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Karin sits in front of her vanity, holding a red phone to her ear. The cord stretches from her nightstand. There’s a cigarette with lipstick stains wrapped around the filter, burning in an ashtray. She holds her face and casts her eyes down. There are broken shards of glass; her mirror is shattered. Her reflection is in a million pieces and her boss says over the line,
“You need a break, that’s all I’m saying. Maybe a date.”
She grips at the phone.
“That was a hell of a story. It’d take a toll on anybody. Get some rest, Sauer. Kick your feet up and relax, how about that?”
Karin runs her fingers through hair. She sighs and says,
“If you insist. But if this is your way of getting rid of me, Sully—”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetheart. Don’t come back until you’re ready, got it? Doctor’s orders.”
She snorts as she hangs the phone up. Her scissors glint on her vanity, all silver and sharp, and she reaches for them. Karin places them in a drawer and shuts it before the temptation overwhelms her completely. Her hair hangs long, brittle, and she thinks about going to a salon or, oh, she doesn’t know, having it curled a bit. She’s never been that sort of coifed woman, not prim, not pretty.
She picks herself up from her vanity and begins the business of picking up bits of glass. There are photographs pinned to her wall, red strings of yarn stretching from one politician to the next. They’re all connected, and there’s something going on in the military, something big. Missing children, experiments, Karin can just smell it. She’s got a feeling in her gut about this one.
She drifts to the window, tossing glass into a bin. Under a burning streetlamp, she catches a couple kissing, necking. Bremens are like that, she’s realized. They cling so close to one another, like they’re one person with two of everything. One never saw public displays of affection in the Eastern Sanctuaries, and she finds herself put off by them in the Bremen Empire.
Disgust whirs its head; she’s never had time for that sort of thing and her eyes quickly snap towards her desk.
There’s a newspaper still rolled and bound. There’s her name in bold print. This is her article, her story. She usually frames these. She hasn’t had the energy lately. She touches the keys to her typewriter fondly, so fondly, then drifts back to the landline.
She doesn’t want to call a shrink.
She’s covered asylums in plenty of hit pieces, she knows better. Men and women beating their heads against walls, screaming, out of their mind.
Karin is perfectly aware of her surroundings, hadn’t had a psychotic break in all her life before shattering that mirror. And one break in twenty-six years, well that’s a pretty good track record.
So, that leaves the Dutch practice on 6th street, doesn’t it? She thinks she can remember the number, must’ve saw it on the window.
Karin takes up her cigarette and smokes as she spins the rotary to her phone.
Daniël Von Dutch is a respectable doctor from the Kingdom of Rondon. No children, the son-in-law of a Baron. Karin, she has this terrible little habit of looking into people before she meets them. She needs to know everything there is to know about them. So, when Daniël enters her hospital room and finds her waiting on the edge of the examination table, legs crossed, gown ill-fitting, cigarette in hand, she feels at ease.
She feels at ease until he says, “Please don’t smoke in here, Misses Sauer.”
She wrinkles her nose and mutters, “Just ‘miss.’ Awfully presumptuous of you, Doctor.”
She grinds her cigarette out on the crinkling paper beneath her. And of course he’d assume she’s married, and of course he’d assume she’d taken her husband’s name. People say they believe in love at first sight. Karin, she realizes then and there she believes in just the opposite. It’s immediate, fast as a bolt of lightning splitting the sky; she detests him.
It’s mutual.
He grips at his clipboard, his smile as tight as an elastic band stretched wide. “Excuse me. Miss Sauer. It’s rare for me to meet an unwed woman with this condition.”
She settles on her back, tugging the hem of her hospital gown down. It doesn’t quite reach her knees. “I suppose it’s children and distant husbands that send women into hysterical fits.”
“Stress can have many causes. You’re a fine example of that.” He sets the clipboard down and snaps on disposable gloves, skintight. Daniël sits on a stool and rolls towards the table as she sets her heels in cold, steel stirrups. Below, he’s thoroughly lubricating his gloved fingers with pumps from a bottle that he soon discards on a tray nearby. “Try and relax, Miss Sauer.”
“I’m perfectly relaxed. Are you done stating the obvious, Doctor? Or would you maybe like to tell me to breathe next?”
Daniël looks unbothered, beyond maybe the slight twitch of the eye. His hand disappears beneath her gown. His voice is steady, his tone is flat. “Yes, actually. Breathing might help. You’re rather tense.”
