An Apple A Day (Wattys2019)

Chapter 14 - Enforced Consent

Miles

I struggle to hear what they're saying. This man stayed for dinner and Doc kept awkwardly reaching across under the table. His eyes kept farting around, he looked so guilty. Now I'm hanging over the end of the couch trying to catch they're hushed words as they stand at the doorway. Their tones are easy to get, since Doc basically just keeps whimpering and seems to lose all semblance of himself around this guy. He is very intimidating and creepy. Moreso than Doc - so I can't really blame him.

Sneaking behind the door, I catch the brief end of their conversation.

"R-Really...? I should?"

"Yes, Doc," the other man tells him firmly. "It's a test subject. Treat it as one,"

"He's... more than that,"

I flinch when I hear a sharp slap, Doc flying back against the wall in his hallway. "Don't talk like that. It's dangerous,"

"H-How is it?" Doc stammers. "Respectively, I mean,"

"Well unrespectively, I don't think you want to know the answer to that," it sounds like he slaps Doc again before leaving, slamming the front door behind him.

Doc rushes to lock the door then I hear a thud. He's collapsed into his ass against the door, breathing heavily between small sobs. I drown out his light sobbing with the TV.

Doc

What goes 'bump' in the night? A grotesque monster which hides under the beds of children or a mangled corpse risen to death from the cemetery clawing at your window when the wind blows fiercely at night? No, for these are fantasy. Creatures and monsters and ghouls coined to avoid our own reality. Dehumanise those who commit heinous acts as some monstrous inhuman concept. Escaping our own reality by distancing ourselves from our own evolutionary urges.

No. What goes bump in the night are people like me. Sadistic creeps who take pleasure in the pain of others, bored by the monotonous drag of a crippled society and replace that void with the dying screams of the weak, forcing that power upon ourselves. Those of us who's need for control rages so aggressively within that we don't even allow ourselves restraint.

Or sometimes, it's Miles groaning in frustration from his bedroom.

I appear at his doorway, crossing my legs and leaning against the frame. He hasn't noticed me yet as he methodically grinds himself on the bedcovers, sitting up and squeezing his eyes closed. "Ahem," I cough, making him squeals and jump back, hitting his head off the wall. "I could hear you from my bedroom,"

"S-Sorry Doc!" He cries, stopping his ministrations and panting furiously.

I am a keen observer and the picture painted before me is an interesting one. His cheeks flushed, sitting with spread legs under the covered and with laboured breaths and weary eyes. I smirk. I know this situation. How delicious, and what a fun experiment. I've never had a subject so young and incapable of providing his own needs. I can help.

"It's fine," I shrug, closing the door. When o do I flick off his bedroom light, plunging the room into a frightening darkness. Miles has never been afraid of the dark but is no longer used to it. There is always some light on in my house to conceal my true nature. Only in the dark so I blossom into that self, the freedom to explore myself not as a scientist, but a person. I pull a scalpel from my pocket.

I've memorised every inch of his house. In pure black I can feel my way around perfectly. My eyes glint with the slick sheen that reflects my teeth, grinning creepily. I can hear my doll's breath hitch, its weak form scrambling against the wall to escape me. I slide my hand along its porcelain form, feeling underneath the clothes it wears, lifelessly but eagerly awaiting my affections. "Keep very, very still," I instruct it, one of my hands holding the scalpel against its neck and the other at my own crotch, undoing my buttons.

"Keep still and don't make a sound - don't even breathe,"