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Chapter Three
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Het
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I can say with almost certain honesty, that I don’t think it was even me who started laughing first—But, suddenly, it felt like all of the boy’s in the dormitory had been woken up by the ruckus and, now, that they were all laughing at the two of us.
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The fact that all these disembodied voices just started laughing out of nowhere kind of startled both me and the new nurse a bit. I shivered slightly, feeling the cold air seeping in through the thin, overly-large, black t-shirt and loose boxer briefs I wore to bed. I’d pushed back the covers when I’d tried getting up to spook the new nurse.
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I felt, more than saw, the heat of her gaze sliding up and down my slim, barely covered body in the rose-tinted darkness.
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Scrambling out of my cot, one of my bare feet getting improbably tangled up in the sheets for a few exasperating and embarrassing seconds, I rose to stand before her finally. Crossing my arms over the flat of my chest, I ducked my head bashfully and peered at her hesitantly through the long wisps of my feathery, black hair.
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I coughed, once. Quietly.
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“Um… Sorry, about that.” I lied, trying to appear as shy and nervous as only I knew myself to truly be, knowing she might find me to be earnest with my chatter, “I thought you were someone else. One of the boys, playing some stupid prank on me. I didn’t mean to—If it helps? Um… Are you okay, missus?”
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“Oh!” the young nurse looked like she was still wobbling from the impact, clutching at her nose with scrunched up eyes and whining, “What a crockpot of horseshit!”
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I, along with every other boy listening in the rose-tinted dimness of the dormitory, gasped.
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And, then, even more riotous strains of bandying laughter and chatter ensued.
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This was my chance to slip away, undetected. I barely started to twist away from her before she was already reaching out at me again and, this time, she caught me with a tight grip of her little hand around the skinny part of my wrist.
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“Hey!” I jerked a little bit in her hold, uncomfortable with people touching me, but she just latched on tighter with her other hand as well, dropping a clipboard and pen to the floor in the midst of our scuffle.
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Loose papers spilled from a manilla folder all over the dusty, stone floor between us. The scattered pages of what was, no doubt, my patient file.
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“Oh, whoops.” I said lamely, then I started to bend over to pick up the scattered papers, “I’ll just… Pick these up for you, then.”
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She cast me a long, exasperated look before releasing her manacle-like grip on my wrist, tossing my arm to the side disdainfully. She pinched the bridge of her nose with a cross look at me.
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“Fine.” she said, fluttering her small, pale hands, “But be quick about it.”
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“Yes, missus.” I said, obediently. Keeping my inhuman looking eyes mostly covered by the feathery tendrils of my black, overgrown bangs, I avoided her accusing stare.
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“Oooh!” A chorus of ape and chimpanzee hoots ricocheted off the high, steepled ceiling of the Boy’s Dormitories, at this exchange between the new nurse and myself. I made a face at a little boy and gave the room the finger. Bent down to crawl about the stone floor in my underwear like a dog in front of everyone.
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“Alright Het?” one of the older boys called out to me, scoffing to his bunkmates in the rosy-lit dimness. I scrambled after a particularly elusive paper with a little growl of frustration as I slipped on the icy floor.
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“Looks like somebody’s asking for a spanking!” another older boy called out to me from the surrounding bunks, riotously.
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I realized I’d been bending over and presenting my rump to the new nurse,in the midst of picking up the papers. I straightened quickly. Coughed.
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“Het! Het!” My best friends Tooth and Nail (identical twins about three years younger than me) cried, audible tears in their laughter as they spoke to me from a bunk bed nearby, “You are so gonna get laid, man. I am telling you, man. Gonna get laid.” Or something stupid along those lines.
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I blanched. Handed her back my own file--which I couldn’t read--robotically. Feeling a keen sweep of sadness, which I did my best to hide. Thankful for the rose-tinted dark of soon-to-be dawn...
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A swell of appreciative chatter splashed around the cavernous dormitories.
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If this racket kept up, pretty soon we’d have Security detail on our hands. I pursed my lips ever so slightly in deep thought, trying to think of how to quiet the room fast--And, I came to only one conclusion.
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I was going to have to leave it. With the new nurse…
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She was here to transfer me to the Men’s Ranks in Ward III, no doubt. Where Johnathan Greaves lay in wait for me, like some great and terrible beast that prowled just beyond a fence. All she had to do was threaten me with Security, and I knew I would have no choice, then, but to be compliant.
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I couldn’t risk running into Officer Spice. Not again. Not after what had happened last time he’d caught me doing something I shouldn’t have… I still had the bruises. And, it hurt everytime he--
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--“Well, now… Are you Het?” The raspy mewl of the new nurse’s voice purred softly at me less than an inch from my neck, just below my ear, and then she leaned in even closer to whisper, “That’s what they call you, right? But, your real name? Do you even remember it?” Her warm, damp breath spilled out in a tumble against the thin skin of my neck, making me shiver.
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My naturally all-black, sylvan shaped eyes widened. I felt a pallor rise in my face behind my dark freckles. And, I swallowed once. Hard. Heart thumping.
“My… real name?” It was something I’d been trying to remember for years.
I’d almost gotten Dr. Doht to read it off my file and to tell it to me once. A couple of times. But, he’d never really bit the bullet and done it.
Nobody ever had. Told me what the real name written on my file was. They’d always just called me “Het.” The staff, the patients… Everybody here knew me as Het.
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At least it’d been that way for as long as I could remember. (Things got a little fuzzy after all that time I’d spent in solitary confinement—I really didn’t know if it was a matter of months or even years that I’d been kept in that tight, dimly lit, white-walled and sound-proofed, little room, then.)
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Back in those days…
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A tight squeeze to my bony wrist brought me floundering back to the present. I gasped at the feeling of a young woman’s lips brushing along the soft, unprotected skin of the back of my neck, as she brushed against me as she drew away. My thoughts ran and scattered, bumping into each other with jumbled trepidation and a pale sort of fluttery feeling of excitement.
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Would you? Would you really tell me my name?
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My stomach dropped as I mentally turned over the tantalizing bait the strange, young nurse had just dangled in front of me. I looked back at her over the curve of my shoulder, squinting after her shadowed features in the darkness.
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My half-fae senses were able to detect a rough approximation of her facial structure. Big forehead. Small nose. Dimpled chin… And, she was wearing dark colored lipstick.
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Plum.
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A shiver passed through my lithe frame quickly, but I acted like it didn’t happen.
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“You… would tell me my given name, miss?” I asked her quietly, leaning in close as the chaos of the giggling and chattering boys filled up the night.
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I saw her nodding firmly in my direction, the rosy moonlight shining in through the stained glass casting her in a stark light. She looked fierce and determined. This did nothing for my nerves.
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Then, as if she sensed my thoughts, the new nurse’s grip around my wrist tightened and then I was being led, hurriedly, between the rows of bunk beds.
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She dragged me by the wrist through the zig-zag of bunks and still laughing boys, and out through the heavy, wooden doors, into the hallway before I could really begin to resist.
“Follow me to my office, and, depending upon your cooperation with my orders, we’ll see if that tidy bit of information can be shared! There! That’s it—There’s a good boy.”
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I followed a step or two behind her, stumbling after her in just my baggy, black t-shirt and undies… Did she realize she’d just taken me out in my pajamas?
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