The Adjusters #60 (Part 1 of 2)

Let's do this in small chunks again... I can't quite get it to work the way I want it to.


60
Intermezzo: Jennifer Hansen
(Part 1 of 2)
“Holy crap, look at those spikes!”

The voice is what finally pulls me out of that gray haze that’s been slowly oh so slowly lifting since I first woke up I don’t know how long ago.

My name is Jennifer Hansen, and my brain feels like mush. I have no idea how long I’ve been out, no idea where I am, no idea even how I’m doing. I can’t move, can’t open my eyes—even if I had the energy, it’s like my limbs were severed from my nervous system.

And then there’s the pain.

I don’t feel the pain directly, but it’s there all around me, and I feel someone feeling the pain—she’s screaming, really, because I’m calling it pain but agony might be more accurate—and I’m connected to her and I feel her pain, but it’s like I’m inside her, protected. There is pain, but it’s indirect, diffuse, the intellectual, emotional, empathetic response to pain, and not the nervous response to pain. It still freaks me out, though.

There are voices around me, hard to make out through the screams of pain that resonate inside my head. I realize who’s screaming, too, eventually. Jennie. Jennie is in agony. I can picture her clutching her head as though it’s about to split apart and give rise to a goddess, writhing agony at talons tearing at her mind.

Memories come back to me in pieces, like a movie reel running forward faster and faster. I’m at the Institute, awake and aware but unable to move, in a crazy coma. I’m woken up, and then there’s Richard, Mouse, Cassandra, Gutierrez—everyone in Blue Ward, a dysfunctional little family. My plan to escape. Then my plan to prevent Mouse from being taken away. My plan to get rid of Gutierrez.

And then it flashes in my mind, the last things I remember. Letting Gutierrez have his way with me as Mouse helps him, an elaborate trap to get him to abuse me on camera while the feed is redirected to a conference room within the Institute where executives are assembled—a desperate gambit to save my friend Mouse’s life. Gutierrez wanted to sell her.

Did it work thought? I have no idea. My last memory is fuzzy: I was fighting with Gutierrez after he discovered he had been played and then there was that lighting bolt right between my eyes, like a sharp spike had been shoved in, like my head was being ripped in half. But then everything went dark.

Even as it happened, even as I felt my head explode, I knew that Jennie was taking the brunt of the damage. While I experienced pain, I have no words to describe what Jennie went through.

Jennie. Jennie is, for lack of a better term, the personality that was programmed into me what feels like a lifetime ago. A slut, craving the touch of men, their hands, their mouths, their cocks. Never so happy as when she’s serving, doing what she’s told with sheer enthusiasm. I have no control over her—she’s the driver, I’m merely a passenger. There are drugs that seem to put her to sleep and let me take over, up to a point—so I discovered recently. But clearly, I’m not on them right now. Right now, Jennie’s driving. Well, screaming.

Biff. Biff did this to me. Biff programmed me back at Darnell University. An animal. He turned me into a slut, created Jennie, enslaved to his cock, a fuck toy for that spoiled bastard, a thing that he could use and abuse to his heart’s content.

Biff. He’s the one who created Jennie—the other me who’s not me while being me, in a way that I can’t understand, however hard I try to. I don’t know who I am, and who she is, and if we’re the same or not. She’s the one in charge of my body most of the time, the one that acts, that makes the decisions, and they’re influenced by what Biff did to her, did to us, did to me, influenced and guided and prescribed. And I’m there, in the back of her head, watching, feeling, partaking of whatever she does, the same but separate. But I’m really me. I’m me. She is… another part of me.

Biff. I can unleash all of my hate right now, let it pour forth like a geyser of loathing because Jennie is otherwise occupied by pain. Ordinarily, any thought of Biff on my part is met with immediate arousal from Jennie, and it’s incredibly frustrating to think of someone you hate only to find your pussy juicing up and your heart rate and your breath shortening because a craving for the man’s thick hard cock just skewered you like a kebab. But not now. Now, Jennie is writhing in agony, and I can bask in dark disturbing fantasies of revenge.

Everything else falls before that hate, gets wiped away, scrubbed clean. There is nothing in my heart right but dark raging flames. And Jennie screams in the background and fuels the fire, the perfect melodic accompaniment.

“Is she waking up?” Another voice. From my left this time. I got distracted and forgot all about the voices.

