Page 4 of His Talisman

CHARITY

The door was sealed, the handle locked, and I sat on the bed like a statue, staring at nothing for a while. Tears ran down my face. The emptiness of this room sank in, drowning me with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

The doctor was the only person who had helped me since my arrival on this ship and since the assault. I felt bereft and hollow, my stomach roiling with nausea, and he’d not really done anything more than he had to, had he?

No. Except for that touch. My skin remembered him.The tactile shock from his hand moving my hair aside in that last moment, before he denied my plea and left—that had been a small earthquake. Gentleness and compassion had been wrapped in his touch. A man’s hand.

My tortured insides had quivered. Not with desire, not that, just recognition.

I inhaled. My nostrils dilated, my eyes closing. I’d registered the solidness of the doctor from that miniscule brush of skin on skin.

“How can you live with yourself?”

“Practice,” he said.

He’d drawled out that word, deep voice caressing the syllables. How could I like a man who was so fucking immoral?

I breathed slower, imagining my palm on him, pushing on his chest and him not moving.

My memory of what good men felt like was doing this to me. Or it was concussion?

I snorted. Leaning over my lap, I absentmindedly combed my fingers through either side of my hair.Ouchagain. Lumps were there.

His gray eyes had been…quiet, unreadable. He’d told me I would see him again. I must try to reach inside him next time, to find his better self. I had to try.

The doctor was a heavy man, with an imprint like a building. I’d seen muscles moving beneath his cream shirt and his scent lingered. I raised my head and shut my eyes to smell the air without the interference of sight. Rosemary? How odd.

The floor before me was rolling more. We were heading for that port, where they would unload me. I clenched my hands into fists and swore as my fingers complained. More hurts. Guess I was lucky nothing was broken. My ankle was aching too, and I hadn’t even noticed it before.

2

CHARITY

I tried to keep track of how many days I’d been their prisoner—whoever the people at the top of this organization really were—but whenever they moved me from boat to shore or truck to house, they drugged me. A reversal agent popped me back to clarity, fast, but I was never sure if it’d been days or hours.

The doctor was less talkative the next time he came to me, in the darkened, shuttered room with the luxurious furnishings and the anchor bolts on the bed corners. I couldn’t even get him to state the day and month.

Blood samples were drawn, eyes and chest were examined, and then there were those uncomfortable yet brisk internal checks. I couldn’t help but feel sensations I knew I should not. He watched me silently as he probed down there.

My thoughts roved into lurid fantasies, no matter how I tried to shut them down.

With everything checked off, inspections accomplished, he gave me a nod and made to leave, having ignored my questions. He had only said a few words that were instructions: stand, sit, turn, does this hurt. I had almost lied, just to get a response.

At the last moment, while facing the reinforced door, he promised to get me a TV to watch.

That night, in the dark, I masturbated to my memories of the doctor, imagining him doing things to me, bending me over my bed and spanking me, then shoving himself inside while I pleaded with him not to…endlessly pleading while he fucked me hard and told me I was bad for tempting him. I came, curled over my hand, gasping into the pillow, trying to conceal what I’d done from any peeping tom cameras as I wound down from the orgasm.

Like magic, the TV arrived the next day. The flatscreen was screwed to the wall—so I couldn’t play with the insides, I guess. As if I could use the wiry innards to kill a guard?

Killing myself would be the best I could imagine myself doing, but I wasn’t built like that. Suicide was not in my deck of cards. Not today, Hellboy.

It was a morbid thought.

This place might be a more permanent accommodation, judging by the clothes and toiletries they’d left in the room. I had a proper bathroom but no window at eye level. Thankfully, just below the high ceiling, a line of squares of un-openable glass let in sunlight. The mattress was so luxurious and body hugging I’d felt sleep pulling at me the instant I lay down. I’d sunk myself there, watching yellow light twist and wave on that faraway ceiling.

What house had no window you could reach to see out of? Wind sighing through trees and the lack of traffic noises made me suspect this place was built away from roads and towns, somewhere in a forest. I dwelled on this house at night, while staring up at the swaying shadows and half-asleep. It was, in essence, a creepy place. They could bury me out there, and no one would know they had done so. No one would find me for years.

A lonely, forgotten grave where I would rot to bones, and a hundred years from now, they would dig me up and wonder.

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