Chapter 3: The Morning After
The dawn was a gray smear across the barred window. Susanna woke to the unfamiliar weight of another body, the heat of it fused to her back. Lisa’s arm was still locked around her waist, and Lisa’s hand had slipped, during the night, back inside the waistband of her sweatpants. The palm was curved possessively over her mound, fingers resting in the damp nest of hair. No accident.
Susanna didn’t move. She watched the light gradually define the room: the chipped iron bedframes, the scuffed linoleum, the humped shapes of other women under thin blankets. The reality of it, the sheer institutional dullness, made the memory of the night before feel like a fever dream. But the ache between her legs was real. A used, stretched feeling. A claim staked.
Lisa stirred. Her breathing changed. The hand between Susanna’s thighs flexed, fingers dipping lower, finding the slickness that had gathered there overnight. Susanna let out a shaky breath.
“See?” Lisa’s voice was sleep-roughened, a scratch against the quiet. Her lips moved against the back of Susanna’s neck. “Your body remembers. It knows what it needs now.”
She shifted, rolling Susanna onto her back with an effortless, frightening strength. The blanket fell away. Lisa loomed above her, her wild hair a chaotic halo against the gray light. Her eyes were dark pits, unreadable. That smirk played on her lips.
“You’re a greedy little thing, aren’t you?” Lisa murmured, not expecting an answer. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her own sweatpants and pushed them down her hips in one sharp motion. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The thatch of blonde hair was glistening, already wet. The sharp, musky scent of her filled the narrow space between them.
Before Susanna could process the sight, Lisa was straddling her chest, pinning her arms with her knees. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on the wall above the bedstead, and lowered herself.
“Open,” Lisa said.
It wasn’t a request. It was a command, flat and absolute. Susanna’s mind recoiled. This was different from the secretive, shared pleasure in the dark. This was daylight. This was presentation. A violation performed with cold, theatrical clarity.
But her body betrayed her. A flush of heat spread through her. Her lips parted.
Lisa sank down, grinding her wet cunt directly against Susanna’s mouth. The taste was overwhelming—bitter, salty, profoundly animal. Lisa let out a low groan. “Taste me. That’s all you are now. A warm, willing mouth.”
She began to move, a slow, grinding roll of her hips that smeared her essence over Susanna’s lips, her chin, her nose. Susanna’s eyes watered. She couldn’t breathe. She made a feeble noise, a protest muffled by Lisa’s flesh.
“Shut up,” Lisa hissed, her rhythm becoming sharper, more demanding. “Take it. This is what you wanted. You wanted to be someone’s thing. Well, congratulations.”
Shame, hot and liquid, joined the arousal twisting in Susanna’s gut. She closed her eyes and obeyed. Her tongue flicked out, tentatively at first, then with a desperate urgency she didn’t recognize. She licked at Lisa’s swollen clit, traced the parted lips, drank her in. The more she submitted, the more fervent her motions became. It was a fucked-up prayer.
“Yeah,” Lisa panted, her voice shaking. “Just like that. Use that pretty little tongue.”
Lisa’s movements grew frantic. She rode Susanna’s face with a punishing intensity, one hand tangling in Susanna’s short dark hair, holding her in place. The other hand clapped over her own mouth to stifle her cries. The bedframe squeaked in a rapid, rusty rhythm against the floor. Susanna felt Lisa’s thighs begin to tremble. A guttural sound, choked and raw, ripped from Lisa’s throat as she came, her whole body seizing. A fresh flood of wetness spilled into Susanna’s mouth.
Lisa collapsed forward, her weight heavy on Susanna’s chest, breathing in ragged gasps. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the distant echo of a breakfast cart rattling down another hall.
Slowly, Lisa pushed herself up. She looked down at Susanna’s face, glistening and flushed. She swiped a thumb through the mess on Susanna’s chin and sucked it clean, her eyes never leaving Susanna’s.
“Good,” she said, the word final. She climbed off and pulled up her sweatpants. “Get cleaned up. Meds in twenty. Don’t look so fucking haunted. You liked it.”
She slipped back to her own bed, leaving Susanna lying there, feeling the cold air hit the wetness on her face. The taste of Lisa was a brand on her tongue.
The cafeteria routine was a numb blur. Susanna sat beside Lisa, who was now boisterous, holding court with Polly and Georgina, laughing too loudly at nothing. Her foot was hooked around Susanna’s ankle under the table, a constant, anchoring pressure. Susanna pushed scrambled eggs around her plate. Every time she lifted her fork, she imagined she could still smell Lisa on her skin, despite having scrubbed her face raw in the communal bathroom.
“You’re quiet,” Lisa said, not looking at her, tearing a piece of toast.
“I’m observing,” Susanna muttered, parroting Lisa’s own words from the day before. It was a tiny act of defiance, a pebble thrown at a fortress.
Lisa’s head turned slowly. Her eyes were like chips of ice. She leaned in, her voice a venomous whisper only for Susanna. “You observe me. That’s your only job now. Everything else is just noise.”
