All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Two) Page 7

  I’m not sure what made her decide I was capable of handling a trip to the grocery store. Certainly part of it was that I drove her crazy and she was high enough to be lenient. Looking back on it, I suspect she figured most of my non-functionality came from depression and self-pity, and I would do better if I was distracted by other worries. Again, looking back, she was probably right. In any case, I didn’t manage to wreck the car or bring home the Feds. I did buy the most amazing collection of things at the grocery store, though. To this day, I have no idea why I thought I needed five boxes of baking soda.

  Shortly after I came home from the grocery store, around noon, Keaton went out. I didn’t do much after that. Keaton came home late for dinner, but I was later, the dinner half cooked. I answered her question about dinner with a ‘fuck you’ shrug.

  Keaton grabbed a nightstick from her workroom and she proceeded to beat me almost to death.

  When she finished, she ate the half-prepared dinner. I couldn’t have moved no matter how she threatened me. I got no food.

  After I refused to move and do my evening exercises, Keaton beat me to a pulp. When I refused again, she tortured me. She kept this up all evening. I didn’t understand why.

  Looking back, I do understand. Keaton had taught me to fear her more than anything else I ever imagined, terror beyond reason. One of her lessons had been ‘you cannot run away from me’. When she took my prey away from me, she had told me to run. In a split second, all her hard lessons washed away. I became the difficult and cranky Arm I had been back in the Detention Center.

  She beat those hard lessons back into me.

  The next morning, I still balked at doing the exercises, too far down on juice, the exercise too hard for me. I figured Keaton would beat me and torture me some more. Instead, she wheeled out a cart of unfamiliar instruments from her workroom and started explaining the uses of these ‘tools’, often with a little show and tell.

  What I previously thought of as Keaton torture turned out to be mild foreplay. Suddenly, I had lots of energy for exercises. Keaton thought my reaction was funny. She also took a blood sample from me when I finished my exercises.

  Keaton applied similar motivation to get me through the rest of this low juice day.

  Even today, when I remember this period, I feel a kind of bleak shame. In those first weeks, ignorant and confused, I lost control of my own mind.

  Keaton peeled away my layers of decency and humanity, slowly and surely. She destroyed my pride and self-respect and tore away all those little things that made me human. She shattered me repeatedly, using terror and pain to break me to her will, and ground the shattered shards into powder, destroying any remnant of humanity she found.

  I would recover. I would built something new of myself, something stronger and tougher, something capable of standing up to the wrecking ball that was Stacy Keaton. Something of steel rather than glass, something that Keaton couldn’t shatter. Brick by painful brick, over long months, I would rebuild myself into someone stronger, someone tougher, someone capable of shaking the world. I would claw my way up out of the pit.

  Before I did, though, I would fall as far as a person could fall, much farther than I have told so far.

  The next morning, when I exercised, all Keaton had to do was wave the pliers over my head as I did my reps. I worked as much as I could. It wasn’t much. I was far too low on juice.

  I made pancakes that morning for breakfast. They were terrible. I forgot the eggs. Keaton ate them anyway, and so did I.

  When Keaton finished breakfast, I got up to do the dishes.

  Keaton said, “Hancock.”

  I came to her and fell to my knees. Somewhere, dimly, I thought being on my knees might make her less likely to hit me.

  “Your juice level was 100 yesterday morning. This morning you’re probably at about 99. You need to learn to have a good feel for your current juice count, without the use of the blood test.

  “I’m going out. Try and make yourself useful,” Keaton said. She turned her back on me and stalked out. She came back three hours later.

  I hadn’t moved.

  Keaton didn’t care, distracted by something else. Later, she went out again. When she came back, she greeted me with an actual smile. “Get over here, asshole!” she said. “I have a kill for you.”

  I leapt to my feet and rushed to her side, filled with unexpected energy.

