The Last Conception

Chapter 10 - screams

The room had no windows, no clocks—only walls damp with age and the faint hum of a generator keeping the air stale but breathable. To him, time dissolved into a blur of light and darkness, though he could no longer tell which was which.

The teacher sat bound to the chair, ropes digging so deep they had rubbed his skin raw. Sweat slicked his temples, dripping into his collar. His eyes darted from corner to corner of the basement, landing every time on the stainless steel table that gleamed under the hanging bulb. A table that looked far too clinical for this decaying room.

Every sound she made seemed amplified—the faint rustle of latex gloves sliding onto her hands, the clink of forceps lined in order, the deliberate scrape of a chair dragged close.

"You'll ruin yourself doing this," he tried again, his voice hoarse. "People will come looking. My wife, my students—"

Her laugh was quiet, humorless. "Your wife came looking. Too late. And your students? Tell me... do you think they really know you?"

He tried to hold her gaze, but those eyes—sharp, steady, surgical—made him feel like prey pinned beneath glass.

"You were always good with words," she continued, setting down a syringe on the tray. "You knew how to make a child feel like she was to blame. You knew how to twist silence into safety for yourself." She leaned closer, her voice lowering to a whisper. "But words won't save you here."

He jerked violently, chair legs scraping against the concrete. Panic shrilled through his voice. "You don't understand—I was sick, I didn't mean—"

Her gloved hand tightened on his chin, forcing his trembling face upward.
"You meant every second of it. And now, so do I."

She released him suddenly, her movements returning to calm, methodical gestures. A notebook lay open on a smaller side table, filled with lines of neat handwriting—her surgical notes. He recognized diagrams, measurements, even color-coded charts. She flipped to a page, tapping it with her pen before lifting her gaze to him.

"You'll be my proof," she said. "Proof that a victim doesn't have to stay broken. Proof that scars can be carved into justice."

His chest heaved. He strained against the ropes until they burned his skin, his muffled sobs echoing in the room. "Please... please, don't do this. I'll confess, I'll go to the police—"

"You'll confess," she repeated coldly. "But not in the way you think."

She drew the anesthetic into the syringe, the liquid glinting faintly under the bulb. He shook his head desperately, trying to jerk away, but the bindings held.

Her voice softened—not in pity, but in clinical finality.
"I've studied. I've practiced. I failed. I succeeded. And now... I'm ready."

His breath came in shallow bursts. "What... what do you mean... succeeded?"

She paused, and for the first time, her expression shifted—something colder, darker flickered across it. "There was a man before you," she said, her words chilling in their matter-of-fact tone. "A stranger. My last experiment. It worked. But he wasn't you. He wasn't the one who deserved it. So I ended him."

The teacher's scream ripped from his throat, hoarse and helpless.

She didn't flinch.

Instead, she steadied the syringe, her hands unshaken. The rubber snapped against her wrist as she adjusted her gloves.

"When you wake," she whispered, the needle poised, "you'll understand what it feels like to lose your body. To lose your control. To become a vessel of the very thing you once forced onto someone else."

The needle slid into his arm. His body convulsed in terror, but the sedative pulled him under, heavy and merciless.

His last sight before darkness swallowed him was her face above him—mask in place, eyes unwavering, the cold precision of a surgeon about to begin.