Everyone's Favorite Girl (12 page)

He stormed up to the chair, stopped, gave me a look I can’t describe, and then carefully went about the task of putting my pajama pants on me.  It felt amazing to be dressed again, and something about the way Patton handled the task made me feel safe.  His hands lingered for the briefest of moments on my sides, but I regretted when he pulled them away.

Before I could thank him, he was back across the room, sitting next to Kate, whose glare had only intensified.  All the boys were focused on me, and she just couldn’t stand it.  Strapped to a chair, fucked by a creepy bald serial killer, and moments from being subjected to torture, Kate was still jealous of me.  How absurd was that?

I had one glorious moment when Kate put her hand on Patton’s leg and he picked it up, moved it to her side of the armrests, and dropped it, like someone plucking a crumb from his lap and flicking it away.

Seated next to Kate, James hadn’t said a word.  He hadn’t looked at me either.  The only emotion I could detect from him was dissatisfaction at being in such proximity to Sean’s bobbing dick while Sean got dressed.

Judy turned to face the room holding a syringe.

“Proceed,” Mr. Shriver said just as Sean finally took a seat.

“Well,” I said nervously as Judy approached, “guess I’ll see you guys next time.  Thanks for the romp, Sean.  And Patton…thank you…”

“You’re welcome,” Patton said shakily.

My eyes began to well up with tears.

Judy stood over me now.

As she leaned in, she whispered, “Hold still.”

I felt the prick of the needle.

~ ~ ~ ~

Five minutes.  The longest, most terrifying five minutes of my life.  I lay there, limp, twitchy, eyelids fluttering, mouth slightly agape, mimicking everything I could remember from the video, and everyone sat in silence, observing me.

Not even Kate spoke.

I knew it was at least five minutes because I distracted myself by counting the seconds.  When I lost count, I rounded back down to the nearest full minute and started over, so what I’m calling five minutes might really be seven or eight.

Finally, like someone holding her breath or trying to withstand a tickle, I couldn’t take it
anymore.  I opened my eyes and lifted my head, feigning alarm, but only until I made eye contact with Mr. Shriver.

Then I smiled.

“Hello,” I said.  Amiable confusion.

“Hello,” Mr. Shriver said.  “How do you feel?”

I wiggled in the chair, looked at my arms as though I were just discovering I couldn’t move.

“Feeling a little tied down,” I said, generating a soft wave of chuckles.  I yawned.  Not intentionally.  It was coming on four in the morning.  I had to go with it.  “Are you going to drug me soon?  I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake.”

“You remember?” Judy asked, grabbing her clipboard and scribbling something on it.

“Remember what?”

“Everything that just happened.”

“Um…yeah.  Am I not supposed to?  When are you going to drug me?”

“We already did,” Mr. Shriver said.

I turned to him.  “Just now?”

He nodded.

“Well it must not have worked then,” I said.

Mr. Shriver crossed his legs and leaned to one side, peering at me.  “This is interesting, I must say.”

“What’s interesting?”

Judy took a few steps forward.  “Melissa, I predicted that with repeated overexposure to the Love Drug, its effects would eventually rewire your brain circuitry, making you susceptible to new ideas, new personality traits, and new behavior.  We’ve been conditioning you this past month.”

“Should you be telling her all this?” Sean barked.  He was back to his foul mood.  Something told me it had to do with Mr. Shriver and James walking in together like best buds on the last day of school.

“If the results are as anticipated, it doesn’t matter what we tell her.”

“Can you guys untie me now?” I asked.  The impatience I expressed was not pretend.

Judy awaited Mr. Shriver’s instruction, and when he nodded she began unhooking the straps.

Suddenly a thought occurred to me, and I decided to share it.  I addressed Judy.  “
How much Libido Drug did it take to spike the city’s water supply?”

Judy looked shocked.  When she spoke, her voice quivered.

“Thirty gallons,” she said.

“That’s all?”

“It was a high concentration.  It takes very little.”

“Same with the Love Drug?”

“Yes.”

I turned to Mr. Shriver, who listened intently.  “You know what you should have done?  Before you killed that water district guy, you should have sent him back with an equal amount of the Love Drug and spiked the water again—just what Brian was trying to do.  You’d stop the rape and murder and chaos instantly, and everyone would forget what happened.”