“Yeah, but that’s not normal, is it?” asks the first voice. I don’t recognize it. Someone new at the Institute? The fog is starting to clear, but not enough for me to think straight. And I’m getting some of the pain that Jennie is crumbling under. “Look at those spikes!”

“No, that’s definitely not normal. Never saw anything like that before.”

There’s shuffling behind me. I’m lying down, that much I can tell now.

“Okay, that’s pretty impressive. When did they start?”

“When the Polypherol took effect, I think. I guess. The timing’s about right.”

“What was she on before?”

“Analassillin. And Clorabarbitocin.”

“Powerful combo.”

“Yeah. Look, they’re getting stronger, too. Almost off the charts.”

I don’t know what they’re talking about, but Jennie’s screams are turning shrill in my head, and I start to feel it much more strongly too, as if she’s leaking pain as if she cannot contain it all and it’s pouring into me, and it’s terrifying me. I can’t move—Jennie’s driving, and when she’s driving, I can’t do squat—I know I would reaching for my own head and clutching it myself.

I feel fingers on my face, and one of my eyelids is pulled back and a bright light is shining through and it just adds to the pain. I’m starting to feel sick to my stomach.

“Her file said she suffered some sort of stroke. Is it worse than we thought?” I think that’s the man in front of me, shining a light in my eye speaking. I want to tell him I’m here, to help me, but I can’t, and if I could, it’d come out as a incoherent rant of pain. It’s getting stronger, lava spewing out of the volcano consuming Jennie and threatening to engulf and incinerate me as well. Please, don’t let it happen. Help me, help me!

“Can’t tell—I don’t know what to make of these numbers.” The man behind me is moving about, taping on a keyboard.

“Mmm… Well, that’s weird.” The man in front of my face has switched to my other eye, and closes it after blinding me once again. The fire in my brain is getting worse.

Jennie is dying, I can feel it. She’s burning up. I don’t know why I’m still here. I don’t know how long I’ll still be here.

“Never saw patterns like these. Well, aside from that, there. That I’ve seen. That’s a pain marker. And here, and here. Whatever else is going on in that head of hers, it’s painful, and it’s getting worse.”

“Is that going to mess up the process?”

“Don’t know. Depends on what’s causing it. If it’s neurological damage, then yeah, that may fuck things up badly. We don’t know where they found her, do we?”

“Of course not. The boss said to process her, and so we do.”

“Well, can’t guarantee anything. For all I know, she’s going to come out of the process a vegetable.”

“A good-looking vegetable though”

Laughter. “Yeah. Nice body, but a complete moron. Basically a blow-up doll.”

“Don’t knock it, there are guys that go for that sort of thing..”

“That’s sick.”

“Yeah. Takes all kinds, right? Okay, well, let’s go, then. You’re up on the new protocol?”

“I am. Not too different from the usual one. And I was part of the previous batch, too.”

I feel hands on me, and I realize I’m naked. But the hands don’t linger. Some sort of apparatus closes in on me. Just like that, I’m trapped. Something slips over my head, something presses against my breasts, against my crotch. I want to struggle, but can’t.

And through it all, the pain.

“Okay, injecting the euphoric agent. Let me record this.” There’s a pinch on my arm, followed by a sting that burns all the way up my shoulder.. More tapping on a keyboard. “Subject Jane Doe, recorded on file as Jennie, age unknown, estimated at twenty-three based on measurement. Five foot eight, one hundred and fifty pounds. Caucasian, brown hair, grey eyes. Lean body, good general health. No distinguishing features, save a tattoo over the pudenda, a script in dark red ink, spelling out Biff’s Cunt in an arc. The ink deterioration suggest less than one year old. Breasts average sized, estimated at C cups, with large nipples. Classically beautiful. Appeared to have suffered from a stroke, under medically-induced coma upon arrival.”

“She’s ready for Alpha Prime stage.”

Suddenly, the pain in my head lessens. It takes me by surprise so much that I want to cry, suddenly. Jennie is still suffering, though

“Check. Proceed.”

Tapping on the keyboard.

“Doesn’t it make you feel… I don’t know… bad?”

“What?”

“What we’re doing?”

“And what are we doing?”

“We’re wiping her mind.”

“Okay, first off, are you crazy? You don’t talk about shit like this here. Second, look at her, at her chart. She’s dead within the year, and not a pretty death at that. Her brain’s shot. Kaput. Mush. This gives her another chance at life.”