If she’s tense, it’s because he’s making her tense. She stares up at the bright fluorescent bulb hanging above. She clenches her teeth and her fists and even her eyes. Rage. Well, she’s not angry at him, but at the idea of him. The concept of someone telling her to relax, to rest, to kick her feet back.
His fingers graze her sex and she flinches.
She irritably hisses, “How does this examination work? Well? Do you suppose there’s something inside me that’s gone foul? Bad eggs?” She’s as sarcastic as she is uneasy. Her nerves are shot. Well, she hasn’t slept since Tuesday. It’s Friday.
“It’s not exactly that there’s anything wrong with you, Miss Sauer. A young man came in with a broken nose about a fortnight ago, and I set it for him. Think of this like that. A . . . readjustment. Very much like a readjustment.”
She supposes her vagina is the root of all evil and snorts at the thought. Her eyelids droop shut. She feels the pressure of his fingers. They’re slick, gliding through her folds. The layer his gloves put between them proves a kind of professionalism and provides her with peace of mind. He has the detached, clinical air of a doctor. And with that in mind, it’s embarrassing how warm she’s getting now. Warm everywhere, but warmest where his fingers stray to. He leaves a trail of heat, and she has to stop herself from whining; he isn't doing anything that would warrant the thoughts she's beating back now.
She’s never been religious, but Karin’s as chaste as any convert. Hell, or is it frigid? Foregoing all courtships, she was able to pursue journalism without the slightest distraction. And as his fingers drift up, making her twitch on the table, she can see it was for the best in the end. What a distraction this would’ve been, a man between her legs like this, making her feel—
“Is that quite alright, Miss Sauer?”
She instinctively tries to snap her legs shut and can’t on account of the stirrups. She blushes darkly, glares down her nose at him, “Is something supposed to be happening?”
Daniël is peering up at her with a solemn expression, one that contrasts heavily with the way his thumb nudges at her hooded clitoris. She whimpers, tossing her head back, and he says very matter-of-factly, “Something usually happens, yes.”
There’s nothing deliberately smug about it, but she’s still left feeling like she should say something, anything but: “O-Oh.” How small and nervous she sounds. She’d be ashamed, but he’s the only one here. “How long, h-how long do you do this for? I’m not sure about this.”
His thumb circles the spot as his eyes drop down to peer under her gown. She’d shaved herself haphazardly; there’s wispy blonde fuzz and an angry red gash just above her pubic bone from the slip of the razor. He’s studying her, and she wants to close her legs again. His thumb leaves her burning clit as his fingers carefully spread her tight, unspoiled hole. She’s leaking, she knows she is because she can feel it burbling out, gushing sticky.
“As long as you like. Would you prefer that I stop? I can, of course.”
“Not much of a treatment, is it, stopping when a patient says so?”
“If you’d like my opinion, Miss Sauer, allowing me to continue is in your best interest.”
He’s a terribly dry man, and she supposes he’s older than her. Oh, undoubtedly. She’s always hated older men; they think they know everything. She fixes her eyes on a poster of female anatomy strung up on the wall. As he pushes the pad of his middle finger against her leaking slit, as he carefully pushes the tip of it inside of her, she imagines that she can see it there on the wall, in that poster.
A single gloved finger, pushing into delicate, glossy pink folds.
He’s inside of her. Just his finger, just the very tip of it, but he’s inside of her. She squeezes her eyes shut and she tries to relax, so that she isn’t so . . . tight for him. That just makes her blush worse. It slides in easily on account of the lubricant. And as it begins to slide back out, her breath hitches from the tug of it against her inner walls. She refuses to call it fingering, but the motion of it, the way it stirs her into this panting frenzy—
“Remember to breathe, Miss Sauer.”
“K-Karin is . . . fine!” Her voice pitches high as she thrusts her hips down, as they begin to find a rhythm together. He’s fully sheathed inside of her, and she could almost pretend that it’s something thick with how tightly she squeezes him. His finger is curling and oh, oh that’s—
“That would be awfully inappropriate, Miss Sauer. Inhale.”
And she finds herself obeying him easily and without complaint, cunt soaked and throbbing and heart pounding. She breathes so deeply. In, in, in. All of the air in the room.
“Very good. Now, exhale.”