As I spoke, Mr. Shriver began nodding his head slowly and slamming his fist on the armrest, lightly at first but with more force each blow.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said.  “See what I mean?  This girl is full of good ideas.”

“But do you believe she’s safe is the question,” Sean said.

“I don’t believe her,” Kate said.  “I think she wants to kill us.”

I snickered and made eye contact with her.  “Why are you lumping everyone together?” I asked with a smart-ass wink.

“It’s working,” Judy insisted.  “You can’t ignore the difference.  The memory retention, the alertness—the cooperative nature.”

Mr. Shriver waved his hand through the air impatiently.  “Okay, okay, it doesn’t matter.  We’ll know soon enough anyway.  I think we should move on to final testing.  Let’s all get some sleep and reconvene on Level E tonight at eight.”

With that, he stood and walked to the door.

“What final testing?” Sean asked.

Everyone else seemed to be in the dark, too: Patton, Judy, and even Kate.

James, though, was smiling.

Mr. Shriver opened the door.  “Sean, James, see everyone back to their rooms.  Do
not
let Patton and Melissa speak to one another.  James, you take Melissa.”

Sean gritted his teeth and shook his head.  He was feeling undermined, I could tell, with Mr. Shriver assigning James the more important task.  Men show emasculation more than any other emotion.

“And when you’re done,” Mr. Shriver added, “both of you come see me.”

I stood up from the chair, feeling a little wobbly, and in an instant James appeared before me, a big, genuine smile on his face, his elbow stuck out for me to take.

“My lady,” he said playfully.

I couldn’t help but smile.  This was James, yes, but James was different now.

When we got in the elevator, my smile went away.

-Final Testing-

“MR. SHRIVER told me about the final testing,” James said as soon as the elevator door closed.  “They’re bringing you, Flora, and Patton to Level E and they’re going to make you have a threesome.  With Flora’s device activated.
  In front of everyone.”

My heart leapt up in my throat.

Flora no longer had a device.  They would see the stitches, and it would take less than three seconds for any one of them to figure me out.

This wouldn’t be an orgy.  It would be an execution.

“I know what you’re thinking,” James said.

I started crying.

Then the elevator dinged and opened into to the Level C lobby, still empty and dark.  We walked out into the open, and when James spoke, he whispered.

“We have to switch them.”

“What?”

But I knew what he meant.

“We have to switch out your Flora for the next one in line.  She just turned eighteen.  The Showcase Hall is defunct, so they’ve got her quartered in the warehouse with all the other Favorite Girls.”

I shook my head slowly
.  I couldn’t stomach this idea.  This would be the third Flora I will have stripped of innocence and dignity—the third Flora I will have escorted into a world other than the one in which she thought she lived.

And I didn’t want to lose my Flora.  I didn’t want to be without her ever again.

“I’ll take care of everything,” James said.  We were in the hallway now.  “You just get some sleep and prepare yourself for tonight.”  At the corner, he stopped, turned to me, and grabbed my arms.  “Melissa, everything’s going to work out.  I promise.  I’m on your side now.  So is Judy.  Now go be with Flora.  You only have an hour.”

~ ~ ~ ~

That hour went by like five minutes.  I returned to the room and found Flora sleeping.  She looked peaceful, hugging her pillow.  I stared at her tender face and couldn’t muster the courage to wake her.

Not for forty-five minutes.  I started to fear James could arrive early, and then I wouldn’t have time to say goodbye.

Flora woke easily.  When she saw me her eyes widened and she shot up and threw her arms around me.

“I knew you could do it,” she said groggily.  “Let’s go to sleep.”

She tried to fall back but I held onto her.

“Flora, I have to tell you something.”

I explained the situation.  Her eyes fell when she realized what was going to happen to the younger Flora.

“Okay,” she said when I finished, beginning to crawl to the edge of the bed.  I was surprised by her lack of emotion.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine.  Everything’s going to be fine.  I trust you.”

For the next few minutes she ran about the room, gathering her things.

James arrived as expected with a scared, exhausted-looking Flora dressed in a nightgown and clutching a pillow with frilly lace.  It looked like an expensive pillow, but it was covered in grime—as if it had been lying on a warehouse floor.

