Anton was confused. “You and Gabe both said she threw things here on the main floor and broke a bunch of stuff. When exactly did that happen?”
“When I was stitching Shannon up in the medical room. That’s when I heard the screaming and smashing. From what I’m told, the other girls joined in. A case of monkey see monkey do, I’d imagine.”
“Is she crazy? I mean… is she broken?”
“She’s very upset. She watched a friend get tortured by a psychopath, so what do you think?” Lindsay made some notes on one of his patient files.
“But will she be okay?”
“I think so. I can prescribe something...”
Anton shook his head. It seemed drugs were the source of Brian’s flip-out; he didn’t want to take the same risks with Annette. “No, we’ll work through it.”
The doctor shrugged and went back to his paperwork.
Anton went back to the dungeon and unlocked the door. “Come with me.”
She seemed slightly more lucid now, but she still glared at him and didn’t make a move to obey. He also noticed she hadn’t addressed him.
Anton wasn’t exactly sure why she was mad at him. Shouldn’t she be mad at Brian? Maybe she was mad at everyone, the whole situation. They’d had weeks of progress. Everything had been damn near perfect with her. Of course there would be an incident.
They all acted out. All subs acted out. Eventually. You could practically set your watch to it. But somehow Anton had thought Annette would be the exception. She wasn’t. Not that he could entirely blame her. It was reasonable to freak out in this situation. He really hated that he had to punish her. What if he broke her beyond repair?
No, it had to be done. She needed to know that good behavior carried rewards and bad behavior carried punishment. He’d had enough subs to know that the worst thing he could do right now is let this go. It would only introduce instability and uncertainty. Once a sub had been in a cage for a while, she craved those bars. She needed them to feel safe. She sought the reinforcement of boundaries. She tested the strength of them.
Anton was sure that what she’d witnessed had been traumatic. At the same time, he also thought it was a perfect excuse to act out. He wondered if perhaps something inside her hadn’t been screaming and clawing to get out, to rebel, to scream and smash things for a long time now—even if it was all subconscious. This was a good excuse to let it out.
What she needed right now was the bars to close back around her and to know there was stability here. If there weren’t firm consequences, she couldn’t settle back into the routine, and they couldn’t move forward.
“Brian had a bad reaction to some medication. He acknowledges he was out of control. He flushed the pills.”
“He killed her,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
Oh, God. She’d just assumed. Of course she hadn’t seen, and Lindsay probably hadn’t explained anything before sedating her. He wouldn’t have been able to reason with her or explain with her being so out of control.
“Shannon is fine. The doctor stitched her up.”
“S-she’s okay?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
She got up off the ground and went to him, her expression wary like a beaten dog.
“Did he hurt you?” Anton asked again.
“No.”
Still no address. This was going to be a long evening.
Anton led her up to his room and to the bathroom. “Strip,” he said.
She just stood and stared at him. He let out a sigh but proceeded to take his own clothes off.
“Let me put it to you another way. Get in the shower with me, or I’ll take you to Brian.” He got in under the spray and closed the glass door before he could see her expression. He didn’t want to see the terror there.
He would never give her to Brian for any reason, but she didn’t know that. And at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to make direct threats. He just needed her to get in the water with him so he could get her cleaned up and get this punishment over with.
A few moments later, Annette got in the shower. She turned away and faced the wall just letting the water fall on her.
Annette flinched when she felt his hands on her. And then she inwardly cringed at how much she still wanted them there. She stared at the bottom of the shower while Shannon’s blood mingled with the water, turning it pink. She tried desperately not to let her body react to him. The scent of him, the strength of him. His voice.
He’d just threatened to send her to Brian for God’s sake. Even knowing what he was capable of! Anton was just as bad. Just because he wasn’t explicitly insane didn’t make him better. How could she ever trust him if there was even the possibility that he’d let Brian hurt her?
This was the moment she began plotting her escape. She would find a way to get both her and her sister to safety, and she would be done with all of this. The tears ran down her face as she thought about Shannon.
Those horrifying screams. Annette hadn’t been able to leave her, but she couldn’t stand those screams. So she’d started screaming to drown it out or to stop Brian. Anything. She’d screamed so much that she’d fallen into a sort of madness. She’d been dimly afraid Brian would open the door and drag her into the cell with Shannon, but she hadn’t been able to stop screaming.
When he was finally done with her, and he’d flung open the door, Annette had rushed in. Shannon had been so pale. There was so much blood. She was sure she was dead already. She’d used her hands to try to keep the blood from spilling out. She vaguely remembered Lindsay coming down and taking her away.
She’d run after him, but he’d locked the door of the medical room. And Annette had kept screaming. Things she hadn’t known were inside her had come out in one long primal expulsion of sound and fury and frenetic energy pouring out of her as she turned over tables and threw chairs.
Other things were being thrown, not by her. It must have been the other girls. Annette couldn’t be bothered because she’d just wanted to hear glass shatter. She’d raced into the kitchen and just started flinging plates and cups and saucers and anything and everything that would make that nice satisfying shattering shriek against floors and counters and walls.
Finally, Gabe had gotten to her, he’d held her firm, and then Lindsay was there with a needle, and everything went dark. She’d woken in the dungeon as the key was turning in the lock. At first she’d though it was Brian, but it was Anton.
All at once, anger boiled over at him, and she’d started to scream again.
Now, standing in the shower with his hands running over her, she slowly became aware that everything she’d done this afternoon was very, very bad. There was no way Anton would let it go.
She bit back a moan as he massaged shampoo into her scalp.
“Rinse,” he said, barely restrained anger in his voice.
She moved under the spray to rinse the soap suds out.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your lack of respect and proper address. It’s going on the list of things you’re being punished for.”
Annette laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was a dark, hard-edged, cynical laugh. It was the kind of laugh nightmares are made of. If only she were the nightmare instead of the dreamer. If only she had the power. Breaking everything in her path had felt like power for one brief shining moment. She’d acted. In that moment, no rational thought had been able to penetrate. She’d been sure Shannon was dead, and she just didn’t care about anything anymore.