“Nora, I won’t ask again. Tell me why I should be mean to you,” he states. “This is a serious matter, and I need you to talk to me. I don’t want to be mean to you, but I will if you want me to. I will spank you and show you that I care about you. That is me being mean, but I don’t think that is the kind of cruelness you are talking about.”
It’s not. But maybe if he did spank me, it would be easier for me to get into the mindset that he isn’t going to be good to me.
“Why?” he asks.
“I can’t,” I whisper, tears pooling in my eyes.
“Why not?” he asks.
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
It is part of the truth. If he finds out, he might do the opposite of what I want him to do. But he might drop the act sooner than he wants because I knew what he was trying to do.
“Tell me,” he demands.
“Be mean to me so I don’t get used to you being nice. And then, when you send me back to the space station, it will hurt less!” I yell, my eyes locked with his.
SEVEN
I take several deep breaths in as we look at each other.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Exactly what I said. You should be mean to me so I don’t get used to it. I know what you are trying to do. Be nice to me until I drop my guard. Then, when I am least expecting it, you are going to be rude to me. Eventually, you are going to send me back to the space station or just kill me here,” I rapid-fire. “I just want you to get it over with and let me die without too much pain, or send me back to the space station right now. I promise I won’t tell anyone about what you Venkorians are doing to us. You can get someone else then.”
Lie.
If he sent me back to the space station, the first thing I would do is tell Headmistress Helena, so she can inform the other girls. Then, they won’t get hurt. I can’t let this keep happening.
“Is that what you think?” he asks, and I nod. “Then why are you crying at every single thing?”
I shrug.
“I think you do know. I want you to tell me,” he states.
Well, I’ve already started, so I might as well just say everything I want to, so he can send me to the space station sooner. It will make everything so much easier.
“You didn’t feed me how you normally do last night,” I quietly say, not wanting to admit it all. “It felt like you were pulling away from me. That is when I realized I needed to keep my distance from you. I decided to get you to be mean to me so I wouldn’t be so hurt when you sent me back to the space station. But I didn’t realize that I would like it so much, and I just kept crying. Every single thing you did reminded me that this is all going to end soon, and I wouldn’t have anything left when I got back to the space station. It made me realize how much I had grown to love you doing every little thing for me, and that I didn’t want it to end. I thought being on the space station was a good life; it was simple and easy. But being here with you has made me realize that I was missing out on so much growing up on the space station. I’ve never had someone do that for me, and I didn’t know how to react.”
I take a deep breath and look into his eyes. He blinks at me, as if he knows I have more to say.
“We’re going to talk about what you had to do on the space station later. But I want to hear what else you have to say,” he says.
“And I want you to feed me how you did me before. It gave me butterflies in my stomach every single time, and I don’t want to give that up. I want you to continue to care for me, but I don’t deserve it. I don’t want to get used to it. I don’t want you to stop all of a sudden after you have done it for so long, and me be so heartbroken that I can’t function anymore,” I continue. “I want you to be horrible to me now so I don’t have to suffer as much later. I just need you to do that for me so that I can live peacefully on the space station. or as peacefully as I can, knowing what Icould have. And the fact that the space station is failing and we’ll all eventually die on there.”
“Why do you think you can’t have it anymore? That I don’t want to give it to you for the rest of our lives?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Because everything we know points to the Venkorians being mean and going to kill us. They hurt our friend when they were dragging her out of the cage they were keeping her in. They injected me to make me unconscious before I even got to the medical bay. They didn’t feed us much when we were in the kennels. It all points to you not wanting us. To torturing us and either killing us or making us your slaves for the rest of our lives. I don’t want that. Not after you have been kind to me and have made me think that you really want me.”
How does he not understand what I am trying to tell him? It all makes sense and I have laid it out for him.
“I just need you to be mean to me so that my heart grows used to it before you send me back,” I whisper. “Can you do that for me? Please.”
I will resort to begging him if I need to. But what if it backfires and he ends up treating me even better to show me he can do whatever he wants?
Shit.
Maybe I should have thought this through better. But he just kept asking me and wanted to make sure I was okay. He pressured me into telling him, making me look into his eyes like he knew it would work.
