The Naked Woman
5
Her hair started to come in blond.
Natalie noticed it some days after the doctor’s initial visit. She was in the apartment’s bathroom combing her hair, thinking at the time that it looked and felt fuller, longer, when she saw the roots. They were blond. She dropped the brush. A moment later, automatically, her hands put in back on the shelf.
It was not the first change that had occurred, and nowhere near as traumatic as those that would come, yet it was the alteration in her hair color that served, finally, to snap Natalie out of a days-long daze.
Her scream was very long and very loud.
Waking from her swoon following the doctor’s “treatment” was as disorienting as the morning after her rape on the subway. For a few minutes, Natalie totally forgot where she was. She forgot that she was a prisoner in an anonymous apartment, forgot that she had been the rape toy of a gang of hoodlums, forgot that a stereotypical “mad scientist” had experimented with her. She forgot all that. Hidden beneath bedcovers, comfortable, naked, she put a hand to her head and wondered, What the hell?
This was the full extent of her thoughts.
She blinked several times at the unfamiliar surroundings, the neutral-colored walls and run of the mill landscape pictures, and for the longest time nothing crossed her mind whatsoever.
Then, with a start of half-remembered agony, she sat up and looked around.
She was alone! She jumped out of bed and at once fell back in, twin lances of pain racing up her shins.
Another sharp stab came from her middle back where she had been “treated.” Natalie cried out and drew her legs to her chest, hugging the back of them with her arms.
Putting her feet flat on the floor had so shocked her, she rolled onto her side and whimpered. The sensation had been like stepping on a pair of upright knives!
She sobbed and grit her teeth. Eventually, the triple agony faded.
Natalie opened her eyes, having squeezed them shut. She looked around. She was still alone.
What did he do to me? she questioned. She rubbed the back of her legs. They felt perfectly normal, aside, that is, from a slight stinging, as if from a lack of circulation: a recovery from the worst leg cramps she had ever experienced.
She continued to rub them tenderly, and after a few seconds the sensation faded away. Her legs felt smooth and normal. They bore no marks of any kind. No scarring. Very carefully, Natalie sat up and slowly put her feet to the carpet. Nothing. Adjusting her position, she put even more weight on them.
She felt a twinge and stopped. Her teeth started to chatter. Her back was starting to flare up again.
“What did he do to me?” she asked, this time out loud.
Gradually, she put pressure down once more. Another twinge, but not so bad this time.
Slowly, Natalie stood up. The back of her legs were sore and tender—she wouldn’t have been able to run, she was sure—but she hadn’t been crippled. Taking a deep breath, Natalie walked slowly to the bathroom, wincing occasionally.
The mirror revealed no change. Natalie checked herself, examined herself everywhere the “mad doctor” had touched or injected her. She couldn’t even find the needle marks. Her nipples felt sore, and when she touched her breasts they felt a little, well, swollen, but there was nothing obviously different. In fact, in terms of her overall appearance, she looked rested and calm, almost serene.
She examined herself even more closely.
She looked good! Better than usual, as if being raped and held prisoner in an apartment, as if losing her ability to read and write, had had the same effect on her as a week in a luxury spa!
She looked indecently good, sexier! The idea revolted her.
Natalie felt an irresistible compulsion to make her bed. She went back into the bedroom to do that, and after she was done she made her way slowly, tenderly into the living room, as if walking on eggshells.
Seeing the kitchen nook, Natalie felt a sudden deep pang in her stomach. Her tummy growled; she had to put a hand to the wall next to her to resist a sudden, momentary bout of vertigo. She was hungry!
During her unconscious state, the refrigerator and cupboards had been restocked. Ravenous, Natalie opened an indecipherable package of sandwich meat and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing noisily, moaning in an almost sexual pleasure as she ate. There was juice and milk, the labels on them equally impenetrable. She drank liters as she made sandwich after sandwich, unpeeled and ate fruit after fruit.
Her actions were . . . frenzied.
She was as incapable of stopping as she had been incapable of resisting those men or her “apartment compulsions,” as she now thought of them (. . . make the bed . . . polish the furniture . . . clean the bathroom . . .). Unlike on those occasions, though, Natalie felt no desire to resist this need.
She ate as if she had been starving herself for days.
