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“What do you think you’re doing?” Helena froze as she felt fingers on her skin, brushing the thick, lush fabric of her pants. It was a short, tentative touch over a navy-blue layer of clothing but it sent a shock wave through her system and forced her to shut her eyes for a moment too long. A most fleeting smirk was on Gemma’s lips and when Helena examined Gemma’s expression, it was smooth and composed as ever; only a touch of commiseration stained it.
“I’m sorry, Miss Eagan. You just look so tired today… desolate. I couldn’t help myself. Is everything okay?”
Gemma had never attempted anything of the sort. Sometimes she would ask questions—How is the weather today? (Cold) What have you eaten for breakfast? (Eggs) Have you seen Mark? (No) What is so special about knowing the color of my mother’s eyes? (I don’t know)—questions that Helena would never answer or entertain. The touch was reckless, and under the oppressive white light, humming, blinding, and making her head swim to the point that threatens to bring on a migraine, Helena could not think; could not pull herself together and present a perfectly chiseled corporate image.
Today hadn’t been different from any other day. At 4:30AM, the alarm clock went off. After two minutes of quiet contemplation—the kind where she stayed very still, tried to not move a muscle and replicated the weight of something more tranquil than sleep could ever be, until the breath she was holding threatened to either turn her blue or bludgeon through her lungs like frightened doves—Helena got out of bed and started the day with two hours of swimming. Afterwards, her vitals were taken, minutely recorded—these days, she did this herself, despite having hated it as a child and well through her teenage years.
“This better not be repeated, Gemma,” Helena said, voice low, yet constrained to the point where it might break, “I’m not your friend. I’m your superior. Now, give me your arm, I need to take your blood again.”
At the sound of Helena’s remark, her attempt at assertion, Gemma worked hard again to contain a smirk. Slowly, she’s slipping, Gemma thought. She stretched out her arm towards Helena, who worked the needle with precision, with almost no tremble to her hand. Gemma kept her gaze steady, looking directly into Helena’s eyes and vowing to not waver even as Helena had to break contact to push the needle in. Neither of them twitched at the breakage of flesh, at the blood flowing. As Helena looked up from her work, barrel half full in her hand, she met Gemma’s stare and faltered, looking off to the side and maintaining it there.
After labelling the vial and gathering the medical records she had come into Gemma’s room to update, Helena moved towards the door to leave, her movements slow and methodical, as if feigning disinterest.
“Goodbye, Miss Eagan. I do like it when it’s you coming down. It’s nice to see a change, I get tired of white lab coats. You have quite a refreshing sense of style... Though it is a bit peculiar—prince-like, I would say.”
Gemma knew the bluntness would disarm her. She reasoned Helena wasn’t quite accustomed to it, expecting instead submission from her subjects; Helena was so uptight and prissy, every movement so oddly restrained that it made her doll-like, as if you would need to pull a cord at her back to reanimate the body. Surprise and confusion quite befit her, or so Gemma thought—it brought color to her pale cheeks, and her eyes seemed to snap alive, human and no longer like bottomless wells, so hard to look into.
Gemma had always liked flowers. Spending long hours in the garden, tending to the soil, brought her back to her own body like nothing had ever done before. Thistles were her favourite; she sowed them every fall, keeping a simple arrangement of them in the kitchen throughout spring and summer. Mark was never very fond of them, thought them boring and desolate, not to mention they were prickly and hard to handle. Gemma loved the purple ones best, and found that handling them with care as to not get nicked was an enjoyable part of the process. The prickles adorning the main flower and its leaves were as if an armour, and you had to know where exactly it wanted to be touched, where exactly you could break the stem.
Gemma could draw them almost exactly from memory. She looked at the thistle-down she’d sketched and colored the day before and then stuck to the side wall of her bedroom, close to the bed where she did most of her thinking. Lumon did allow her one or two play-things. She had paper and colored pencils; and a large selection of novels to entertain herself with when she wasn’t doing their bidding—room upon room upon room of restless darkness; they all haunted her dreams, but every image her subconscious mind was able to conjure did not help her decipher what had been done inside. Mostly, shadows hovered in near darkness; slight ones and large, looming ones that she could attribute to the grating presence of Dr. Mauer. Only one body was bathed in enough light as to make out its features—Helena Eagan’s, her face shifting with dancing shadows; scared and helpless, enraged and vindictive, helpful and cloying, and most often, empty as a forgotten shell, grey eyes mute and devoid of thought, of history; plain as a blank page.
#
The road was icy as Helena stepped out of the car, nearly causing her to slip. She undressed her gloved, trembling, hands, wanting to feel the press of ice cold wind on the damp skin. For weeks she had been attempting to find a way to get to the severed floor whilst still herself, still Helena, but access to certain rooms had been further limited to her after the fiasco at Woe’s Hollow. Without access to the Glasgow block, she was helpless.
