Chapter 13: The Infinite Task
The chemical sleep was a black, airless tide. Peter awoke to the bite of cold stone against his cheek and the distant, hollow echo of a horse shifting in its stall. Darkness pressed in, thick and complete, broken only by the faint, dancing glow of lantern light from the central aisle. His back was a solid sheet of throbbing fire, each welt a distinct line of agony beneath the rough cotton of his shirt. The taste of the pill was a bitter ghost on his tongue.
A boot nudged his ribs, not hard, but insistent.
“Up.”
Izzy’s voice was a clean slice in the dark. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, the movement sending fresh spasms across his shoulders. The lantern light revealed them standing in a semi-circle, dressed not in riding gear but in simple, dark clothes. Becky held the lantern aloft, her face a mask of serene expectation. In her other hand, she held a long, thin cane, tapping it lightly against her thigh.
“The boots from today’s ride are… unsatisfactory,” Izzy said. Her eyes gleamed in the low light. “You will clean them. Properly. With your tongue. Every one. From the top of the cuff to the edge of the sole. We will inspect.”
Chloe was already dragging the heavy tack box into the center of the aisle. She opened it. Inside, instead of brushes and soap, was the same bucket from earlier, its contents faintly luminous in the gloom. The smell, ripe and ammoniac, wafted out. Next to it, laid out in a neat row, were eight pairs of riding boots, still crusted with the dried mud and manure of the afternoon’s hack.
“Position,” Becky said softly.
He crawled to the bucket. The stone was freezing. He looked up at the line of boots, a seemingly endless topography of leather and filth.
“Begin with Felicity’s,” Izzy instructed, pointing to a pair of dusty jodhpur boots.
He picked up the first one. The leather was cold, the dirt granular. He dipped his head toward the bucket.
“No,” Chloe said. “No brush. Your tongue only. We want to see the effort.”
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened his mouth. The first lick was a revelation of grit and salt and the profound, earthy foulness of the stable yard. He gagged, his body convulsing.
A sharp crack split the air, and a line of pure, electric pain seared across his shoulders. He cried out, dropping the boot.
“Resistance,” Felicity said, lowering her riding crop. She sounded pleasantly analytical. “That’s a restart. From the beginning. And we haven’t even decided on the multiplier for that.”
“Let’s watch a bit more first,” Becky murmured, her hand drifting to her stomach. “I want to see him work.”
Trembling, Peter picked up the boot again. He forced his tongue out, flattening it against the muddy toe. He worked in small, pathetic swipes, gathering a paste of dirt and saliva. The process was excruciatingly slow. The girls watched in silence, their breathing the only sound besides the rasp of his tongue and the occasional shift of leather.
He finished the toe of the first boot after what felt like an hour. A tear, born of pain, humiliation, and sheer exhaustion, welled in his eye. It trembled on his lower lid for a moment before splashing onto the partially cleaned leather, leaving a dark, star-shaped blot on the dusty surface.
He froze.
Becky let out a low, delighted laugh. “Oh. Oh, that’s interesting.” She stepped forward, crouching down to examine the spot. “A tear. Saltwater on the leather. That’s a contaminant. That’s an undo.” She looked up at Izzy, her emerald eyes glittering. “Start over from the beginning. All of them.”
“No, please,” the words were out before he could stop them, a wet, desperate slurry.
Izzy’s riding whip snapped out, catching him across the face. The pain was blinding, a white-hot brand on his cheek. “Sound,” she stated coldly. “That’s another restart. And we’ll multiply the total… let’s see… by three. For a start.”
He knelt there, the taste of blood mingling with the dirt in his mouth. The mountain of leather before him seemed to grow, to multiply in the flickering light.
“Begin again,” Chloe said, her voice bored. “And try to control your ducts. They’re costing you.”