I shuddered at the thought.  If I got the production manager job, the Favorite Girls wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor.  I would see to that.

I invited the younger Flora inside.  She quickly spotted my Flora and the two ran to each other, embracing, crying,
kissing each other’s cheeks.

I pulled James inside and we stood by the door while he explained how he’d managed to retrieve his Flora and why I should feel confident that he could easily transport my Flora, too.

James walked straight down to the warehouse, informed whichever of Sean’s guards was on night duty that he’d received an emergency call from Patton that one of the very young Floras needed a blood transfusion and that he needed the eldest Flora—the most physically mature, the one with the most blood to spare.

The guard, idiot that he was, didn’t even question him, and James walked right out with Flora following him.

“I haven’t told her anything,” James said.  “Thought I’d frighten her.  It’ll sound better coming from you.”

“It’ll sound bad no matter what,” I said.

He nodded, then looked past me.  “We need to break up the reunion.  We’re out in the open here.”

I turned to face the Floras.  They were still crying, though with big smiles on their faces.

As James led my Flora away, the crying persisted.

The smiles didn’t.

When the door shut, I wandered over to the new Flora, took her by the hand, and led her to the bed.  I made her discard her dirty pillow and pulled the comforter and sheet down.

“I’ll explain everything in the morning, honey,” I said.  “Right now we need to get some sleep.”

Explaining was the least of tomorrow’s agenda.  I had to get this girl prepared to play the role of her predecessor.  In other words, she needed a taste of the real world before it gobbled her up tonight.

Flora
cried on and off into the morning.  For some reason I’d built it up in my head that this Flora—the one I’d watched confess her love to Patton when I came upon them in the air duct—would act cold towards me.  On the contrary, when I braved a hand on her arm, she scooted close and clung tight.

And that’s how we fell asleep
, holding each other, me and my Flora’s little sister, somewhere about the time the rest of the city was experiencing sunrise.

~ ~ ~ ~

I called the service desk for breakfast, but really I wanted confirmation that everything went smoothly last night.  My imagination kept me up all night, playing out horrible scenarios like James and Flora turning a corner and coming face-to-face with Sean.  Sean incapacitating Flora with a single hard slap, then beating information out of James.  Best case scenario, the Love Drug allowed James to withstand torture and he died without breathing my name.

The new Flora was in the Jacuzzi pool.  I figured a little luxury bathing and a hot breakfast might make her less apprehensive about being tonight’s sacrifice to the g
ods—I still hadn’t told her; I needed her awake, alert, fed, and calm first.

The phone rang eight times.  By the fourth ring I was convinced James wouldn’t answer, that he hadn’t reported for work this morning.

Finally the line picked up.

“This is Liu.  How may I help you?”

I couldn’t speak.  Suddenly it felt like I’d swallowed a bowling ball.  James had gotten caught, and right now Sean and Mr. Shriver were somewhere putting the pieces together and deciding what to do with Flora and me.  As for James, he was probably already dead.

It couldn’t hurt to ask.

“This is Liu,” Liu said impatiently.

“Liu?  Where’s James?”

“Is this Melissa?”  Cheerful again.  “Hi!”

“Hi Liu.  Where’s James?”

This time she sounded snotty.  “Fuck James.  I got his old job and that’s the only thing he had worth keeping.”  Then she mumbled a few angst-filled words of heartbreak, obviously still affected by James’s newfound affinity for Judy.

“Where is he, Liu?  I need to know.”

A pause on the other end of the line.  Then she said, “He got a promotion or something—I don’t know.  Sean woke me up this morning and said I have to take his new job.  I was pissed because who wants to sit at a desk all day?  Turns out it’s not like that, though.  They gave me a cell phone and all I have to do is press a button on the desk phone for calls to be transferred.  I get to roam the building freely!  Isn’t that exciting?”

Jesus, why didn’
t she just rub it in?

That must have been what Mr. Shriver wanted to discuss with James and Sean last night after they delivered Patton and me to our respective rooms.  Why it took James an hour to collect the new Flora.

Promoted to what, though, and how?

Did it have something to do with the Love Drug?  Was James working on something for my benefit?

One thing at a time.  You have a sex show to prepare for.

