Free Underworld Queen by Sharon Hamilton

“Five minutes.” She held up a hand that could palm a basketball, fingers spread wide. “You got five minutes, you hear?”
    More than enough time.
    The woman answered the phone and held up her five-minute sign like a small pizza platter. Audray was careful not to appear unnaturally quick, and entered the room Burt shared with three other male patients. Everyone was sleeping except for a younger man who was a double amputee, heavily medicated. He nodded as Audray passed him to get to Burt, whose bed was next to the window. Both televisions were blaring.
    She looked down at the gray face of the man she saw in her dreams as she cried herself to sleep in those early days. He wore death like a blanket all around him, and it wasn’t becoming. He had a tube down his nose secured with a white piece of tape. A yellowish green liquid was being sucked from inside him, ending up in a clear jar with an inch of the frothy buildup at the bottom. He was hooked up to an IV on the back of one hand, but his other flaccid arm had large purple and red bruises on the inside at the crook. One purple trail snaked up from the bruise almost an inch.
    That probably hurts. The thought gave her courage.
    Audray picked up the yellow plastic water pitcher and poured a stream over his face and onto his chest. Burt opened his rheumy eyes and mumbled, trying to wipe the water, getting his arm caught in the plastic tubing. His eyes got small as he squinted to see who was next to him.
    “Don’t have your glasses? Guess you don’t read much.”
    “Who…?”
    Audray leaned into him so that her face was no more than five inches from his. At first there was no reaction, but then his eyes became wide.
    “Bumblebee. My little bumblebee.”
    Audray looked up and out the window. It should have hurt, this reminder of what he used to call her in perhaps happier times before the rape. She noticed her heart was completely stone cold.
    “That all you can say to me after you what you did?”
    “I’m sorr… I couldn’t help…”
    “I’m not here for an apology. You’re beyond redemption.”
    She blew on his face, grimacing down at him. It doesn’t hurt a bit. Not anymore.
    “You want to live forever just like this?” she asked him.
    His eyes contained nothing but questions. Audray continued. “Yes, that could be one solution. I could let you live forever in a bed, hooked up to a tube, your ass wiped not as often as it should be so it gets nice and red.”
    “Wha?”
    “Or I could cut off your pecker with a pair of scissors I bet I could find. Maybe then the government might try to sew it back on, maybe backwards. I could arrange that if you like. Or make you leak like a punctured garden hose, hmmm?”
    She found a small pair of nippers for cutting surgical tape. “Now these look good. Nice and dull.”
    Burt was trying to scream, but was having difficulty mustering the energy, from the whoosh of air she deposited to his face. A buzzer started going off. Someone in the room was beginning to have tachycardia. It didn’t matter to her who it was.
    “I had more than enough reason to kill you. But yesterday, I found out you also killed my sister.” Audray reached under the sheets and pulled his hairy unit, yanking it sharply to the side, twisting it. Burt’s face got bright red, the veins in his neck and at his temples bulged, but no sound came out of his mouth as his eyes crossed.
    See what it feels like to be helpless? Can’t save yourself? Should I kill you?
    She released her grip and watched him fall back into the bed. She thought about leaving him alive to experience the bruising and pain in his cock with every muscle he tried to move, every breath he tried to take until his last day, which was coming up very soon. It wasn’t eternity, but it was the best she could do, and not nearly what he deserved. He wasn’t worth killing. Much better to let him suffer out the rest of his miserable days.
    She gave him a dose of her dark energy, causing