists, her smile stretching into a ghoulish rictus, her eyes bleeding black as tar. Her voice fills the room, but it's wrong, distorted, a demonic mockery of the warm, honeyed tones I know so well.

"Juniper," she croons, her voice overlaid with a grating electronic buzz.

I shake my head desperately, my hands clamping over my ears in a futile attempt to block out the poison dripping from her lips.

"My poor, pathetic Juniper. So weak, so broken. Did you really think I could ever love a creature like you? Did you honestly believe your touch didn't make my skin crawl, that I didn't have to choke back bile every time you spilled your rotten seed inside me?"

This isn't Cara, it can't be, it's a trick, a lie, a deception crafted to shatter me...But the words keep coming, an endless barrage of vitriol and contempt that flays me to the bone.

Every secret fear, every whispered doubt that's ever plagued me in the darkest hours of the night... it's all here, thrown back in my face with ruthless precision.

"The baby isn't even yours," not-Cara hisses, her face a twisted mask of cruelty. A howl of pure agony rips from my throat, my fingers clawing at my scalp as if I could physically tear the images from my mind.

"It's Louis's, did you know that? I've been fucking him for months, laughing at you behind your back for being so blind, so pathetically eager to claim another man's child as your own."

"I'll kill the both of you and eat the bastard fruit of your sins." There were doubts, a nagging voice of suspicion that said Cara and Louis were fucking. Like that time, he came her apartment and whisked her away from me.

The memory sends hate with a heat straight of the pits of hell, and the murderous threats spill my lips like a litany of corrupt chorus as the broken smile shapes into a twisted smirk. I'm dimly aware of Faulkner's laughter, high and sharp and utterly mad, but it's distant, drowned out by the roaring in my ears, the sickening thud of my heart as it struggles to keep beating under the onslaught.

It goes on for hours. Days. Lifetimes. An endless loop of degradation and betrayal, the love of my life twisted into a monstrous harpy spewing venom and lies until I can't separate fact from fiction, reality from nightmare. I scream until my voice gives out, until all that's left are raw, animal whimpers that tear at my ravaged throat.

At some point, I must pass out. Or perhaps my mind simply retreats, fleeing into the depths of oblivion to escape the unrelenting torment. But when I come back to myself, when I peel my swollen eyes open and blink against the harsh fluorescent light...

Everything has changed.

The world is a dull, leached-out husk, drained of color and warmth and life. And at the center of it all, like a festering wound that refuses to heal, is Cara.

Cara. The name is a curse, a blight, a poison that makes my stomach churn and my skin crawl with revulsion. Every memory of her, every sweet caress and whispered endearment, is tainted now, warped beyond recognition until all that remains is a twisted mockery of the love we once shared.

I want to hate her. Want to carve her out of my heart like the malignant tumor she is, to purge myself of every last trace of her insidious influence. But even now, even with the stench of Faulkner's manipulation thick in my nostrils...

I can't. Because beneath the layers of lies and madness and carefully cultivated loathing, there's a tiny, stubborn spark. A glimmer of something pure and true and unbreakable, a love that refuses to be snuffed out no matter how hard they try to poison it.

It's that spark, that fragile flicker of defiance, that keeps me breathing. That has me squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, meeting Faulkner's smug, expectant gaze with a glare of pure, unadulterated hatred.

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