Page 17 of Little Puppet

I nod, taking in the information.

I’ve never known much about the women I kidnapped. It feels odd to know anything about her. I wonder if it’ll make it more challenging when the end of our time comes.

“Why do you hate Christmas?” she asks, and I’m nearly knocked breathless at the question.

But when she picks up her feet and rests them on my thighs, it’s as if she gives me the strength to answer unwittingly.

“I saw my parents murdered in cold blood on Christmas Eve. I was hiding in a closet.”

She gasps, sitting forward and reaching to comfort me, but her strings pull taut, and she hisses. “God, these things are fucking infernal.”

She realizes her misstep and eyes me. “I’m sorry.”

However, I don’t let myself get annoyed by thebehavior because I’m too confused about why she would try to comfort me.

I give her another bite of bagel and silently riddle out the meaning behind her gesture.

“Did they catch their killer?” she asks, her eyes filled with caution.

“No. But I did. Years later. You can’t forget a face when something like that happens. It was like it was etched into my fucking brain.”

She nods. “I can understand that.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. While nothing bad has happened to me, I learned about it in one of the psychology classes I was required to take.”

“What are you studying?” I ask, knowing it’s a moot point to ask because she’ll never finish school.

“I wanted to work with kids. Ones who’ve been abused.”

The way she’d spoken in past tense means she’s accepted her fate here with me. It’s curious when no one else has ever done so.

“Admirable profession. We need more people who care,” I say, knowing I’ve said too much.

“I, too, took psychology, and I’ve also spent time on the leather couches of doctors who sought to evaluate the dark shit in my head, and yet, it hasn’t helped me. While I understand my urges, I don’t care to change my ways.”

“Why did you take psychology?”

I weigh telling her who I am in the daytime. She could survive. She could make it out.

Though, none ever have.

“I’m a doctor. A surgeon.”

She swallows. “You took an oath to do no harm,” she says, confusion floating in her eyes.

I nod. “I did. And for the entire year, I do no harm when my badge is hooked to my scrubs. But for one week a year, I let every dark urge that I have out of my body and take the wheel. It’s how I survive the world.”

Goosebumps rise on her flesh, and I wonder what drives them.

Not enough to ask, however.

“Are you full?” I ask her, and she looks at her half-eaten plate and nods.

“I am. Thank you, master.”

Her behavior only strokes the dark fucker living beneath my skin, but when he answers with another purr, I begin to worry.

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