Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection (21 page)

“See anything wrong?”

“Decidedly not.” He chuckled. “Everything appears
physically normal. I’d like to try something. Would you mind if we
did a stimulation test?”

She sighed. “Okay.”

“I know you’ve been through this before.”

She had, numerous times, but she still gasped when a
strong buzzing sensation met the sensitive bud of her clit. It was
so strange to be in a clinical setting like this and have someone
testing your capacity for arousal. It was like walking a tightrope
over an unknown drop into nothing. Dr. Matt continued rubbing a
vibrator against her clitoris, back and forth, up and down.

“How does that feel?”

“Nice.” Rose blinked up at the ceiling.

“I’m going to leave this here on your clitoris for a
moment while I do an internal examination. Do you mind?”

She shrugged. “No.”

His fingers were feeling around inside, gentle but
pressing firmly. “And you’ve had your g-spot explored?”

“Thoroughly,” she assured him. “It’s broken too.”

He hesitated for a moment and then stood up between
her legs, looking down at her. “You’re not broken, Rose.”

She couldn’t help the tears that stung her eyes. “Yes
I am.”

He shook his head violently. “Do you feel that?”

“What? The vibrator?” she asked, swiping at her eyes
with the back of her hand. “Of course.”

“No, this.” He removed his gloved hand from her pussy
and brought it up to her stomach, pressing her hand there along
with his. “Feel how tight your muscles are? How little breath is
getting down here into your belly?”

She looked at him, incredulous, as he removed the
vibrator, snapping his gloves off. He helped her out of the
stirrups and took her elbow as she swung her legs around so she
could sit on the examination table.

“You might as well be wearing
armor,” he told her as he went over the sink to wash his hands.
“It’s no wonder you can’t feel anything beyond ‘nice’ right now.
It
is
a kind of
armor.”

“What do you mean?”

He dried his hands on paper towel as he talked.
“You’ve just built up a lot of walls. The good news about those
walls is that they’ve protected you when you needed protecting.
You’ve walled out all the bad things—and good for you! But the
problem is that while you’ve walled everything out, you’ve also
walled yourself in. And you’re going to have to break those down
before you can get where you want to go.”

Her aunt Poppy had been right. This place—this
doctor—was very different from anything she’d ever experienced
before. She felt frozen by his words, unable to respond.

“Okay, examination over.” He smiled as he walked
toward the door. “You can get dressed. I’ll see you in the
morning.”

“In the morning?” she managed, her throat tight.

“Group therapy,” he reminded her before he left.
“Nine a.m.”

* * * *

I so don’t belong here.

She knew, of course, that this clinic dealt
with all sorts of sexual issues, and maybe she was just being
naïve, but she hadn’t expected to be in a group session with
ex-prostitutes, sex addicts, and one woman (or man?) she still
couldn’t quite determine the gender of. Rose couldn’t believe some
of the things she was hearing.

“My father told me I deserved to get
Aids.”

That was from the woman (man?) with the
long, curly dark hair, mouth painted brightly with red lipstick.
But he (she?) had a day’s worth of stubble.
It has to be a
man,
Rose reasoned.

“And how did that make you feel, Kennedy?”
The other group therapist—besides Dr. Matt—was a petite blond woman
who said on the first day to call her Dr. Kelly and who seemed to
think matching her eye shadow to her outfit was a good idea. Today
it was a shimmery pink to go with her blouse.

“Fucking fantastic.” Kennedy—his (her?) name
just served to cause more gender confusion—snorted laughter and
pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his t-shirt pocket. They weren’t
allowed to smoke inside, but Rose, and she supposed the rest of the
group as well over the past week, had become familiar with his
routine of smacking the edge of the pack against the arm of his
chair over and over. It annoyed her but she just watched, knowing
that her own habit of tracing the side seam of her jeans during the
whole session probably drove someone else nuts. They all had their
little quirks, she supposed.

“Bullshit.” The girl with the dragon
tattoo—just like the book, which so amused Rose she thought of her
that way even though she knew her real name was Ann—practically
spat the word from her pierced mouth. She had a ring on either side
of her bottom lip—“They’re called snake bites,” Ann had told her
while they were eating lunch the other day.

