person wouldn't carry a card like that.
Then again, nor would a good person make an appointment, purchase a genetically programmed sex slave, a nd create the circumstances in which someone dies violently.
I yearned for the comfort in at leas t knowing this wasn't my fault, but it was. Humiliation and shame were swelling up inside me like spray foam insulation, and it wasn't because I was buck naked or that I'd had sex with three guys and one girl all in a single day.
I felt stupid. Incapable of making a good decision. Skip college, marry a man I don't even know because he's good in bed and has money, devolve from a wife to an unwanted pet, and now this.
I could only lift my head a few inches, but it was enough that I could see most of the way around the room. White cinderblock walls and a wall of cabinets with a sink and counter top, a computer monitor in hibernate mode, a rolling stool, two cushioned chairs. Above me, a multi-jointed robot arm extended from the wall. At the end was a large rotor that housed several different lights and pointy tools. It looked like a demented hand, multiple methods of slicing me into pieces.
From behind me came a soft beeping and the occasional whoosh of air, maybe the breath of other bizarre mechanisms.
When I noticed the hand sanitizer dispenser by the door, for some reason I felt a wave of relief. A beautiful moment of delusion. This is a hospital. I'm in the hospital, not Your Favorite Girl, Incorporated. It was a dream.
The feeling came and went like a camera flash, a gasp of air.
Why am I naked?
I lowered my head carefully and lay staring at the ceiling, my muscles so tense they ached. I was probably still sore from my encounter with Flora, too.
Where i s Flora? Where am I?
This was the first time in my life I'd ever experienced such a loss of control, the first time I genuinely thought I might die.
Perhaps it was fitting that, in my panic, I experienced a strange sort of nostalgia, triggered by the feel of the prep table on my skin. It took me back to high school, when I used to waitress at the steakhouse a few blocks down from the end of my street. On nights when the manager left early and business was slow, two of the bartenders would sneak some of the waitresses drinks. We were all friends who hung out at each other's houses, and sometimes something more sprung out of the group. I dated one of the bartenders, but at some point both of them had my butt on one of the kitchen prep tables.
That was back when I looked at Ted as no more than a very hot grownup, a regular customer who happened to live at the end of my street. A very hot neighbor who ran past my house every morning in nothing but track shorts, always timed perfectly so he would pass by while I waited for the bus. It never occurred to me that I wasn't the only girl on the block waiting at the curb, that he probably gave that same quick nod, smile, and eye-fuck to every teenager along his route. We were his catalog. The new crop. And I wanted him to pick me.
I didn't know how to flirt with anyone outside my circle of friends, but I couldn't keep myself away from him. I found excuses to come to his table, I made certain to stand in his path on the sidewalk, making him swerve around me but hoping he would stop. My boyfriend, the bartender, knew I was in love with Ted before I did. He broke up with me because I apparently twirled my hair and pivoted back and forth when I talked to him, or, as Steven put it, "acted like an eight-year-old."
Ted invited me to his house three days after my eighteenth birthday, while I was refilling his drink.
He started talking about a movie he loved, and I pretended that I hadn't seen it.
"You should come over tonight and watch it with me," he said. "I have a home theater."
The sound of the doorknob yanked me out of my thoughts in time to notice someone rushing at me. My heart started pounding and I clenched my eyes
Then again, nor would a good person make an appointment, purchase a genetically programmed sex slave, a nd create the circumstances in which someone dies violently.
I yearned for the comfort in at leas t knowing this wasn't my fault, but it was. Humiliation and shame were swelling up inside me like spray foam insulation, and it wasn't because I was buck naked or that I'd had sex with three guys and one girl all in a single day.
I felt stupid. Incapable of making a good decision. Skip college, marry a man I don't even know because he's good in bed and has money, devolve from a wife to an unwanted pet, and now this.
I could only lift my head a few inches, but it was enough that I could see most of the way around the room. White cinderblock walls and a wall of cabinets with a sink and counter top, a computer monitor in hibernate mode, a rolling stool, two cushioned chairs. Above me, a multi-jointed robot arm extended from the wall. At the end was a large rotor that housed several different lights and pointy tools. It looked like a demented hand, multiple methods of slicing me into pieces.
From behind me came a soft beeping and the occasional whoosh of air, maybe the breath of other bizarre mechanisms.
When I noticed the hand sanitizer dispenser by the door, for some reason I felt a wave of relief. A beautiful moment of delusion. This is a hospital. I'm in the hospital, not Your Favorite Girl, Incorporated. It was a dream.
The feeling came and went like a camera flash, a gasp of air.
Why am I naked?
I lowered my head carefully and lay staring at the ceiling, my muscles so tense they ached. I was probably still sore from my encounter with Flora, too.
Where i s Flora? Where am I?
This was the first time in my life I'd ever experienced such a loss of control, the first time I genuinely thought I might die.
Perhaps it was fitting that, in my panic, I experienced a strange sort of nostalgia, triggered by the feel of the prep table on my skin. It took me back to high school, when I used to waitress at the steakhouse a few blocks down from the end of my street. On nights when the manager left early and business was slow, two of the bartenders would sneak some of the waitresses drinks. We were all friends who hung out at each other's houses, and sometimes something more sprung out of the group. I dated one of the bartenders, but at some point both of them had my butt on one of the kitchen prep tables.
That was back when I looked at Ted as no more than a very hot grownup, a regular customer who happened to live at the end of my street. A very hot neighbor who ran past my house every morning in nothing but track shorts, always timed perfectly so he would pass by while I waited for the bus. It never occurred to me that I wasn't the only girl on the block waiting at the curb, that he probably gave that same quick nod, smile, and eye-fuck to every teenager along his route. We were his catalog. The new crop. And I wanted him to pick me.
I didn't know how to flirt with anyone outside my circle of friends, but I couldn't keep myself away from him. I found excuses to come to his table, I made certain to stand in his path on the sidewalk, making him swerve around me but hoping he would stop. My boyfriend, the bartender, knew I was in love with Ted before I did. He broke up with me because I apparently twirled my hair and pivoted back and forth when I talked to him, or, as Steven put it, "acted like an eight-year-old."
Ted invited me to his house three days after my eighteenth birthday, while I was refilling his drink.
He started talking about a movie he loved, and I pretended that I hadn't seen it.
"You should come over tonight and watch it with me," he said. "I have a home theater."
The sound of the doorknob yanked me out of my thoughts in time to notice someone rushing at me. My heart started pounding and I clenched my eyes
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