23. Jaxcen
Chapter twenty-three
Jaxcen
I t’s happening again. I can’t move. I’m here but I’m not. My body feels heavy yet weightless, and I’m frozen. Trapped inside myself. Inside a dark place that wants to swallow me whole.
Sometimes, bursts of sounds come to me. Voices, male, yet I can’t make out what they say. Any time I try to open my eyes, I can’t. It’s like my lids are sewn shut, but I know they aren’t. I’ve been here before. I know what this is.
It feels like hours that I try to break through the thick haze that keeps me under, and when I finally do, I want to return to the nothingness of the drug induced sleep I’ve been in. It feels safer there.
I blink rapidly, letting my eyes adjust as I lay still, not wanting to alert anyone that I’m awake. The sterile room surrounding me is white, cold, and barren. My eyes find the window, the familiar sight taking me back to when I was younger.
The grates over the windows allow light to come in, but no way of getting out. I used to spend so much time looking at the framing, analysing how I could find a way to break through.
There’s no escaping this place though.
“Good morning.” A male nurse enters the room, and I scurry to sit up, making my head spin. “Careful there, Miss Summers. You’re still medicated.”
I glare at him, I think. It’s hard to tell with how numb I feel.
“I need to leave,” I slur, hating the way I sound.
“You can leave after your treatment.” He smiles, his dark moustache looking like a caterpillar as he approaches me. “Let’s go to the bathroom, hey. Time to freshen up a bit.”
I shake my head and mutter a no, but he easily takes my arm and leads me off the bed.
“I don’t wanna go pee,” I slur again and he chuckles.
“Yeah you do. You just can’t feel it yet.” He eases me across the room and flicks the light on inside the small bathroom, its fluorescent bright, hurting my eyes.
I flinch away, yet he still leads me in, and before I know it, he turns me, lifts my gown and helps me sit back.
“Where are my undies?” I ask, my head feeling heavy as I try to lift it higher to look at the man as he lowers to his haunches.
“You weren’t wearing any when you came in.” He lifts my gown and peers between my legs. “Besides, you don’t need them here. They just get in the way.”
I feel it then, the brush of his fingers touching between my legs.
“W-what are you doing?”
I lift my hand to try and push him away, but it’s too heavy, and flops back to my side.
“Helping you go to the toilet.” He smiles at me, and I think I frown, because I don’t know why he’d need to touch me there for me to pee. “Can you feel that?”
I do. I feel it, and it doesn’t feel good. I don’t want him touching me there, and I know, even with how dazed I feel, that the press of his fingers to my nub is not needed to help me.
“Stop. Please,” I slur, and he just smiles up at me. “I will stop once you’ve gone to the toilet.”
The hot ache that engulfs my chest every time I cry seeps past the fog clouding me, but not enough to actually get tears to fall. Yet inside, I want to scream.
Just pee, Jaxcen. Then he’ll stop.
Not sure if he meant what he said, I know there’s only one way to find out, so I close my eyes, try to ignore how he touches me and focus on emptying my bladder.
It takes a bit, his fingers distracting me more than I’d like, but eventually, the hot stream starts flowing from me, and he stops, smiling at me like I’ve done a good job.
Mr whoever you are. I would kindly like to take a pen and stab your eye.
When I’m done, I try to clean myself up as best I can, before the perverted nurse helps me up and back out to my room.
My eyes are focused on my bed, so I get a little disoriented when he steers me in a different direction that takes us out of my room and up the passage.
Christmas music. I hear it playing softly through the speakers, but when I glance around, there’s not a decoration in sight. All the bedroom doors are open except for one, and when we slowly pass by, I see the lone silhouette of a female sitting over at the window.
“Where is everyone?” I slur again, trying to look up at the man, but that task combined with walking is all too hard, and I drop my head onto his arm as he leads me.
“It’s only you and Frankie this time of year. Everyone else has gone home for Christmas.”
Frankie? Is that her? The woman sitting in the window that I saw?
I think about asking, but by the time I work the words to my lips, we are walking through another door, and the scent hits me, having more of an effect on me than what I see.
Dr Xavier.
I’ll never forget his scent. It reminds me of stepping into a dentist surgery, mixed with something smokey, like cigars.