Her lungs seem to collapse, deflate in her chest as she sinks into the table, as he examines her, plunging his finger deep. She wants to take off her gown, it’s so hot all of a sudden. Her nipples are pressing hard against the fabric, and she’d be horrified but finds she wants him to see them, wants him to maybe pinch or lick them. She moans, “Another?”
But, instead of pushing his second finger into the ache between her legs, he withdraws the first. He drags his fingers up her cunt, smearing her mess. His thumb has returned to her clit, remains there, idly stroking girlish whimpers out of her. She feels so completely and utterly strange. She’ll die, probably, he’s killing her. And it’s all mounting to this grand, blazing peak. She wonders what's happening while instinctively knowing. He watches her with that plain expression, and there’s something grounding about it. His voice, his perfectly calm voice comes gently. He asks a second time, drones it really, “Is that quite alright, Miss Sauer?”
She does die.
Her body snaps up from the lash of something absolutely like a shock and then she drops. She lies there limp, her breasts heaving with every breath. Oh, God.
He retracts his fingers, his gloves glistening horribly under the fluorescents.
He peels them from his hands and tosses them in a nearby waste bin. Spins around on his stool and pushes off towards a counter where her chart is.
Daniël says, “Bed rest will do you some good, Miss Sauer. Try to limit those long hours when you return to the work force.”
She can’t move. She’s still aching, though less severely, less needily. And though he is a licensed physician and she his patient, she's left feeling decidedly dirty. She refuses to meet his gaze.
“. . . Yes, Doctor.”
Karin chews on the end of her pen, thumbing through archived articles. She’s so refreshed she could almost believe she’s in love.
Daniël Von Dutch.
“Oh, that guy. He’s Rondon, ain’t he?” Her boss has stopped by her desk, is peering over her shoulder. He stinks of cigars and pussy, gut hanging over his belt; he’s sleeping with his secretary, and everybody knows, probably even his wife. But his infidelity isn’t news and wouldn’t interest the people much. She has bigger fish to fry.
Her cunt throbs under her skirt; she’s not stuck on him, not like that, but nosy Sully says, “Ah, you got a thing for this guy? Didn’t know you went for the married sort. I could’ve taken you to The Ritz last night if that’s how it is.”
“I’m working on a story.”
“On what, illegal immigration? Give me a break.” The man snorts. “He’s got papers, I’m sure. He’s a Dutch. Why don’t you try doing some real work for a change, Sauer?”
She waves him off and he lumbers off to fool around with the secretary. In the corner of her eye, she can see him talking her up, telling her he needs her in his office. The girl jumps at the chance; she’s not wearing a bra. Karin tosses the file down on her desk and wraps herself tighter in her worn bomber jacket, shaking her head.
Sully’s got it all wrong.
He’s just her doctor.
His waiting room is full of people from all walks of life.
She’s not sure why she’s relieved to be one of the only women there.
Karin is wearing perfume, but that’s not important. She waits patiently. Well, she hasn’t got an appointment. The clock on the wall is just spinning. Hour after hour. She taps her foot, she keeps her hands stuffed in the pockets of her jacket.
Finally, finally, she’s the last person there, and it’s damn near night outside, and the nurse calls, “Karin Sauer?”
Long white corridors, clean floors.
His private practice is spotless.
The room she’s shown to looks just the same, tidy and unremarkable. Jars of tongue depressors and cotton swabs, a framed picture of Elise Von Dutch. She’s stunning, but she’s practically nobility, isn’t she? How strange that her husband bothers to work at all. Karin grimaces, strolling towards the counter and plucking it up, examining the woman. Jet-black hair, eyes like crystal in the moonlight. She sets it back down. Oh, it doesn’t matter really, she was just curious.
Karin shrugs her bomber off and folds it neatly. And as she’s slipping her turtleneck over her head, the door opens and she quickly tugs it back down, face enflaming as her yawning doctor enters. He’s got a mug of tea, is carefree and a touch exhausted. She’d be relieved to see him again if he hadn’t just walked in on her undressing.
“Excuse me, Miss Sauer.”
“Yeah, I guess knocking would’ve been too much to ask for.”
“Mm.” He sips his tea, reaching behind himself and absently knocking twice against the wood. He’s not funny, not even a little bit. Daniël nudges the door shut with his foot and turns the lock. The hall is quiet outside, well just about everyone’s gone home.
He sets himself down on his stool, crossing one leg over the other. “Please don’t mind me, feel free to continue.”
