The Doctor's Casebook Pt. 05 Ch. 02

She straightened her posture, wiping her tears with the palm of her hand, and then she smiled patiently at me. The change in her attitude was too quick for me to follow. "Sure, Master," she said, gracing me with a radiant smile that made her face achingly cute. "Where do you want to go?" Suddenly, I felt like I was the one acting strangely, even though she was the nude in the room.

I swallowed heavily and took another deep breath. "What's your name?"

She batted her eyes seductively. "Bambi."

I felt my brow furrow in confusion. "Bambi? No shit?"

She cocked her head slightly, still smiling. "What? You don't like Felix Salten?" she asked. "What do YOU want my name to be? You can call me anything you want, Master."

I considered that. "How about your real name? What do your parents call you?"

Suddenly, she winced and put her hand to her head. "My ..." She jerked, doubling over slightly in what appeared to be intense pain.

I strode to her and again took her by the shoulders. "Are you okay?"

She straightened back up, shaking her head, her hair tossing left and right. "I ... I don't want to think about the past, Master. Please. Please, can I give you a blowjob now? It won't be messy! I'll swallow it all, I promise! Please?"

"No," I answered firmly. "Later. Now, where are your clothes?"

She looked around uncertainly. "I ... I don't know. I haven't been allowed to wear any clothes since I got here."

I took off my coat and held it out for her, and she dutifully slipped her arms into the sleeves. Then, I turned her toward me and zipped it up. Fortunately, she was significantly shorter than I was, and the garment covered her butt and crotch, though barely (if you'll excuse the implication). I took her hand and led her out of the room and down the hall.

Freeman, the private dick, was standing outside the closed office door. "He said he didn't want to be disturbed," he told me in a tone that insinuated that whatever the doc was doing, he didn't approve.

"Well, we're going to disturb him, anyway," I said firmly. The man just shrugged and moved aside.

I took two steps into the room before coming to a screeching halt, then I spun around and physically turned the girl back toward the door. Thank God she hadn't seen. Casting one last look back over my shoulder, I propelled her out and firmly closed the door again. I was shaking. Looking at Freeman, I could tell that he could see the shock and uncertainty in my eyes. I took a deep breath before addressing my new acquaintance. "I want you to go with Mr. Freeman here. He's going to take you to a van outside." She seemed suddenly panicked, so I quickly added: "I'll be right there, I promise. Some other men will be there, too. Please, just do as they say, and I give you my word that I'll be back with you in just a few minutes. This is an order from your master. Do you understand?"

She looked pleadingly into my eyes. "Do I have to have sex with them?"

I glanced toward Freeman, but he was no help. His eyes had widened in shock. "No," I told her. "You will NOT have sex with them."

"Not even blowjobs?"

I sighed. "No, you will not give them blowjobs."

Freeman cleared his throat. "But you will let us take a picture of your face," he stated.

She ignored him after a single dismissing glance and looked questioningly at me. I nodded. "Yes. I want you to let them take your picture."

"And fingerprints," the man added hastily.

"And fingerprints," I said in exasperation. "Now, get out of here. I'll be there in just a minute." But I grabbed his shoulder as he turned away, and I put my lips next to his ear to whisper a question. "Who the hell is Felix Salten?"

He backed away slightly. "Fuck if I know. Is he somebody famous?" I shrugged. "Look him up on your phone," he said.

I grimaced. "I don't have a smart phone," I told him. But he was already leading my new "slave" away. Trying my best to prepare myself, I turned and walked back into that office and approached the room's single chair.

"Doc?" I said in as steady a voice as I could muster. "What the fuck are you doing, doc?"

The good doctor was sitting in the unconscious man's lap, straddling him, pushed tightly against him, chest-against-chest. It would have been absolutely, utterly obscene, except that they were both fully clothed, though the man's shirt was in tatters. Both of the doc's hands were clutching something that was sitting just to the right of the man's nose. To make the scene even more bizarre, the guy's head was tilted backward to the point that I was afraid his neck might break; and it was being held in that posture by several wraps of duct tape that were strung from his forehead to the back of the chair.

"You'll have to excuse me, Rory. I'm a little busy here. Almost done, though."

"Uh ... doc ..." But suddenly, it dawned on me what Herringwick was holding, and I backed away from them, one step, then another, until my back hit the counter and cabinet behind me. Something fell. I heard glass break, but I didn't care. My blood ran cold, and I could feel a tingle of fear in my arms and hands and fingers. Slowly, slowly, the doctor began withdrawing the hypodermic needle from the man's eye. And the needle just kept coming ... and coming. Three inches long ... four ... five ... six. Did they even MAKE needles that long? And what on earth FOR? For doing THIS? Everything began twisting slightly, the room, the spectacle before me; and I took a deep breath to make the world stop spinning and hopefully keep from puking.

