Page 12 of Repossess My Heart

“I… I just want to look.” Please… I whisper in my head, knowing there’s little point in begging out loud. Things like pleases matter little to bots.

“Perhaps a story instead, Reverie.”

I throw out the steel cooking plate I’d strapped to my elbow. I have the most force there, a self-defense trick I learned from the very person…thingI’m using it to escape from. My heart shudders so violently in my chest it matches the pain radiating from my elbow as it bounces ineffectively off the glass only seconds before a steel arm slaps against the metal wall hard enough to create a boom that raddles my eardrums.

“Reverie is not allowed to leave for her own good.” CeCe reminds me in that monotone voice I’ve grown so weary of. I lunge to the side, dipping under CeCe’s arm and for the door I know I can’t open. It’s a shot in the dark, a stupid knee-jerk reaction… but it’s worth it for even a chance to step outside. A scream leaves my throat as CeCe’s hand jerks me up by it. The touch is far from the gentle ones I’m used to. This is clinical, painful, as her grip tightens around the back of my neck. I don’t have enough time to speak, beg maybe before the air leaves my lungs. The room having flown by in a blur of color as she threw me away from the door, making me collide with a metal stool. Whooshing sounds loud in my ears as a familiar eerie alarm blares from CeCe’s closed mouth. My eyes widen on two of my fingers bent at odd angles, but I don’t feel any pain.

When my head snaps up again she’s on me, “No. no, no, no please, I’ll calm down-“

“Reverie’s heart has reached a critical limit.”

I scream as the casing of her thumb pulls back, revealing the needle there. One of many that’s injected me more times than I can count. I scream, pointlessly as fear builds, egging on the familiar pounding in my chest. The budding of a hollow pain I’d never been kept awake long enough to feel as I struggle to keep away from her.

From it.

Another scream lodges in my throat as I’m jerked up off the ground into a steel cage of arms. The prick in my neck is familiar as is the near instant loss of use of my arms and legs.

“Reverie must relax, your heart cannot…” her words drift off, carried by my own shallow breath as darkness wraps its warm cocoon around me. A cocoon she’ll keep me in off and on for the next few days…

Or weeks?

Until Reverie is safe.

5

An Awakening

Myskinpricklesagainsta jarringly cold whip of air. One you feel when you walk into a tube. I’ve only ridden one once, but being compressed in a cylindrical device and whipped at neck breaking speeds across the upper levels of the Below once was enough. Sure, it’s a great way to get around, but it looks like a super-sized child’s toy and if I had a choice to wipe my slate clean of debt and it only took riding the damn thing again.

I’d be stuck right where I am.

Arching my spine doesn’t relieve the tension in my back I’d hoped it would. My shoulders throb, wrenched up at an ungodly hyper-extended angle, pushing a pained groan from my lips as I try to lower them. My eyes flutter open at the realization that I can’t, a new sense of alarm coursing through me before my brain finally gives me the information it withheld moments ago.

Nine…

Water brims in my eyes as they burn against the harsh lighting hung… no positioned overhead forced down on me as if I’m under a microscope. The idea alone has my chilled skin crawling. My muscles throb after what can only be hours of inactivity. The manacles biting into my wrists breed a whole new sense of uncomfortable awareness as yet another whip of frigid air nips at my bare, damp core. My bare and damp…everything. When they finally adjust past the harsh lighting, my eyes dart around the room, taking in one horror after another as panic rises in my chest, hot and heavy like a flaming whip. Blades and medical instruments line the walls. Reflecting the deep violet accent lights around the room. They seem to disagree with the obviously surgical setting, with everything about the room, really. Jerking again against the restrains binding and holding me spread and taut over the metal table only serves to add to my pain instead of alleviating it. My teeth score my inner cheek as my breath becomes shakier.

I latch onto the feeling.

I’m… scared? It's as close as I get to the feeling, anyway.

It’s not the idea of dying but of the pain this room promises. For a moment I think I might even cry. I feel that long lost burn in my throat that used to come before torrents of tears. The sensation only compounded by the figure, leaned casually against the far wall, watching me. Its burgundy-colored full bio suit isn’t the cheap kind you’re used to seeing on waste pickups. The suit is made from thick material, heavy and covering every inch of vulnerable flesh. A long apron is held on the figure by leather straps. My heart hurdles in my chest as the person shoves off the wall stalking forward with the confidence of someone who belongs in this room.

It- he’s stalking me.

Only this isn’t a fair hunt. I’m laid bare and he’s in full control. The rounded medical grade face covering isn’t too different from the ones at surgery centers. Equipped with the metal disk in the middle just above the clear viewing panels lit from inside. My lips part as the light from above is shoved away, allowing my first look at the icy blue eyes inside the mask. Relief overwhelms me as the half cooked need to cry evaporates. His name, or his number, leaves my lips on the breath I was holding as I let my head thud back against the metal table. He doesn’t speak as he turns from me, roughly jerking a metal cart with him to the wall of horrors, loading it up with perfectly polished tools of his trade. I feel my cheeks flush with color as the need to say something… to hear him overwhelms me.

“I was worried it wasn’t you for a moment. Can’t say I’m super impressed by the wardrobe change. Although I get the functionality of it.” I ramble, clenching and unclenching my hands at my sides, trying to gain a little of the feeling in them. My body jolts as he slams something down on the table violently.

Okay, don’t talk, got it.

That doesn’t last long.

I guess I feel nervous?

No… excited is closer to it, but even that doesn’t seem quite right. It’s an excitement deep in my belly, causing me to feebly attempt to pull my legs together, hiding my downright alarming reaction to waking up in a kill room strapped to a table.

Not just any kill room, his kill room.

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