Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories (6 page)

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Authors: Paul Kater

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BOOK: Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories

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Only then it was that the doctor noticed she
was not tied up anymore. "Miss Marin..." he started, pointing at
the leather strap on the floor. "Can you tell me what happened?" A
mixture of surprise, curiosity and fear showed on the man's
face.

Lily rubbed her wrist. "I had hoped you would
be able to tell me, sir. I woke up and then I broke the chains.
What has happened to me?"

The doctor did not respond. Instead, he
turned and quickly paced over to his desk where he started sifting
through the stacks of papers.

Lily waited for a while, wishing that he
would not make so much noise with the sheets of paper. The noise
they made was like lightning bolts to her. Finally she sat up and
covered her ears with her hands. She knew that if this would
persist, she'd go crazy over the sounds that seemed to come from
everywhere now. She just wanted it all to stop. The thought had not
even fully developed in her mind when the noises indeed
stopped.

Carefully she removed her hands from her
ears. She heard nothing special. Still there was the doctor
rummaging through his papers but somehow the lightning-like noise
had gone. Lily relaxed.

The doctor turned to Lily, a few papers in
his hand. "I must admit, Miss Marin, that your quick recovery
pleases me tremendously."

There was something in his voice that should
not be there, Lily noticed, even though she had no idea what it
could be.

He walked up to the bed where she was still
sitting. "Would you mind showing me your arm? I would like to check
your pulse, before we... uhm... yes, thank you."

"Before we do what, sir?" Lily asked. As she
spoke, she saw the doctor make a swift move. She saw how an
injection needle landed on her arm, she felt the sting of it - and
then watched the needle break. It was obvious he did not want to
check her pulse. "Sir!" she yelled out, even though the needle had
not done her any harm. Instinctively she yanked her arm away.

Doctor Drosselmeyer stared at her, then at
the broken needle. "Miss Marin," he started, while Lily got off the
table. "You can't leave!"

"Oh yes I can!" Lily said, abandoning most of
her courteous behaviour. The man, after all, had tried to stab her
with a needle without warning!

The doctor grabbed her arm with both hands.
"You will stay, Miss Marin, the procedure is not finished yet!" His
voice had lost all of its charm and niceness.

Lily looked the man in the eye. "Sir, I
request that you take your hands off my person, or I will be forced
to do that for you."

Doctor Drosselmeyer, much taller, wider and
heavier than Lily, could not suppress a grin as he tightened his
grip on her arm. "You will stay." Each word was accompanied by a
strong squeeze of her arm.

"I shall not!" Lily pulled her arm free of
the hands that held it, and with her free hand she gave the big man
a shove. The effect of this startled her so much she clasped her
hands over her mouth: the doctor literally flew through his office
and landed just short of his big wooden desk. The thud that
resounded when he hit the floor, made the lamp on the desk tremble,
its glass cap making threatening sounds of an impending demise.

After a moment, the doctor moved and sat up.
He first needed to confirm where he was, and then he looked at Lily
again. There was terror in his eyes. "Miss Marin. Please." He
worked himself to his feet.

"I am so sorry, sir," Lily said. She was
relieved the man was standing again. He appeared to be well.

Suddenly the man charged at her again,
throwing his entire weight onto her! Lily screamed, closing her
eyes, tensing her muscles - and the doctor almost bounced off her.
The impact of his body hitting her made her stumble backwards, her
eyes flying open as she fell back onto the table. From there she
heard the man groan as he rolled over to get onto his knees.

"What is happening?" Lily asked, half in a
scream. She looked at her hands. They shook. So did her voice. She
could not remember ever having been in such an floundering
situation. "Tell me what is happening, doctor. This is not normal.
What have you done to me?"

"I just want to improve your voice," the man
on the floor said. "Trust me."

Lily was halfway tempted to do that, when he
jumped up with an ease she would not have believed possible for
such a big man. He landed on top of her, pressing her down on the
table. Before Lily had understood the situation, the doctor had
grabbed a small flask from his pocket and sprayed something in her
face. The world went fuzzy, and then black...