“Is this how you treat all of your paying customers?”
“We prefer the term ‘patients’ in the medical field. I’m admittedly a little short on time.” His eyes stray towards the pocketwatch he’s taken out of the pocket of his white coat. “I wasn’t going to see anybody else today, but I remembered how neurotic you were last we met. Better to see you, I thought. Do a good deed.”
She sneers, “How tremendously kind, Doctor.”
He clicks his tongue, snapping his pocketwatch shut. It gleams under the lights shining above. “I’d like to think so. Consider this an additional step to the treatment plan, Miss Sauer.”
She blushes as she covers her chest with her arms, staring down at her chewed up boots. “What, just undress, in front of you? What a bad joke, maybe the worst I’ve ever heard.”
He sips his tea, he levels her with his impassive gaze. Steam rises between them. After a pregnant pause, he mutters blandly, “I really must be going in at least half an hour.” The doctor sets his mug aside on the counter. “I recommend that you start with your boots, from there your stockings . . . I’m sure you can figure out the swing of things after that. You seem like a bright young woman.”
He waits patiently, folding his hands and resting them on his knee. He has the air of a man who’s doing her a favor and she hates him for it.
Her body is molten, she feels like a virgin sacrifice. She feels like she’s standing at the apex of a bubbling, boiling volcano, one of those fantastic ones she’s seen on the covers of magazines.
She averts her eyes as she crouches and tugs off her boots. He doesn’t praise her, doesn’t jeer like some heckler in the audience either. He just observes her with what she feels is a very keen eye. She hesitantly peels her left stocking free, then her right, the fabric rolling and bunching at her ankles. She kicks out of them, her long, mulberry skirt swaying.
She unbuttons it and flinches as it drops fast in a heap of crushed velvet. Next, she strips her top, mussing her hair, the loose band slipping free.
Karin stands in her underwear, her bra, hair wild, face on fire. She crosses her arms over her chest, shivering from the draft that’s been drifting about the room. His staring is blatant.
She snaps, “Are you done?”
“I’m just a bit taken aback, that’s all.” Except, he doesn’t look fazed at all. Still his eyes rake over her body and make her feel more than naked.
Daniël stands, drawing close, too close really, and she stumbles back against the counter. He reaches out and she flinches into herself, squeezing her eyes shut. They crack back open as she hears the cupboard door creak on its hinges. He’s reached above her head, is getting a gown down.
“You’re surprisingly timid, Miss Sauer. It’s almost endearing.”
If looks could kill . . .
He only smiles thinly in response to her murderous glare, likely just to antagonize her further. As she turns her back to him, he helps her into the pale blue gown. He draws the strings taut then knots them. His hands wander as he crouches, as he reaches beneath her gown to drag her panties down her legs. She warily steps out of them, shivers as his rough hand glides up and strokes the inside of her thigh.
“Turn around. Please.”
And when she does, he says,
“Thank you.”
Like he thinks having good manners makes him a gentleman.
He stands and gently guides her to sitting on the counter. Reaches down to tug the hem up, looking down at her fuzzy pussy. She’s leaking on his clean, white counter. And he touches her with his bare hand, seeming to shudder at how wet she’s gotten. This can't possibly be medicinal, and all her suspicions are confirmed by the look in his eyes. She tugs the hem back down, hissing, “You’re an absolute quack! I can’t believe I came back here, I can’t believe I—”
“—I recall you being satisfied your last visit.”
His wrist pushes forward, finger thrusting good and deep, inside, and she’s gripping at the hem so hard she might just rip it.
“A-Aren’t you . . . isn’t that your wife?”
There, in that fine black and white portrait.
Her doctor’s eyes flit to it briefly. He regards Elise’s portrait dimly. Karin squirms as he fingers her, her cunt squelching wet. He agrees, “Oh, yes, I suppose so.” It’s rougher than the first time, and there’s something perverse in the way that he tries to make every thrust humiliatingly audible. He murmurs, “That feels much better, doesn’t it?”
He watches the way she crumbles there. Her arms have wound around his neck and her stomach is in knots. She’s shrill and can’t keep herself quiet, thank All-mer that his practice is empty, that they’re alone together. A second finger pushed alongside the first makes her squeal, and he breathlessly suggests, “You did want me to call you Karin, right?”
“Yes, yeah, ngh, Doct—"
“—Daan’s fine. Just Daan.”