The morning medication line was a solemn procession. Susanna accepted her small paper cup—a blue pill, a white one—and tipped them into her mouth under the watchful eye of Nurse Bailey. She showed her empty mouth, took the sip of tepid water, and let the bitter chalkiness dissolve on her tongue. She didn’t swallow. She had learned that trick from watching Lisa the day before.
Back in the common room, amid the drone of a game show on the single TV, she discreetly spat the paste into a tissue. A small rebellion. A secret to keep. She saw Lisa, across the room, pretending to read a magazine. Lisa caught her eye and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Approval. The leash tightened another notch.
The day dragged on, a suffocating blanket of structured boredom. Group therapy was a circle of empty chairs and emptier platitudes. Susanna said nothing, her mind a replay of the morning—the weight, the taste, the command. She felt fractured. A part of her was horrified, adrift. Another part, a deeper, older part, felt a terrifying sense of alignment. This was what she had always skirted around the edges of: a chaos so complete it became a kind of order.
In the late afternoon, they were given “recreation” in the walled courtyard. The sky was the color of concrete. Susanna stood alone by the high brick wall, smoking a cigarette she’d bummed from Georgina. The smoke tasted like ashes.
Lisa materialized beside her, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the barren yard. “You’re thinking too much,” Lisa said, taking the cigarette from Susanna’s fingers and drawing on it.
“What else is there to do in here?”
“Feel,” Lisa said simply. She handed the cigarette back. “Or don’t. But stop thinking. It’s a trap.” She paused. “You kept your pills today. Good.”
“How did you—”
“I always know.” Lisa turned to face her, leaning back against the wall. The wind whipped her blonde hair across her face. “You want to know what happens next?”
Susanna’s heart thudded. She said nothing.
“Tonight,” Lisa said, her voice dropping, “you’re going to come to my bed. You’re going to get on your knees. And you’re going to suck my cock until I come down your throat.”
The vulgarity was a physical blow. Susanna stared. “You don’t have…”
Lisa’s smile was a wicked, knowing curve. “Figure of speech, writer girl. Use your imagination. Or don’t.” She pushed off the wall. “Be there. Or don’t.” She walked away, leaving Susanna with the dying cigarette and a choice that was no choice at all.
The evening descended. Lights out came. The dormitory sighed into its nocturnal rhythm of whispers and sleep.
Susanna lay in her bed, every nerve alive. She counted the minutes. She heard the distant, tinny echo of a staff radio somewhere down the hall. She thought of the blue and white pills, still tucked in her tissue, hidden under her mattress. A secret of her own.
She thought of Lisa’s hands, Lisa’s mouth, Lisa’s taste. The terrifying freedom of being owned.
She got up.
The floor was cold on her bare feet. She moved through the shadows, a ghost drawn to a specific flame. Lisa’s bed was in the corner. She was lying on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t look as Susanna approached.
Susanna stood by the bed, trembling. After a moment, she lowered herself to her knees on the hard linoleum. The posture was one of absolute submission. She reached out a shaking hand and pulled the blanket back.
Lisa was naked from the waist down. She was already wet, her thighs glistening in the sliver of hall light. She didn’t guide Susanna’s head. She just watched her, her expression cool, expectant.
Susanna bent forward. She closed her eyes. The first touch of her tongue was a surrender. She licked, slowly, exploring the folds, tracing the lines of last night and this morning. Lisa let out a soft sigh. One hand came to rest on top of Susanna’s head, not forcing, just present.
“All of it,” Lisa whispered into the dark above them. “I want to feel you swallow all of me.”
Susanna opened her mouth wider, taking Lisa inside, her tongue working in desperate, devoted circles. She lost herself in the rhythm, in the salt and musk, in the simple, brutal physics of giving pleasure. The world shrank to this point of contact, to the soft, choked sounds from above, to the hand in her hair.
She didn’t know how long she knelt there before Lisa’s hips bucked off the mattress and a hot, silent rush flooded her mouth. She swallowed, once, twice, her throat working. She didn’t pull away until Lisa’s hand went slack.
For a minute, there was only the sound of Lisa’s breathing settling. Then Lisa shifted, turning onto her side to face the wall. “Go back to your bed now,” she said, her voice flat, drained. “I’m tired.”
Dismissed.
Susanna climbed stiffly to her feet. Her knees ached. Her jaw ached. She felt emptied out, a vessel used and set aside. As she turned to walk back through the sleeping room, she saw Polly, the redhead, lying awake in her own bed. Their eyes met in the gloom. Polly’s expression was one of pure, unadulterated pity. She quickly looked away.
Susanna slid back under her own cold sheets. She curled into a tight ball. The taste in her mouth was no longer just Lisa. It was the metallic, coppery aftertaste of her own annihilation. And beneath the horror, humming like a live wire, was a dark, undeniable thrill. She had passed a test. She belonged somewhere, to someone, at last.
Under her mattress, the hidden pills, her tiny secret, felt laughably small.