Chapter 9: The Greenhouse Games
The silence after Dr. Wick’s office didn’t heal; it festered. It lived in Susanna’s joints, a stiff reluctance as she moved through the following days. The routine pills felt like stones in her throat. The glances from other patients seemed to linger too long. She caught Polly, the burn-scarred woman, watching her with watery, knowing eyes once at breakfast, and had to look away, her cheeks burning with a shame that had no single source.
They gave her a job. Occupational therapy, they called it. A meaningless task to foster a sense of purpose. Her purpose, that Thursday afternoon, was to water the plants in the west wing greenhouse.
It was a forgotten place. A long, glass-paned corridor jutted from the main building, its iron skeleton weeping rust. Many panes were cracked or patched with yellowing tape. Inside, the air was a wet blanket, thick with the perfume of loam and the sharper tang of decay. Ferns spilled from broken pots, vines snaked across the gravel paths, and monstrous, spiked plants with leathery leaves loomed in the corners. The sound of dripping water was constant, a slow tap-tap-tap from a leak in the iron gutters running along the ceiling.
Susanna moved slowly, a rusty watering can in her hand. She poured tepid water onto dry soil, watching it bead and then sink, leaving a darker stain. The place felt alive in a hungry way. It felt like the inside of a lung.
She heard the click of the door latch, a clean, metallic sound in the green silence.
She didn’t need to turn. The energy in the humid air changed, grew charged. It was the feeling before a lightning strike.
“Found you.”
Lisa’s voice was close. Susanna kept watering, her hand trembling slightly. The can’s spout clattered against the rim of a pot.
A hand closed over hers, stilling it. Lisa’s fingers were cool. She took the can from Susanna’s grip and set it on the gravel with a soft crunch. Then her hands were on Susanna’s shoulders, turning her around.
Lisa looked different. The calculated smirk was gone. Her blonde hair was tied back messily, a few strands stuck to her temples. Her eyes were too bright, the pupils wide and dark. There was a restless, jittering intensity to her, like a wire stretched to singing point.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Lisa said. It wasn’t an accusation; it was a flat statement.
“I haven’t,” Susanna whispered. The lie was pathetic.
Lisa’s gaze held her, dissecting. “You think about that office. You taste me when you swallow your pills.” She stepped closer, backing Susanna against a long, wooden potting bench cluttered with bags of soil and terra-cotta shards. “It scared you. How much you liked it.”
“I didn’t—”
“You screamed,” Lisa cut her off, her voice dropping to a husky murmur. “You screamed so loud the whole fucking ward should have come running. But no one did. That’s the real horror, isn’t it? The silence afterward.” She brought a hand up, traced the line of Susanna’s jaw with a single finger. “That’s when you knew you were truly mine.”
Susanna’s breath hitched. The moist heat of the greenhouse was suffocating. She could smell Lisa underneath the decay—cigarettes, sweat, that same musk.
“I need you,” Lisa said, and the raw, stripped-bare truth in her voice was more frightening than any command. It wasn’t a ploy. It was a confession of a different kind of sickness.
Her mouth crashed down on Susanna’s. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a collision. Lips, teeth, tongue—a bruising, desperate claim. Susanna gasped into it, her hands rising to push against Lisa’s chest, but the strength wasn’t there. Her fingers curled into the thin fabric of Lisa’s shirt instead.
Lisa broke the kiss, breathing hard. “On the bench. Now.”
She pushed. Susanna’s hips hit the rough wood. A stack of empty clay pots wobbled and crashed to the gravel, shattering. The sound was shockingly loud in the leafy quiet.
Lisa’s hands were at her waist, yanking the drawstring of her sweatpants, shoving them and her underwear down to her knees in one brutal motion. The damp, grainy wood bit into the bare skin of her ass.
“I’m going to fuck you until you forget your own name,” Lisa hissed, leaning over her, pinning her upper body down with a forearm across her back.
Susanna heard the wet sound of Lisa spitting into her own palm. A cold thrill shot down her spine. Then Lisa’s fingers were there, at her entrance, slippery and demanding. Two of them pushed inside without preamble, a deep, penetrating burn.
“Fuck!” Susanna cried out, her forehead pressing against the wood.
“Yeah,” Lisa grunted, working her fingers in and out with a rough, scissoring motion. “You’re so tight. Still so fucking tight for me.” She crooked her fingers, searching, and found the swollen, sensitive spot inside. She rubbed it, hard.
A bolt of white-hot pleasure, vicious and unwelcome, tore through Susanna’s pain. A moan was ripped from her throat.
“That’s it,” Lisa breathed, her own arousal damp against Susanna’s thigh. She added a third finger. The stretch was immense, punishing. Lisa fucked her with her hand, a relentless, pistoning rhythm that made the bench creak. The wet, slapping sounds of her fingers driving into Susanna’s cunt mixed with the drip of water from the roof.
“You want my cock, don’t you?” Lisa whispered, her mouth against Susanna’s ear. “You want that fake dick to split you open again. You dream about it.”
“No,” Susanna gasped, but her body betrayed her, clenching around the invading fingers, her own wetness joining the spit, making the glide obscenely slick.
“Liar.” Lisa nipped her earlobe. “Your cunt doesn’t lie. It’s begging for it.” She pumped her fingers faster, deeper. “Come on. Come for me. Come on my hand like the desperate little slut you are.”
The shame was a catalyst. The coil of tension in Susanna’s gut, wound from fear and brutal stimulation, snapped. Her orgasm crashed over her, a wave of humiliation so intense it felt like annihilation. She shook, a silent, shuddering cry locked in her chest as her insides spasmed around Lisa’s fingers.
Lisa fucked her through the tremors, prolonging it until it bordered on pain. Then, slowly, she withdrew her hand.
Susanna slumped over the bench, spent, tears of frustration and release mixing with the sweat on her face. She felt Lisa wipe her glistening fingers on the back of her thigh.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the eternal drip-drip-drip. Then Lisa’s hands were on her again, turning her over onto her back. Her sweatpants were tugged off completely, discarded on the gravel. Lisa pushed her thighs apart, staring down at the flushed, wet evidence of her work.
“Look at you,” Lisa murmured, but her voice had lost its edge. It was almost wondering. She leaned down, not to kiss her mouth, but to press her forehead against Susanna’s. Her eyes were inches away, a turbulent sea of grey and green. The manic energy seemed to have bled out of her, leaving something hollow and shaky in its wake.
“They’re increasing my Thorazine,” Lisa said, the words spilling out in a quiet rush. “Wick says I’m ‘escalating.’ He doesn’t know the half of it.”
She lowered her body, settling her weight on top of Susanna. The heat of her was everywhere. She buried her face in the crook of Susanna’s neck. “The silence… it gets louder. It’s in the walls. It’s in the pills. You’re the only thing that makes it stop.”
It was a vulnerability more shocking than any violence. Susanna lay still, feeling the rapid beat of Lisa’s heart against her own. The greenhouse breathed around them, a living, decaying thing.
Slowly, hesitantly, Susanna brought her arms up and wrapped them around Lisa’s back. She held her. The destroyer, trembling. The jailer, seeking refuge in her prisoner.
They stayed like that for a long time, as the afternoon light faded behind the dirty glass, painting the steam in the air with streaks of dull gold. The line between caretaker and captor, between poison and antidote, dissolved in the humid dark. There was only this: two broken women in a cathedral of rot, holding onto each other as the water dripped, a steady measure of the coming night.