“Yeah, but what kind of life?”

“Boohoo. Look, this sort of talk won’t lead you far, not with the boss. He’ll have you out on your ass and reassigned to sanitary duty.”

The other man merely grunts. Meanwhile, I can only hear the words that have been said. We’re wiping her mind. Oh God!

“So I heard a rumor.”

“Come on, man, don’t.”

“I hear this is really based on Cargyle’s tech.”

“Fuck,” but there is a note of curiosity in his voice. “Really?”

The other man doesn’t answer. “Okay, that’s weird.”

“What now?”

“There are traces of Serum in her system.”

“Come again?”

“Traces of Serum. Faint, but unmistakeable. The board just lit up.”

“She’s already been adjusted before?”

“You didn’t see an adjustment mark on her, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Mmm…”

“Is this going to mess things up?”

“It shouldn’t. But I wonder why that’s not part of her file.”

“There was another one last time with something similar. Again, a no-name. Black chick. Nice tits on her too. Not a stroke victim, though she was messed up pretty bad. Schizophrenia or something like that. And she had traces of Serum. No adjustment tattoo.”

“What the fuck is going on? They never tell us anything.”

“That’s probably a good thing. I’m pretty sure that half the stuff we don’t really want to know about.”

“So how do we cover our asses?”

“We do our job. That’s how we cover our asses. Now can we get on with Alpha stage already?”

“Fine.”


* * *

Whatever they injected into me was powerful stuff. Jennie goes from screaming her head off inside our head to whimpering quietly and then moaning happily and lustily in no time whatsoever. And I can understand why—waves of sexual desires come crashing down upon me, and Jennie, on the front lines of the assault, has no protection, has no desire whatsoever to protect herself.

I can feel her struggle against our bounds, wanting to free her hands so that she could reach down and push her fingers deep into our pussy, scratch and destroy that itch that clamors for something—anything—to take care of it. Unbidden, the though of a large cock—so large as to take up the whole sky—comes to mind, and Jennie sees it and she lets out a moan of despair and yearning so deep that it pierces me with empathy. This is so much more powerful than any compulsion Biff has ever put into my head, so much beyond even what led to Jennie’s creation, it’s frightening. I know, without a doubt , that if a man offered to fuck me in exchange for cutting off one of my tits, that Jennie would happily go along with it, without hesitation, without any second thought—release is everything.

And I feel the surge of Jennie’s arousal—as it is my own—at that thought, of mutilating herself for sex, because of course she’s me and she can tell what I think—and she agrees wildly and adds images of her own, taking a big cock down her throat and massaging it endlessly until she passes out from lack of oxygen, or having her limbs hacked off and left a torso with tits and holes so that she can be picked up and fucked and dropped off like a discarded rag before the next man picks her up and fucks her as well, in whichever hole he pleases. It’s a small step from that to imagining herself fucked with a huge pike that ends up impaling her, in through her ass and out of her mouth.

This image of being impaled sends Jennie into a frenzy, shoots her up the arousal scale. I can feel her wanting to thrust her hips up, trying to meet that cock that she’s imagining, and suffer her disappointment of finding nothing, unable even to make the smallest movement, the bondage serving merely to arouse her further. It is a positive feedback loop.

And that pike that she’s imagining splitting her up shifts and morphs into a large, hard, demanding cock, breaching the walls of her pussy, tearing her up wider, and the images are incredibly sharp and I understand at some level that those images are not just in my mind’s eye but that I can see them, right there, that the darkness that has engulfed me until now is filled with ghostly shapes, moving, shifting, dancing, and one of them is indeed a large cock—beautiful and mouth-wateringly hard—pushing into a shaved pussy and Jennie moans at the sight and I can understand her because it feels so fucking good, so real, like something was really pushing inside me.

