Captured Souls (8 page)

“Fine lot of good this does me,” he said.

“What do you mean? It’s a great article.”

“I’m stuck here with you. I’ll never get to enjoy my growing fame.”

“Of course you’ll enjoy your fame.”

“No I won’t. You’ll always have me all trussed up like a turkey, ready to destroy me with the click of a button.”

“Oh, Scott, don’t be silly. We will learn to trust each other, you’ll see.” I wrapped my arms around him. His pushed me away, standing up. He grabbed his scotch and drank again.

“Trust, huh? Is that all?” he scoffed. “Sure, I’ll trust you. And you can trust me. Deal.” He stuck out his hand. I took it and he squeezed it hard. “Look, Doctor, I don’t know what you want from me but…” he leaned very close, “…I’ll do my best to deliver.”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath and I almost sighed in relief, but now was not the time.

“Don’t worry, Scott, things will change. You’ll see.”

As I made my notes, I remarked that it was good to see the real Specimen 1 back again. The subservient dog was just not his style.

Specimen 1

Weary, I sank into the warmth of my pillows with no other thoughts than to get as much sleep as I could in the least amount of time possible.
 

Once again, I woke in the night to find him standing over me. It wasn’t as before—his stance was relaxed, even resigned. The dim light from the streetlights through the sheers gleamed in the reflective stare of his blue eyes. Strangely blue in the darkness, in fact. Like a scene out of
Sin City
. I wondered if the electromagnetic energies were affecting the pigment in his eyes. Regardless, the way he looked at me with such great sorrow piqued my interest.
 

I perched on my elbows, staring at him, wondering if my own eyes glowed with the same intensity. The curtains wafted as the air-conditioning kicked in. It finally seemed to be the correct moment to speak, but he turned and passed through the doorway into the hall. Soundless, his tall, naked body a shadow in the streetlights, he walked with a purpose away from me. I called after him as I swung my legs around on the bed, making the effort to rise, but he shut the door after him. The sound of his footsteps down the stairs faded away. I watched him make his way through the house and back to his room on the monitor on my cell phone. He didn’t return and I didn’t chase him.

I’m unclear about his motivation. Perhaps he still had longing for me. Perhaps he was formulating some kind of plan of his own. He was my intellectual equal in many ways. I’ll have to be certain to keep an ample supply of his favorite liquors to embrace him in a daze thick enough to keep his curiosity at bay.

Of course, it could have all been a dream. After all, the man is supposed to be locked tightly in his chambers with no chance of escape. Somehow, he found a loophole.

Journal

Just as I suspected: After the incident the previous night, I devoted a few hours of time to reviewing some of the security footage from the cameras installed around the house. There he was. Specimen 1, trying the locked doors, prying with coat hangers and other objects when I wasn’t around. He rummaged for keys in my offices and laboratories, opening and shutting drawers, crawling under desks, and knocking around for secret panels. He found lots of keys for various things, but whatever keys he was looking for were not within his grasp. He had no luck finding my many squirrel nests. But he was still curious.

His escape in the night had been a series of loopholes and missteps on my own account. I had forgotten to lock the tunnel from the basement to the first floor through the dining hall. Various skeleton keys, and I guess his own deft skill at breaking and entering, had enabled him to get from his room to my room. However, why didn’t he just run away? If he’d gone so far, why didn’t he just climb out one of the second-floor windows?

Perhaps he thought the windows were rigged. I did have scattered booby traps throughout the house, areas where touching a window or a door would result in an electrical shock. Of course, he was well aware of my bracelet and other devices, and perhaps had figured that if he tried to escape I’d just torture him further or even kill him.

So I had to top up the booze and add a formula to every bottle in the house to keep him less curious about everything.

Out of all my specimens, Specimen 1 has proven to be the most difficult to balance. Yes, I’m working with new technology, but his moody artistic temperament is more complicated than that of others I’ve worked on. His brain is bursting with intelligence and it’s proving difficult to tame.

I will persevere to find the balance between adoration and obedience.

Specimen 2

While in my office transcribing notes, an image in one of the cameras caught my attention. It was Specimen 2, sitting up and looking around. He was tugging at the shackles, shaking his head as he tried to scream around the ball gag.

I removed my lab coat and checked myself in the mirror on the back of my office door. A blue T-shirt matched the blue contacts I wore that day. My favorite stretchy jeans clung to my ankles. My feet were bare.

I slipped on a pair of black leather, one-inch pumps and retreated to the room where Specimen 2 was wrestling with the chains.

“Hey, honey,” I said as I approached him. Spit foamed around the ball gag. He stopped flopping around so that I could unbuckle it.

“What’s going on here?” he cried out. “What the hell is all this? Fuck, I’m thirsty.”

I went to the fridge on the far side of his bedroom suite and retrieved a small bottle of water. I also retrieved a couple of tea towels. In between his moans and groans, I held the bottle for him, which he slobbered on with his numb lips and tongue. His mewling like an animal was peculiar.

“You fell asleep, honey,” I told him. He shook his head while continuing to drink. I used the other tea towel to wipe where he had urinated on himself. Pulling away the soiled sheets and blankets, I explained the situation to him.

“We were playing fetish games. You know how much you like the handcuffs. You fell asleep like that and so I left you.”

“No…no…” he shook his head, “…there’s more, I think. I dreamed…”

“Yes, you caught some sort of fever. A virus that’s been going around. You likely caught it at one of your races. All those people spreading their germs everywhere. And incubation can take up to twenty-one days.”

“No…no.”

