Page 107 of Servitude to Serpents

“Let’s start with your name, then we can find out how you know Adrian Roth.” It’s not a request, but he must see the confusion in my eyes at that name again.

“Perhaps you don’t know him by that. He’s gone by many through the years. We’ll get to that in time. Who are you?”

I stare at him, panic banding around my lungs like ropes. The handcuff, the lights, the fucking beeping—it all prods at my chest, making my breath come in rough spurts.

Warrick.

I would sob if I could breathe, and saltwater laps at my chin.

Again, I find myself waking up in a sterile room, police glaring at me after I’ve lost everything.

This time, I handle it even worse.

The next few hours seem to drag on like lifetimes. No matter my silence, the questions don’t stop, and the man I now know as Agent Benigno never seems totire. He rounds my hospital bed, my tired eyes darting toward the armed guards outside the door.

“…I mean, we’re already scanning for your information. Being seen as cooperative can go a long way for someone in your position, or we can fucking sit here and wait until transport shows up and continue to waste everyone’s time. That’s who you want to stand by, huh? A monster who supplies weapons to fucking war criminals, to terrorists, a fucking woman killer? This isn’t some Bonnie and Clyde bullshit. These are the big games. I saw your body when they wheeled you in here. You gonna back that fucking bastard after what he did to you? Or maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe he let his friends have a go at you too.”

Indignation fills my chest, hating what it must look like to them. My state is an alarming one, made more so by the fluorescent lights. I want to tell them every mark, every bruise, I begged for, relished in it, but I don’t trust myself.

Don’t trust this fucking lump in my throat.

I don’t know what to do, what to say without him, so I say nothing at all.

It’s a silence I slip into like an old, comfortable pair of shoes. My mom asked a lot of questions toward the end, demanding answers I didn’t have, the same way Grandma had before her. You learn to make yourself small, quiet, just as well as you learn the sound of their footsteps in the hall. My fingers find the collar on my neck again, rooting myself with it, but it’s a mistake, one Agent Benigno notes as he hits the nurse's call button.

One quickly filters into the room, glaring at him. It seems his grating presence isn’t just offensive to me.

“Let’s see what we can do about that necklace. I think it’s making her uncomfortable.”

My lips part, my hand coming up to shield my neck. “No.”

He smirks. “It’s got a weird locking mechanism on it. You’re lucky you didn’t have to be shocked. It would’ve killed you. I’m sure the hospital-“

“Sorry to interrupt, Agent, but—”

He turns toward the nurse on his heel. “Another interference from any of you, and you’ll be arrested.”

The tiny woman doesn’t back down. “She was abused! You cannot treat her like this! She needs to speak to—"

“Have her removed,” he sighs, and just like that, she is.

The next nurse who comes in is unfamiliar, keeping her head down, and I don’t blame her, nor do I see the brave, tiny woman again.

It takes an hour before they show up with whatever tool they plan to use to pry this off my neck. My response is shocking, even to me. I’m not a violent person by nature, never was. You wouldn’t know it by the way I scream. It feels like they’re stripping something vital from me, the only thing holding me together as I claw and scream and beg. I’m in a wretched state by the time their hands pin me to the bed. My heart stops, all the panic tunneling into a single point that makes bile rise in my throat, and I cansmellMistress, can smell the urine, the cigar smoke, the cigarettes. I can taste my teacher’s cock, feel the gripping, tugging, pushing hands. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I wail. “Please. I need it. I need it!” Agent Benigno looks downright pleased with himself, looming above my panic like a sword ready to deliver the final blow after they’ve hacked at my neck with a dull blade.

I’mraped.

Again and again, I’m raped, pinned and screaming while theytakefrom me. The physical rapes aren’t the worst ones. It’s these that rewrite me, alter me, until I’m nothing but broken bits.

Theytookit.

My last piece of him.

Maybe the last of my sanity, too.

I don’t know how long I’m left alone to scream after that, once the hands leave and my throat is raw and bleeding. Agent Benigno is a silent and steadfast witness to it all. I retch, my stomach trying to rid itself of anything weighing it down as I jerk until my wrist is tender and bloody. Every member of staff turned away—not that they could help me.

“Fuck you, you fucking bastard! He’s going to fucking kill you! He’s going to kill you for touching me!” I scream, sobs wreaking my chest, my resolve gone. “Give it back to me now! Give it back! Now!”

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