Bedlam Read online

  By the time she leaves the shower room, she’s feeling almost human again.

  By the time she wakes up from a nap on a proper bed, she’s feeling energized.

  By the time she’s summoned to Elena’s office, she’s feeling combative.

  Silver stands in the threshold of Elena’s office, looking over the stoic doctor, trying to feel disdain for her. All that surfaces is pity.

  She’s undeniably beautiful, her immaculate exterior and forced austerity concealing a woman who’s terrified of her own feelings and frequently lashes out as her only means of self-preservation. Silver became aware of that the minute she was thrown into an ice bath.

  She caught a glimpse of it again in the shower room, when Abby had taken the brunt of her frustrations, and once more in the refectory, when her vain attempt to reinforce her authority backfired quite spectacularly.

  Each time she’s challenged to confront her caged passions, her façade cracks a little more, and today, she looks positively primed to snap. Tension is visible in every aspect of her posture, starting with her tightly crossed legs: right leg over left, the toe of her right shoe hooked around the back of her left ankle, as if determined to keep her legs together at all costs.

  Her breathing is so controlled—one deep breath after another—that her chest is heaving beneath her fitted jacket. While her right hand is draped limply over the arm of her leather wingback chair, she’s fidgeting with her left. Her wedding ring has been teased half way down her finger, just past the knuckle, her thumb and pinky working together to twirl it around.

  Furthermore, she won’t make eye contact. She’s staring at a computer tablet in her lap, focused completely on the screen. The only indication that she’s even cognizant of Silver’s entry into the room is an involuntary nostril flare, accompanied by a brief cessation in breathing.

  Approaching the sofa, Silver finds herself wondering what it would take to tip her over the edge; to make her give in; to crumble; to submit. If not for her own sake, then for the welfare of the women in her care.

  She sits, waiting to be addressed.

  Nothing happens.

  After a while, she breaks the silence. “How long was I in there?”

  “Two weeks.” Elena answers so softly it’s almost a sigh, a flicker of remorse dancingly fleetingly on her face.

  “Did it help?” Silver asks daringly.

  Elena keeps her head tilted down, but peers up from the tablet, a frown creasing her brow. “Isn’t that a question I should be asking you? The punishment was yours.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Silver goes out on a limb. “You only put me in there because you hate being around me. Maybe you thought some separation might”—she chooses her words pointedly—“straighten things out for you.”

  Elena’s eyes dip back down to the tablet. She’s watching her own biorhythms, and her indicators for arousal have been on a steady incline since Silver walked in.

  Distressed by her inability to quell the emotions Silver stirs in her, she exits out of her biorhythm profile and taps into Silver’s instead. Expecting to find rocketing levels of anger, hatred, and disgust for the torture she was forced to endure, Elena is taken aback to discover that Silver’s overriding primary emotion at this moment is concern.

  It’s overwhelming.

  Clearing her throat, Elena slips her wedding ring back into place and presses on, adjusting her position so that her hands are clasped in her lap. “Are we ready to begin?”

  Silver studies her face, trying to read what’s going on behind those stunning green eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  “These private sessions are mandated by law,” Elena spouts protocol.

  “But we’ve been through this.” Silver groans at the ceiling. “I’m not crazy.”

  “No-one’s suggesting otherwise.” Elena regains some of her poise, confidence returning to her as she slips into doctor mode. “I simply want to explore your sexuality in more depth, that’s all.”

  “I bet you do.” Silver puts her fore and middle fingers together, making an obscenely sexual come-hither gesture.

  “I might be able to help.” Elena stays on track, despite harboring wicked thoughts about straddling Silver’s lap and impaling herself on those fingers.

  “Help?” Silver chuckles. “I don’t need any practice. I thought you’d already know that, having watched your darling Abby melt at my fingertips.”

  Elena doesn’t need to consult her biorhythms to know that the tightness spreading through her chest is jealousy. An irrational, sickening jealousy.

  “Let me be clearer.” She rephrases herself. “I’d like to rehabilitate you.”