Eventually, the rumbling in her stomach faded, replaced by an equally pleasant sense of satisfaction as she grew sleepy again. Heeding an overpowering call to brush her teeth and rinse out her mouth, she stumbled back into the living room and fell asleep on the couch. When she woke later, the lights were dim outside. Natalie had absolutely no idea how long she had slept. She had no idea of the time.
She went to the bathroom without thinking. For some reason, she took a bath and started to shave her legs. After she was done, she shaved her bikini zone. She exfoliated. She didn’t question. She just did it. Coming back eventually, much later, walking with a bit more practice, she came to stand, naked, in the middle of the living room, looking down at and pressing her fingers into her tummy.
She should have been feeling absolutely stuffed! Nauseous, even. As it was, Natalie still felt a faint stirring of appetite, thankfully though not near as intense as before.
Obeying the impulse to clean, Natalie did so, thinking as she gathered the necessary rags and polish.
What did they do to me? she questioned. What just happened? She frowned over the end tables, slowly circling with a rag from the kitchen. The doctor . . somebody . . . put me in bed after he gave me those last injections. She questioned whether or not he would have had the strength to do so: he had been a small guy. She stopped for a second.
Maybe that black women helped? she thought.
Where had she come from? And where is she now? After finishing the living room, Natalie went to the locked door. The “laboratory” was once again locked. After debating whether or not to call attention to herself, and deciding that nothing could make her situation anymore the worse, Natalie knocked and called out: “Hello! Is anybody in there?” Silence was her only reply.
There had been another door in that room. Did it lead to another apartment? Another prisoner, like herself? Natalie pounded the surface in front of her in frustration.
In spite of her large post-awakening meal hours ago, Natalie cooked herself an equally big dinner and ate it silently. She washed the dishes—she would have done so anyway, but the “apartment compulsion” to do so made sure—and then tiptoed into the bedroom.
Without knowing why, unable to resist the impulse to do so, and not thinking about it at all, Natalie climbed onto the treadmill beside the bed and started walking.
She walked and she walked and she walked. The repetition of movement was intoxicating, all-consuming. She lost herself in the activity, not thinking anything for hours, just walking and walking.
She walked until she was covered in sweat, until she was physically exhausted. Obeying impulses, she fell into bed still wet and lost consciousness within seconds of her face hitting the pillow.
Her sleep was dreamless.
The next day Natalie was in the apartment’s living room when the door burst open, startling her. She yelled out, and then she screamed a second, louder time upon seeing who it was in the doorway.
You can call me . . . Tommy.
Her rapist strode in carrying a bag of groceries. Natalie tried to back away, but when he called her by name she stopped. Twing! Her eyes glazed for a second, and then she knew she was “under control.”
“Tommy” put the bag on the kitchen counter. “I brought you some more eats, darlin’,” he said. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”
She stood there, swaying, unsure what to do. He smiled and looked at her. “Thank me, bitch,” he told her.
“Thank you,” Natalie said, and she was unsure why she had spoken: out of fear of what he might—again—do to her, or whether she was somehow compelled to obey him while in that cursed apartment.
“That’s better.” He came into the living room and sat down, beckoning Natalie to follow him, which she did. “Last time we met, you weren’t all that friendly to Tommy, were you?” She stood there silent.
“I asked you a question, bitch. You weren’t all that friendly to me, were you?”
Oh God. “No,” Natalie said. Her voice was a monotone.
“But you’re goin’ be a damn sight friendlier to me now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Natalie struggled but couldn’t resist answering him, and answering him “yes.” There was no pleasure in this control, and somehow she knew—knew—that it wasn’t coming from him.
He wasn’t a Man! He was just a man.
“Tommy” gestured, waved his hands about the apartment. “You’re lucky. You got yourself a nice place to live while you’re all fixed up. If you was a guy, They would’ve just got rid of ya.” Natalie could hear the capital letter when he said ‘they.’ “As it is, They’re preppin’ you for Their own use.”
He smiled again and chuckled, evilly. “But in the meantime, I’m gonna get me some perks. Take those clothes off, bitch.” Obeying, Natalie did so, shrugging out of the outfit she had pulled from the closet.
She was once more a naked woman.
He told her to get her knees.
He gave her instructions.
She had to obey.
Later, after she had cleaned up, Natalie was on the couch again when the “doctor” this time came into the living room from the hall. Startled, she stood up and tried to say something. “. . ah, ah, Natalie,” he stumbled at her, and she stopped, mouth open.