  Keaton drove. A half-hour into the drive, we swapped her normal car for another. Keaton wore a disguise as a dark-haired woman with too many muscles, the muscles covered over by a winter coat. I was dressed up as a cheap tramp, similar to the makeshift disguise I had worn to escape from the Detention Center. Keaton insisted I wear gloves.

  I didn’t pay attention. Keaton didn’t want anything from me, so I just stared miserably out the window and dreamed of juice.

  Keaton wasn’t in any hurry. We stopped several times for food, twice to make phone calls, and once to stretch. We got to New York around dinnertime. We went to Brooklyn; Keaton parked the stolen car in another alley. We walked from there to the main street and down a few blocks. On a quiet side street Keaton used her Slim Jim again to pop the lock on a late-model Ford parked at a parking meter. She seated herself in the car and unlocked the door on the passenger side for me. Then she took a pair of needle-nosed pliers, with the wire-stripper in them, and fooled with some wires under the steering column. The car started and we drove some more.

  I didn’t pay attention to anything except my need for juice until at around 8:00 PM, when we arrived at a place that called itself the Brooklyn Transform Clinic. The clinic was set well back from the road, with a high chain link fence, and gates, at the property line. However, the gates were open. This wasn’t a Detention Center and the place didn’t have any visible security.

  I sensed the bright glow of a male Transform inside, but a simple glare from Keaton kept me from going after him. Keaton drove past the clinic and parked the car about a block away. We got out and Keaton rooted around in the back seat for a few seconds. I noticed for the first time that she carried a considerable assortment of weaponry back there. The weapons disappeared under her coat.

  “You need to show some control over your kill lust,” Keaton said, breaking me out of my blissful contemplation of the nearby Transform. “Your kill is coming up soon. Wait until you get to it. You’ll get the chance to do it right. Just follow me and don’t do anything stupid. Put your diaphragm in.”

  I did what she told me, and started to head toward the bright glow of the male Transform. “Dammit – yes, that’s your kill in there. Stay right here. Don’t move an inch!” I obeyed, fixated on the promise of juice. The St. Louis Transform Detention Center would have guards stalking the grounds, and the gate shut tight. Not this place. I hid in the shadow of the gate and didn’t notice the night noises or the traffic outside. The rich allure of the kill held my attention like a vise.

  A few minutes later, Keaton returned. “Go get him. The path is clear.”

  I entered the clinic hunched over, my eyes swiveling left and right, my movements unnaturally graceful as I stalked toward my kill. The place appeared deserted. My kill waited on the floor above, not moving. I passed by all the deserted offices on the first floor without a care. I climbed the wide stairs up to the second floor, deep in the grip of the kill lust. Breathing deeply, I clenched my hands into fists. My kill still didn’t move. As I stalked past a deserted nurses’ station, and another, a small part of me wondered where everyone was.

  Then I smelled the juice. Off I went at a run down the final stretch of the hallway to the locked room where my kill waited. I ripped the door open, lock and latch parts flying, and pounced on the man in the bed.

  My kill.

  He blinked groggily when he saw me come in. I didn’t care how drugged he was. It wouldn’t affect his juice. I shucked off my coat and laid myself against him, to encounter heaven and ecstasy once again.

  I awoke to pain. Keaton was slapping me. I
giggled happily. Pliers? Giggle. Slapping? Giggle. The person I had been a few hours ago was long gone. Keaton slapped me again.

  “Alright. Come out of it, dammit!” She slapped me again.

  I moaned, overwhelmed with sensuality. Keaton slapped me again.

  “Talk to me. Come on, dammit. I’ve got someone here for you to fuck, if you can get your shit together.” She slapped me once more.

  She had someone for me to sleep with, if I would talk to her? I giggled.

  “What do you want me to say?” I asked as I moaned and writhed in her grasp.

  “I want you to hold a semi-intelligent conversation with me. If you can do that, I’ll leave you alone with boyfriend here. Talk to me, dammit.”

  She wouldn’t let me escape into sensuality. I gave in.

  “What do you want from me?” I whispered, my voice husky.

  “Tell me how we got here,” she said.

