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“I have,” I admit. There is no point lying about it. We were clearly being watched the entire time.
“Do you think that is ethical?”
I think she’s trying to intimidate me, but I refuse to be intimidated.
“I think ethics have very little place here. I think she wanted it, and so did I.”
“But she is in a position of dependence.”
“Are you going to take her from me?” I cut to the chase. I want to know what happens next.
“I’m not.”
“So what is this meeting about, Head? Are you asking us to refrain from intimacy?”
“… No,” she smiles. I don’t understand the smile. I don’t understand anything that’s happening here. This woman seems to enjoy messing with me, but I don’t think she has time to mess with people. There’s some point to this, even though it feels pointless.
“You just wanted me to know that you knew,” I say flatly.
“I’m warning you, Doctor Ares. You have a task to do.”
“A vague, nebulous task of civilizing and socializing Electra. Sex could easily be considered part of that.”
“Yes, I suppose it could. It could also be considered taking advantage of a young woman who doesn’t know better.”
“If she doesn’t know better, it is because she has been kept captive most of her life. She has needs and instincts, both of which have been frustrated for far too long. You tell me she’s feral, wild, that she can’t go out into the world, and then you drag me in here and lecture me when we do what is most natural. In one day, she’s come further than she has in years, I’d bet.”
I don’t know what the woman wants to achieve with this interview. Very possibly she just wants to let me know that I’m not truly in control, and that Electra isn’t really mine. But that’s already untrue. Electra is mine, and if the Head tries to come between us, she’s going to find out that I don’t give up what I’ve taken easily. My girl’s life has been one tragedy after the other, but I’m going to make damn sure it improves from here on out.
“You should be careful, Doctor Ares,” the Head says. “I do not find insubordination amusing in deed, or tone, for that matter.”
“You asked me to help her. Let me help her.”
“Not with your penis, Doctor Ares.”
“You got in trouble, didn’t you?”
Electra knows what happened as soon as I walk through the door. I suppose it is written all over my face, and she knows the way this place works as well as any of us do. If there’s something you were enjoying, it will be used as a pressure point, taken away from you… it occurs to me I’m thinking the way Electra would. Maybe she’s growing on me, getting inside me just the same way I got inside her.
“I’m a grown man,” I tell Electra. “I don’t get in trouble.”
“I knew you did. It was the sex, wasn’t it? I knew she wouldn’t like that.” Electra can’t stop grinning. “Did she try and ban it?”
“She did.”
“We are going to bone so hard,” Electra smiles, coming toward me, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief.
“We’re going to abide by her wishes until we can get you out of here,” I say, my voice lowered as she presses her face to mine.
“I don’t want to. I’m tired of her wishes. What about my wishes?”
“We’ll have our wishes soon enough, don’t you worry.”
I shouldn’t be making promises to her, but I can’t help it.
Electra
“You can’t live like this, can you?”
I can sense his frustration in the way he tries to hold me, then hesitates, then grips me close. He’s starting to understand what it is like to live my life, to feel as though every impulse he has is cut off, every freedom taken away. He has joined me in my jail.
“I can live like this,” he says, his eyes warm as he looks down at me. “I will live like this as long as it takes. I meant it when I said I was going to be there for you. A little lecture from the Head doesn’t change that.”
“We’ll see. It sucks being me. You have no experience being me. But you’re starting to get some.”
“Mhm. We’ve got other things to work on.”
“We do?”
“Uh huh. There’s laundry.”
“What the fuck is laundry?”
Tom
Laundry. That’s the distraction we need.
Electra’s entire life, clothes have been brought to her and removed from her, but she knows nothing about where they come from, or what needs to be done to maintain them. I want to teach her the basics, so one day, if she finds herself on her own, she’ll be able to look after herself. Or maybe do my socks. Kidding. Mostly.
She follows me willingly into the laundry room in our little pretend apartment. I think of it as being fake, but it’s real enough in the sense we’re actually living in it. The place has already taken a fair bit of damage. She’s tough on things and thinks nothing of spilling drinks or food. The concept of cleaning up after herself is completely foreign. I’m still working on that, there’s a lot to cover in the general lesson plan of ‘how not to be a feral little animal’, except in the bedroom, where it is actually a lot of fun.