He picked up Felicity’s boot again. His tongue was raw. He worked, a automaton of degradation, his mind screaming against the sheer, monumental futility of it. He was on the third boot when Penny, silent until now, stepped forward. She placed her booted foot gently on the back of his left hand, where it braced against the stone floor. Then she shifted her weight.
The pressure was intense, grinding the bones of his knuckles against the unyielding stone. He whimpered, a high, trapped-animal sound.
“Ah,” Becky cooed. “A sign of resistance. Perceived. That’s another restart. Multiply the current total… by five.” She was breathing faster now, her free hand slipping lower on her abdomen. “Keep going. I want to see how many times we can loop this.”
It became a hellish calculus. He would manage two boots before a tear fell. Or a flinch as Felicity ground her spur into his other hand. Or a stifled moan that was deemed too loud. Each infraction sent him back to the start of the line, the multiplier climbing: seven, then ten. The numbers lost meaning, becoming mere syllables of dread chanted by Chloe.
Becky, watching him lick the same patch of mud for the fifth time, sighed with deep, sensual pleasure, her body tensing. “Multiply by twenty,” she gasped, her back arching slightly.
He broke then. A sob, ragged and total, tore from his throat. He dropped the boot, his body slumping forward over the filthy leather.
The beating that followed was a blurred, percussive storm. They used crops, their hands, the buckle end of a belt. It was not the measured, recorded punishment of the afternoon. It was chaotic, personal, and fuelled by a fresh, frustrated energy. When they stopped, he was curled on his side, his breath coming in wet, shuddering hiccups.
“Pathetic,” Izzy spat, wiping her brow. “Chloe, send the video off to Dominion. I hope they will appreciate the additional action.”
Two hours later, they were in the small office above the tack room, the glow of a laptop screen illuminating their faces. The reply from ‘Dominion’ chimed in the silent room.
Chloe read it aloud, her voice flat at first, then tightening with a mixture of insult and intrigue. “While we acknowledge that the punishment delivered is an increase on previous days, we feel that administering an RGX pill after a mere 100 strokes is wasteful. The spark seems to have gone out of your performances. The first video you sent us was exciting, you all seemed to relish the opportunity to allow your sadistic cruelty free reign…”
As she read on, detailing the disappointment, the suggestions for varied implements and areas of impact, the explicit reminder of the ‘Punishment Rules’, the atmosphere in the room changed. The lethargic cruelty of the evening evaporated, replaced by a sharp, focused hunger. Becky’s lips curled into a smile. Felicity examined her nails, then cracked her knuckles. Izzy’s dark eyes glinted with renewed purpose.
“They’re right,” Izzy said quietly when Chloe finished. “We got lazy. We let the routine numb us.” She stood up, pacing the small room. “Two thousand, three hundred and fifty strokes in the bank. Subject to interest. And we’ve been scratching the surface.”
“They want a show,” Becky said, her childlike curiosity morphing into something razor-edged. “They want to see us enjoy it. Really enjoy it.”
“Then let’s give them one,” Chloe said, closing the laptop with a decisive click. “Starting now. Let’s remind him of the rules.”
They found him where they left him, shivering in the dark aisle. They did not drag him to the mounting block. Instead, Izzy shoved the laptop screen in front of his face, the white text of Dominion’s message glowing brightly.
“Read it,” she commanded. “All of it.”
His vision swam. He read the criticism, the clinical suggestions, and then the list of rules. Each one landed in his gut like a stone. Any sound… any sign… any perceived thought… we can begin again any time we like… no limit… The final rule, about the cane to his cock and balls, made his testicles crawl tight with instinctual terror.
“Do you understand?” Becky asked, her voice sweet as poison. “These aren’t our rules anymore. These are the rules. The gospel.”
“We begin now,” Izzy said. “First punishment segment. One hundred plimsoll slaps to the face. The number is one hundred. Are you ready?”
He could only nod, a frantic, jerky motion.
