It was past midnight at the Howcroft Centre for the Mentally Ill, the halls deserted of all by the cleaning staff and the varied patients put to bed for the night. Yet Lily was awake, as Francis knew she would be, greeting the orderly with one of her customary seductive smiles. “You came for me,” she purred, exuding the sort of confident allure more appropriate for a queen holding court than the straitjacket-clad inmate of an infamous asylum. On bare feet, she stepped over to the trembling young man, leaning in close and breathing in his scent. “Just as I knew you would.”
“Lily, we can’t… we can’t do this anymore.”
“And why not?” the slim blonde demanded, pacing around her secret lover like a cat circling a tasty-looking mouse. Spending all day locked in her cell had given her a pallid complexion, while the lines of her face had become gaunt from poor nutrition, wide green eyes set in dark hollows now, yet Francis still looked at her like she was a goddess, and her lips pulled back in a wicked smile. She’d been committed at the request of her well-to-do parents, tired of constantly being embarrassed by their youngest daughter’s promiscuous and impulsive behaviour, and within twenty-four hours of that initial phone call, somber men in white coats had carried her off to Howcroft, straitjacketed and gagged, to treat her for nymphomania. She’d pegged Francis as an easy mark the day she was admitted; a sober, serious young man who nevertheless couldn’t stop glancing at her helpless figure, and it wasn’t too long before he was making these illicit visits to her padded cell. Every time she took his manhood in her mouth or he outright had his way with her, guilt over his lust would compel him to declare this was the last time… only for said lust to bring him back to her cell all over again. “Do you think the Director would forgive you for becoming involved with a patient just because you stopped now?”
“He doesn’t know, and he can’t know. I…”
“Have nothing to be ashamed of,” she whispered. She spent her days locked into her canvas straitjacket, the garment only removed under the supervision of the staff when she was bathed, clinging to her upper body and highlighting her more feminine aspects. “You’ve always wanted me, and you’ve always enjoyed the special moments we share together. Why deny it? You’re a man, with a man’s needs, so stop clinging to righteousness. It doesn’t suit you.”
Francis looked so pitiable in that moment, the sight provoking a pang of disgust deep within her. “You know, there is a way out of your little dilemma. Help me escape the asylum. You know as well as I that I’m not really crazy; they had no right to put me here in the first place. And once we’re both free of this awful place, well… then there will be nothing stopping us from being together. Right?”
“Right,” Francis admitted, giving her a shy kiss on the cheek. “It’ll take time for me to arrange it, but… I’ll do everything I can for you. Okay?”
Smiling, Lily went down on her knees, straitjacket creaking at the movement. “Then I guess you’ve earned a reward, haven’t you?”
And me a ticket out of this horrid place!