That pussy up there, getting fucked in front of my eyes, that shaved perfect pussy, skewered alive, has a tattoo running over the front of it, in a graceful arc over the mons, lettered in dark red, a script that I know but so well, Biff’s Cunt—I recall the man that tattooed it there too, an artist that really loved his work, only slightly disturbed by the fact that a beautiful woman in front of him with her leg spread was begging him to mark her, only barely distracted by the juices running down her gash because that was what Biff wanted, to see me aroused by the artist, and I was, and so it’s my pussy up there getting fucked hard and Jennie knows it and she loves it and she’s starting to whimper those little words, those “fuck that cock… fuck that hard cock… fuck that hard cock with that tight cunt… fuck that hard cock with that tight juicy hungry little cunt…”

It’s almost a song—repeated often enough any sentence takes on a melody of it own—and it’s almost catchy and I can feel myself wanting to hum along, “Fuck that hard cock… fuck that hard cock with that tight cunt… fuck that hard cunt with that tight juicy hungry cunt…” And the images before go with the song, timed perfectly, each thrust of the shaft matching the accents, the crescendo, the ebbs and flows of the music, plowing through that pussy—my pussy, with that fucking tattoo over it, inviting, marking me, making it clear what sort of girl I am, and then there are flashes all around me, flashes of girls dressed scantily, in various poses, mixed in with the feelings. And those girls are me, but they’re not me, and I can feel Jennie longing to be them, to forget herself in them.

We’re wiping her mind.

The full impact hits me. The overpowering sense of lust that’s threatening to obliterate everything including self-respect and self-preservation, these images, these sensations. They’re serious. They want to wipe me out, turn me into a cock-loving automaton. A year ago, I would have scoffed at the notion as much as I do at human trafficking, a boogeyman I believe is meant to keep us womenfolk in line. Yet here I am, already a slave to my own lust by fucking Biff, and about to be taken further down the rabbit hole!

We’re wiping her mind.

I want to scream, to let out a wild scream to tell everyone that I’m still here, that I’m still me, but it’s like a dream where all your movements are too slow, where you’re moving through molasses. Is this what it feels like to drown, to be submerged in this water that rushes into every nook and every cranny and fills your lungs and you can’t breathe in any air because you are breathing but all the space it taken by this invader that won’t give you what you desperately need and you shout but all that comes out is more water that immediately gets replaced by more water?

Images are coming in faster and faster now, more precise, and I can tell that Jennie is guiding them now, lost as she is in the throes of her ecstasy—she’s not aware of what’s going on, the poor girl, has no sense that her identity is about to disappear, and even if she were, I’m not entirely sure she would not take it for the latest fucked up kink and savor her own oblivion with one more gate crashing orgasm. And I can understand because it’s getting to me too, I’m still subjected to what she’s subjected to, and I can heed the siren call of desire and part of me wants to dive in and drown.

Images float about me, images of flesh and bodies, male and female, faceless, formless, touching themselves, each other, fucking every way possible, as the droning in my ears has gone from a song-like mantra to actual music to a strangely soothing white noise that sounds like I’m listening to multiple voices at once, one on top of each other, some singing, some whispering, shouting, groaning—“Fuck that cunt… I’m a horny little slut… I’m yours, Master… My mouth or my ass?… Please hurt me… Please love me… Please let me obey you…”

And they’re all my voice.

It’s getting to me, how can it not, this subjugation of emotions? I’m responding, nowhere near as strongly as Jennie of course—this is so much her, so much targeted to her weakness, that she’s a moth heading straight into the flame. She was built up by Biff, piece by piece, as the perfect sexpot, ready to drop her panties at the flick of a finger, offer herself to whomever Biff chose, willing to follow her Master to the end of the earth and back, a creature of pure lust, and here she is given lust to spare, in crashing waves.

She’s lost to the world, overwhelmed by everything, by those hands all over our bodies, ghostly hands, some soft, some harsh, groping, tweaking, pressing, poking, invading, while cocks enter us through every opening, and Jennie is on a long never-ending orgasm, moaning and groaning and screaming her pretty head off in time with the crescendo of sound and images that permeate everything.

That’s when the fucking begins.

I know immediately that I’m getting fucked for real, that something hard is pressing into my pussy for real, and Jennie also of course notices but she’s either too far gone to know the difference between getting fucked in the head and getting fucked in the body, or she doesn’t care. She responds by just going even crazier, and I have to admit it feels oh so fucking good.

It starts slowly, a warm hard pressure against my pussy lips—my hot little cunt—vibrating softly, a pressure that eventually enters me slowly and Jennie goes nuts and wants to start impaling herself like mad but of course she can’t and I feel the same need and the same pleasure and I want to feel that hard shaft deep inside me.