I pushed him back, rubbing his shoulders and arms, trying to ease the ache from the shackles that still contained him.

He began to moan again, a low, guttural sobbing chant. It was weird and I didn’t like it one bit. The ball gag was returned to use and though he valiantly fought me, I managed to get him buckled in once more.

“You’ve been ill. In fact, I can show you the charts.” On his dresser lay a few folders full of graphs and forms, charting the progress of his illness and the prognosis, combined with a quarantine period. There were clippings of newspaper warnings about conducting a quality quarantine so as not to create an epidemic. Of course, I had prepared the charts months before, much as I had similar sets of documents for all of my specimens. It was only a simple matter of adding date and sex, and most other information was the same.

“See, this shows the approximate time period when you may have contacted the virus. The strains of the virus are discussed in these papers here.” I waved a stack of papers with photographs. Since he was chained and gagged, he had no choice but to look at the various papers I flashed at him. There was no point in letting him read them. This episode, too, would be another dream segment when next he woke.

After I took the soiled bedding into the laundry room and put it into the triple loader I had installed for just such tasks, I returned to the bedroom. From the closet, I took a long leather hammock-type contraption and hooked the four corners to his chains. I winched the chains very tight, which lifted his body above the bed. There was no way I would attempt to winch Specimen 1, as he was nearly 200 pounds and the weight wouldn’t be good for the wood posters of the bed, although the posters would likely sustain him. However, for Specimen 2, with the metal bedframe and his lithe body, it was a breeze to hoist him up.

I finished pulling away the soiled bedding from underneath him. I wiped down the plastic sheet with an environmentally friendly lemon-salt mixture and rinsed it well. Once I wiped it dry, it was quite the task pulling fitted clean sheets underneath his flailing, angry body. Even though he was suspended slightly above me, he tried his damnedest to hit or rock against me. Poor little triathlete. The chains were impossibly tight and he could barely wiggle two inches in any direction.

Instead of knocking him out, I wanted to observe his strength when awake. Although a small man, he was very strong. I was gauging if the metal bed and the studs through the walls and into the beams would be enough to hold him when I wasn’t near to observe him.

To keep him calm or perhaps to agitate him, I spoke in a low, reassuring voice while I set about my duties.

“You’ll have to stay here for a while. You’re quite ill and since I’m a doctor, I’ve arranged to care for you while you’re under quarantine. In fact, you will have to be here some time so your apartment is being packed up for storage, except for your racing bikes, some clothes and a few other things you might need.”

There was much commotion, with the chains rattling and the hammock swinging. I had finished with the bedding and set to work lowering him back down. Since he was so agitated, I had to sedate him to calm him down.

Journal

It took one week to program Specimen 2.
 

Once he was ready to function on his own again, it was time for him to meet Specimen 1.

If Specimen 1 had suspected that there might be someone else, he had never said anything.

“Scott, I have something to share with you,” I told him one day as I went into his office. Scott spun around in his chair.

“I hate it when you say that. It usually means that something isn’t going to go well for me,” he said.

“On the contrary, you may find this interesting, if not delightful. I’ve added another male to our lifestyle. Perhaps you can even be friends.”

“Huh?” Specimen 1 was clearly confused. “I’m not gay…”

“Oh, you don’t have to fuck him or anything, unless you want to. But I wanted you to know that I’ve been spending less time with you as I’ve been preparing a new Sp…friend for us. I want you to meet him later on today.”

“Not that I have a choice.”

I laughed. “No, not that you have a choice.”

“So, what’s up?”

“We’ll all have dinner together and then we can get to know each other. I’ll see you at six in the dining room.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Specimen 1 said as he turned back to his work.

“And your novel?”

“Working on rewrites. Will be asking you to send it soon.”

“Excellent…”

Journal

Dinner was…interesting.

Specimen 1 was seated at six in the dining hall, which was up on the main floor of the house and only used once in a while. I had a tunnel from the back stairs entrance into the dining hall. The doors were all locked, no windows—there’s no way for the boys to escape.
 

The dining room was one of my favorite rooms. The mahogany table was long enough to seat sixteen on either side, with the hostess on the end. There was a lengthy side bar and several tall locked cabinets with china and serving dishes. Every item in the room was heavy and reinforced with locks, as it could be so easy for a specimen to get uppity and start to trash the place. I’d been down that road before and didn’t relish traveling it again.

I led in Specimen 2, who had decided to be feisty, which meant that I had to put a shock collar on him to make him behave. Of course, after the first shock, he became quiet and didn’t bother attempting escape or tackling me. I had dressed him in a yellow T-shirt and jeans. His brown hair was a bit longish since he’d not had a cut since he’d come here.

Specimen 1 looked very handsome, wearing a casual blue shirt that brought out the vibrancy of his eyes, his blond hair slightly gelled into the little spikes that I liked. He probably wore faded jeans, though I couldn’t see under the table.

“Scott, here’s our new companion. This is Peter, our resident triathlete,” I said holding Specimen 2 by a leash attached to his collar.

Specimen 1, born and bred with English manners, stood up and approached Specimen 2 with his hand out.

“Welcome, Peter.”
 

Specimen 2 turned away from Specimen 1’s outstretched hand. “What the hell is this?” Specimen 2 yelled. “Now I have to service you too? What the hell is going on?”

I tugged at Specimen 2’s leash. “Calm down or you’ll get another shock.”

“I’m like you, old chap,” said Specimen 1. “I’m here because Miriam took a liking to me, much as I guess she has to you. I didn’t know you were here until a couple of hours ago.”