Obligement sessions had been endless and brutal anyway, allowing her little time for much else. Her mind had been clouded with a strange white mist; she had certainly been well behaved and not many perverse thoughts of sympathy and desire had taken root of late, but her dreams were a different story altogether; she had not shared them with her doctor, so there was little chance of them being smothered without an external push, without punishment and repentance.
Amidst the white mist there were memories of touch, rough hands on porcelain smooth skin, red light burning in a small tent, the depraved and vicious images that overflow in nighttime.
She knew that she should, but she did nothing to be rid of them, and instead searched in every corner for a way to bring them back.
I walked into the cave of my own mind and there I tamed the four tempers. Should you tame them as I did mine, then the world shall become but your appendage.
These words Helena repeated to herself devoutly as she stepped into the building, like a mantra made to sooth the deviltry burrowing through her mind, staining the benevolent white mist, converting them to fury, agitation, revolt, delirium.
When she stepped inside the elevator, Helena attempted to stay conscious through sheer will, stabbing her nails into her palm until the skin stung.
Gemma walked circles in the small room around Helena, but Helena did not order her to sit down. Gemma was answering every question promptly— How did the Wellington feel today? (Cloying) Does Allentown still make you nauseous? (Yes) Which one do you gravitate to more? (This one) How was the Siena? (I don't know)
Gemma was well behaved enough, she always had been in Helena’s eyes, but she could notice in her voice a sort of mischief laced with irony, as if answering questions and giving out her arm to draw blood were all done in carefully constructed spite and mocking. It did not compare to the docility and subservience Kier and father would have approved of, delighted in.
“Are you mocking me? Perhaps you should like a visit to the break room, Gemma?” Helena let this out in one quick breath, rage, once held tight behind a doubly locked door, spilling out in one single, uncontrolled surge.
“The Break Room? I don’t think I have visited that one, Miss Eagan.”
Helena was bereft. At the tone and attitude, but mostly: How could Dr. Mauer never have taken her there? Never have had to teach this woman a lesson? Was he so blind by his obvious infatuation that he could not see the way she played him and everybody in her care?
The break room, as always, was dark and stifling, a room designed for two or three people at most to sit or stand comfortably. Helena had never been there to teach lessons, although she knew her body had visited it to receive them. She had also been there as herself as it was being built; she had followed the whole process, knew exactly what its purposes were, had experienced its methodologies and outcomes firsthand.
She ordered Gemma to sit down, which Gemma did with a smile, placing her hands on top of the table where Helena told her to place them.
Helena did not not know if she was allowed to serve punishment, to remind one of one’s place in Kier’s garden, but, as far as she knew, there were no cameras in this room, so she hoped no one would know she had been there to begin with.
“Repeat the words that appear in front of you, please.”
And Gemma did.
“Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me, and only in me shall their stain live on. I am thankful to have been caught, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is sorry, and that is all I am.”
Gemma repeated these words twice, thrice, with not an inkling of confusion, discomfort or combativeness. If anything, boredom was the sole sentiment that marked her speech. It unnerved Helena. One should be meek, obedient, feel every word as if prayer. In Gemma’s mouth, the words rang hollow and profane.
“Again.”
After a sigh, Gemma repeated the compunction, and then, “How many times do I have to say it?”
“As many as it takes. Until you feel it.”
“And how does one know if I am feeling it? It feels rather arbitrary.”
Helena knew that it was; she knew that what you had to do was to break a badly behaved spirit, and then the flood that would follow from one’s lips would be truly apologetic; the sentiment would be forged within your centre, trembling, wailing, and then take root until it left your mouth in honest prayer. It had been so since she was five.
“Again.”
#
The words spilt from her mouth as before. This is ridiculous, Gemma thought. It was a senseless, childish punishment. After repeating the statement a dozen times and twice that, she began to see the scope of it, the purpose, and as everything else in this place, it was torture by breaking one’s patience. Luckily, at this point, she had gained a lot of it.
The more Gemma said it, the more serious the whole ordeal seemed to Helena—her eyes resolute, dark under the soft light, her lips murmuring the phrases to herself as if attempting to help Gemma reach a climax that Gemma was set on not allowing to happen.
“This is ridiculous. Do you not understand that this is bullshit? A made up strategy to turn you into a subject of a fucked up cult? Do you really believe that this will make me, or you, for that matter, be repentant? It doesn’t make any sense.”
At this, Helena stood up abruptly, the small lightbulb on the side wall shining directly on her eyes, bloodshot and wet, “No, you are the one who doesn’t understand! You’re reckless and immature, and you have no respect for your superiors. Do you know how lucky you are? You are taking part in something… something monumental, larger than your own life. You are helping to construct our future, humankind’s future. For the better. You do not—you don’t understand any of it. And you’re spoiled and thankless for it.”
