“Katarina, but she goes by Kat around here, don’t you? She’s a long-term resident of Hallow Hall,” Pavol said, and took my arm in his, clearly growing weary of our long introduction.
“Now, sit down, and let’s get your session started. Father Lucciano is here to observe my groundbreaking methods of exposure therapy. He will watch your session today.”
“What? No. I don’t want anyone to watch,” I said quickly.
Massimo had moved back to the couch, and I watched him like he was a snake about to strike.
“Why not?” Pavol suddenly seemed interested in my response. “Do you remember last week’s session?” He watched me intently.
“I—no, I don’t,” I confessed. When I tried to think of the reason I didn’t want anyone to watch, there was nothing there. Admitting that just the thought of his therapy made me ill didn’t seem smart. If he thought I was remembering, he’d shoot me up with something himself.
“Well then, don’t be churlish. And don’t be self-conscious. It’s all part of getting better. Sit down.”
I sank into the seat opposite him, all too aware of the gaze of the black-eyed devil behind me.
“Now, some background for Massimo about why you are here.”
Massimo. Father Massimo Lucciano. His name was powerful somehow, just like him.
“Katarina was checked in by her mother for dangerous behavior... attention-seeking and the like. Her mother felt that she was sliding down a dark path and needed an intervention to prevent her sinful nature from taking over.”
My face burned hot. I looked at the surface of the desk, fighting helpless tears stinging behind my eyes.
I would not cry for these men.
I would not. I had nothing to be ashamed of. I’d done nothingwrong. It was all lies. Lies they’d used to steal my life. That was one thing I’d never forget.
Massimo was silent.
Pavol continued. “Now, we are trying a technique where we simply use a stimulus to provoke an instinctive reaction, and then use a punishment to train the brain to associate those two things. Katarina, dear, go and change behind the partition.”
My fingers shook again as I rose and made my way behind the partition at the side of the room. As soon as I stepped behind it, the memory flooded back. The TV and the sound of grunting. The lash of pain at the same time. Oh, God. He was going to perform his degrading, painful therapy on me, and this time, I had no cushion of pain pills to fall back on.
Well, if you ever want to get out of here, you need to get your head clear,the voice in my head said reasonably.
It made sense, but it was much easier said than done. Father Vargas was in a predicament with me. He couldn’t get rid of me because, as he constantly reminded me, I was special, though he’d never deigned to explain why. He couldn’t let me go, because I’d talk and bring the police up to Hallow Hall as soon as I could. So, he was stuck with me here... In order to torture me, or maybe just to please his partners in crime, he’d made me their plaything. All the weird experiments and therapies they longed to try on their patients they tested on me first. The only saving grace was that my being “special” held them back from full-on assaulting me.
I changed from my thin white T-shirt and long, loose pants into a hospital gown, tying it as securely as I could in the back, painfully conscious of how easily it came open.
“Katarina, hurry up behind there, I have other patients to see today.”
I stepped out from behind the partition andmet Father Massimo’s eyes first. His dark stare was curious, and something else... angry, perhaps.
I turned from him and walked to the leather therapy chair in the middle of the room. Pavol had wheeled over a TV on a stand, and now he gestured for me to sit and tied me into the leather straps.
“It’s best to restrain the patients, as they can be resistant to treatment for their addictions. Lust is one of the hardest to curb. Poor Katarina is one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen.”
He fiddled with the TV, and a movie played. A porno. In it, the couple was undressing on a bed. A city skyline filled the window behind them. I focused on it. My face burned. Pavol had tied my ankles and wrists to the chair, and now he fitted a gag and glasses that blacked out everything except the TV sitting right in front of me.
“Now we wait until the arousal starts—her sinner’s instinct coming to the surface—and then we apply the therapy.”
“What’s the therapy?” Father Lucciano’s voice was dispassionate.
“The whip is effective; electroshock we have only tried once. She had a bad reaction to it.”
He forced me to stare at the TV for a good ten minutes, pausing it when the couple was fucking enthusiastically on the bed, and took a strap to my thighs, lashing my skin twenty times before he unpaused the TV.
I didn’t cry. I was too numb. I was the branch of the cherry blossom, swaying in the wind.