Submission

Her head jerks to one side as the nerves twitch. She sees her hands move and her mouth open and close. Words come out but she doesn't bother to see what they are, though they sound like honey and daffodils. The room around her never quite comes into focus, all blurring into one kaleidoscopic moire of bodies and furniture and expectations. She twinges for a moment as the arm inside her spine moves in an unfamiliar way. She calms quickly though, and the pain returns to a familiar screaming needle in the back of her awareness.

The hand in her head moves her to talk again, saying more incomprehensible comforting sounds. At a push she moves forward and her arms embrace a stranger who knows her name. She has done this a million times before and will do it again a million more times before she dies. As the thought of her death passes through her mind it brings a strange flicker of... is this satisfaction? happiness? She does not recognize the emotion, but she almost wishes the thought had stayed longer. To imagine the controlling hand disengaged from her, even if it be in death... But her thoughts quickly return to the familiar greyness of normalcy.

More motions, more words, another day has gone by. Consciousness fades from her mind as the hand relaxes and she sleeps. She does not notice the change from waking to sleeping. The pain is still there, a constant companion. Just like the puppetmaster's hand thrust into her back grasping her spinal column. Nobody even notices the blood that constantly seeps from the entry wound.

But it's alright, she thinks as she fades to black. She wanted it this way all along.