Felicity produced a grubber plimsoll from the tack box. A simple, ugly shoe of hard rubber and canvas. She weighed it in her hand.
Izzy grabbed a handful of Peter’s hair and yanked his head upright. “Count them,” she whispered. “And remember Rule Two.”
Felicity’s arm drew back and swung in a tight, brutal arc.
The slap was a deafening crack. It wasn’t just pain; it was a shockwave that rattled his teeth, filled his head with light, and dumped him into a void of pure, stunned disorientation. Spittle flew from his lips.
“One,” he choked out, his ear ringing.
The second slap landed on the other cheek. His head snapped sideways.
“Two.”
The third. The fourth. They came in a steady, rhythmless rain. The plimsoll was unforgiving. It split his lip on slap twenty-seven. By forty, his vision was pulsing with red and black spots. He lost count at fifty-three, his mind a scramble of noise and hurt.
He moaned. It was not a word, just a raw expulsion of anguish.
The slaps stopped.
Izzy’s face swam into his bleary view. “A sound,” she said, her voice vibrating with a pleasure she made no effort to hide. “That’s Rule Two. The punishment starts again from the beginning.” She looked at Becky. “Multiply by?”
Becky was leaning against a stall door, her hand firmly between her legs, rubbing in slow, circular presses against the seam of her jeans. Her breath hitched. “He lost count, too. That’s defiance. A perceived failure to comply. That’s Rule Three as well. Let’s make it… four. Multiply by four. Four hundred slaps now.”
Peter stared, the numbers expanding into an impossible cosmos of pain. A low, continuous whine started in his throat.
“Ah,” Chloe said, pointing. “A sign of resistance. Starting again. Multiply that four hundred by… two. For my amusement. Rule Four.”
Becky gasped, her hips stuttering. “Eight hundred,” she breathed, her eyes rolling back for a second before fixing on him with delirious intensity. “Eight hundred plimsoll slaps. Let’s begin.”
Felicity hefted the plimsoll, a wide, savage grin spreading across her face. Izzy tightened her grip in his hair. The lantern light flickered, casting monstrous, dancing shadows as Felicity’s arm drew back for the first of eight hundred.
The crack that followed was not just a sound. It was the world dissolving into a single, endless point of impact.
The impact was a flat, world-ending crack. Pain detonated in his cheekbone, a seismic shock that traveled through his teeth and into the dark core of his skull. His head wrenched sideways in Izzy’s unyielding grip, a puppet with snapping strings.
“One,” he gasped, the word mangled by swelling lips.
Felicity adjusted her stance, rolled her shoulder. The second slap came lower, crushing his already split lip against his teeth. Copper blood flooded his mouth, warm and metallic.
“Two.”
The count became a broken liturgy, punctuated by the wet, percussive thwack of rubber on flesh. Thirty-seven. Forty-two. Each number was a stone he had to dredge up from a deepening well of shock. His face lost definition, becoming a numb, burning mask. At seventy, his eyes refused to focus, the lantern light smearing into blurred orbs.
A whimper escaped, high and thin.
Everything stopped.
“Was that a sound, Becky?” Izzy asked, her voice detached, clinical.
Becky didn’t answer immediately. Her breath was coming in short, audible pulls. She had her phone out, recording, the screen’s glow illuminating her rapt face. “Mmm. Yes. A definitive vocalization. Rule Two.” She finally looked away from the screen, her eyes glassy. “Restart. And the multiplier for that segment is now… six. For my personal satisfaction.”
Peter moaned, a deep, helpless noise from his chest.
“Another one,” Chloe noted from the shadows, her tone that of a dispassionate scorer. “That’s a restart on the new count. Compound the multiplier. Make it eight.”
The numbers swirled in the soup of his mind, meaningless and terrible. Eight times eight hundred. The impossibility of it broke something loose inside him. A sob shook his frame, violent and snot-filled.