Kennedy glared. “Are you not familiar with
sarcasm, you stupid bitch?”

“Fuck you.” The girl with the dragon tattoo
give him the middle finger and a snarl.

“No name calling, Kennedy,” Dr. Kelly
reminded him, waving one of the big guys back. There were two of
them, both with shaved heads, that were part of their little group,
and Rose thought of them both as Mr. Clean 1 and Mr. Clean 2. The
one who actually had an earring in his left ear liked to stand up
as everyone’s protector. Besides those two, their group was rounded
out by a skinny young girl about Ann’s age with thin, lanky blond
hair and dull eyes, and a chubby kid who couldn’t have been older
that twenty-five with severe acne. He hadn’t said more than two
words the entire week.

“Sarcasm is just the body’s natural defense
against stupid.” Kennedy smacked his maroon pack of
Pall-Malls
against the chair, flipping it before doing it
again.

“You’re half right,” Dr. Matt interjected.
“Sarcasm is a natural defense mechanism.”

Rose smiled over at him and then looked at
Kennedy. “If my father had said that to me, I would have been
devastated.”

“Yeah?” Kennedy scoffed, dismissing Rose’s
comment and sneering at the dragon tattoo girl. “How about you,
Ann? Would
you
have been devastated?”

“My father?” Ann flashed him a smile, those
snake bites rising with the stretch of her lips. “He started
fucking me when I was five. If I had a penny for every time he told
me I’d be better off dead, I’d have more money than Warren Buffet.”
She allowed this shocking news to sink in, letting the silence
stretch. Rose didn’t know if anyone else heard her mumbling, but
she did. She was right next to her. “Funny thing is—he was
right.”

“No he wasn’t.” Rose turned and put her hand
on the girl’s forearm, over the dragon tattoo. It was a horrible
rendition, red faded to pink, more amusing then menacing. “He
wasn’t right. You aren’t better off dead.”

“This coming from you?” Across the room,
Kennedy scoffed again. “You think we don’t know about your
scars?”

Rose shrank into her chair and could almost
feel her wrist burning beneath her long sleeved blouse. She’d been
so careful… yet someone had seen. They knew. They all knew.

“So what did Daddy do to you, Rosie-girl?”
The blond chimed in, her dull eyes brightening for a moment. “Or
was it maybe Mummy?”

“Neither,” Rose insisted, looking around at
the group. “My parents are good parents. I’m sorry for what
happened to you…” She glanced between Kennedy and Ann. “Both of
you. But nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

“So why are you here?” The blond leaned
forward so far Rose thought she might fall out of her chair.

“That’s a good question.” Rose felt tears
coming and didn’t want to show them. Not after hearing that they
knew, they all knew about her suicide attempt. She couldn’t stand
the humiliation, the shame of it. She knew she would hear about it
later in an individual session, but she did it anyway—she
bolted.

The group therapy room was around the corner
and down the hall from the residence rooms. They all had private
quarters with their own bathrooms. There were no roommates at the
facility, and after hearing some of the stuff people said in group
therapy, she understood why. They really didn’t want fraternizing
between clients going on.

She passed one of the women who cleaned
their rooms every morning but Rose didn’t stop. Her room opened
with a key card and she flung it onto the desk, giving into her
tears now, real sobs ripping through her body, making her shake
with them.

What am I doing here?

She still didn’t know the answer to that
question. Because Poppy had made the recommendation? Because her
father was paying for it? Because she didn’t want to hear her
mother complaining about how she’d let “the good one” get away in
Sam? Because she felt fundamentally flawed and wanted to find a way
to mend the cracks in her veneer?

Whatever the reason, she felt as if it
wasn’t working. She’d been there a week and so far it hadn’t been
that
much different from other places and methods she’d
tried. Sure, there was the live-in aspect of this place. And she
couldn’t complain about the view from her room or anywhere else in
the facility. Everywhere you looked, it was an island paradise
outside. But how was that helping her with her issues?