  “You drove me. We went to the Brooklyn Transform Clinic. We went in. I killed the Transform.”

  “Good. Tell me about the place.”

  “Uh. No security, no problems. No one there but the Transform.”

  “More.”

  “The Transform was drugged and he was wonderful. It was beautiful…” My voice drifted off, and Keaton slapped me again.

  “Let me see you walk a straight line,” Keaton said. She let go of me and I fell face down on the floor. The floor stank. I bounced to my feet and swayed, unsteady.

  I concentrated intensely and walked a straight line. I wasn’t sure, but I thought we were in some sort of cheap motel. My shoes made a little tic-tic noise, as they tried to stick to the cheap chemicals in the carpet. I went about ten feet, then looked over at Keaton proudly and smiled.

  Keaton grunted “Take advantage of your opportunities and I’ll be back in a few hours” before she left.

  A decidedly nervous looking young man lay on the bed in the cheap motel room. He was about twenty or so, thin, and needed a shower…yesterday. I didn’t know how Keaton got him here but at least he didn’t try to leave.

  I saw him and I wanted him. I shucked my clothes as fast as I could and landed on the bed with him. He spent a lot of time and effort making me happy. After a while of enjoying my own pleasure, I recovered from my first Keaton kill enough to make sure he enjoyed himself as well, and afterwards we had several hours of wild, rollicking, playful fun. He laughed and played, and his endurance was good, even for a young man. I really, really, really enjoyed myself.

  Keaton came back while we were still entwined. She didn’t bother to knock. The boy and I unglued hurriedly, and I stood up. The boy tried to cover himself with a sheet.

  “Okay. Fun’s over,” she said, and turned to the boy. “What’s her name?”

  “Carol,” he said, staring at Keaton with wide eyes.

  She turned to me and handed me a gun I didn’t know she had. “Kill him.”

  I hesitated. Keaton got in my face, glaring. All thought and emotion fled from me, save one: obey. I took the gun with its funny attachment on the front that I learned later was a silencer and I shot the boy right through the forehead. His brains splattered all over the pillow. I froze, disgusted at myself. Keaton always made me destroy everything that was beautiful and sweet and gentle.

  Keaton slapped me. I slugged her.

  We fought and she beat the crap out of me. From down on the floor, licking her boots and in horrible pain, I eventually apologized and said I would never hesitate when she gave me an order again.

  Then she tortured me, going after my fingernails and my ego, until I understood the boy’s death was my fault because I told him my real name. Keaton made me put the gloves back on as we went back into our stolen car. We left the stolen car a while later, in a poor colored ghetto in Harlem. We slipped through the dark streets for a mile or so and then transferred back into the intermediate car. We drove this car back to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, we transferred back to Keaton’s real car. The only stops we made were for Keaton to make her phone calls. I got to overhear part of one; traffic had quieted, and us Arms have good ears. It was something about the press, of all things. Television. I wondered which network she was referring to, though – CBS, NBC or ABC. I didn’t have enough nerve to actually ask her about it, though.

  (6)

  After the clinic kill, up on juice, I found myself able to think for the first time since I killed the nurse. I was disgusted at my behavior since my escape from the Center. Some plants showed more intelligence. I hadn’t been a human being, just a giant tropism, reacting to Keaton as unthinkingly as a plant reacts to the sun.

  I needed to do better.

  I considered at my situation, thinking and planning as I scrubbed the bathroom. I was stuck with Keaton, at least until I knew how to hunt. I didn’t intend to cross her in any way whatsoever. I wanted to live, and crossing Keaton made those odds a whole lot worse.

  She beat me when I showed weakness, stupidity, or insubordination. She liked to humiliate me. She considered me her slave.

  All right. The humiliation I could deal with. If she wanted me to crawl, or grovel, or whatever, well, such submission didn’t cost me much. I would do what she wanted, and try to put a good face on it. My real goal was survival, and getting the skills I needed from her. If doing so cost me my pride, well fine. Pride wasn’t a survival requirement.

