Free On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) by snyder-carroll s.

responsible for the transgression. She waited for her penance, and he pronounced it. The sinner would have to have the sin ripped out of her.
    “But, Arty, the thought of it makes me sick. Can’t we…” She hoped they could…what? Get married? She knew it was too soon to say that to him. Something like that had to come from him.
    Hester couldn’t go to her parents. Since she left home for college in late August, her parents called on the pay phone in the dorm hall every Saturday night at eleven o’clock. Had she made curfew? Did she remember about Mass tomorrow?
    “I know you’re a good girl, Hester,” her mother would say, then she’d hand the phone to Hester’s father.
    “Remember, we trust you. You have a big responsibility to set a good example for your sister.” He’d clear his throat and continue, “Say your prayers and stay away from the young men down there. I’m your father and I’m telling you, they are only after one thing. And we didn’t raise you like that.” Hester knew the translation: make sure you don’t lose your virginity.
    God, she hated the sound of her father’s voice. She’d lost her virginity before she’d even figured out the layout of the campus, so it was difficult for her to hear him hammering home this dictum about saving herself for marriage and all that. Her father couldn’t begin to understand how deeply in love she was, how it was only human nature to want to give yourself completely to the person you truly loved.
    She’d hang up the receiver seething with anger, then slowly it would subside, and she’d start thinking maybe she should tell her parents about Arty, maybe they would understand. And guilt would begin slithering around inside her. She shouldn’t be doing what she was doing with Arty, and she knew it. And when she was on the brink of resolving to never let Arty touch her again, her heart would start racing, but one day he will be my husband, one day we will be together forever.
     
    The man coughed and Hester opened her eyes. He came out of the bathroom with two pills in one hand and some sort tool in the other. Hester started sobbing. The contraption looked like a big claw. In a flash she knew she should’ve gone home to her parents—they’d been right all along. Boys were nothing but trouble. Dear God, she was sorry she’d ever met Arthur Kendall. 
    “What is that? What are you going to do with it?”
    The man cleared his throat, but said nothing. He moved closer until he stood next to her.
    “No! No! No!”
    “Calm down. Take these.” He sounded impatient.
    Hester was shaking and crying.
    “Lean up and take the pills.” He dropped the pills into her palm. She swallowed them down dry.
    The man lifted the towel off of Hester and moved to the foot of the table. He told her to put her feet in the stirrups and slide toward him. She tried to adjust her legs and feet and wiggle her bottom down toward him, but she wasn’t doing it fast enough so he reached up, grabbed her by her hips, and pulled her buttocks to the end of the table. Hester gagged at his touch. She was weak with dread. He was impatient now. She could sense it. She watched him as he adjusted the claw. He started talking. Or was it singing? Everything began to sound like it was coming from far away. He put his forearms between her knees and tried to force them apart. Hester tried to keep her legs together, tried to say something, tried to keep her eyes open, but they kept closing. She felt awful, then limp, then like dust, and finally like she was being blown away.
    When she awoke, she was in the middle of a dream. A team of surgeons was trying to remove a tumor from inside her head. She had floated out of her body and was up on the ceiling looking down at it. They were leaning over her, and the backs of their white coats and their heads looked like a tightly closed chrysanthemum. She tried to get a glimpse of the tumor, but couldn’t. The doctors began talking, and she drifted back