  Silver rolls her eyes. “Of all the things anyone’s ever tried sending me to rehab for, my liking of women has not been—nor will it ever be—one of them.”

  “You are aware that homosexual practices are a crime in this beautiful but misguided country?” Elena holds steadfast to everything she’s ever been taught. “As your psychiatrist, I have a professional obligation to try and rectify your deviance before it endangers your life.”

  “My deviance?” Silver props her elbows on her knees and leans forward. “First of all, don’t ever call it that again. Second, don’t you feel like a stone cold hypocrite right now? Even just a teensy-weensy little bit?”

  Elena watches Silver’s concern ebb away, irritation taking its place. Purely for the sake of her own sanity, she dodges the question and keeps the focus of the conversation on her patient.

  “I’d like to perform an analysis of the problem. In order to best treat you, I need to know how extreme your condition is.”

  Silver cocks an eyebrow. “It’s a condition now? Listen, I’ll save you some trouble: you can’t quantify how gay I am. It’s impossible.”

  “If you could just concentrate on the screen behind me,” Elena trudges on, “we can have this over and done with in a few short minutes.”

  Silver throws her hands up and slouches back on the sofa. “Whatever. Have it your way.”

  Elena clicks a remote and the wall-mounted monitor lights up, displaying an image of a random blonde woman. Silver frowns, flashing the doctor a questioning look.

  “Eyes on the screen.” Elena clicks on to the next picture, her attention never deviating from the biorhythm monitor on her lap.

  The second image is a brunette, the third a redhead. Next, the images are close-ups of women’s faces, each one with a different eye color and skin tone.

  Silver sighs and turns back to the green-eyed brunette in front of her. “Look, if you wanna know what type of woman I go for, just ask me. It’ll be a lot fucking quicker.”

  “Eyes up,” Elena persists.

  The next image is that of a woman’s bra-clad breasts.

  “Whoa.” Silver chuckles. “This is going somewhere different all of a sudden.” She relaxes, weaving her fingers together behind her head. “Click on.”

  The following pictures get progressively more graphic. First, Silver is shown naked breasts, varying from A-cups to voluptuous FF-cups, some with brown nipples, some pink. Then, the images head south, showing snapshots of vaginas: some landscaped, some not; some blonde, some brunette; some with piercings, some without; one with an intact hymen. In several of the images, the woman being photographed is clearly aroused: her skin is moist, her labia engorged with blood, her clit peeking out from its hiding place.

  The occasional full frontal picture of an erect male is thrown in for good measure, and Silver gets an eyeful of long penises, short penises, thick ones, thin ones, some circumcised and some not. As this goes on, the images are tailored based on Silver’s biorhythms, automatically discarding those models she finds less pleasing and showing more of the ones she responds favorably to.

  As a result, the pictures of men soon cease altogether. Every male she sees makes her think of Alex, and those thoughts bring more anger and resentment than they do arousal. Based on that, the program out-selects them—along with flat-chested women an
d blondes—leaving Silver with a sampling of curvy brunette women in a state of undress.

  When the next image comes up, Silver bursts into a grin. It depicts one woman lying on a bed with her legs akimbo, another woman about to perform oral sex on her. Both are naked.

  “You’re literally showing me porn now.” Silver laughs. “What’s the point of all this? Seriously. Are you hinting? Giving me tips? What’re you hoping to achieve?”

  Glancing at Elena for the first time since things started getting dirty, Silver finds the doctor’s demeanor altered. Her eyes haven’t left the biorhythm monitor, but her cheeks have a touch of a blush and she’s uncrossed her legs, her knees pressed tightly together.

  “I’m measuring how these suggestive and erotic pictures affect your level of arousal,” she answers matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, yeah?” Silver quirks an eyebrow. “Well, you might get a better result if you took your clothes off. I’m jussayin’.”

  Her biorhythms fluctuate.

  Elena watches as Silver’s levels of oxytocin, serotonin, and acetylcholine all peak, indicating genuine and undeniable sexual arousal, and she can’t help but think that she’s being mentally stripped. The fact that she appears to fit Silver’s ideal physical profile isn’t lost on her either.