I try to stop my feet from moving, but the man leading me just tugs a little harder, forcing me inside to sit me down on a seat at the small round dining table.
It reminds me of one I’ve sat at recently.
Devon’s .
Memories come at me then, the dark eyes that terrify most, yet set me on fire. The lips that taste and nibble at me like I’m delectable. Hands that dominate me, yet have the gentlest touch.
I wanna go home.
“There we go, Miss Summers,” the male nurse says before leaning over to get in my line of sight. “You have fun with Dr Xavier, and I’ll be back to get you later.” He bites his lip as two of his fingers press to mine and sink into my mouth. “Hmmm. I have a special treat for you tonight.”
“Thank you, Hamish. I’ll call for you once we are done.”
Dr Xavier’s voice saves me from this perverted nurse, but who’s going to save me from him?
My lazy gaze moves across the two place settings and the bowl of salad in the middle of the table before Dr Xavier’s looming form takes the seat next to mine and I slowly turn my eyes to him.
“You’ve gone and gotten yourself in a spot of trouble, haven’t you, Jaxcen?” he asks, but I don’t respond. “And now we have to fix you. Make you compliant again. Make sure you know your place.”
I’m glaring. Well, I hope I am. I want to, but I can’t feel my face enough to know if it’s working.
“You know, Eddie was prepared to take you the way I left you. He’s been very aware of the treatment we provide. As is your father. How do you think your mother became so compliant?”
I frown. I think.
Did my mum come here?
“Presley’s a different story. She was obedient from the beginning, doing as your parents asked, but you, Jaxcen, have a way of doing the opposite. Look at what happened when you put your nose in where it didn’t belong as a child. You were given clear instructions not to speak of what happened in Sunday school, yet that’s exactly what you did. And you thought you were helping that girl, didn’t you? You thought she wanted it to stop, but she got angry at you, didn’t she. ”
I gulp, remembering something I don’t want to.
“And when you took the secrets outside the room, it wasn’t only you that was punished, was it.”
Tears, I feel them burning the back of my eyes, which must mean the medication is starting to wear off.
Dr Xavier must notice too, because he pushes a glass of juice towards me.
“Drink up, Jaxcen.”
My gaze drops to the juice. Orange I think. And everything inside me is screaming not to drink it.
He always asked me to drink the juice at the beginning of our sessions. It took me too long to realise what was happening. I was too young and naive. I thought it was the hypnosis that dragged me into a dark mental cage, trapping me within, but it was the drink. Or at least the drug inside the drink.
I could feel it all. I just couldn’t move. Couldn’t make a noise.
“Drink the juice,” he orders again, but I’m still caught in my memories. Still caught in the nightmare.
It started out simple. Him talking to me softly, making me feel like I was safe, only to stand over me, take his dick out of his pants, and wank it over my head before ejaculating on my face.
After a few sessions of that, the touching began. Over my clothes at first, but then he went under, and I couldn’t talk to say no. I couldn’t move to push him away. All I could do was experience every second while screaming inside my head and pounding my subconscious to wake up.
I tried so hard to be good so he’d send me home, and eventually he did. I got handed back to my dad and my sessions became monthly outpatient sessions.
I’d go every month and for a while he did nothing. It’s like I forgot how much of a monster he was. I figured because I was an outpatient, that sort of treatment was over.
I was wrong.
“Drink it!” he yells this time, becoming impatient, and I manage to shake my head and slur.
“No.”
“Jaxcen, Jaxcen, Jaxcen,” he sighs. “For this treatment to work, I need you paralysed.”
I flinch as he lurches forward, taking the drink and moving to my side.
“You’re more experienced now, Jaxcen, so we have to increase the intensity of the treatment. Make sure it sticks this time so you don’t step out of line again.”
Fisting my hair, he tugs my head back, and a whimper escapes me as his hard hazel eyes bore into mine.
“Open this pretty mouth,” he demands, releasing my hair to grip my jaw, the action opening my mouth. “Drink it.”
He pours the juice into my mouth, and I start choking, juice flowing over the sides of my mouth and down each side of my neck as he holds my mouth open, and although I fight it, my need to breathe has me gulping down mouthfuls of juice, and I’m almost certain I’m about to drown.