Read Online Jeremiah Quick by SM Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

skin,
no feasible way to sleep. Number one on her priority list from now
on would be staying out of there. She'd earn ten and twenty and a
hundred of whatever his punishment was – whatever it took, to not
have to go back in there.
    He dried her off, still clinical, still
impersonal, then led her back to the main room and to a plain
simple table. He leaned her over it at the waist, stretching her
hands above her head and pressing her fingers closed, so they
curled over the far edge.
    "Close your eyes and hold on," he said, and
then, "If you're obedient, you can sleep on the bed when we're
done."
    The bed. It sounded so nice. So normal.
    "Ten strikes," he said.
    She held her breath.
    "Don't hold your breath."
    She almost could have laughed, but he hit
her with a switch of some sort, a diagonal line across her back,
and it took every ounce of self-control she imagined she'd ever
have to keep from screaming.
    "One," he said. "Isn't that lovely?"
    Her head was reeling, skin twitching, eyes
already burning with tears. And that was only one. How would she
cope with ten, silently?
    The next strike came then, quick and hard,
no warning, and she managed not to scream, but somewhere in the
fight to be silent, she crawled right up onto the table.
    Jeremiah let loose a quiet laugh, and the
word, "Two."
    She was on her hands and knees, lips sealed,
shaking her head back and forth, all four limbs trembling, barley
able to hold herself up.
    "Get down," he said. "Put yourself the way
you were."
    She wanted to say she couldn't do it, there
was no way. She wanted to say stop and wait and this isn't how it's supposed to be .
    But no. Not only was she not going to speak,
she was going to obey, perfectly, and somehow in that stubborn
obedience make him proud. Or at least make him stop hating her. Or,
at the very, very least – keep herself out of that fucking
cage.
    She pushed back with her arms until her legs
were off the table and resting on the floor again, her back
displayed for the evil instrument he held in his hands.
    "Three," he said, and the pain came, and a
noise rose up from her chest, and the effort of withholding it made
her gag. It was worse when he spoke first, when there was warning.
The number ten had never seemed so far out of reach.
    She was tension from toes to fingertips,
breathing heavily through her nose when she wasn't holding her
breath, gripping the far edge of the table so hard her hands hurt,
too. Not like the fire of her spine, but with fierce cramps that
stiffened the joints, her grip on the table's edge bruising the
bones of her fingers.
    The next mark drove a scream from her,
flaying across her back in the opposite direction, criss-crossing
the marks she already imagined were there, and, as if he didn't yet
want to acknowledge her voice, the fifth followed immediately. She
imagined tic-tac-toe across her back and wondered if she was the X
or the O.
    "You just earned ten more." His voice was
soft, floating over her, light… happy, even?
    "I can't, I can't I can't," she cried.
"Jeremiah, please."
    "That's thirty earned altogether, five
given. Thirty minus five. You're not doing all that well."
    She clamped her lips shut again, pressed her
face hard against the table so the wood held her lips tight against
her teeth. She held her legs together, clenched the edge of the
table harder with her fingers, thinking, He's going to kill me.
How could I have not realized that, from the moment I saw him
again? He hates me. He always has .
    "More of these are waiting for you," he
said. "At my discretion. Don't forget it."
    She heard him moving around, but didn't dare
move. And then his fingers were tangled into her hair, and he
wrenched her head up, touched her lips with gentle fingers. "Shh,"
he said, slipping a straw between her lips. "Slow sips."
    She sipped, hoping for water, but it was
fire that went down her throat, and she choked a little.
    Two small swallows, and he pulled the straw
away, then ran his hands down the