  After a while, she dares to cast her gaze up at the unapologetically sexual woman in front of her, unnerved though she is by the intensity of Silver’s eyes.

  “Look at the pictures, not me,” she says then, fighting the urge to break contact once more.

  “Why?” Silver sneaks her hand under the elastic waistband of her blues and parts her legs. “Am I making you uncomfortable again?”

  Elena watches intently as Silver’s hand moves to her crotch. She imagines her inmate’s fingers moving through the curls of her pubic hair, finding the firm nub of her clit tucked beneath, and she salivates at the thought of the moisture that could be seeping between her delicate pink labia at this very moment.

  Peeling her eyes away, she drags her attention back to the screen in her hands, feeling the heat between her own thighs increase as Silver’s biorhythms continue to betray the telltale signs of heightened sexual arousal. She’s not faking it.

  “Stop,” Elena mutters softly, no conviction in her tone.

  “Isn’t this what you want?” Silver keeps tormenting her. “Don’t you want to watch me? Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that why you’ve been trying to turn me on?” She slides her hips forward and dips a finger inside her sex. “If you want a more accurate reading of my arousal, you’re more than welcome to take my temperature.”

  When Elena looks up again, Silver withdraws her hand from her blues and holds her middle finger out. It’s glistening from tip to base, covered in her secretions, and as Elena fixes her eyes on the provocative digit—quashing the sudden desire to leap off her chair, kneel at Silver’s feet, and suck the moist, sex-slathered finger into her mouth—Silver inverts it, flipping her off.

  Elena’s attention reverts to the biorhythm screen, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment and shame, her illicit fantasy broken by Silver’s laughter.

  “Jesus fucking christ.” Silver chuckles, wiping her finger off on Elena’s sofa cushions. “You need to loosen up, you really do. If you don’t get laid soon, you’re gonna pop. You’ll probably go postal and drown all of your patients in the ice baths.”

  Elena manipulates data on her tablet, taking a moment to restore her stoic façade before moving ahead with their therapy session.

  “Unrig,” she demands calmly.

  “Excuse me?” Silver peaks an eyebrow.

  “Take off your clothes,” Elena translates, locking eyes with her.

  “You’re not serious?” Silver can’t quite believe she just heard those words leave Elena’s lips. “You want to fuck me now? Just like that?”

  She waits for an explanation.

  None is forthcoming.

  Undeterred by her inaction, Elena uses the tablet to summon two orderlies. The men—both over six feet and bulked up—restrain Silver without being asked, wrenching her off the sofa and twisting both arms behind her back.

  As a perk of working at Bishopsgate, the nanites in their blood have been used to tweak their physiology, making it easier for them to gain muscle mass, thus enabling them to physically overpower the inmates when necessary. Despite this, Silver should be able to put up more a fight than she now finds herself capable of. She slings out curses and struggles for a few brief moments, then slumps in their arms, her head swirling.

  “Feeling a little vulnerable, are we?” Elena sets her tablet aside and gets up. “Not to worry. I temporarily adjusted the electrolyte levels in your body, that’s all.” She crosses the room to her desk, smugness blossoming. “For a minute or two, you’ll feel dizzy, slightly fatigued, and you’ll be suffering from some muscle weakness.”

  Opening one of her locked drawers, she retrieves a cat o’ nine tails leather whip from a selection of different whips and floggers, each designed to generate varying levels of pain.

  “Bare her,” she instructs the orderlies, running the whip through her hand several times.

  Dutifully, the two men bend Silver over the back of the sofa, pin her there, and tug down her blues, exposing her naked backside. Feeling limp and uncoordinated, murmuring something unintelligible, Silver is unable to resist.

  “Lewd behavior is not tolerated at Bishopsgate,” Elena explains, leaning over her inmate, placing her mouth close to Silver’s ear. “In fact, I take such matters rather seriously.” She straightens up, running a hand over Silver’s buttocks. “I will straighten you out.” She raises the whip. “By any means necessary.” She cracks the whip against one pale cheek, using all her force.