Felicity sighed, a put-upon sound. “He’s just leaking everywhere now. It’s messy.” She lowered the plimsoll. “Do we even continue this? The count’s unreal.”
Izzy released his hair. His head slumped forward, drool and blood stringing down to the stone. She studied him, tilting her head. “You’re right. The arithmetic has exceeded his capacity. The lesson is lost.” She tapped his forehead with a finger. “Subject B. Look at me.”
With monumental effort, he raised his pulped face.
“The slaps are suspended. Indefinitely. They remain in the ledger, accruing interest.” She smiled, a thin, surgical curve. “We’ll find a more immediate form of instruction. One that doesn’t require your feeble arithmetic.”
Becky pocketed her phone, a flicker of disappointment crossing her features before it brightened into fresh curiosity. “The boots never got finished. And the stall floors are a disgrace after Bluebell’s colic this morning.”
Izzy’s gaze followed Becky’s toward the nearest stall. The floor was strewn with soiled straw and foul, wet patches. “Perfect. A practical lesson. Chloe, the bucket. Felicity, the brush.”
It wasn’t the same bucket. This one was heavier, sloshing as Chloe set it down. The smell was thicker, profoundly organic, a gut-churning punch of stable waste and ammonia that made his already-queasy stomach clench. A stiff-bristled yard brush lay beside it.
“You will clean Bluebell’s stall,” Izzy said. “With the brush. And your tongue. You will ensure every soiled strand of straw is removed, every stain lifted from the stone. We will inspect it by lantern light. And by touch.”
Penny, silent until now, spoke up, her voice softly eager. “The corners. They’re always the hardest. He has to get into the corners.”
“Precisely,” Izzy said.
They dragged him to the stall entrance and pushed him inside. The reek was overpowering, a physical presence in the damp air. He knelt in the foul straw, the cold wetness immediately seeping through his trousers.
“Begin,” Becky said, leaning on the half-door. “And remember Rule Four. Any perceived resistance. Any lagging pace. We begin the entire task again. From the very start.”
He picked up the brush, dipped its bristles into the noxious slurry. He scrubbed at a dark stain on the stone. It smeared. He scrubbed harder, the bristles scraping.
“Tongue,” Chloe reminded him, her arms crossed. “The brush just loosens. The tongue polishes.”
He dropped the brush. He leaned down, his face hovering inches above the stain. The smell filled his nostrils, his throat, his lungs. He extended his tongue, touching it to the cold, wet stone.
The taste was unspeakable. It was bitter, sour, fecal, a concentrated essence of degradation. He gagged violently, his body revolting, jerking back.
“Perceived resistance,” Felicity sang out. “He doesn’t want to do it. Start over.”
“After he cleans the brush,” Becky added. “With his mouth. It’s dirty now.”
They made him take the fouled brush into his mouth, run his tongue over each clump of bristles. Tears streamed down his ruined face, mingling with the filth. He returned to the stain. This time, he kept his tongue pressed to the stone, moving it in a small, pathetic circle. He collected the muck, swallowing convulsively.
He moved to a soiled strand of straw. He had to take it in his mouth, draw it clean with his lips and tongue, then place it in a discard pile. Each piece was an eternity. The lantern light wavered, making the shadows in the deep corners of the stall seem to writhe.
He was halfway through, a shuddering, mucus-covered automaton, when Becky clicked her tongue.
“His posture is all wrong. He’s not committed. He’s just going through the motions.” She turned to Izzy. “That’s a restart, isn’t it? A failure of proper spirit.”
Izzy nodded slowly, her eyes cold stars in the lantern glow. “It is. A complete restart. And this time, Penny is right. The corners need special attention. You’ll use just your tongue on the corners. No brush.”
A sound escaped him, not a word, just a hollow, cracking exhalation of utter despair.
Becky’s breath hitched. “Vocalization. That’s another restart condition. Multiply the required repetitions by… let’s say three. You’ll clean this stall three times perfectly. Starting now.”
