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“Don’t stare at me that way or your face is going to get stuck like that.”
Her molars grind together, enamel against enamel. It’s freezing in here. The metal against her bare skin doesn’t help. It’s dark, too—save for the ominous glow of monitors casting shadows on Midori’s face.
“Are you going to kill me?”
His eyebrows shoot up in earnest surprise. “Why would I do that? I’d get in loads of trouble, anyway.”
The blue light emitting from the monitors illuminates a surgical trolley to her right. She looks down at her bare chest and stomach and a wave of nausea undulates in her throat. The manacles tethering her to the table clink rapidly against the metal legs.
“Are you going to…”
He laughs mechanically. “You’ve got an active imagination, Miss Sara! You’re just a carrot at the end of a stick for your beloved partners. It’ll take them a while to realize they need to come back to this floor, so I figured we could get to know each other better until then.”
“I’m not interested.”
“It’s not up to you.”
Sara purses her chapped lips. She has nothing to say to that. Her cognitive gears turn and turn, trying to conjure some manner of egress, but if he was deft enough to wrangle her in here and disrobe her, he’s likely covered his bases.
“Lucky for me, I’ve seen how smart you are. A little too smart, if you ask me. So I’ve got a fail-safe right here,” he says, holding up a small switch that looks—
Her teeth might crack if she clenches any harder.
He pockets the switch. “It’s fine to be bold, but it comes with a price.”
“You’re breaking the rules for this.” She narrows her eyes. “What’s your goal?”
A fresh spike of panic twists itself into her heart when he discards his scarf and shrugs off his suit jacket, laying them at the edge of the center console. He grabs something off the tray—a matchbook—and turns it over in his hands. He takes a few slow steps toward her, expression as pleasant and hollow as ever.
“I might not seem the part, but I’m actually a scientist. Well, more accurately, I was a scientist,” he says, taking a seat on the stool to her left and folding his hands together. “You’re a sharp one. Can you guess what I researched?”
She stares ahead at the ceiling. She won’t dignify that with an answer.
“Not in a chatty mood anymore, I see. That’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
“Annoying…”
“That’s the Miss Sara I know and love. Well, I won’t stop you from thinking what you want. Regardless, there’s something called the HPA axis which influences how the body responds to stress. Some people have more resilient responses than others,” he explains. “Some people just don’t seem to bend or break, no matter what!”
She swallows her unease. “Get to the point.”
“Whoa! So impatient. Anyway, I’m not much of a scientist anymore and I’ll spare you the details. But even as a doll, it’s still my job to gather data about what makes that HPA axis go into overdrive for our participants. And you,” he says, “have been particularly resilient.”
He takes her chin between his fingers and turns her head, forcing her to look at him.
“If you can persevere through the death of your dear friend, through seeing the people around you dropping like flies…maybe you respond better to physical stressors?”
“The attractions weren’t enough?” A hybrid of plea and and protest.
“Oh, come now. Those were a cakewalk for you! Besides, you had others supporting you—that doesn’t count. I’ve got something a little more personal in mind.”
Midori rises to his feet. He extracts a match and her mouth dries up. The thin edges of the handcuffs cut into her wrists.
“Ah, that’s a cute expression, Miss Sara!” Satisfied, he hums as he strikes the match against the phosphorus. The flames’ reflection dances in his vacant eyes and he stands statuesque, allowing the threat to fill the space of their mutual silence before he speaks again. “I’m a little jealous. I wish I’d been the first to see it.”
“I’ll…” Her nails press into her palms. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ll survive.”
“Oh, I’m not arguing that. Surviving’s the easy part.”
The hum of electricity grows louder in her ears, louder and louder with every step he takes towards her, until he’s centimeters away and she can hardly hear anything but the groan and whir of circuits. Her chest rises and falls, faster and higher and deeper with each passing second. Terror tightens her throat and slumbers in her diaphragm.
He lowers his hand and swipes the match against her nipple and she winces, though the sting she’d been expecting never comes.
“Doesn’t hurt like you thought it would, right? Don’t worry, that was just a preview.”
He turns his back toward her and approaches the steel trolley. Her teeth chatter, rattling her skull and sending her neurons spinning. She rubbed the skin of her wrists raw in desperation; any further struggle against the restraints will burn as intensely as whatever he has in mind.
He blows the match out, but the dim yellow glow is supplanted by another. Sara cranes her neck to see what it is and he’s cupping a glass jar. When he turns back to face her, the light dances, brighter and bolder than before.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Don’t worry, the wax dries down clear.”
She chews the inside of her lip raw, ripping little flecks of tissue between her teeth. He saunters toward her, standing to her left, candle in hand. The fire flickers in the darkness.
“Some people do all this for fun. Would you, Miss Sara?”
