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Lucian
Fifteen years ago …
“Mother, I want to go home.”
Straps across my face limit the movement of my jaw, where I lie bound to a stiff bed in the middle of a mostly empty, dark cell. An incessant chill burrows deep within my bones, over the thrum of anxiety that’s only mildly subdued by the drugs they’ve forced down my throat. Restraints at my wrists and ankles ensure that I won’t leap from this bed and follow her when she leaves.
“This place is hell.”
A hospital, from the looks of it, but far from any place designed to heal. Their method is torment. Aversion therapy. Experimental medicine that hasn’t been approved by any governing body. I doubt any practicing doctor has ever set foot inside.
Considering where it’s nestled, deep in the northern woods of Vermont, it’s a wonder my parents managed to stumble upon it.
“You’re ill, Lucian. The doctors here … they’ll help you.” Tears gather in Mother’s eyes that’re red and swollen, from days of crying, no doubt. “They’ll make you better.”
“There’s … nothing wrong with me.” I manage to grit the words past the tight clench of my teeth that’s reinforced by unyielding leather stretched across my chin. The pressure against my jaw sends a throbbing ache to my skull that pulses behind my eyeballs, and the shape of her blurs behind a watery shield, while little snippets of memory, things they’ve done to me here, flash through my head.
Injections. Drugs. Clamps. Cuffs. Electric shock. Hissing. The screams.
“Take me home!”
“She’s lucky she’s already dead, or I’d insist she get the worst of it.” Fingers curling around the strap of her designer purse, she stares off, lips clamped tight with her disgust, but then her eye twitches, and her expression changes into what I surmise as satisfaction. “My God, do you have any idea what they do to female child predators here?”