He stared at the fouled expanse before him, now multiplied into an infinite, unscalable landscape. His body gave a violent, uncontrollable tremble, a final tectonic shift before total collapse. He vomited, a thin, bitter rush that splattered onto the stone he had just licked.
In the sudden, stinking silence, Felicity laughed, a bright, clean sound. “Oh, brilliant. Now he’s made a new mess. That’s definitely a restart.”
Izzy stepped into the stall, careful to avoid the vomit. She crouched down, her face close to his. He could see his own shattered reflection in her dark eyes.
“You see how it works?” she whispered, her voice almost gentle. “There is no finish line. There is only the process. And your continued failure within it.” She stood, brushing a speck of straw from her jeans. “Clean up the new mess. Then begin the first of your three repetitions. We’ll be at the house, reviewing the ledger. We expect progress by dawn.”
They left him there. The lantern hung on a hook outside the stall, casting a solitary, jaundiced light over his kingdom of filth. The night was perfectly still, broken only by the distant hoot of an owl and the slow, steady drip of water from a rusted tap.
He looked at the brush. He looked at the stone. He looked at his own trembling, stained hands.
Slowly, moving as if every joint were rusted shut, he crawled toward the fresh puddle of his own sickness. He lowered his head. The process was all that remained.
The process was all that remained. He pressed his tongue to the cold, fouled stone. The vomit was acrid, a sharp counterpoint to the deeper, rotting stable stench already embedded in the membrane of his mouth. He cleaned it, swipe by agonizing swipe, swallowing convulsively until the patch was gone, leaving only wet stone and the phantom burn of bile in his throat.
He then picked up the brush. He worked. The night wore on, measured in cramps and tremors and the endless, gritty passage of filth over his tongue. He did not think. He simply moved from stain to straw to corner, his mind a blank vault where numbers like 2,450 and 800 once echoed. Dawn was a grey smear through the high windows when he finished the first perfect cleaning. His body was a single articulated pain.
He began the second repetition. The movements were mechanical now, a grotesque ritual. He was on his hands and knees, scrubbing a patch of stone for the second time, when the stable door groaned open. Boots clicked on the central aisle stone, slow and deliberate. He did not look up.
“Progress report?” Izzy’s voice was crisp, morning-cool.
He kept scrubbing. A shadow fell over him.
“I asked you a question, Subject B.” Her riding crop tapped against the stall door.
“Second… repetition,” he rasped, the words scraping his raw throat.
“Look at me.”
He lifted his head. She stood with Chloe and Becky, all three sipping from tall travel mugs. The smell of fresh coffee pierced the stable’s miasma, a cruel memory of a different world. They looked rested, clean.
Izzy’s eyes scanned the stall. She stepped inside, avoiding the cleaned areas with fastidious care. She went to a back corner, knelt, and ran her fingertips over the stone. She lifted her hand, examining it, then rubbed her fingers together. She stood.
“Dust,” she announced. “In the corner. Inadequate. You missed a particulate film.” She walked back to the entrance. “That’s a failure. Start the three repetitions over.”
He stared, the last of his mental cohesion dissolving. A low, continuous whine started in his chest, escaping through his cracked lips.
Becky sipped her coffee. “Persistent vocalization. That’s a new infraction for the ledger. Add it to the stroke debt.” She smiled over the rim of her mug. “But let’s table the stall for now. We have a new day. New equipment arrived.”
Chloe held up a small, polished wooden box. She opened it. Inside, nestled in blue velvet, were six steel bits, each more intricate and severe than the last. One had a serrated roller. Another had long, sharpened cheekpieces.
“Dominion’s care package,” Chloe said. “A token of their continued… interest.”
“We’ll institute a wearing schedule,” Izzy said, her gaze returning to Peter. “But first, the morning inspection. Your boots are still waiting.”
They had not touched the line of boots from the night before. They sat, a silent tribunal of filth. The bucket, now a brackish horror, sat beside them.
