Page 18 of Teddy Bear

I ask in a serious, wide-awake voice, the clearest I can use right now.

Danny's fingers find their way to my pale, bony hand again. I'm annoyed by his excessive closeness and sweetness, which destroys all the dominating and controlling games we've played so far.

I'm annoyed by this sweet and gentle lowering of walls and barriers and sudden outpourings of empathy from the doctor who put me in this fucking nuthouse.

I want him to remain only my cold and cruel master, an earth golem with a black mask who takes me unreservedly, breaking every rule and making his own, who takes me to the underworld of dark desire and lets me wander the corridors of my own darkness.

I want him to be just Danny, my hypnotist and psychiatrist who fucks me tied to a hospital bed in a hypnotic trance that he himself induced, deep, clinically cold, calculated, and precise.

I want him to remain just a perverted law that governs my life and my lust against my will.

I want him to just be Danny, my father's best friend, a renowned doctor, and a man I will never have, except within the four walls of his renowned madhouse, where I'm not sure if he locked me up so he could play with my young, eager body and cracked brain, or to actually heal me.

I want him to remain only a doctor, to whom I give myself completely.

I don't like this sudden friendship and closeness. I don't like his tone, which is suddenly full of fake care and kindness.

I don't want him to touch me like he actually cares about me. There is no need for that.

-Lizzie, your parents died in a car accident. I've been waiting for the right moment to tell you.

Silence.

I do not speak a word; I am dead, a gray stone, a dead object, no longer a flesh-and-blood human being, but a motionless, hardened, and petrified rock.

My eyes stare blankly into the window of his face.

- I know this is terribly difficult.

Danny continues, in a sickeningly warm, friendly voice that shatters the vision of an icy man secretly fucking his helpless, bound patient in the observation room and rips my ears off.

- I know it will be terribly difficult for you to get over this. But I want you to know that you are not alone. After last night's session, I don't think you will need any more hospital treatment. You've finally broken down your biggest blockade; it's time to go home, with me.

He places particular emphasis on this last word, or is it just an echo of this far-fetched scenario in my head?

With me

With me

With me

I repeat it in my brain, and then I guess unconsciously blurt it out loud, with the incredible "me" prompting Danny to continue his sweet, savior presentation.

- You're going home with me, Liz. It may seem complicated, but it's actually quite simple. Due to your, let's use the legal term, which is essentially quite crude and completely irrelevant, "mental insanity", your father authorized me as your guardian in case of some unforeseen events or their death.

My body is now a rag doll, hanging withered and listening to Danny's crazy words.

Crazy images flash through my head, starting with the death of my parents, to my father nonchalantly signing the custody agreement, and Danny's smiling face as he takes his best friend's mentally ill daughter in as his ward and brings her to his beautiful, closed, heavily guarded sanatorium, where he is God himself, to going home with Danny and OLIVIA and seriously fearing that something is seriously wrong with this man.

I thought he was just a twisted doc who enjoyed playing perverted games with his patients, but now I think this is much deeper and worse than that.

What he is doing is related to me; everything is well thought out and planned, organized to the smallest detail, and even last night's hypnosis and his request that I surrender to him completely were targeted and planned to finally mark me as his.

The two of us are no longer just a perverted doctor and his crazy patient, but two true lovers, completely connected by secretions and sperm, earth and the pink sky, snow and roses, and a dark desire that emerges from the very mud - and a contract of strategy due to mental insanity.

As my limbs hang motionless and my gaze blankly stares at every corner of the room, Danny continues his heart-wrenching exposition, artificially and extremely fakely shaken by the death of his best friend.

Now his hand is on my shoulder; I guess this should be some protective, friendly gesture.