Chapter 33: Hammer Time
Caterina pushes me toward the table, her hands surprisingly strong against my back. Each step feels like walking toward my own execution, my feet dragging against the polished floor as if they’ve developed their own survival instinct.
“Wait, wait, wait!” I cry out, my voice breaking into a desperate sob that echoes off the sterile walls. “Please, Cat, please don’t do this!”
My vision blurs with tears, the clinical room swimming before me. The leather restraints hang from the table like predatory vines waiting to ensnare me. The hammer sits in the center, ordinary and terrible in its simplicity.
“This is too far, please!” My words tumble out between heaving breaths, my chest constricting so tightly I can barely draw air. “I understand now. I won’t ever try to leave again. I swear to God!”
Caterina’s hand slides up to grip the back of my neck, fingers digging into the tender flesh with precise pressure. She guides me forward with the casual expertise of someone who’s done this before, who knows exactly how much force to apply to keep me moving despite my resistance.
“You don’t understand yet,” she says, her voice soft and almost maternal in its patience. “But that’s okay. There’s time to learn yet.”
She tries to push me into the chair, but I plant my feet, my body rigid with resistance. “No!” I yell, the word tearing from my throat. My muscles strain against her grip, adrenaline giving me a burst of desperate strength.
Caterina’s expression darkens, her crimson eyes flashing with dangerous impatience. “Do you want me to kill the family I just so graciously saved, Adam?” Her voice drops to a venomous whisper. “Is that what you want?”
The fight drains from me instantly, like water rushing down a drain. I close my eyes tight and sit down, clenching my teeth so hard my jaw aches. My body trembles uncontrollably, sweat beading on my forehead despite the room’s clinical chill.
“Please don’t,” I whisper, the words barely audible through my constricted throat. “Please don’t do this.”
She begins methodically strapping my arms into the leather restraints, her movements precise and unhurried. The leather is cold against my skin, clearly worn from previous use that I don’t want to think about. Each strap tightens with a finality that sends fresh waves of terror coursing through me.
“Adam,” she says conversationally, as if we’re discussing dinner plans rather than my imminent torture, “why is it you never say ‘I love you’ back when I say it to you?”
The question catches me off guard, so absurd in this context that for a moment, I can’t process it. Then panic surges through me, desperate for any chance to delay what’s coming.
“I do love you,” I blurt out, the lie tasting like ash on my tongue.
Caterina scoffs, her lips curving into a mocking smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “No, you don’t.” She laughs, the sound brittle and hollow in the sterile room. “But you will.” She finishes securing the final strap with a sharp tug. “Not today, of course. Probably not tomorrow. But you will love me.”
She steps around to the other side of the table, her movements fluid and predatory. My eyes follow her hand as it reaches for the hammer, lifting it with casual ease. The overhead lights catch on the metal head, gleaming dully against the worn wooden handle.
“Please, please, don’t do this,” I sob, my voice breaking into fragments like shattered glass. Tears stream down my face uncontrollably, my body trembling so violently the restraints rattle against the metal frame. “Caterina, I’ll do anything you want. Anything. Just please, not this.”
Caterina’s perfect features harden, her crimson eyes narrowing as she stares down at me. “Stop talking, Adam,” she says, her voice flat and cold. “You’re supposed to call me Cat, remember?”
She reaches for the hammer, her fingers wrapping around the wooden handle with practiced ease. The fluorescent lights catch on the metal head as she lifts it.
“Doc, stay close,” she instructs, her gaze never leaving my face as Doctor Ramirez steps forward, a syringe held carefully between her fingers.
My eyes dart to the needle, panic surging through me with renewed force. “What’s that for?” I gasp between sobs, pulling frantically against the restraints that hold me immobile.
Caterina’s lips curve into something between a smile and a grimace. “The aftercare,” she says simply as if the words explain everything.
She positions herself beside the table, her stance widening slightly as she adjusts her grip on the hammer. Her eyes lock with mine for one terrible moment. She looks sadder than I anticipated.
The hammer rises in a smooth arc above my outstretched right hand.
Time seems to slow, stretching like taffy as I watch the hammer’s descent with horrified fascination. I can’t look away, can’t close my eyes, can’t escape the terrible certainty of what’s about to happen.
The impact is beyond anything I could have imagined. The hammer crashes down with all her strength onto my right hand, and the world explodes into white-hot agony. The sound that tears from my throat doesn’t even sound human, a primal scream of pain so intense it transcends language, transcends thought, transcends everything except the all-consuming fire radiating from my shattered bones.
Through the haze of unimaginable pain, I see Caterina’s face transform. The cold determination melts away, replaced by something that looks almost like horror. Her perfect composure cracks, revealing a glimpse of something human beneath the monster.
“Fuck me, I can’t do it like this,” she says, her voice tight with an emotion I can’t identify through my fog of agony. She looks away from my mangled hand, her gaze finding Doctor Ramirez. “Knock him out.”
The doctor hesitates, her clinical detachment momentarily cracked by the raw animal sounds tearing from my throat. My vision swims with tears and black spots as the pain radiates from my shattered hand. I feel the individual fragments of bone grinding against each other, the warm wetness of blood pooling beneath my palm.
“What the fuck are you doing? Knock him out now!” Caterina screams, her voice strained with an emotion I’ve never heard from her before. The hammer trembles in her grip, a thin spatter of my blood visible on her cream-colored sleeve. “I’ll keep going when he’s asleep.”
‘Kill me. Please.’
Doctor Ramirez moves with sudden urgency, stepping forward with the syringe already prepared.
“Hold still,” she murmurs, though the instruction is meaningless. I couldn’t move if I wanted to, trapped by both restraints and the paralyzing pain that has frozen every muscle in my body.
The needle slides into my neck with barely a pinprick, insignificant compared to the inferno consuming my hand. The liquid enters my bloodstream, cool and strange, spreading outward from the injection site with alarming speed.
“Count backward from ten,” Doctor Ramirez instructs, her voice suddenly distant as if she’s speaking from the end of a long tunnel.
“Ten... nine...” I manage the words slurring together as my tongue grows heavy in my mouth. The ceiling lights blur and double above me, bright haloes expanding and contracting with each labored breath.
“Eight... sev...”
The pain doesn’t disappear, but it transforms, becoming something abstract and faraway, like watching a storm through thick glass. My eyelids grow impossibly heavy, each blink lasting longer than the one before.
Caterina’s face hovers above mine, her features distorted by tears. I didn’t notice she was crying. Her lips move, forming words I can no longer hear. Something wet falls on my cheek. Her tear or mine, I can’t tell anymore.
One of my last conscious thought before the darkness claims me completely is that perhaps the only way to survive in my new life is to accept the monster that holds my strings.
‘God, are you there? It’s me, Adam. Kill yourself.’
A/N: Short chapter just kinda wanted to get through this one.