“Assume the position,” Becky said, setting her coffee down. “We’re going to do this properly. One boot at a time. We’ll count every speck you miss.”
He crawled to the bucket. He picked up Felicity’s first jodhpur boot, his hands shaking.
“Begin,” Izzy said.
He licked. The dried mud was like concrete. He worked at a single patch on the instep, his tongue a blunt, aching tool.
“Stop,” Becky said, barely a minute in. She crouched, peering. “There. A fiber, embedded in the leather. You missed it. That’s one.” She looked at Chloe, who held a small notebook. “Mark it.”
Chloe made a note.
“Continue,” Izzy commanded.
He licked for another thirty seconds.
“Stop,” Felicity said. She pointed a toe of her own clean boot at a barely visible scuff. “Two. You’re not applying enough saliva. It’s a dry clean. Unacceptable.”
Tears, hot and silent, welled in his eyes. He blinked rapidly, trying to force them back. One traced a path through the grime on his cheek.
“Ah,” Becky cooed. “A tear. That’s a restart on this boot. And a new infraction for emotional leakage. Mark three, Chloe.”
He started the boot over. His despair was a physical weight, anchoring him to the stone. He licked with a desperate, focused intensity, trying to see every molecule.
“Stop,” Izzy said. She didn’t even point. “Your breathing is too labored. You’re huffing moisture onto the leather. That’s a contaminant. Restart.”
The count climbed. Every perceived flaw, every minute variation in the leather’s finish, every hair or fiber his raw tongue could not collect was tallied. They found seven on the first boot before they deemed it passable. His mouth felt flayed.
The second boot took longer. The infractions reached twelve. They made him hold the boot up to the morning light while Chloe read each recorded flaw aloud.
On the third boot, he whimpered as a sharp edge of dried manure cut the underside of his tongue. The coppery taste of fresh blood joined the chorus of filth.
“Vocalization,” all three said in near unison. Becky laughed, a bright, sparkling sound. “That’s a full reset. All boots. Back to the beginning.”
He dropped the boot. It clattered on the stone. He didn’t sob. He simply knelt, head bowed, blood and saliva dripping in a steady rhythm from his chin.
“Pick it up,” Izzy said, her voice devoid of all patience. “Now.”
He reached for it. His hand, numb and cold, fumbled. The boot tilted, and the filth-caked sole brushed against the thigh of his trousers.
Everyone went very still.
Izzy slowly put her coffee mug down on a saddle rack. She walked over, her boots echoing in the quiet. She looked from the faint smudge on his trouser leg to his horrified face.
“You,” she said softly, “have contaminated yourself with the unclean object. You’ve transferred the filth you were meant to remove.” She leaned down, her dark eyes inches from his. “That is not just a restart. That is a profound failure of the basic premise.”
She straightened up. “Chloe. The ledger. Add a new punishment segment. One thousand strokes. To be administered with the new cane. The offense is cross-contamination.”
Chloe’s pen scratched. The sound was infinitely precise.
“As for the current task,” Izzy continued, “it is now invalid. The boots are corrupted by your failure. You will clean something else.” She looked around the tack room, her gaze falling on the rows of saddles on their racks, the bridles hanging from hooks. Her eyes landed on their feet.
“Our boots,” she said, a slow smile forming. “The ones we are wearing. You will clean them. While we wear them. You will follow us and ensure no dust from this stable floor touches them. Use your tongue.”
Becky’s face lit up with childish delight. She put her full weight forward, presenting the toe of her gleaming tall boot. “Start here. I rode in the paddock. There’s a fine dust. I can feel it.”
He shuffled forward on his knees. He bent his head. The boot smelled of polished leather and the morning air. He extended his ruined tongue.