Slowly, it pushes in. It’s artificial, I can tell, because really nothing feels like a real human cock—a delicious hard bar of throbbing male flesh to be worshipped like a god—but it’s effective nonetheless and it sinks into me without any difficulty because I’m so wet that I must be drenching whatever I’m lying on.

Jennie snaps when the shaft is fully embedded inside us, and I can feel it, huge and throbbing and hot and cold and all bits in between, filling me like I can’t breathe—and her orgasm reaches a peak and her screams shift into a higher almost impossible register and I can’t tell if it’s pleasure or pain or something else but I know without a shadow of a doubt that she’s not coming back from wherever what’s being done to us is doing—she’s going to drown into that numbing scream of apocalyptic pleasure and it’s with an orgasm that she’ll swallow her last lungful of sanity.

And then the fucking goes into high gear, the shaft pumping in and out, and I can’t concentrate anymore. Jennie takes over, and I just sit back, and watch, and feel, and groan in pleasure.

I sink into Jennie’s fantasy, helpless.

Faceless men are all around me, groping me, pawing me, their hands grasping my breasts, squeezing them hard, mauling them, their hands on my ass, on my pussy, on my legs, caressing and slapping and raking their nails over my sensitive skin, their fingers invading me, in my mouth, in my pussy, in my ass—in and out, in and out—and Jennie’s there with me the whole time, teammates in this blood sport, and she wants to scream some more but as soon as she opens her—our—mouth there’s a cock—two? three?—pressing in and we’re choking but we suck because the taste is amazing and that’s were here to do—SUCK! WORSHIP! OBEY!

And very soon we’re being mounted, our ass raised and penetrated by a large cock that pummels in, the faceless body behind it hammering with arresting strength, every thrust sending us slamming into the cock that’s fucking deep into our throat and we’re bouncing around like a rag doll and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt—I don’t know when I’ve started coming, but I haven’t stopped since, it’s been waves after waves of pleasure—and those faceless bodies, male and female, never give me a chance to recover, never give me a chance to catch my breath, they just take me over the hump over and over again and I let them because I’m drunk on pleasure—SERVE! WORSHIP! OBEY!

After I don’t know how long—did I black out?—I’m on my back, my legs spread impossibly wide and tied to posts all around us, unable to cover myself: an offering, a wanton display, an invitation to just take me and use me without any consideration for what I want because I want it all, I love it all, I’m the girl that will do anything for cock, and there’s another faceless man between my legs plowing into me, fucking me with hard punishing thrusts, over and over, his body a river of muscles, and I soak it all up and Jennie’s in a continual moan now, a drooling idiot, her brain fucked out of her.

I’m glad the bitch is gone. I’m all they have now, those faceless bodies, those strong muscular shapes that seek nothing but to sink their appendages into my soft wet warm flesh. I wrap my legs around the faceless body o n top of me—I’m not tied up anymore it seems—and I pull him close and my breasts are clamoring for his attention. I want him to grab them, hurt them, use them as he sees fit, because they’re his. I’m all his, to do as he wishes. A slave to his needs, his desires, his fancies.

There’s a steady chorus of voices that I’ve been ignoring but that I focus on now, a steady stream of dirty talk, some describing what we’re doing, other whispered voices calling me a slut, a whore, a cum bucket, a cock sleeve, a fuck rag, a slag, a thing, a doll, flesh, meat, holes, and I know they’re right and I bask in their description because it is me, I am all of that and more.

And when they tell me that I’m such a good girl for obeying, for serving, for worshipping, that I will be rewarded, that I will be loved, that I will be saved, that all I have to do is give in and offer myself, my heart, my soul, let it all go for the pleasure of my Masters, for the will of my Masters, for the whims of my Masters, I close my eyes and want to give myself over to the feelings that this faceless man is nailing right into me.