Rose flopped face down onto her bed—even
those were nice, double-size not twins, better than most hotel
mattresses she’d been on—and buried her face in the pillow
. I
wonder if you can suffocate yourself?
She hadn’t thought about
suicide in months, but she thought about it now. Not in a real way,
not in the same way she had the night it happened. But the thought
of not being here, not experiencing this life, walking around like
she was in a dream, was more than a little appealing at the
moment.

What are you running away from?

Dr. Matt’s voice in her head. They had
individual sessions for an hour every day. It was, she had to
admit, the most intensive therapy she’d ever had. It was as if he
had become part of her consciousness, definitely more than just
background noise. Instead, he was a constant presence, and she
often heard him in her head like this, asking questions, making
comments. She hadn’t told him about it though.

“Nothing.” She whispered it out loud,
closing her eyes, feeling a dull ache behind them. She lied to
herself again, hoping she might actually believe it as she let
herself drift off. “I’m not running from anything.”

She was dreaming something strange but
couldn’t remember what it was when the knock came on her door.
Glancing at the clock, she saw it was nearly noon. Group therapy
had been over for almost an hour. She thought about not answering
it, but then she heard Dr. Matt’s voice on the other side.

“Rose?”

He smiled when she opened the door, holding
out a small blue box. “I have something for you.”

“A blue box.” She took it from his hands,
inspecting the name on the top.
Lelo
. What was Lelo? “You
know, most women see a blue box and think Tiffanys.”

“Not this time.” He laughed. “This is to
help you do your homework.”

Her head came up fast, eyes widening,
knowing immediately what it was. “Okay, well, I’ll open it later.”
She set the box on her desk, but she couldn’t help the blush
spreading on her cheeks.

“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning against
the door frame. He was long and lanky but he seemed to fill every
available inch of space anyway.

“Fine.” She offered him a smile, a shrug.
“Just fine.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Can we please stop
with the lies?”

“I’m not lying,” she protested, crossing her
arms over her chest. “I am fine. Now that I’ve had some time away
from that…group. I’m fine.”

“So you’re not enjoying group therapy?”

She smirked. “Am I supposed to enjoy
it?”

“Not exactly.” He grinned.

“I’m not like those people,” she confessed,
hugging herself as she looked up at him.

He nodded, but disagreed. “You’d be
surprised.”

“But…none of them have my problem.”

“No,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you
don’t have things in common.”

Rose sighed, not knowing if what he said was
true or not, but feeling bad anyway. “Well I’m sorry I ran
out.”

He shrugged. “You can apologize to them
tomorrow.”

“Great.” She rolled her eyes and laughed.
“Something to look forward to.”

“Well, it’s almost lunch time,” he told her.
“Are you hungry?”

She shook her head. “I think I’ll just get
back to napping.”

“You could always do your homework,” he
reminded her, turning to go.

“You’re not the first therapist who’s
prescribed daily masturbation you know.” She got the reaction she
wanted when he turned and looked over his shoulder at her.

“Are you doing it?”

“Yeah, but it does nothing,” she countered.
“I feel nothing.”

“Do it anyway.” He started out.

“It just makes me cry,” she called.

“Good.” He smiled over his shoulder at her.
“Crying doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“It’s depressing,” she muttered.

“Do it anyway.”

“Okay! Okay!” She started to shut the door
behind him.

“Don’t nap too long,” he reminded her.
“We’re conducting your sleep study tomorrow. You need to be awake
for twelve hours beforehand.”

“I remember.” She leaned against the door as
she closed it, contemplating the box on her desk. It felt strange
having Dr. Matt give her a vibrator, like it was a personal gift.
Of course, it wasn’t. It was just another tool, something to help
her with her “issues.” She’d been instructed by plenty of sex
therapists to masturbate daily. She was familiar enough with the
idea.

And she’d been a diligent student, just as
Dr. Matt had told her to. Ten minutes of masturbation every night,
by the clock. She set her cell phone alarm so she was sure it was
actually ten minutes. So far, she had barely even felt a tingle.
She felt strung too tight here, stretched thin, always too aware
that there were people around, even when her door was locked.