Page 35 of Hangman's Knot
When she lays down, she forces herself to do math equations in her head to keep her from thinking.
What is fifty-five divided by three?
Count backwards from one thousand by sevens.
What is twelve times thirty-six?
Fourteen push ups, twenty crunches, twenty-five squats. Then walking, four paces across, turn, four paces back.
Dinner is a dry hamburger patty, more margarine, and canned green beans. None of it is warm. She eats the beans and forces down a few cups of water.
She lays down in her bed and the scream climbs to the top of her throat. She has to swallow several times to keep it down. Or is that bile?
She takes a deep breath, and then she catches scent of Luke, his safe, earthy smell that makes her feel like she's being cradled by mother nature herself. She's sitting up so fast her head swims, whipping her head back and forth, searching the room for him.
It takes her a moment to realize that the scent is coming off her, from the spot where he had scent marked her earlier.
It feels like a warm blanket finally settles over her. She curls into a ball on the mattress in the far corner with her back against one of the walls and her legs pressed up against the other.
She takes in deep breaths, the scents filling her sensitive nose. The rubber of the mattress. The disinfectant that had been used on it. Sharp and acrid. And lightly beneath all of it, a whiff of Luke's warm alpha scent. Safety. Mate. Hers.
She reaches her hand in her pants, swiping between her legs. There's not much of them there. They are always so careful about wiping her down after, trying to remove all the evidence of their coupling so they don't set off a riot with the scent.
She brings her hand to her nose and takes a deep breath. There they are. Julius and Tenor and Luke, all woven together by her own scent. Ripe pomegranate seeds amidst a field of deadly lilies, soft wood surrounding them, with warm earth steadying them.
She dozes, one arm wrapped around her legs in as tight a ball as she can force her body into, the other folded beneath her nose. She wakes frequently, not knowing how much time has passed. She feels like she's in a fever dream, like time ceases to be real.
Was she awake again? Had she ever been asleep? Was it thirty minutes or eight hours?
She loses track of how many times she wakes, her body feeling restless and unsettled. But there is no nest here, and so there won't be any rest.
A hysterical giggle escapes her. No nest, no rest. That's funny. It rhymes. Nest rest nest rest nest rest. She repeats the words to herself until they no longer make sense.
Acid fills her stomach and her veins prickle uncomfortably beneath her skin.
Her neighbour screams throughout the night too, and that's the only thing that grounds her to reality.
???
It feels like years before morning comes. By the time the meal tray slot opens again, she's gone numb.
"Chow time!"
She doesn't taste the food.
When they come to take her to the showers and give her a clean change of clothes, she finally screams.
She cannot lose the last pieces of her mates that she has, the scent that is still ever so faintly inside of her and on her jumpsuit.
She screams and fights, thrashing back and forth, kicking and clawing at the guards until they put her in something that looks like a straitjacket.
They throw her under a freezing cold spray of water, still in her clothes, and she screams like she's dying, her voice a broken wail.
Multiple guards crowd in the shower room to stare hungrily at her body. The one who picks her up from the floor gropes at her, but she doesn't feel it.
She's numb, whether it is because of the freezing cold of the water or because she's finally snapped, she doesn't know.
"Are you going to behave like a fucking animal or are you going to get changed nicely?"
