[I wrote this like months ago haha. I don't know why I didn't post sooner.]
KARIN
And there I was again, on that terribly familiar hospital bed, staring up at a stark white ceiling lit by frozen blue lights. Another nightmare.
I could distinctly feel goosebumps popping up all over my arms. Weird, I thought, suddenly aware of just how lucid I was. My dreams were almost never this sensual. Does mean I can control my dreams now...? I tried to get up from the cot, but my thick metal restraints soon made it clear that would be impossible. I tried thinking of other places, other people; anything that could turn my subconscious imagination around. I smiled and opened my eyes.
Nothing had changed. My smile melted off my face as an all too familiar panic flooded my senses, and I scrunched my eyes as tightly as possible.
It’s okay. I whispered inside. Now you know it’s just a dream. It’ll be all over in a little while. Sebastian will wake you up. It’s just a dream. Just a dream... Wake up, Karin, please wake up...
I opened my misty eyes again and tried to assess my situation. Maybe now that I’m conscious and stronger, I can get out of this nightmare myself... There was no one in the room but me. Several different scalpels lay on a tray at my bedside. Eight cuffs -- two per appendage -- were binding me. If I could just wriggle my way out of one, then maybe--
My thoughts ceased when I saw what I was wearing. It wasn’t an awful gray medical gown that barely covered me.
No, I was wearing pajamas. The very same pajamas I had been wearing before I--
Everything came back to me at once, and I laid my head back and cried.
My misery, along with my complete and utter terror, paved a way for the tears to flow freely down my cheeks. My ears tickled with every tear that splashed past them.
I barely noticed the door open as he walked in. All this time, he’d been in my visions, but I never really saw this face or remembered his name. As he approached, I read Dr. Hiraku and the handwritten character 拓 upon his I.D.
Hiraku... Japanese for Expand. Open. Pioneer.
All things he had done to my body.
“Awhh, do not cry,” he cooed cynically, his Japanese accent dripping off every word. “You have come home!” I hate you. I thought venomously. This man had ruined my life, kidnapping me and testing me and torturing me and... I tried to drown out the rest of his meaningless rambling, but I started when he pet my ears.
“すごい---” he whispered in awe, fingering my sensitive white fur as though I were his pet. It felt awful with those rubbery gloves. An unsettling giggle filtered through his upturned lips, and his voice went high as he started gushing about nerve endings and axons. I tried to stubbornly twitch my ears away, but he kept them in his grasp.
“Stop it,” I gasped, tossing my head to the side and breaking his hold. “ Stop it! Why are you doing this? Please, let us go. We haven’t done anything wrong,” I sobbed, overcome by the evil that was my nightly torture.
“Tsk, tsk, you and I both know I cannot do that,” he replied nonchalantly, unphased by my pleading. “Besides, you belong here. Have you not figured that out already?”
“Fine, then keep me here,” I cried, exasperated. “Just let everyone else go-- Please!!” His bemused smile suddenly stretched into a dark scowl.
“They are not all mine to play with,” he hissed spitefully. I was disgusted by how close his face was to mine. Only Sebastian could do that. I gathered every ounce of courage I had left and spat in the man’s face.
Man, I’d been wanting to do that for so long.
He was shocked, to say the least. He let out a rather unmanly yelp and scrambled to the small sink behind him. I let myself laugh a little as he crouched to wash my saliva from his eyeballs. But then he whirled around, water droplets flying, and the look on his face was absolutely menacing.
In hindsight, my 15 seconds of pitiful revenge was not worth the hours of inevitable torture to come.
Wild eyed, Hiraku breathed through clenched teeth before smacking the tray of scalpels in a fit of rage. I winced and screamed as they all fell to the floor with metallic clatters.
He snarled. “I’ll be back.”
Straightening out his disheveled black lab coat, he whipped around abruptly and left me gasping on the bed.
