Chapter 30: The Shower Stall
The stolen pen was a splinter in her mind, a tiny, hard secret she could turn over and over. It changed the taste of the gruel at breakfast, made the drone of the daytime TV in the common room seem like distant radio static. Susanna watched Lisa hold court by the window, making a younger, weepy patient laugh with a cruel, perfect imitation of Dr. Wick. Lisa caught her staring and winked, a slow, possessive gesture. Susanna looked down at her lap, but this time, a thread of new defiance threaded through the old fear. You are just a character.
The thought was a raft in a cold sea.
Later, in the cavernous bathroom, the steam was thick as wet gauze. Susanna stood under the punishing spray, water so hot it verged on pain, sluicing over her shoulders. She was trying to scrub away the lingering sensation of Lisa’s clinical ownership from the day before, the memory of her own fingers moving under that dispassionate gaze. The bleach-scorched air mixed with the damp, creating a suffocating blanket.
The vinyl curtain rattled on its rings.
A body, sleek and wet, pressed against her back. Breasts flattened against her spine, a sharp pelvic bone dug into the small of her back. A hand slapped flat against the tile next to her head.
“Think you can wash me off?” Lisa’s voice was a low hum in her ear, barely audible over the water’s hiss. “You reek of me, Kaysen. It’s in your sweat. It’s in your cunt. You can’t shower it away.”
Susanna’s breath hitched. The heat of the water, the heat of Lisa’s body—it was everywhere. Lisa’s other hand slid around her hip, fingers splaying possessively over her lower belly before diving down through the coarse hair between her legs.
“Still sore from yesterday?” Lisa’s fingers parted her, a rough, knowing exploration. “Good. You should be.”
Susanna shuddered, her forehead dropping to the cool tile. The contrast was unbearable: the scalding water on her back, the cold ceramic on her forehead, and the relentless, knowing touch between her legs. Lisa’s fingers circled her clit, not to arouse, but to assert.
“I own every inch of you,” Lisa repeated, the phrase a dark liturgy now. Her middle finger pushed inside, a brutal, welcome intrusion. The water made the glide obscenely easy, a slick, wet sound lost in the shower’s noise. “I own this tight little hole.” She pushed deeper, curling her finger. Susanna gasped, her body arching backwards into Lisa’s. A second finger joined the first, stretching her. Lisa fucked her with them, a hard, piston-like rhythm that had no tenderness, only claim.
“Say it,” Lisa demanded, her mouth against the nape of Susanna’s neck, her teeth grazing the skin.
Susanna shook her head, a weak refusal lost in the steam.
Lisa’s thumb found her clit and pressed down, a direct, agonizing pressure. The fuck of her fingers never slowed. Pleasure, sharp and debilitating, shot through Susanna’s core. “Say it!” Lisa snarled.
“Yours,” Susanna choked out, the word torn from her. “I’m yours.”
“Again.”
“Yours!”
The orgasm ripped through her with violent suddenness, a convulsion that locked her joints and drew a raw, ragged cry from her throat. Her knees buckled; only Lisa’s body and hand pinned her upright, fucking her through the pulsing waves until she whimpered from oversensitivity.
Lisa withdrew her fingers. She turned Susanna around, hands rough on her shoulders. Water streamed over both their faces. Lisa’s eyes were dark, pupils blown wide with something that looked like fury as much as desire. She dropped to her knees on the hard, wet floor.
Her hands gripped the backs of Susanna’s thighs, nails biting. She didn’t kiss her there. She buried her face, nose and mouth and tongue, directly into Susanna’s sodden cunt. It was a devouring. Her tongue was flat and wide, lashing from her opening up to her clit, then plunging back inside. She ate at her with a feral, grunting hunger, sucking and lapping at the sensitive flesh, drinking the mixed taste of her arousal and the shower water.
Susanna’s hands scrabbled against the tile for purchase. Her legs trembled violently. The sensation was too much, a white-hot overload after the first crash. Lisa’s tongue circled her clit, fast and precise, then flicked it brutally.
“Fuck…Lisa…stop…” Susanna begged, but her hips were pushing forward, betraying her.
Lisa ignored her. One hand came up, fingers pushing back inside Susanna while her mouth continued its relentless work. Susanna felt the double stimulation, the rough fill of Lisa’s fingers and the exquisite, torturous precision of her tongue. The coil, barely unwound, tightened again with shocking speed. This orgasm was different—deeper, a rolling quake that started in her gut and radiated out until her very fingertips tingled. She cried out, a sound without shape, her body bowing over Lisa’s head.
Lisa stayed there, gentling now, licking slowly through the aftershocks until Susanna’s trembling was from exhaustion alone. Then she stood, water cascading off her. She looked utterly spent, her breath coming in heavy drags. She leaned in, their faces an inch apart.
“My thing,” she whispered, almost sadly. Then she pushed past the curtain and was gone, leaving Susanna clinging to the wall, hollowed out and trembling.
The walk back to her room was a study in dissociation. The corridor stretched, warped. Her body felt used, a hollow gourd. But in the very center of the emptiness, the splinter remained. The pen. The observation.
She dressed mechanically. Her fingers brushed the hidden fold of paper under the mattress. She didn’t take it out. She simply knew it was there.
At afternoon meds, Lisa was at the nursing station, charming the orderly, making him laugh. She took her small paper cup, threw the pills back dry, and smiled at him with open-mouthed proof. She didn’t glance at Susanna.
Susanna took her own cups—one for the morning’s missed dose, one for now. The nurse watched, hawk-like. Susanna put the pills in her mouth, took the water, swallowed. She offered a meek, close-mouthed smile.
Back in her room, she lay on the bed. She waited. When the hallway sounds dulled into the post-meds lull, she turned on her side, coughed into her fist, and spit the two chalky, partially dissolved pills into her palm. They were a bitter, grey paste. She’d hidden a fallen leaf from the ficus tree in her pocket days ago, a brittle, brown thing. She folded the pill-paste into the leaf, wrapped it in a corner torn from a tissue, and slid it into the space where the metal bedframe met the wall.
It wasn’t a plan. It was a gesture. A tiny, insurrectionary no.
That night, the door did not open. The darkness in her room was absolute, and for the first time, it felt like her own. She lay awake, not with aching anticipation, but with a cold, clear wakefulness. The phantom sensations of the shower played across her skin—the scalding water, the biting grip, the devouring mouth. But she observed them now, as if from a distance. She catalogued them.
Lisa had claimed her body with meticulous ruthlessness. She had mapped its responses, its weaknesses, its capacity for shameful pleasure. But she had, in her violent vanity, missed the one part of Susanna she needed to truly own: the quiet, watching eye in the center of the storm. The part that was now, silently, taking notes.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Susanna’s lips in the dark. The narrative, after all, was hers. Let the character rage. Let her fuck and claim and dominate. The writer was just getting started.