nurse – hell, she still could be for all I know – she had access to the drugs necessary. I find it difficult to imagine that she was still treating people though. Picture coming out of anaesthetic and finding her hulking form looming above you. You’d be back in surgery before you knew it.
But she must be getting money somehow, so maybe she is still in the nursing game.
Not that that mattered to me now.
I am fairly certain she hasn’t drugged me in a long time.
I don’t know if that is scary or not.
It does occur to me that she no longer needs to move…
* * * * *
…The tumblers click and I am awake in an instant. My back screams in protest as I bolt upright; stiff from sleeping hunched over the desk. Another click resounds and I frantically run over in my mind why she is visiting. I have no idea how long has really passed but it just seems too soon for another visit. Has she already bathed me? I think she has but I cannot be certain. I remember her saying she would but I don’t remember it actually happening.
As the third tumbler clicks, my eyes dart to the food tray which is my best way of judging time passed. It lies empty even though I have no recollection of having eaten it. The door swings wide just as the scent hits me and looking down I realise my t-shirt is spattered with vomit. I have no time to process this before I hear her stomping across the floor and my mind freezes.
‘Now look what you’ve done.’ Her voice drips with concern but I’m not fooled by it. I can sense the anger seething underneath. ‘I only just washed you.’
Well at least that solved that little mystery.
Suddenly her voice is very close to my ear. Very soft and full of venom.
‘You fucking stink. I should let you wallow in it.’
Her voice is gone and I am finally able to expel the breath I’ve been holding.
I hear the slosh of water behind me and wince inside because I know what is coming.
‘Get up,’ she orders and I obey instinctively, not even considering the possibility that I could do otherwise.
I turn to face her but keep my eyes down not wanting to see her. I can’t avoid the bulge of her calves though. I can see the muscles straining as though they want to burst through the skin.
‘Turn around.’
I feel her approach from behind and wince as her hand slides up and grips the neck of my t-shirt, bunching the fabric into her meaty hand. Then she yanks and I can’t help the girlish yelp of pain that escapes me as the t- shirt bites into my flabby skin. The pain is only momentary though and then the shirt tears, sending splatters of my vomit shooting across the desk in front of me.
I begin to sob as I hear the shirt splat to the ground. Her hand hooks into the waistband of my tracksuit pants and wrenches them down. I stifle a second yelp as the friction burns at my thighs.
I wear no underpants and vulnerable does not even begin to describe how I feel.
I can feel her eyes boring into my back. I can sense her disgust at the sight of my body. At my weakness.
Suddenly I am angry.
Fuck her, I think, she made me this way.
I hear the splosh of a sponge entering a bucket and then the droplets as it is wrung out and my anger dissipates quickly in a rising fog of shame. The sponge slaps against my back and the breath whooshes out of me at the frigidity of the water. She rakes it down, scoring my flesh as though the only way to get it clean is to remove the entire epidermis.
‘You’re fucking disgusting,’ I hear her mutter and then the sponge dips lower, running over my buttocks and into my arse crack.’Your fucking arse stinks.’
Her hand grips my shoulder, the fingers digging painfully, and she spins me like a rag doll. I close my eyes as I turn so I won’t have to look at her.
The sponge makes its icy way down my chest, over my stomach and down towards my genitals that have already shrunk in anticipation of the chill. Her fingers cup around my scrotum and I momentarily stop breathing, the certainty overcoming me that she is going to crush them. Perversely I feel my penis begin to swell to life and blind panic grips me. I know that if I get an erection, I will be punished. She wouldn’t even have to flex those forearms to reduce my testicles to paste.
‘You like that don’t you?’ she breathes in my ear. With my eyes closed it sounds sultry. Like what the voice of all the beautiful women I imagine sounds. This doesn’t help. As my erection rises to life I hold my breath, waiting for the blinding agony as she clenches her fist.
It doesn’t happen though and I feel her hand drop away.
The sponge splashes back into the bucket and her footsteps recede across the floor. She pauses in front of the doorway and when she speaks it is in a new tone of voice I haven’t heard before. It is a sad tone. Full of not feigned but genuine disappointment.
‘You’re not the only one being imprisoned by this... I’ll bring you some new clothes soon.’
I don’t know what she means or what to say in reply. For once I am relieved to hear the lock click shut…
* * * * *
… I awake with a start, disorientated by my sudden flight into awareness. Something woke me; a loud sound. I’m certain of it. It sounded like a gunshot or a car back-firing. Or was it just a dream? I hold my breath, listening intently but the noise is not repeated.
Hope surges through my frame as my over-active imagination churns out a reason for the noise: the police have found me; even now they are heading for my room, guns drawn, ready to set me free while behind them she lays slumped on the floor, a bullet-hole in her head.
I listen hard, willing my ears to here the slap of footsteps approaching but there is nothing, just dead silence. Maybe it was nothing? Maybe it was just a dream?
Disappointment hits me hard and fast. Before I know it I am sobbing. Through my tears I can see something on my desk in front of me. A piece of paper and a pile of neatly folded clothes next to it. It is only then that I realise I am still naked. I don’t know why but the fact that she hasn’t woken me to dress me fills me with a horrible foreboding. Usually she would never trust me to dress myself.
My sobs have stopped and I wipe away the tears from my eyes so I can read the note next to the clothes.
It is short so it doesn’t take me long.
I really wish it was something I’d written and just couldn’t remember but I know it isn’t my handwriting.
I let it fall to the floor when I am done and my sobs come back full force…
* * * * *
… I take the shirt off the top of the pile and slide it over my head. Even this minor exertion causes me to pant slightly. I can feel beads of sweat break out on my forehead. Carefully I lift the razor blade from where it nestles on the fresh set of tracksuit pants.
I struggle into them, wincing as my bloody knuckles, stripped raw by the repeated pounding of the door, glance off the desk’s corner during my struggles.
I don’t want to be naked for this.
I have finally decided to do what the note suggested. But before I do, there is something else I must do first. It has finally come to me, now, when it is too late.
An idea.
I can see it crystal clear in my mind. It may not be a masterpiece but what does that matter. My only critic is