Deep, even breaths. Physical pain is nothing compared to what she’s been through up to this point.
“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, you know.”
“I’m not like you,” she spits.
He raises his eyebrows. “Does it look like I’m having fun?”
“That’s your whole M.O.”
“So cold! Anyway, if this is small stuff to you, we can skip the middleman. I can just douse you in alcohol and go from there.”
She holds her tongue. Do your worst.
The corners of his eyes turn up, vulpine. “Right, right. That’s what I thought.”
He tips the glass forward and wax spills over, and she watches as it splatters across the expanse of her stomach like liquid flame, and she sucks in air through her clenched teeth. The scorch sinks into her skin and saturates her nerves. Her knees draw up instinctively to shield the vulnerable skin and the metal around her ankles hisses in protest.
“You…!” she chokes out.
“What about me?”
The hate filters from her heart through the canals of her capillaries. It beats wildly against the walls in tandem with the adrenaline. The wax cools and splinters like dry earth.
She stares at him from underneath her lashes. “Whatever you’re hoping to get from me, you won’t get it.”
“So confident, even when you don’t know a single thing. No wonder the others love you so much.”
The next drops come abruptly, landing right above her nipples. Cold sweat gathers on her forehead. The next round festoons her ribs and a strained groan rumbles in the back of her throat.
Midori tilts his head and his voice is soft. “You’re a gorgeous canvas, Miss Sara.”
His laughter follows her cries, distorted echoes of amusement, as he paints searing trails across her breasts and torso all the way down to the juncture of her thighs. Encapsulated in each drop is the heat of the sun, exploding and skittering across her skin; it’s every time she’s accidentally touched a hot kettle, every time she’s set a bare foot on asphalt in summer, dozens and dozens of times over. When the wax dries it clings, fusing to her dermis and rendering every minute movement an exercise in self-torment.
He looks toward her and raises a hand to caress her cheek as he tilts the jar with the other. His eyes brim with a lascivious hunger that could dismantle her if she let it. Wax pools on her mound and endorphins salve the wound, consoling her with a paltry kernel of pleasure as she pleads silently with her parted lips.
He appears to remember himself and the evanescent euphoria dissipates. He blinks and the hunger evaporates.
“Oh, it seems I’ve run out. How are you feeling, Miss Sara? Ready to keel over?”
“No…N-No way,” she pants, rubbing her thighs—slick with sweat—together. “It’s going to take m-more than that.”
“I can see that! I knew you’d tough it out. I’ve got my work cut out for me.”
Midori shrugs before striding back over to the trolley. He sets the jar down. The ribbons of wax crack with every muscle contraction. His neutral smile doesn’t waver. A cap opens. The squelch of gel, the susurrus of butcher paper. She’s cold and the burns are tender beneath the wax barrier.
When he returns, he stands between her legs. He strokes her thighs before planting a wired pad on each one. The wires wind down the floor, leading to a device perched front and center on the trolley.
“Don’t panic,” Midori says as he takes two thinner pads into each hand. “Or do. I’ll be happy either way.”
He forces her thighs apart and her breath hitches, suspended in the atrium of her lungs. His eyes linger too long, impassive, before his pupils dilate by a millimeter—a change she would’ve missed were she not observing in rapt terror.
His silence imposes. It’s intentional, inscrutable. It bears down on her, crushes her, the way aluminum crumples beneath a compactor.
A cool sensation on either labia snaps against her spinal cord and primal fear seizes her. She thrashes against the steel, gritting her teeth as the handcuffs dig into her raw wrists and ankles.
They’re supposed to be looking for her. This room might not be soundproofed. She inhales sharply, filling her chest to bursting, ready to tear the air to shreds with her screams.
But he’s nimbler than her and he leans forward to clamp his hand over her mouth, stifling the impending screech. The mirthful mask comes off. His eyes narrow. He scowls.
“Not yet.”
He dons the mask as quickly as he removed it and smiles affably as he reaches over and grips the handle of the device—a small black box with various dials. He takes a seat on the stool by her side.
“This might be a little intense, but I believe in you, Miss Sara!” he chirps, turning a dial by a few tick marks.
A strange sensation radiates from the pads, little sparks that feel like teeth grazing against her skin. She whimpers.
“Feels good, doesn’t it? There’s no fun in feeling good, though.”
Another jolt scatters across her thighs, unleashing latent lightning against her skin. The ghost of its fire courses through her stomach and up to her neck and she can’t bite back the tortured yelp that erupts from her throat, the sound of which delights him.
“You can go ahead and scream now. They can’t hear you.”
I don’t need your permission is what she wants to say, but what spills from her lips hardly resembles words. Her head lolls; her tongue fails to form syllables.
Midori shakes his head. “I know this isn’t enough to do you in.”