The doc got up from his unorthodox seat and turned toward me, smiling, like nothing at all was out of the ordinary. "Now, Rory. All done. What is it you wanted?" He walked over to another counter, wrapped a heavy cloth around the hypo, then he leaned heavily against it until the needle snapped off it. He wrapped the two pieces in the cloth, and then he put it into his pocket.

"What ... what did you do to that man?"

He gave a shrug so slight that only one of his shoulders moved. "I lobotomized him."

"Lo ... bot ..." I couldn't even force myself to form the word.

"I went over the top of the eye, in through the orbital cavity, and I injected pure alcohol into his frontal lobe. They didn't use chemicals in the earliest days of the procedure. They simply used a steel probe. 'Ice pick lobotomy,' they called it. But I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything, or that there was any chance the brain cells might begin to repair themselves. I needed to make sure it was permanent." Nonchalantly, he picked up and a scalpel and began cutting the duct tape, being none too gentle about pulling the stuff off of his victim.

"Why ... why didn't you just let him die when we first came into the house?"

The corners of his mouth twitched upward for just a moment. "Where's the fun in that? I wanted the punishment to fit the crime. By the way, if you really want to know about Thorazine, look it up online under "chemical lobotomy." That's what he did to his victims: the last one he took in Providence. And to Loretta. And, at least at first, I'm sure he did it to the other girl who I sent you to get." He grinned. "Tell me ... is she your sex slave now?"

I had been regaining my breath, but that seemed to knock it out of me again. "You ... You set me up!"

He grunted a little huff of a laugh and finished stripping the tape off of his victim. Without it holding him, the inert body slid forward and flopped onto the cold tile surface of the floor. He ignored it and stuffed the balled-up tape into an empty plastic shopping bag, adding the expended hypodermic needle as an afterthought.

"What's going to happen to him?" I asked.

He shrugged again. "For the rest of his life, he'll never set foot outside of a mental institution. He's completely incapable of caring for himself, or of ever again making a decision on his own."

I winced. "If he doesn't KNOW, then why ...?"

"Oh, he'll know, alright. That's the magic of it. He'll be just as intelligent as he's always been. The knowledge is still there ... he just can't USE it. It's all about control. That's why lobotomies were used in the first place ... to control the patients who had been institutionalized. Can't have that nasty old 'free will' getting patients upset or out of hand." He paused and considered. "No, Doctor Prokonov will remember the people whose lives he ruined. He will know exactly what's been done to him. And I wish him a long, long life."

"Geez, doc! You're kinda' sick, you know that?"

He smiled at me. "You're just now figuring that out?" And he turned and walked out of the room without looking back. I stumbled as I followed him.

Freeman once again intercepted us with his argument about "proper chains of evidence," but I finally convinced him that what had just happened to Prokonov was far worse than anything the legal system could possibly do, death sentence included. He accepted my word for it, and we followed the doc, who was already sitting beside Loretta in one of the two vans they had brought.

"Oh, by the way," the detective told me confidentially, "Felix Salten was an early Twentieth Century novelist. Austrian." That didn't make any sense to me until he added: "He wrote Bambi." He stopped and drew me aside. "And your girlfriend is Lauren Chedworthy. Went missing two months ago. Honor student at William and Mary. Cheerleader, even. The family is old money on Long Island ... she was home for the holidays when she disappeared. Anyway, there's a million-dollar reward. You led us here, so there's no question that it's all yours."

I was just a little tired of being stunned by seemingly endless and unconnected revelations. I pulled open the side door to the van and crawled in beside the girl who was wearing my coat (and only my coat), and she immediately grabbed my arm and tried to work her body as close to mine as she could possibly get. She leaned up toward my ear, and I dutifully lowered my head to hers.

"Master," she whispered. "That woman in the seat in front of us ... Loretta. She's been drugged. I was like that when I first came here! It's horrible! I can't even describe what it's like! I was ... empty. Hollow. Alone. Awful. Please, Master. Please, can we help her?"

I patted her hand, then couldn't help myself as I smoothed a curl away from her face. That only resulted in more familiar pangs of guilt. "The doctor is going to take care of Loretta now. They're lovers, those two."

She snuggled her face into my shoulder and sighed. "Like us," she said quietly. "Oh, Master, I love you SO much!" She gave another happy-sounding exhalation. "Please promise me that you'll never make me leave you!"

Oh, fuck. What was I going to do?

TO BE CONTINUED