Mine(19)

CHAPTER NINE

Rien

It was time to start carving up this couple. And with nobody else on my schedule, I could take my time and enjoy it.

Mrs. Steadhill was screaming behind her gag, her body twisting against the straps. I would definitely have to tie her neck down or risk being sloppy. But first I’d deal with her husband.

I picked up the cotton to stuff it in Mr. Steadhill’s mouth again.

“Wait! She isn’t my wife,” he said, rasping air.

I paused. The nagging feeling that I had gotten when the couple walked in was back. I had assumed that she had been lying, but a worry itched at my mind.

“She’s an actress,” he continued. “She—”

I stuffed the gag in his mouth. He choked as I taped it back up, shrieking as the tape touched his musculature on the exposed part of his face.

“An actress?”

I looked over at the woman. She nodded frantically, her eyes wide.

“I can tell you want to talk,” I said. “But I’ve found that when I let people talk to me, they lie. Are you going to lie?”

She shook her head. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. A twist of unease made its way into my stomach as I looked at her. If she really was innocent, I couldn’t kill her. But I couldn’t let her go. She was a witness.

If she was innocent, that is.

“Then we’ll talk,” I said, deciding quickly. “In another room. I don’t trust the two of you together.”

I went over to the medical cabinet and pulled out another hypodermic, then brought it over to the woman. She looked at the needle with terror in her eyes and looked away as I injected her.

“You are scared of needles, aren’t you?”

She nodded, her eyes clenched shut.

“Oh, that is such a shame. It would have been so much fun to torture you.”

I undid the strap around one of her arms. She opened her eyes and stared down at what I was doing. I raised her arm and let it drop. It fell limply to the table. Excellent. She frowned, looking down at her arm as though willing it to move.

“Paralyzed. Yes,” I said, undoing the rest of the straps. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

I slid my arms underneath her and picked her up. Her head lolled against my chest, the cotton gag still stuffed in her mouth. She whimpered.

“Goodbye, Mr. Steadhill,” I said. “You’ve been granted a short reprieve. I’ll be back later.”

The man moaned, but I was already carrying my new toy across the room. With my elbow, I pressed the hidden button on the side of the medical cabinet. The back wall opened up and I carried her through the secret doorway.



Sara

I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I thought I must be dreaming. It’s only in dreams you can’t move. Those nightmares where you try to run, but your muscles don’t work, and you’re frozen in place. Trying to get away from the boogie monster.

Now the monster had me in his arms.

The doctor picked me up easily, as though I was a small child he was carrying in his arms. He paused at the back of the operating room, shifting my weight in his arms. Then the back wall of the operating room opened and we stepped into another room. A dark room. The door closed behind us and I could barely see the sliver of light coming from the other room.

My eyes were still adjusting as he put me down on something soft. A couch. I felt his hands peel off the tape on my gag. Then the wet cotton was gone and I could breathe. I gasped air, sucking in deep breaths.

“Easy, now,” he said. “You’ll hyperventilate if you breathe too fast.” His voice was gentle. A gentle killer, I thought. I must be going crazy.

He walked over and turned on the light, and then I could see where I was.

Shelves of books surrounded me on all sides that I could see. There was a single leather couch in the middle of the room, and a small endtable with a lamp. The doctor was standing next to the lamp. His hand fell down to his side. I tried to move my lips. My jaw wouldn’t move, but I could form the words I wanted to, even if they sounded a bit mumbled.

“Doctor… doctor Damore—”

“Rien. Please. Call me Rien.”

He walked over to where I was lying down and knelt beside me. I wanted to run, oh God, I wanted to run. The look in his eyes was back, the look of a predator. It made me think of a book I had read when I was a kid, called Watership Down. The book was about rabbits, and they had a word for the feeling I was experiencing right now. The feeling that something so dangerous is looking at you that you can’t move. You’re so scared that every muscle freezes, and you can’t even run away. They called it going tharn.

I was going tharn right then. I didn’t know what to say, or if anything I said would matter. I couldn’t even move when he took my hand and held it in both of his.