When he turns the dial again, it’s not just her thighs. A thousand tiny needles burrow into her folds as her thighs convulse, and the primal fear rears its head once more, telling her that this is it—this is how she dies, chipped away bit by bit, singed and stung until the current stops her heart. A pathetic sob bubbles up in her throat, trapped only by the seal of her lips.
“Now that you’ve gotten a taste, let’s move on to part two.”
He reaches down and takes another wire between his fingers. This one doesn’t have pads at the end, but rather a small, flared probe with a chrome finish. His lip twitches as he reaches between her thighs and prods the probe at her entrance. Her stomach churns and she gags.
“Aw, what’s the long face for? There’s nothing to be scared of,” he mocks.
He slides the plug inside her and her body rejects the intruder, pushing against it as she jerks away. A flare of irritation crosses his features.
“You’re too stubborn for your own good, Sara Chidouin.”
He shoves it in and it stays this time. He cracks his neck and resumes his place on the stool before turning up the dials.
Arcs of static crack against her skin like invisible whips. Tendrils of it unfurl inside her and massage an excruciatingly sensitive spot that’s uncharted, untouched, and it feels so torturously good she could weep—and weep she does.
“Too much?”
He crosses his leg over the other.
“Or not enough?”
Sharp nails rake across her thighs and lips and wetness cascades from her entrance down the curve of her ass, forming a small pool beneath her. She holds fast to the rags and tatters of rational thought, tenuous as her grip may be.
“Please!” she cries, handcuffs rattling against the steel.
The imperturbable surface gives way to the sadistic depths, his cruel grin as keen and piercing as the needles in her flesh.
“Please? That could mean lots of things.”
“Turn—T-Turn it off,” she stammers.
“If we stop now, the next part won’t be so easy for you.”
Her walls contract rhythmically and she can’t distinguish the pain from the pleasure. He turns the dial higher and higher until the current swells to engulf every nerve ending, decimating the last vestiges of coherent thought. White hot pressure pools beneath her navel and there is no slow build, no gradation, just the swelling of sensation until she’s bucking her hips and arching her back and getting closer and closer—
“Nope, not yet.”
All input ceases abruptly even as her thighs continue to spasm. He tears the pads from her skin and pulls the probe from her cunt with no measure of tenderness. He discards the device onto the trolley and comes back, leaning over her, hands in pockets.
She blinks and blinks and wills the beads of tears to evaporate, but her lashes send them cascading down her face, hot and briny, matting strands of hair to her soaked cheeks. Restrained sobs rack her ribs, her muscles still twitching from phantom voltage. He raises a finger to stroke her jaw.
“What a beautiful face you have, Miss Sara,” he whispers. “Maybe I’ll break the rules and keep you to myself.”
Her tongue juts out and wets her lips; they tremble, opening and closing, refusing to form words through the pain until she does so through pure force of will. Her thighs are soaked and his proposal sounds enticing to the parts of her she’s already surrendered. “I’d—I’d, I’d rather—die.”
He laughs and loosens his tie. “Good, good. You’ve still got presence of mind, so we have a ways to go.”
“What,” she begins with a mournful hiccup, “do you want from me?”
Sara waits. He considers the question. His empty eyes shimmer with adulterated affection. He bends down closer to her neck, close enough that she thinks she feels puffs of hot breath against her clavicle.
“You’ve figured it out by now, haven’t you?” He leans closer, his lips hovering above the shell of her ear. “Why I’m really doing this.”
Midori planted the seed and he lets it ferment in the fertile soil of her fractured mind as he withdraws. He rolls up his sleeves and slides the tie off of his collar. He gathers it into his fist.
“I don’t like getting my hands dirty.”
Sara closes her eyes and it’s only now that she becomes fully aware of the tears and sweat soaking her face and the pool of wetness between her thighs. The screech of the stool sliding across the floor scratches against her ossicles. Her panic has burned itself out like a supernova, collapsing in on itself and leaving a void in its wake.
“You’re a stubborn one, but if you can get through this, well—I don’t think much short of killing you would do the trick.”
A warm piece of cloth loops around her throat and she gasps. She wants to protest. She’ll beg. She’ll bargain. She tilts her head back and he’s sitting right behind her, his head hanging above hers. His lips brush against her disheveled hair.
He loops the tie around again, tighter this time but still not restrictive. Not yet.
“Are you afraid?”
She nods as vigorously as she can against the restraints of the makeshift noose.
“Aw. That’s too bad. You really shouldn’t be. You’ll get to be with Joe soon, after all!”
She tenses. “B-But—But you said—”
The tie constricts around her trachea. Her heart races.
“Survival instinct kicking in?” A click and one of her hands goes loose, liberated from its restraints. “Maybe I’ll let you live if you can finish yourself off.”