Twing! Another second of vertigo. And just like that, once more, for a third time, she found herself silent and obedient to another’s instruction. “Fa . . fa . . . follow me, please,” he told her, and she did.
The door at the end of the hall was open.
Natalie followed the little man into the laboratory. Already standing inside was the woman she had seen briefly before. Natalie was able to get a closer look at her this time.
She was African-American, about her own age, perhaps a little younger. She was naked, and she had a generous figure. Her breasts were large and firm, the areolae dark and lovely.
She was almost completely shaven, from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes. She had thin, sculpted eyebrows—and eyelashes—but that was it. She had no hair anywhere else on her body.
Their physical differences aside, her posture was identical to Natalie’s, as were the look in her haunted eyes. Help me, that gaze pleaded to Natalie.
I can’t, she tried to project back, feeling as helpless. I wish I could. The things “Tommy” had told her to do were disgusting. “You and I are gonna get real acquainted,” he had told her. “You and my pals, too,” he had added, just before leaving. And the worst thing: despite all that he had done to her, before she could go to the bathroom, she had been compelled first to put the groceries he had brought away.
The other door, the one evidently leading to the black woman’s prison, was open. Through it, Natalie saw a hallway all but identical to her own. The mad scientist stopped and turned to her.
“Wa . . wait, ah, wait for us in the other apartment, please, Natalie.”
Without looking back, unable not to obey, Natalie did exactly that, passing her fellow prisoner without a second glance. The hallway beyond did prove identical, as was the apartment on the other side.
How many of us do they have here? she asked herself. Could she hear me when I called out before?
Maybe she had called out, too. Natalie had heard nothing, though. She wondered if the entire building was full of consciously disregarded prisoners.
Natalie sat down on a couch identical to the one in “her” apartment and proceeded to wait. With the opportunity to look around, Natalie saw that the set of rooms was a perfect mirror set to the other.
Windows, front door, kitchen nook, everything was set opposite to her own arrangement.
After about an hour, Natalie heard a loud-pitched scream from the other room, followed seconds later by another, equally loud. She wept, knowing what must be happening. A few minutes later the “doctor” called her name. Shuddering, Natalie came at his beck and call, returning to the hellish suite.
“Help me with her, puh . . . please” the little man instructed.
The black girl lay on the table face first in a position that Natalie recalled too well. The doctor even had one of her legs in his hand still, an injection needle in the other. She was unconscious, apparently.
The woman’s dark skin gleamed now with the same oil as before. Her skin, in fact, practically glowed.
What kind of ‘treatments’ are you giving her, you bastard?! she glared at the doctor. “You . . yu . . use these,” the man said, handing Natalie a pair of rubber gloves.
“Try not to get any of the solution on . . on you.” Putting on a pair of white gloves himself, he helped Natalie get the unconscious woman to her feet.
Together, they half carried, half-dragged her into her respective apartment and into the bedroom, laying her down on the bed. The doctor was of almost no help. Afterwards, he told Natalie to take a shower.
“Wa . . wash it all off, quickly,” he said, snapping off his own oiled gloves with evident distaste.
She followed directions. The “baby oil” on the black girl’s skin had felt very peculiar in contact with her own flesh. The thought of what it must be doing to that poor woman made Natalie feel sick.
Several minutes later, Natalie returned to the laboratory.
The doctor had clearly just finished taking his own shower to rid himself of any “oil” he may have inadvertently come into contact with. Dressed again, he was wiping his unruly hair when Natalie approached. “Ah . .” he muttered, and then proceed to work.
He did to her what he had done previously: the same painful injections into both nipples; the shots in her arm (right arm, this time); the labial injection; the hair and skin treatments; the degrading coating of her lips, pussy, and anus. Once more, Natalie was filled with an anxious and utterly embarrassing sexual appetite. By the time he had her lie down on the table face first, she knew what to expect.
Despite the control over her that he apparently had, Natalie whimpered audibly. Hearing her, he stopped for a second. “I . . I’m so sorry,” he said. “I have to. If I don’t, if I don’t . . .”
He shivered in fright, recovered himself, then gave her the leg injections. Natalie screamed.
Before she passed out from the pain, the thought went through her head that he would have no one to help him carry her to bed. He would have to do all the hard work himself this time.