Flora emerged from the corridor in a bathrobe and stood there, hugging herself and wiggling her toes, waiting as if for permission to enter the room.

I realized then and there I couldn’t tell her what was going to happen tonight.  It was much safer to dress her up, say we’re going to dinner, and just press the button when the time came.

I ordered breakfast.

Before Liu arrived, I made Flora go back to the shower room and hide.

~ ~ ~ ~

This Flora was as easy to handle as mine, as it turned out.  I told her to eat breakfast.  She ate breakfast.  I told her to stop crying.  She stopped crying.  I encouraged her to cheer up, stop worrying.  Like a well-trained submissive, her very demeanor changed to accommodate my demands.

It was this characteristic that fueled my suspicion of Patton and his relationship with the Favorite Girls.  No matter what upbringing, all teenage girls display defiance, unless they’re specifically conditioned otherwise.

Behavioral conditioning?  In this building?  It screamed abuse.  Of some sort.

As I continued to observe Flora’s obedient nature,
my fear of this evening going awry diminished—Flora would play whatever role I assigned her—leaving me to dread only the act itself, the twisted, ethereal deflowering of an innocent young virgin.

I had to keep
telling myself I had no choice, but the more I reminded myself, the less I believed it.

After gobbling up a plate of food—Liu obviously wasn’t privy to the restrictions placed upon me because she brought everything I ordered, not just cold gravy and hard biscuits—Flora proved easily distractible.  A glass of wine to make her feel like a real grown-up and she was ready to play dress-up in the closet.

When we emerged, Flora wore a shimmery pearl-colored lingerie top that I insisted was a dress.  The back of it rested on her butt, barely covering it when she stood straight.  I also put her in white stockings with little bows down the outsides.

“Elegant,” I said, observing her, but what I meant was,
Fuck-tastic.

She was clearly self-conscious.  That’s why I dressed her so
early in the day.  By eight, hopefully she would shed her reservations and believe she was dressed appropriately.  I wanted Mr. Shriver’s and Sean’s jaws to drop.  I wanted them elated by the fact that I’d prepared for the show, short of actually rehearsing.

Next I sat her down at Kate’s vanity and began blow drying, brushing, and curling her hair.  To distill the awkwardness she felt for being underdressed, I asked her to tell me everything that happened when Sean came to take them to the warehouse.

She gave me a concise summary, as though she’d prepared for when I asked:

“They came right at bedtime, after we’d all changed into our pajamas.  We were allowed to take a pillow.  Nothing else.  Not even a book.  And they haven’t given us our belongings since.  We were all taken to the lobby, all the girls at once
—except the nine-year-olds and under.  We stood there waiting while they crammed groups of us in the elevator.  I was with the last group, just four of us Floras who couldn’t fit.  None of us had any idea where we were going.  They took us down to the warehouse.  I never even knew there
was
a warehouse.  We’ve been sleeping on the floor in a corner.  It’s dirty and cold.  They taped off a big square where we sleep, but we sleep and work in shifts, so the girls stuck on the edge have fork lifts driving just a few feet away from their heads.  It’s mostly the little ones and the Frog Girls, the ones who couldn’t bully their way to the corner.  They make us work all day.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Different things.  The Frog Girls are driving forklifts, loading and unloading trucks.  We get these big black metal barrels and they have to be hauled back to the elevator and taken upstairs.  When they come back down, they’re filled up with water, really heavy.  They haven’t started production yet, but they’re making us practice.  Some of us have easy jobs.  I assign pallets full of barrels to the right shipment, I print labels, I verify quantities.  The youngest ones are just kept around to run errands, find things, sweep the floor, clean the bathrooms and the break room, that kind of thing.  But a bunch of the girls—most of them—are in the back of the clearing out a space to put in a bunch of new machines.”

I studied her for a moment in the vanity mirror.  Her eyes were lost in that place.  She looked exhausted, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

“You must be glad to get out of there,” I said.

She shook her head.  “Why should I get to leave?  I should be with them.”

I sighed and put my hand on her shoulder.

“You will be soon.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Two hours before show time,
I called Liu and asked her to bring me an assortment of flowers.  She arrived an hour and a half later and presented me with a bouquet.  Tucked into the wrapping I found a business card from a downtown florist and a receipt