  I refused to remember the details of those occasions when she made me crawl. Especially, I refused to remember my emotional responses to her humiliations. I could deal with this. I needed to.

  The next problem was the beatings. I definitely needed to reduce those. The beatings tore me apart one piece at a time. I needed to take active steps to keep her happy, figure out how she thought. I also needed to put some serious work into doing the appropriate ego stroking, providing her with comforts, and generally making her pleased with me, rather than disgusted. I probably wouldn’t be able to eliminate the beatings entirely, but I certainly ought to be able to do something to cut them down.

  She considered me her slave. I didn’t like being her slave, but, well, I had offered to do anything. Fine. For the duration of my stay with Keaton, however long I stayed, I would be her slave. I needed her lessons, and I wanted to live in as much comfort as possible. To get these, I needed to be the best slave possible. I would be subservient, obedient, and do my best to support her, to the best of my abilities.

  I flushed the toilet and put away the cleaning supplies with a new determination. It struck me as funny how well my mind worked immediately post-kill, this time. Before, the immediate post-kill period was a time when my reason grew weak, overwhelmed with lust. Dr. Zielinski was wrong. I did need sex to live and think.

  I gripped the sink tightly, after I put away the cleaning supplies. I am Carol Hancock, I told myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m just trying to survive. Such a thin shell of sanity. This thin shell was all I had left.

  I followed my plan and put some work into my cooking. I cooked a roast, and used the last of the ham to make scalloped potatoes and ham. I found quite a bit of canned asparagus from the last time I went to the grocery store, and made a sauce to go with it. I even, finally, made the cheesecake I had bought the ingredients for days ago. I made a good cheesecake.

  When I heard the garage door open, my stomach churned and my palms began to sweat. Keaton always appeared without warning. My metasense picked her up only when I paid attention. Otherwise, she faded into the background.

  I clung to my soul, but what I held remained in tatters. Bad. My mind I held better. I let reason comfort me; if I played this smart, Keaton wouldn’t hurt me.

  Such interesting lies we tell ourselves.

  I put the roast and the scalloped potatoes and ham on the table as Keaton walked in. The little flowers of the tablecloth showed bloodstains now, remnants of discussions with Keaton that had gone poorly. I followed the roast and scalloped potatoes with the three cans worth of asparagus, covered with a cheese sauce. Keaton looked
at the dinner in front of her and motioned me to sit at the table with her.

  “So, did you think of running away, today?” she said, between bites of roast.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So, what did you think of?”

  I shivered, not knowing what was coming. “Ma’am? I only want…”

  “Can it,” she said, and shoveled a fork-full of scalloped potatoes into her mouth. “You’re an Arm. When you’re up on juice you can’t help but think.”

  I nodded, and sweat began drip down my back. “Ma’am. I went over my behavior since my escape from the Center. I was embarrassed.”

  “Good start.” Keaton paused to inhale more food. In my short amount of time with her, her ability to speak intelligibly with her mouth full had measurably improved. “Low juice will do that to you. You’re going to have to learn to cope if you want to be anything other than a turd in the toilet.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, what sort of plans did you make? Cut my throat in the night, perhaps? Snitch one of my pieces and shoot me?”

  “No!” I said. Horror filled my face. I hadn’t been thinking any such thoughts.

  “Why the fuck not?” Keaton said. “That’s what I would’ve been doing, if someone treated me the way I treat you.”

  “Ma’am.” I tried to cut my roast, but the sweat made my knife so slippery it fell out of my hand and down to my plate. “You’re my teacher. Your teaching is the only thing standing between me and my death. I have no intention of threatening you, or crossing you in any way whatsoever.”

  “Huh,” she said, studying me for a moment. “Less turd-like by the moment. Down on your knees, get over here, and feed me my dinner, slave.”

  I complied without thought or hesitation.

  “Your plate of food is over there, getting cold,” Keaton said. “You’re hungry, you want it, yet you’re willing to feed me my own dinner. Where’s your anger?”