And the man must have picked up on it, because he starts slamming into me harder and I can’t believe he’s not ripping something inside me and tearing me apart for it’s painful but the pain is pleasure and the pleasure is that of being a pussy, nothing more than a pussy—a pussy and a pair of tits, and a mouth and an ass, and the faceless man growls and I can hear him mutter and tell me how good my tight fucking cunt feels wrapped around his cock and that he’s going to fuck me to the bone and that he’s going to ruin me for everyone else and when my pussy is but bloodied flesh he’s going to turn to my ass next and then I’m going to scream for real and I won’t be able to spend a single day of my life without a fucking cock up my tight ass and there’s something in the way he says it that cuts through my lusty haze and even as I pull him close and shudder in my never-ending orgasm I try to focus on the man’s face and even as he starts slapping my tits—fuck that feels so fucking good and my cunt starts squeezing him like mad and what won’t he just come and drown me with his cum?—his features dances and twist and resolve somewhat and then it’s Biff on top of me taking me the way he always loved to do, taking me like he was punishing me with that cocky grin plastered all over his face that told me how pleased he was to sink his cock into the tight juicy cunt of Jennifer Hansen and to show her that really all she was good for was to spread her legs and get fucked.

“You like it, doll?” His voice was unmistakeable—dripping with conceit, like I was doing this because I wanted to, which of course he’s right because I do. “Tell me how much you like me boning you… go on… tell me…”

Jennie squeals like I’ve never heard a human being squeal before—Biff’s presence must be the only thing able to cut through whatever mind-destroying loop she was caught in—and I can hear her scream her agreement and her screams turn into screeches as she snaps and her screams become part of the background again and Jennie is no more and suddenly I’m all alone and Biff is fucking me harder telling he’s going to come all over my face and my tits and that’s just the beginning because that’s how things are going to be for the ret of my life—SERVE! WORSHIP! OBEY!—I’ll be his fucking slave all over again, with no hope of rescue, no chance to escape, nowhere to go, nobody to be but his fuck doll.

I can’t help fuck back against him, but I close my eyes ever as he leans down and bites one of my nipples so hard that I’m sure he’s bit it clean off and it sends an incredible bolt from my clit down to my soul even as I try to wish him away and wander about helplessly looking for something to hold on to and then I open my eyes again and Biff’s still there fucking me hard, his eyes peering into me, but he’s not Biff any longer.

Richard. Richard Sanderson. The nurse at the Institute, the one who helped me, the one who liked me, and he’s smiling at me and it is not a smile like Biff’s but one full of care and lust and confusion and he fucks me just as hard and it feels just as good if not better and I’ve still got my legs wrapped around him and I pull him close and he kisses me and I let him as grateful relief washes over me even as we buck together and he carries me over yet another orgasmic wave and he’s trying to say something and I have to focus and he’s asking me to get on my hands and knees so that he can fuck me from behind like a bitch in heat and that he wants to stare at my ass as he fucks me and he’s coarse and he’s turning me on and there’s that strange feeling inside me like I passed by something important and it’s Richard but it’s not Richard and I’m having difficulty thinking but Richard is key and I pull him close again and kiss him hard this time sending my tongue deep down his throat while I rub my whole body against his and we’re glued like that for minutes—hours? days?—and when I pull back it’s not Richard any longer, nor Biff, but Daniel fucking me.

Daniel! The shock frightens me.

He’s on top of me, staring at me with one of his typical little smiles on his face, the one that says that he knows what I’m thinking even before I do and in this case he may not be wrong.

Daniel! Biff took me away from him. Snatched me away from him, without a second thought. Daniel. My boyfriend. My fiancé. The love of my life, soulmate. I know it’s cliché to say that when I’m young, but you know those things when they happen. You can’t not know them.

Daniel! My heart leaps and the cries and the voices for a second fade away and I really I must have said it out loud and his smiles grows wider and he nods as if I did good, the exact right thing I was supposed to do, and he’s fucking me as well, like everyone has been doing, but he’s careful, controlled, and my body goes along with this new rhythm like it is the most natural in the world, and it is.

Daniel! He proposed to me before Christmas last year—I think it was last year, when are we anyway?—and I said yes. And he was willing to follow me to Texas when I got my Blumburry Fellowship, back in my old life, back when I looked forward to write and become a legal and analyst—whichever one panned out first. But that was before. Daniel, the Blumburry, the law and English, that was all before. Before Biff. Before Biff turned into a fuck doll.

“Hi love,” he says, looking at me deep in the eyes, and it’s his voice, and I melt and I kiss him and hug him and I think I’m either crying or laughing, screaming my head off because the orgasm that rips through me upon hearing his words is more intense than any that have preceded it, and Daniel has to hang on for dear life—his cock never leaving the cozy confines of my pussy—as I buck and waiver and undulate underneath him.