He handed her an out on a silver platter. She could do any number of things right now, any iteration of retaliation of which she’s fantasized since arriving here. Her hand hangs limply down the side of the table.
“It’s embarrassing…” she croaks.
“Aren’t we past that?” He loosens his hold on the tie and grabs a fistful of her hair. “Do it.”
Her unsteady hand could reach for his neck but it travels downward instead, her fingers running along her abdomen until they glide along her wet folds. He resumes exerting pressure on her throat, and she moans despite herself, despite her fear, despite the burns and ghostly currents still lingering on her thighs. She feels his eyes on her, sweeping across her body and drinking in the desecration.
“Maybe you’ll be my new project, hm? Sou—no, Shin—was too easy. But you, Miss Sara—you won’t give yourself to me so easily.”
She quickens her pace as she rubs circles around her clit. If she can expedite this, she might be spared the worst of it, but shame’s a potent deterrent and no amount of stimulation can bring her close.
“You might be the leader of the pack, but you’re just an animal in the end.”
Her entire hand is soaked and she knows she had no control, knows it’s a reflex, but guilt catalyzes shame and the concoction brews in her chest like boiling lava, incinerating any pleasure or reprieve.
“What are you, Miss Sara?”
Midori eases the pressure on her trachea and she sucks in air desperately, coughing and choking on it. She reels herself back from the precipice of madness and shakes her head, sending her hair flipping about her face. It’s loosened itself from its ponytail and the braid threatens to unravel.
“No,” she rasps, a cough racking her body; it dares not expend the oxygen on speech. “You—can’t—m-make me—say anything.”
Her words hang in the air. A crackling silence, portentous and pernicious, raises the hairs on the back of her neck.
“You know, I really don’t like getting my hands dirty,” he mutters.
He stands up and pivots to face her and his face is blank. His patience has worn thin; bridled rage billows off of him. Still, he can’t resist affecting detachment; he pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head.
“Ah, well. Maybe I went too easy on you. I’ve got a soft spot for you, after all.” He seizes her hand and raises it above her head, and a click followed by the icy, familiar feel of metal informs her that he’s secured it back in its tethered place. “I thought it was pretty easy, but I guess if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”
One hand snakes back around her throat and the other trails down her ruined body, covered in wax and sweat and her own wetness. No amount of air seems sufficient to fill her lungs. His eyes burn into hers with their lust as he slips two fingers effortlessly past her folds and inside her. She moans and disgust pools in her stomach. She tries to turn her head away, but his grip tightens and he twists her neck until she’s anchored to his eyes.
“No,” he says roughly. His eyes widen and his teeth are bared. “Don’t turn away, Miss Sara. Look at me. Look at the one who’s doing this to you.”
His fingers pump in and out of her with brutal urgency, curling upward and pressing against her until she throws her head back and tries to scream. The suffocation amplifies the pressure mounting in her core and she writhes beneath him as one thumb presses against the column of her neck and the other presses against her clit.
Tears flow freely from her eyes, beads of them gathering on the table below her. Saliva slides past her lips. He chuckles before exploding into derisive laughter.
“That’s right! Don’t stop. Just accept it—you’re an animal.” He bites his lip and his fingers press against the side of her neck. “Did Joe ever see this side of you? Did he, Sara? I know Keiji hasn’t. Am I the only one who knows how disgusting you really are?”
Her body grows desperate, and every molecule of lost oxygen is replaced by adrenaline, hot and sweet. The sound of his drenched fingers against her slick skin fills the room, consuming the electric hum, and he quickens his pace until she can tolerate no more. Sara squeezes her eyes shut and she arches her back, her body trembling violently as pleasure beyond the realm of comprehension clamps her in its vise and she cums, she cums and hears something splash against the floor in sharp staccato and a startled gasp. She thrusts her hips forward one last time before falling back against the table; it stutters with the sound of her bones shaking against it.
His hand extricates itself from her throat. He withdraws his fingers. She opens her eyes and observes him examining his hand before averting his gaze back toward the table.
Midori runs a hand through his hair, displacing the tendrils clinging to his forehead. She does not question that a doll could sweat; she does not question anything. He shakes his other hand out and drops of moisture fly against the floor.
“Whew! I got a little carried away.” He adjusts his tie and slides his arms through his suit jacket. “And so did you! I’ll have to wash my hands.”
She doesn’t notice him coming back toward her. She doesn’t hear the tap of his shoes against the linoleum. She doesn’t feel the frigid air. She doesn’t hear the rap at the door.
He leans over her and she wonders if this is how he looked at Sou. Caustic and possessive. He takes her face between his fingers and squeezes, his nails sinking into the skin of her cheeks.
“They won’t be happy, but I’ve made up my mind. This time, I’m definitely keeping you.”