Page 41 of Exposed
My throat constricts. I’m poisoned by his scent: disinfectant, sourness, dirt. He grips my neck. I press my arms to my side, the knife digging into my skin. I cross my fingers, pleading he doesn’t notice the weapon. Not yet.
He leers at me. “Answer me honestly, sweet one. Do you think she wanted you?”
My vision blurs. I clench my eyes shut. “Dr. Ambrose, please?—”
“She told me to abort you. Begged me, in fact. She couldn’t bear the thought of bringing another life into this cruel world. It wasn’t up to her though.”
He squeezes my neck tighter; I gulp down my spit. I clasp the knife’s handle; he doesn’t notice. He bares his jagged teeth.
“I injected my seed into her because I knew a woman like you would eventually come to me,” he says. “I’ve been experimenting for years to see whether depravity is nature or nurture, and though I’ve found evidence to steer me both ways, you, Violet, arenature.”
I grit my teeth. “No!”
“Did you know I kept her in a cage for the entire duration of her pregnancy?” His smile widens. “Of course you do. You had your idiot boyfriend steal my files. But do you knowwhyI kept her in the cage?” He winks. “I couldn’t lether take away what’s mine. I couldn’t let you die due to some foolish attempt at mercy.”
I amnothis.
I pull the knife out and ram it forward. The sharp edge cuts his chest, but before it penetrates, he grabs my wrist, cinching it midair.
I shove harder, but I can’t move.
A spot of blood seeps through his lab coat.
He smirks down at me, then squeezes my wrist tighter, and tighter, until the pain blinds me.
He’s going to crush me.
I cry as I drop the knife. Finally, he loosens his grip on my wrist.
“Oh, sweet one,” he says. “If you truly want to kill me, you’re going to have to try harder than that.”
Panic floods me. I reach for the top of the grave and jump, clutching the dirt. Each handful sends clumps of earth hailing down. He rips me from the wall.
My eyes burn, but I snarl at him. “Fuck you?—”
He tackles me to the coffin. My lungs compress and strain for air. He tears down my leggings and begins to mount me. I reach around for the knife, scrambling for anything to help me survive. But his cock impales me, and as he props himself up on his elbows, he grins, like he knows he’s won.
“Looking for this?” He raises the knife, pressing it against my throat. “Tell me, freak. Does your cunt get wet when you’re forced to meet the potential of your death?” The knife pierces my skin, the tiniest trickle of blood tracing my neck like a bead of sweat. I moan, and he snaps his teeth. “It didn’t take anything for me to slide inside ofyour filthy hole just now. Youwantme to hurt you with a knife. You want me to fucking take you,” he growls.
Tears drown me, and finally, I let go, sinking into the wooden exterior crowding me. My mother’s coffin becomes my cradle, and Dr. Ambrose becomes my home without a door. A locked cage without a key. He is the embodiment of every messed-up thought in my brain.
And he is exactly what I want.
“Don’t move, or I may cut you even more, you pathetic piece of trash,” he says. I whimper and shudder. His cock digs a hole inside of me. “You came from a freak, you are a freak, and soon, you’ll be nothing butmyfucking freak.”
My chest crushes my heart, and as each valve pulses, pushing blood through my vessels, I tremble so hard, the pill container smashes into my thighs.
I still have the poison. It’s not over yet.
But there’s something inside of me that wants to give up, to accept everything. Wouldn’t it be easier to give everything to this man? A man so obsessed he chased and captured me, even after I burned him. Even when I tried to stab him.
A thought echoes across my consciousness: I will never be the person I was before Dr. Ambrose. I am a living corpse, and this is a symbolic death.
He swipes his hand across my face, then licks the tears from his hands, his fingernails black with dirt, and I realize why his hands have been filthy this whole time: he dug up my mother’s grave before the initial examination. The proof of his obsession has always been right in front of me. He stole my dead mother, and he did it to control me.
“Fuck you!” I scream. I don’t know if I’m mad at himor myself, but I’m frustrated, and it’s the only thing I can say to hold on to my old self. “Fuck you, you fucking?—”
“Youarefucking me, sweet one,” Dr. Ambrose says with a cold laugh. Goosebumps ripple over my skin as his cock jabs inside of me. He puts his lip to my ear, the knife pressed against my neck. “And soon, fucking me will be the only joy in your miserable existence.”