“Wait,” Becky said, pulling her foot back just before he made contact. “Rule Four. Any perceived sign of reluctance. You sighed. That’s a restart on the entire new protocol. And we haven’t even started.” She looked at Izzy. “The cane first, I think. A down payment on the thousand. To focus his mind.”
Izzy nodded. She took the new cane from the box. It was dark, slim, and whippy. She flexed it. It sang a high, wicked note in the air.
“Over the mounting block,” she said. “Now. We’ll give Dominion their money’s worth.”
The mounting block was cold. The familiar position sent bolts of agony through the old welts on his back. He heard Becky tap something on her phone.
“Recording,” she murmured. “For our patrons. Let’s give them a show.”
The first cane stroke was a different language of pain. It was not a broad impact but a searing, precise line that seemed to cut into the nerve beneath the skin. It stole his voice. All that emerged was a choked gasp.
“One,” Izzy counted, her voice calm.
The second landed parallel, a razor’s width away. Fire traced his spine.
“Two.”
The third crossed the first two, a burning X. His body jerked against the wood.
“Three.”
She worked with a slow, deliberate rhythm, painting a grid of agony across his back. Each stroke was measured, allowing the full bloom of pain before the next descended. By stroke twenty, his muscles were in constant, jittering spasm. By forty, the individual lines began to merge into a continent of pure, white-hot sensation.
He lost count. The world narrowed to the crack of the cane and the expanding fire on his skin.
Something changed at stroke fifty. The impact came lower, across the backs of his thighs. A new, deeper ache exploded. He cried out, a raw, broken sound.
The cane stopped.
“Vocalization,” Izzy said, breathing slightly harder. “That’s a restart on this segment. And we’ll add the missed strokes to the total. Chloe?”
“Fifty missed, now one hundred and fifty owed for this segment,” Chloe recited from her notebook. “Plus the original thousand for contamination.”
Peter began to sob, great heaving shudders that tore at the wounds on his back.
“Emotional display,” Becky chimed in from behind the phone. “That’s another infraction. Add it.”
The numbers ceased to be numbers. They were the atmosphere itself, a crushing weight of inevitable, endless pain. Izzy raised the cane again.
The stable door banged open.
Felicity stood there, breathless, her face flushed not with cruelty but with genuine, bright excitement. “You have to see this,” she said, ignoring Peter completely. “Bluebell’s done a massive, wet one in the fresh paddock. It’s perfect. It’s absolutely soup.”
Izzy lowered the cane. A look passed between the three of them, a silent conference. Becky stopped recording. The practical cruelty of the stall was one thing; this was an opportunity.
“The paddock,” Izzy said, her eyes returning to Peter’s broken form over the block. “Fresh. Uncontaminated by your previous failures.” A new, chilling warmth entered her voice. “You will clean it. Before the sun dries it. With your mouth. No hands. No brush.”
She grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head up. “This is a chance for redemption, Subject B. A clean slate. Perform adequately, and we may reconsider a portion of the stroke debt.”
They all knew it was a lie. He knew it was a lie. But the glimmer of a conditional maybe was enough to make his shattered mind cling to it. It was a straw, and he was drowning.
“Okay,” he whispered, blood bubbling on his lips.
“Good,” Izzy said, releasing him. “To the paddock. Now. Run.”
He pushed himself off the block, his legs almost buckling. He stumbled out of the stable after them, into the blinding, indifferent morning sun. The fresh air was a slap. The paddock gate stood open.
In the center of the lush green, a vast, steaming pile lay, dark and wet.
Izzy pointed. “That. All of it. We’re going for breakfast. We expect it to be gone when we return. The grass beneath it should be spotless.”
They left him at the gate, walking back toward the house, their laughter floating on the crisp air. Peter stood alone, swaying. He looked at the house. He looked at the stables. He looked at the open gate leading to the long gravel drive and the world beyond.
Every muscle, every nerve, screamed for him to run.
He had to go for, there had to be some way out of this madness.
He waited until the girls were out of sight and made a run for it.