Moore picks one up, swirls it, and pops the top. He draws out a fat needle, the kind they use for livestock. He goes for the inside of my upper arm, pushing the tip in until the skin puckers. He injects the whole thing in one slow, steady push.
“Stimulant,” he says. “Helps with attention.”
The drug hits fast. Everything gets louder. The pain, the cold air, the sweat rolling down my chest. My heart slams like a fist against a door.
He comes up behind me, both hands on my shoulders, and whispers, “Now, you thank me.”
I can’t talk with the gag. He takes it out, careful not to tear the skin. I cough, spit, and then the command comes again.
“Thank me for teaching you your place.”
I want to scream. I want to say nothing. But there’s no option. I hear myself whisper, “Thank you.”
He’s not satisfied. “Louder.”
I clear my throat, voice shaking. “Thank you.”
He presses the tape over my mouth again, and resumes.
He moves to the next tool: a curved metal hook, shiny and thin. I have no idea what it’s for, but when he presses it against my hole, twisting, it sends lightning up my spine. He rotates it, slowly, pulling it out in a spiral.
He does it again, and again, each time the pain worse, each time the voice in my head gets smaller.
At the end of every violation, he makes me thank him.
After the third, he’s finally pleased.
He leaves me there, body burning, mind spinning. The drug won’t let me sleep. I count every breath, trace the stains on the floor, hear every sound—the hum of the fluorescent bulbs, the metallic clink when Moore tosses the tools into the sink, the drip-drip-drip of the saline bag.
After a while, I stop thinking of myself as a person. I am just a thing that can be used, a chair or a table or a medical dummy. I let the ceiling suck me up and hold me there, far away from the body in the chair.
He comes back, pulls me upright, slaps my face until I look at him. He says, “Look at me when I love you. That’s the rule.”
He undoes the straps, and for a second, I think he’s done.
But then he bends me over the table, face pressed to the cold steel, and uses his hand instead. No tool this time, just skin on skin, his grip around the base of my neck like a leash.
The first strike stings the skin. The second bruises. The third is dull, almost tender. He keeps going until I lose count, until the numbers start to blur.
When he finishes, he wipes his hand with a towel, dabs antiseptic, tapes the skin, then leans down close enough that his mouth brushes my ear.
“You will remember this lesson,” he says. “You will thank me for it.”
I try to answer, but the words stick. He waits. The silence is a threat.
“Thank you,” I say.
He sets me upright, puts a cup of water to my lips, and makes me drink until I choke.
He stands back and admires his work, breathing heavy but not out of control.
“This is what you’re for,” he says. “You exist to be improved. To be refined. To serve.”
He leaves the room, lights still bright, body still burning.
I am somewhere above the scene, detached and floating. There is no body, just the memory of one. A catalog of pains, an inventory of violations, each neatly numbered and filed away.
The timer on the table goes off. In the distance, I hear the clack of Moore’s shoes on the tile, the brush of his gloves against the stainless steel. He’s coming back.