...until she woke up again. Lily was
instantly aware that she was on the table again. Tied to it. And
the doctor had not taken that lightly this time. A heavy chain was
wrapped around her and the table several times. She could not move
her arms nor her legs, and she could barely lift her head high
enough to see all these things, as a big metal ring around her
forehead effectively restricted her movement.

"Doctor Drosselmeyer?" she asked, blinking
her eyes. Whatever it had been the man had sprayed in her eyes, it
still stung. There was no answer to her calling out his name.

"Doctor!!" Lily threw all politeness
overboard. Still no answer. She strained her ears to hear
something. It was all she could do; the ring on her head made it
impossible to look sideways. Then she heard it. Breathing.
Breathing and a slow thumping. His breathing, she suddenly knew,
and his heartbeat.

"I know you are there," Lily said. "Come here
and release me."

The thumping became faster, the breathing
too. Then she heard a creaking sound and the loud rustle of...
clothes? Puzzled, Lily tried to understand this as footsteps came
closer, until the face of Doctor Drosselmeyer loomed over her.

"Miss Marin. Welcome back to the living." His
voice was cold now, very different from the gentle and
understanding tone she was used to from him. "I have taken the
opportunity to make sure you will not become violent against my
person again, as you may understand."

The man's first words had thundered in Lily's
ears. Very quickly her hearing seemed to react by itself, the noise
the voice had made was gone.

"I assume you are not willing to let me
complete the procedure that we started..."

"Certainly not!" Lily fumed, yanking the
heavy chain..

"I thought so much. That is why I proceeded
without your approval. Oh yes," the man said as Lily's eyes grew
large, "the third part of the procedure is done by now, and it all
went very well. I am sure you are going to be thrilled with the
result, Miss Marin."

"How dare you! Without my consent!"

"Oh, I beg to differ," the doctor grinned, as
Lily noticed a red mark on his face that had not been there before.
"Before we started the procedure, you agreed to it. As you were not
able to respond when I was ready to continue, I went ahead and
completed the procedure."

"You are going to regret this, sir," Lily
hissed, "I will report you to the authorities."

"I am sure you feel that way, Miss Marin, but
by the time you reach the authorities, I will have gone. Yes, the
procedure I performed was slightly outside of the law, but I needed
to do this to complete the preliminary experiments."

"Preliminary..." Lily's voice failed her as
she understood that she had been used as nothing more than a
test-person. And one for illegal experimentations too!

Calmly the doctor held something in front of
her face. It was the same spray he had used before.

-=-=-

Lily woke up. It was dark in the room, and
cold. Her eyes stung.

"Hello?"

There was no reply. No sound. She strained
her hearing, the way she had done before. There was no breathing,
and also the thumping heartbeat was missing. There just was the
loud ticking of a clock somewhere.

"Hello," she tried again. It was hardly
surprising there was no reaction. "Think, Lily," she told herself.
"You have to get away from here, and nobody is going to help you."
After a while in which she tried to decide what to do, she told
herself: "You will have to break the chain."

It sounded so stupid and impossible that she
almost had to laugh at herself, were it not that she had broken
chains before. Even when these were thinner than the massive one
that lay over her chest and stomach now.

She had, Lily understood, no other choice
than to try it. She took a deep breath, tensed her arms and started
pushing against the chain. To her surprise there was some movement.
She pushed harder. A cracking sound told her that parts of the
table she was on were about to give up their support.

Lily yanked one more time. Something gave way
and she tumbled down -

Lily found herself on the floor of her
bedroom, her blanket and pillow on top of her, the sheets of her
bedlinen wrapped tightly around her.

She'd had the dream again.

Slowly she curled up, pulling the blanket
over her head. Underneath that she was alone, with her tears.

###

About the author:

I am an IT consultant who loves reading and
writing.

I've been an amateur-author since years,
writing SciFi, Fantasy and lately also Steampunk. My home is in the
Netherlands.

I hope you liked "Lily Marin - three short
steampunk stories".

All books I published so far:

Hilda the wicked Witch series:

Hilda the wicked
witch
(Smashwords, July 2010)