Gemma stood up and walked toward Helena, whose face was now stained with tears, hands trembling as she held on to the ends of the table.
As Gemma brought her hands to Helena’s back, smoothing them over her shoulders lightly, Helena’s whole body twitched, and a low and pained sigh left her throat.
“What do you think you’re doing? You’re way out of line,” but the reproach wasn’t convincing, her voice wet and quivering as she sniffed the tears away. Behind her, Gemma smiled.
“It’s okay, Helena. You’re crying because you know something’s not right. You know as I know it. Just give in.”
Gemma kept comforting her, moving her hands around Helena’s back, from shoulder to shoulder, over her neck, delicate and methodical.
“No. Just stop,” but Helena did not move an inch; the tears kept flowing. “Please, Gemma,” her voice broke.
“It’s okay. Just let it out.”
Gemma brought a tentative hand to the ends of Helena’s hair, tied at the back of her head in a low ponytail, and that was decisive. Helena’s body weakened and her head fell back into Gemma’s hand. Gemma caught Helena’s body with her own, and as soon as full contact was made Helena moaned—it was a faint, gentle sound, but it came from low in her stomach as Helena’s hips shifted slightly backwards towards Gemma’s body.
This was certainly not what Gemma had expected, but quickly she would prepare for it. She knew that there was no going back from this for Helena. It had happened, and she could not take it back; the shame of it, how her body stiffened after the sound, after the hips searching for friction.
Not wanting to waste the moment, her only chance, Gemma went for it.
She grabbed Helena’s hair at the root, softly at first, massaging her scalp, strands of hair coming off the carefully brushed and constructed copper tress, which elicited another sigh from Helena. The hand Gemma had at her back, moving in soft circles, quickly moved lower to grab her hips.
Helena tried to stop it, but nothing but a whispered Gemma, don’t came out before she surrendered again, Gemma’s hand quickly finding a tender spot in the middle of Helena’s thighs, which shut together instantly. Helena Eagan was whimpering at her fingertips.
“It’s okay, just take it. Just let it happen.” Gemma’s smirk was triumphant on her lips as she glimpsed the access card peeking from Helena’s pocket; as she pushed Helena flat on the table, her face pressed against it, tears staining the dark wood and hips shooting back, searching.
Gemma quickly undid the zip of Helena’s pants from behind, pushed open the button, and moved her underwear to the side to find the future CEO of Lumon dripping wet at her touch, clenching and heaving as soon as Gemma’s fingers grazed over her cunt.
Helena whimpered as if in pain, sniffling through the tears and the hiccups as she pleaded, her hips pushing down and backwards, searching, searching, searching.
Gemma brought up her free hand to Helena’s head, petting it gently, moving the stray hairs back and whispering reassurance. And then she slid two fingers deep inside her. That’s it, that’s it, Helena. The sound out of Helena’s mouth was coarse and aching; she almost growled, her arms stretching at her sides as her hands clasped the edges of the table.
Gemma started moving her fingers gently, but soon understood that Helena wanted more; more of everything. She quickened her pace and grabbed at Helena’s hair tighter, causing a mournful whine. Then, she ran the hand at Helena’s head down her back, over her hips, and to the other side of her legs so that she could reach her clit, circling it lightly. At this, Helena’s knees started to give, her thighs started to tremble, and her hips started to move faster and faster so that Gemma had to keep a relentless pace. She added another finger, and then another, and after a few brutal, quick thrusts, Helena’s cunt tightened and she brought her knees in as she came, dripping all over Gemma, all over her trousers, all over the floor. It was definitely a sight.
Gemma grabbed the card from Helena’s pocket and ran for her life.
#
As soon she’d understood what had happened, as soon she pulled up her pants and zipped them up, Helena ran after Gemma.
Her mind was a dark, thunderous. Her tears were running free, quiet sobs brutal and painful in her chest. All she could do was run.
Run, run, run through the halls, listen to quick footsteps. She could not lose Gemma, not for something so foolish, so stupid, so deeply revolting. Helena felt repulsive and soiled, but she had to run, could not let her escape. Helena did not think there was a way out, but she also knew she did not know everything.
When she saw Gemma, she was at the end of the hall, incessantly pressing the button to an elevator and looking back at Helena, afraid. The elevator chimed, the doors opened, and Gemma passed through. Helena ran as she had never run before in all her life; her lungs burned. She lunged at the last possible moment and fell into Gemma as the doors closed. Her mind went dark.
_______
The memory of red halls surrounds her, she can see herself running. She’s wearing Helly’s clothes.
This was the first image Helena saw before opening her eyes to a security guard hauling both her and Gemma off the elevator, entwined. Gemma stared steadfast at her, and Helena thought she could spot a trace of pity in her eyes.