Chapter 14: Botanical Discipline
The chemical smell of the lecture hall’s cleaner still clung to Victoria’s nostrils, but beneath it now was the damp, fecund scent of wet soil and blooming rot. Wang had driven in silence, the car swallowing the miles of suburban darkness until he turned onto an unmarked service road, pulling up beside a long, low building with corrugated plastic walls. The greenhouse.
He’d simply pointed. She’d gotten out.
Inside, the air was a thick, warm blanket, heavy with humidity. Rows of tables stretched into the gloom, laden with trays of seedlings and exotic-looking plants. The only light came from intermittent banks of amber grow-lights, some of them flickering with a faulty, insect-like buzz, casting long, distorted shadows that writhed up the glass walls and across the concrete floor. The place felt simultaneously alive and dead.
Wang led her to a central aisle where the plants were taller, their leaves broad and dark. The air here smelled sweeter, cloying. Orchids. Their flowers were pale, intricate things in the eerie light.
“Here,” he said, his voice a flat statement. He stopped before a clear patch of damp floor between two long tables. “Wheelbarrow position. Hands on the ground. Legs straight. I hold your ankles.”
She stared at the dirty concrete. “The… the plants…” she whispered, gesturing weakly at the delicate orchids trembling beside them.
“Precisely,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her. He was pulling on a pair of gardening gloves, the kind with a rough, synthetic leather palm. He flexed his fingers. “Your back will be arched. Your head down. Your…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. The massive screen image of her branded rear seemed to hang in the humid air between them.
She bent slowly, the movement pulling at the fresh, crisp welts from the crop. The concrete was cold and gritty under her palms. She kicked her legs out behind her, her skirt falling uselessly against her back. The position was brutally vulnerable, her balance entirely in his hands.
His hands closed around her ankles, his grip firm through the gloves. He lifted. Her upper body dipped, her arms taking her weight. The world inverted. The flickering lights swam above her. She was a display, an offering to the silent, watching plants.
“Good,” he murmured, more to himself. He adjusted his hold, his thumbs pressing into her tendons. “Now. You’re going to count. Each one. Loud and clear. And you’re going to hold this position. Every time you waver, every time a knee bends, every time you let out anything but a clean count… you risk the plants. Every broken stem adds ten minutes to your time here. Understood?”
She tried to nod, but the motion threatened her balance. “Understood,” she breathed, the word rushing from her upside-down lungs.
The first spank was a dry, sharp crack. The gloved leather was unforgiving, lacking the fleshy give of a hand. It bit into her, a concentrated explosion of pain right on the crest. The sound echoed off the glass.
“One,” she gasped, the number torn from her.
He waited. Five seconds. Ten. Letting the burn settle, let her muscles begin to tremble from the strain in her shoulders, the odd angle of her spine.
CRACK.
“Two!”
This one landed lower, overlapping the first. Her legs jerked instinctively, but his hold was iron. She swayed, her left hand slipping a fraction on the damp concrete. A broad orchid leaf brushed her hair.
“Careful,” he warned, his voice low and pleasant. “These are Paphiopedilum rothschildianum. Very rare. Very expensive.”
CRACK. CRACK.
“Three! Four!”
The pace quickened. She was a pendulum now, swaying with each impact, each numbered gasp. The pain was a living grid, mapping her skin with fire. Sweat dripped from her forehead, spotting the dark concrete. The musky scent of her own fear mixed with the perfume of the orchids.
CRACK.
“F-five!”
Her right arm buckled slightly. She corrected, heart hammering, her elbow locking with a painful click. A flower petal, dislodged by her violent motion, drifted past her eyes and settled on the floor.
“Was that a stem?” Wang asked conversationally, as if discussing the weather.
“No. A petal. Just a petal.”
“Good. Your counting is adequate. Your form is slipping.” CRACK. “Six!”
She was crying now, the tears running up her temples into her hairline. The position was agony—a deep, muscular torture layered over the surface sting. Her world had narrowed to the grit under her palms, the crushing grip on her ankles, the smell of damp and leather and her own salt, and the relentless, methodical destruction of her composure.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
“Seven! Eight! Nine!”
Her entire body was shaking. A fine tremor ran through her outstretched legs. She was a bowstring pulled too tight. He paused, letting her shiver there, letting the ache in her shoulders and core bloom into a white-hot throb. Her reflection in a dark pane of glass was a grotesque, inverted puppet.
“You’re thinking,” he said, his voice close to her ear now. He had leaned over her, his shadow enveloping her. “I can see you thinking. You’re thinking about the stool in the auditorium. You’re thinking about the screen. You’re wondering what’s next.” He straightened up. “Don’t think. Just hold. And count.” His hand smoothed over the heated skin, feeling the raised ridges, tracing the brand beneath. He pressed a thumb deep into a particularly livid welt.
She cried out, her hips twisting. Her knee grazed a thick, fleshy stem. The plant shuddered.
Wang went still. “That,” he said softly, “was a stem.”
Before she could beg, before she could even form a thought, his hand came down in a swift, furious volley.
CRACKCRACKCRACKCRACK!
The numbers disappeared, lost in a choked scream. The blows were everywhere, overlapping, igniting a conflagration that swallowed the previous pain whole. She bucked, but he held her fast, his other hand joining now, a relentless, alternating rhythm that turned the air into a drumbeat of violence. She was sobbing, her arms giving way, her chest heaving, the concrete scraping her palms.
He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun. The only sounds were her ragged, wet breaths and the buzz of the lights.
“Ten minutes,” he said, his own breathing slightly elevated. “You owe the garden ten more minutes. In this position. Silent. Still.” He tightened his grip on her shaking ankles. “And if you collapse, we start the count again.”
The heat from her skin rose into the cool, moist air. The orchids loomed around her, pale and judgmental. The trembling in her muscles was a constant earthquake. She held, eyes squeezed shut, counting not spanks now, but seconds, each one an eternity measured in pulsing pain and the certain, quiet knowledge that there was no bottom to this. He had pictures. He had time. He had a greenhouse full of rare, fragile things, and all she had was her own breaking body, suspended in the amber dark.