The blades spun. Xnx “She’s doing a PhD in history at the Sorbonne. “Welcome back!”
She helped me to sit up, held the glass to my lips, and then asked whether I’d prefer coffee. What the fuck are you laughing at? I felt my lips sketch a smile, then realised I was thirsty. Mandy had begun to treat me as a near-equal, almost a friend, and at last she did what she’d promised before I was abducted: she told me her story, the story of how the Castration Festivals had begun. Then I awoke in a hospital bed, clad in hospital gown, IV line in right wrist, monitors chirruping, summer light streaming through the window. She wanted to feel uninhibited, unencumbered, while she got drunk. “Good grief, what do you do with those things?