Deeper, if only he could go deeper. His fingers withdraw filthy, and he sucks them clean as her own fingers wander into his thick, slicked back mane. Gel and sweat. She’s ruining his hair. She rushes forward to kiss him as his hand fall back down to find that spot. He rubs her clit as she licks then sucks the taste of herself clean from his tongue.
The phone is ringing off the hook.
She feels want and wanted. He keeps rubbing her there, and sparks seem to leap right from his finger tips. He's going to make her do it again, she knows, that nerve wrecking thing.
And just a little more, just—
Her thighs tense and her body stiffens up, rigid as stone as she groans into his mouth.
And with the phone still ringing and with his lips still on hers, he quickly unbuckles his belt. Karin blushes all over, hazed eyes dropping down to watch. She's gotten him hard. Has she ever aroused anyone in her life? She shudders as the sticky tip of his hard cock brazenly grazes her folds, as he hastily strokes his swollen shaft, semen spurting onto her twitching cunt and creeping down, joining the puddle beneath her.
He breathes deeply through his nose.
Daan pulls back, stuffing his wilting cock back into his trousers. He settles onto his stool and pushes off towards his desk, picking up that shrilly shrieking phone. Watching Karin pant across from him, not missing a beat, he says,
“Ah, of course I didn’t forget about the dinner party.”
It’s effortless, it’s as easy as breathing, and he’s already slicking his hair back into place. One might think she’d never mussed it if they saw him now. And beyond the shine of perspiration on his brow, Daan is perfectly presentable.
She sits there stupefied, his cum still hot on her sex.
The secretary is popping a mint. It’s likely she blew the boss in a supply closet. Well, it wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Still looking into Dutch? Damn it Sauer, every time I come over here, you’re mooning over his picture in the paper.”
Her boss is standing over her with a cup of coffee and a bad hangover.
She scowls up at him, “He fought in the second Great War, you know. I thought that was interesting.”
“Oh, what a boy scout. I would’ve fought too, if I’d been half as young and just as nuts. Does that get me a date with you or what?”
Karin snorts, shutting the dusty old article. She picks up her pen and chews on the end of it. She says, waving him off and out of her space, “I’m not into married men, Sully.”
6th street.
Mysterious Daan is locking up his practice, and flinches at the white flash of a strobe.
The moon hangs high.
Karin is leaning against a parked car, holding up her bulky camera. She lowers it, peering at him over it with sharp blue eyes. Daan sighs, attention returning to his jingling keys. “I’m afraid we’re closed for the evening, Miss Sauer.”
“I thought we agreed on Daan and Karin? You know, I work for the paper.”
“Congratulations.” He pockets his keys and begins to walk north, and she’s on his heels. Daan’s fished a cigarette out of a carton, is patting himself down for matches.
“People might find it interesting how you treat female patients stricken with hysteria. More than interesting.”
“I’d wondered why it was you’re unmarried. I see now that you’d threaten any man that so much as smiled at you. What a vicious woman.” He finds his matches and strikes one, lights the very end of his cigarette with such care, like it’s the last one he’ll ever have or something equally sentimental. “And you’re stalking me now, too.”
He steps through a puddle with his oxford, she steps through it with her worn boot.
They walk under streetlights and moonlight and it could almost be romantic, except he is most likely fleeing her and she is most likely chasing him. Karin clutches at her camera. “I’m thinking it’d make for a great headline. ‘The Dark Truth About—‘”
He turns, and very smoothly takes his cigarette between two of his fingers, ducking down and swiftly kissing her. He does this quickly enough that before she can so much as blink, he’s already taking another drag on that cigarette.
An exhale, then, “If you’d like my attention, Karin, you need only ask. You’re far too old to be playing children’s games.”
“I—I’m not coming on to you, you malignant narcissist!”
“No? I think you’d like the number to the telephone in my study, or maybe you’d like dinner? I will admit you’re the first woman to bother me outside of business hours, but I’m not exactly opposed to house calls.”
She stands there mortified, and he takes another drag, nodding like he thinks he’s struck close to the truth when he’s so terribly far from it he might as well be in outer space. Her mouth is dry, her face as red as a bloody nose. Finally, unable to think of anything else, she croaks,
“Don’t you love your wife at all?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so.”
He’s walking again, towards God knows where.
And Karin reluctantly rushes to catch up to him before he gets too far away.