  The pain brings some lucidity back to Silver and she gasps, her violets flashing. A second crack follows the first and she pinches her lower lip between her teeth, tensing her body.

  When the third crack comes, she emits a stifled ‘oof’, refusing to squeal or show weakness. By the fourth crack, she’s growing accustomed to the sensation and she begins to laugh.

  “I’m seeing a pattern here. You don’t like the way I make you feel, so you make me hurt. Is that how this works?” She clenches her jaw, preparing for more.

  Elena whips her again. “You will conform.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Silver grits her teeth and bears it. Having been shot, stabbed, and mauled by Chimera more times than she cares to remember, it’ll take a lot more than a sexually repressed, somewhat sadistic doctor’s leather fetish to break her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Silver squirms, trying to alleviate the pressure on her sore ass. The chairs in the dayroom aren’t the most comfortable to begin with, but after you’ve been whipped repeatedly across the backside with multiple leather straps, you may as well be sitting on a bed of nails.

  If it weren’t for that, the dayroom—a place for inmates to retire and amuse themselves between occupational therapy sessions and mealtimes—would be the best place to kill a few hours. It’s a large room, filled with sofas, chairs, tables, and shelves. The shelves, bolted to the wall, are stacked with books for all reading ages, from toddler to adult, as well as numerous board games.

  Decorated in pastels, like everything else at Bishopsgate, the walls are painted pink, the plain cotton curtains dyed green. It’s supposed to be calming, but looking around the room, Silver’s not sure if it’s having the desired effect. One inmate is trying to eat the corner of a checkers board, another is huddled under a blanket in the middle of the room, and three are fighting for possession of a ball of wool. Panic erupts when the wool drops to the floor and unravels.

  A younger inmate—a teen, judging by her peachy complexion and the couldn’t-give-a-fuck attitude she’s exuding—is standing on the periphery, watching the hilarity unfold. Her shoulder-length, blue-streaked black hair is cut jagged, the coloring matching her nail polish. Heavy eye makeup darkens and obscures her green eyes, her lips shimmering
with pink gloss, and she’s wearing black leather wrist cuffs.

  When she clocks Silver looking at her, she mistakes curiosity for an invitation and bounds across the room, diving onto the sofa with gusto.

  “You’re new!”

  Silver covers the girl’s face with her hand and pushes her away. “Fuck off.”

  “Hey!” The girl swats at her, falling backward onto the far end of the sofa. “I was only being friendly.”

  “I don’t need friends.” Silver tucks her knees up, planting her feet flat on the sofa cushions and leaning back, her ass elevated, finally bringing her some relief.

  “My name’s Leonie,” the girl perseveres.

  “I don’t care,” Silver groans, hugging her knees. “Leave me alone.”

  “What’re you in here for?”

  “A technicality.”

  “Ooh, sounds dangerous.” Leonie crawls back up to her. “Who’d you kill?”

  “Lately?” Silver fixes her with a glare. “Or ever?”

  When she sees that Leonie’s sufficiently disconcerted, she looks away.

  “I’m waiting for my citizenship documents to arrive, that’s all.” She lowers herself back down to the cushions, her legs beginning to cramp. “I’ll be out of here soon enough.”

  Leonie props her elbow on the back of the sofa, determined to pester Silver into submission. “How long’s it been already?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  Leonie screws her face into a frown. “Really? Your Authenticard should’ve arrived by now.”

  “What would you know?” Silver glowers at her. “You’re crazy.”

  “You know what you need to do?” Leonie punches her in the arm, spurring action. “You need to sneak a peek at your patient file. You can’t trust what anyone here tells you. Especially not that old ewe Elena.”

  Silver rubs her arm, taken aback by Leonie’s audacity. “Old ewe?”

  “Baaaaah!” Leonie bleats like a sheep. “Mutton dressed as lamb.”

  “That’s mean.” Silver kicks the errant ball of wool away as it rolls toward her, watching the three inmates scrabble after it like a pack of dogs. “I think Elena’s really pretty. Completely unhinged, but pretty.”