When I come down, I’m no longer on the bed—or whatever it was I was on before. I’m on the sidelines, watching someone—is it me? it looks like me—getting taken over and over again by a swarm of naked faceless men and women, buzzing around that body like vultures around offals, and it’s like a bad porn movie but I can feel the effects of all that sex and I know it’s still me up there but this time it’s subdued, indirect, and it’s not Jennie getting fucked because Jennie’s gone and I don’t know who it is but I know everything is okay because Daniel is next to me and nothing bad can happen when he’s there.

And he’s right there, lying or sitting or floating beside me, and he’s naked but he’s casual about it and he has his gentle smile on his face and the surge of love and relief that courses through me serves to remind me of how lost and alone I have felt since Biff snatched me and fucked with me.

“You didn’t forget about me,” I say. It’s not a question, more a statement of disbelief.

“Never would, love. You know that. I’d look for you to the ends of the earth and beyond.”

And I know he’s right, because I would do exactly the same. “Take me away from here.” The words rush out of my mouth before I can censor them, and I cringe when I hear the need and the ache that laces them. Then again, if anyone can see me weak without judging me, it’s Daniel. He takes me as I am and accept me, the good and the bad. He always has.

“I can’t, love. I’m not really here, and you know that as well as I do. This is all in your head.”

I nod. Of course, he’s right. I look back at the scene in front of us, all around us, the mind-numbing display of sex in all shapes or forms, my body out there bucking and fucking and doing its best impersonation of a porn star on crack, doing everything and asking for more in a voice that is mine but that I can’t recognize. In the background, I can hear instructions, telling me to act this way and that, to be good, to obey, to acknowledge my masters.

“They’re destroying my mind.”

Daniel chuckles, and pulls me close. It feels better than the myriad of orgasms that have racked me earlier, that are already fading away.

“Well, clearly not, because you’re here,” he says.

I pause, look at him. The way he emphasized you gave me an idea. “Jennie.”

Daniel smiles and nods. “She took the brunt of it. The main personality that evolved from what Biff did to you, and that’s what the reprogramming found and destroyed. Pretty thoroughly, too.”

“How do you know about Jennie?”

“Because I’m not really me, silly. I’m really you.”

“Oh.” Of course. “Am I going crazy?”

Daniel laughs, that laugh I remember so well, that laugh that I sought out many nights when needing to feel better about the world, or just because it put a smile on my face like nothing else could.

“Not yet, but if you don’t find somewhere safe to go, I can’t promise anything. Whatever they’ve given you is powerful stuff.”

“I’m safe with you.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t stay. And I’m not safe enough for you. I’m too intertwined with what happened with Biff and all that crap. I’m too close to the surface of your thoughts, too obvious. No, you have to find somewhere safer to hide, somewhere from way back.”

And I know there’s a door behind me now and I can even guess where it led, but I don’t want to go. I know Daniel does not exist here, that this is just my mind trying to save itself, my subconscious trying to understand everything that’s going on around me and everything that’s happening to me and interpreting it in the best way it knows how and I should listen to it—to myself.

“Come with me! Stay with me.” Again, the need, the ache.

“I can’t. But don’t worry, I’ll find you. I won’t give up.”

“Promise?” I’m crying now, shamelessly.

“I promise, love. Now go.”

And I go while I have the strength, after kissing Daniel and avoiding the sight of my body fornicating away doing things that I did not know human bodies could do, blocking out the sounds and the voices that are getting louder and telling me to listen to them and obey them and submit to them and I can feel the pull of that body out there, getting overwhelmed with lust and pleasure and pain and sweet oblivion and in a flash I’m through the door and I slam it behind me.

Silence, except for birds in the distance.

I knew what I would find. It’s my old room, back home, the room where I grew up, decorated like I remember. I had forgotten most of the details, but never forgot the feelings. There’s a beautiful Maine early Fall light outside. And I know in my heart that this is how my room was the months after Mom split up from my father and had kicked him out. She told me that I would always be safe here and of course she was right. This is home, in a way deeper than I can ever hope to express.

I crawl onto my old bed, onto the handcrafted quilt that came from my Mom’s mother, and hug Steady, my large plushie turtle, who has seen me through so many childhood crises. I know I’m safe, curled up in a ball, clutching Steady, knowing that Mom will eventually bring me some hot coco before dinner, while outside the door the sounds of unholy fornication continue unabashed.

I fall asleep.