HOUSE OF BROKEN SOULS Part 14
Warnings: This Chapter: Sexually explicit content, violence. Overall: Slash, sexually explicit content, graphic violence
The fiction includes a mental illness storyline. I am not qualified in mental health, everything I know about it is googled. It's fantasy folks, please don't shoot me though helpful criticism is always welcomed.
*Not real. The folks aren't mine. No damage intended.
Dream-state
The receptionist placed Doc Carver’s drink on his desk and collected the small pile of signed paperwork.
“Jared Padalecki is here for his appointment. He’s brought another gentleman with him, a Mr.Ackles.
Ben Carver didn‘t look surprised.
“He was wondering if you could make some time to see them together. Apparently Mr Ackles has volunteered to conduct some research into Caitlin’s identity. I can postpone your 3pm for half an hour if it helps.”
“Do that Doris, thanks. You can send them in now.”
***
She quite liked this dream. There was no blood. She had checked in the shower and all over and there was definitely no blood on herself, none on the floors or walls and none staining the water that ran to the drain.
It was warm, dry and comfortable. She could walk from room to room but she couldn’t leave. The outer doors were locked, even the attic and fire stairs were locked. She would quite like to go into the garden, step onto fresh grass in sunlight. It would make the dream perfect but it wasn’t so bad. There were other people in the dream, some of them talked at her or among themselves but she didn’t listen. She didn’t want to hear the truths they might spill,
She didn’t talk for fear of waking up. She wanted to stay in this dream where the bloody evidence of what she had done didn’t dry in putrid puddles on the floor and where nobody forced her to her knees and pushed her bloodied lips around their rank cock, ramming deep into her mouth until she had no choice but to swallow the cum and say thank you.
Someone led her gently to a sun-brightened room where a halo of yellow light clustered about the tall men talking at her. They seemed friendly but it was hard to see their faces in the blazing light. She tried not to listen but a word infiltrated her defences, she heard it clearly “Ackles” and when clouds conspired to dim her sunshine she saw a face. In her dream green eyes stared down at her with compassion, there were freckles and a proud jaw-line.
In that moment her dream shifted. She tried to remember the rules. If you died in a dream, did you die in reality? Or was it if you saw a dead person in a dream you were dead too?
The thing about a dream is that you can’t always control what you do, so she wasn’t surprised when she reached out to touch his face and her voice came unbidden “Did I die?”
***
Caitlin was brought into the bright conservatory to meet with Jared. The Doc asked Jensen to stay, he was interested to see if she would recognize any of them. Jared chatted for a while, reintroduced himself and Jensen, then rambled about the weather, Harley, Sadie and home. After a few minutes his eyes misted a little and he had to accept what the Doc had already told him. Caitlin, or whatever personality stood here, wouldn’t acknowledge his presence, she was lost and unresponsive.
Doc Carver didn’t know who was most surprised when she reached to touch Jensen, there was no time to assess her purpose or ask him not to flinch. It wasn’t a problem because she was tentative and gentle and he stood still giving a reassuring smile.
“Did I die?” her voice was quiet and dreamy.
Jensen’s mind flashed back to his forced entry into her apartment. “No. No. I had a gun, sorry, nobody got hurt. I wanted to help. I still do.”
The doc laid a hand on his shoulder and he stopped talking. Her eyes were no longer focused and she was walking away in a daze with no fixed destination.
They chatted for a while. Jared wanted answers and wanted to know when Caitlin could come home. Ben Carver didn’t have the answers, Caitlin’s case would be difficult in normal circumstances, but without knowing her history it was damn near impossible. He was reasonably certain that the personality in Glenview’s care right now wasn’t Caitlin, Jane or Emma but whoever she was, she was unwilling to communicate. He would be less worried if she was genuinely unresponsive as she appeared to the untrained eye, but the clinic had cameras for observing patients and he was skilled in noticing small tells. The first time she moved away from an argument between patients it could have been coincidence but he scrolled through, finding it to be a consistent action. Then there had been the moment she had stopped by an open newspaper and focused on it for several minutes. Finally, she had walked the entire unit, glancing at every potential exit.
Jensen told Jared he would be some time at Glenview and reassured him that he would be fine getting a cab home. In truth he didn’t think he could take another journey in close quarters with him. Jared had driven, eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses, his firm body, lithe and relaxed in perfectly fitted suit pants and a plain white, open-collared shirt. His long fingers had curled around the steering-wheel tapping in time with music while a breeze from his unwound window had blown rebellious hair softly around his face. Then of course, there was the enveloping sweet-sexy musk smell that was all Jared. Jeez, this really tested Jensen’s “we can be just-friends” stance because what he had really wanted to do was make him pull over, kiss him hard and dirty, run his hands all over him, take those straining pants down and fuck him over the bonnet of his too-shiny black SUV.
So yeah, Jensen would be taking a taxi back to Madison House Mansions.
He settled in the Glenview Library, reading Caitlin’s file. He was used to reading victim reports and case files, it was never easy but as a detective he could disassociate. This file was making it more difficult than usual to stay detached. A list swam in front of his eyes; evidence of cracked ribs, cracked cheekbone, jaw injuries from forced removal of teeth, crushed fingers, broken wrist, chipped shin bone, broken toes and burns. Finger and toenails only half grown back when she was arrested.
He swallowed back tears as he fought the memory of a similar list and the excruciating vision of Tom’s agonized face as The Player inflicted those injuries while Jensen watched, bound, gagged and helpless.
The internal injuries were horrific. Caitlin would never conceive or bear children. There were external scars, a neat pattern of cuts that traversed her back, chest and arms, like an intricate tattoo. Deep enough to scar yet not enough to kill, it was a sick work of art that, by its very positioning, couldn’t have been self-inflicted.
Then there was the arrest sheet, no evidence of any other person present when Alec, her pimp, had the exact same pattern repeated on his skin. The door had been locked from the inside, she had been covered in his blood and she had used the knife in a struggle to avoid arrest. There was no conviction, not because Caitlin had been declared mentally unfit but because her pimp had sworn, when interviewed, that an unknown man had carried out the attack and left her, shocked, bloodied and holding the knife.
He rubbed his temples and forced himself to concentrate on the information in front of him. The file was ridiculously thin with a few scattered memories of Jane’s life as a prostitute over the months before her arrest. Jensen bit his lip, regretting his boast to Jared. From this perspective the task of identifying Caitlin looked impossible and if he did succeed he wasn’t sure Jared was going to like the truths he might uncover.
He took copies of a few of the reports, slipped them into his battered document case and called a cab. He had an investigation to organize.
Continued in Part 15 here: anniespinkhouse.livejournal.com/5286.html