“We’ve got you,” whispers the one behind me, voice rough against my ear. His stubble scrapes my shoulder as he kisses a path to my spine.
The one before me watches, eyes hooded, before claiming my mouth. He tastes like salt and something darker. His tongue slides against mine as his hand finds my breast, thumb circling until I moan into his mouth.
Four hands now, working in tandem. One pair holds my hips steady while the other explores between my thighs, finding me slick and ready. I arch, shameless, as fingers press inside, stretching, preparing.
“Please,” I hear myself beg, not knowing what exactly I’m asking for.
They know. The one behind shifts, positioning himself, then enters me with agonising slowness. I cry out, clutching at the one before me who swallows the sound with another kiss.
“Look at you,” he murmurs against my lips. “So beautiful like this. Such a good girl for both of us.”
They establish a rhythm – one withdrawing as the other advances – that builds and builds until I’m trembling, incoherent. The one behind grips my thigh, lifting it to change the angle. The one before slides down my body, mouth replacing fingers, tongue finding the center of me with devastating precision.
I turn, catch a glimpse of eyes gone dark with hunger, lips close enough to taste?—
—and everything freezes.
Heat becomes static. Breath becomes a hum. The world folds in on itself.
There’s a sound.
High, sharp, mechanical.
It cuts through my skull and rips me out of sleep.
I gasp, heart in my throat, tangled in thin sheets that smell wrong – bleach and metal instead of skin and sweat. The ceiling is pale and sterile. The light is too white, buzzing faintly like it’s laughing at me.
For a second I don’t remember where I am.
Then the itch starts. Between my toes, crawling upward, invisible teeth gnawing at my nerves. I kick the blanket off, drag my nails across the skin hard enough to leave crescents. Nothing. No relief. The itch burrows deeper.
“Fucking hell,” I hiss, sitting up. The bed squeaks – cheap frame, bad balance. I glare at my feet, half-expecting to see something moving under the skin.
Nothing. Just that maddening pulse of sensation.
It’s fine. I’ve handled worse. Torture, confinement, blood under my fingernails that wasn’t mine. But this? This is the kind of petty cruelty that makes you want to claw your own leg off.
I stare at the corner of the room. There’s a vent humming softly, camera half-hidden inside. Another red light blinking above the door. Observation. Always observation.
They think I won’t notice.
I shift my weight, trying to shake the feeling. Maybe it’s not an itch. Maybe it’s memory. Maybe something inside me is trying to crawl its way out.
The laughter hits me before I can chase the thought – soft, echoing, wrong.
Kookaburra.
It’s faint at first, distant as a dream, but it’s there – the same call I used to torment them with, looping through my mind until even I started to believe it meant something. My signature, my curse, my lullaby.
I press the heels of my palms against my ears, hard. The sound doesn’t stop. It never does.
The itch crawls higher.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing the tremor from my hands. The trick is to stay calm, to remember who the fuck I am.
“I’m Kayla Kingfisher,” I whisper to the room. “The Kookaburra Killer. Not your toy. Not your experiment. Not your asset.”
No one and nothing haunts me. I’m the stuff oftheirnightmares, not the other way round.
