Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Adrian Sterling’s mother had me committed to a conversion facility.
Before she left, Eleanor looked at me as if I were something that had crawled out from under the floorboards. Her son wasn’t attracted to men, she said. He couldn’t possibly be gay. I should give up on him, stay here, and let them straighten me out.
I only smiled.
What she didn’t know was that her son did like men—and that he’d become interested in one because of her. Adrian was the one who wouldn’t leave me alone at college. He was the one who pursued me, the one who took someone as straight as I’d been and changed all that.
Yet I was the one locked up.
The metal gate slammed behind Eleanor. Her heels struck the floor as she stormed away. Maybe she was going home to deal with Adrian. Maybe I’d spoiled her good mood. Or maybe my refusal to look ashamed had embarrassed her.
Whatever. I wasn’t dating her. Why should I care what she thought?
Even with the light on, my room was dim. The floor was damp, the bedding clammy. Only the desk was reasonably dry, and I had to hunch over it to see well enough to write in my diary.
Looking around, I had to wonder how I’d ended up here. I was a university professor with a salary I could barely complain about. At home, I lived in a little villa. When I traveled for work, I stayed in five-star hotels. When had I ever slept somewhere like this?
What a joke.
That’s enough writing. Another few minutes of squinting and I’ll go blind.
[July 2 — Sunny]
You have got to be kidding me. These people made us get up at dawn to run.
Morning exercise was the thing I hated most about school. I used to tell myself that once I had a job, nobody would ever make me run first thing in the morning again. Apparently becoming a professor wasn’t enough to save me.
I could have cried.
When we finally finished, the person supervising us checked their watch and sent us to breakfast. I was exhausted.
Breakfast was two eggs and a bowl of millet porridge, with seconds if we wanted them. I didn’t. It tasted bad enough to ruin the rest of my day.
In the morning, they showed us a mandatory propaganda video explaining that homosexuality was a psychological and mental illness, and that with enough determination it could be corrected.
Mental illness? They were the ones with something wrong with them. I was sick of this place already.
According to the staff, Eleanor had paid for two months. That meant I had to live here for the full two months, with no permission to leave—even if they decided I was ‘cured.’ Two months of videos like that. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl.
Chapter 2
After the video came lunch: three dishes and a soup. It looked decent, but everything was so bland that the cook must have run out of salt. Or perhaps the facility was saving money wherever it could.
Lucky me.
I wanted Adrian’s cooking. I wondered when I’d get to eat it again.
Fine. I missed him.
[Early hours of July 3]
I had a nightmare.
I dreamed I’d been released and Adrian had come to pick me up. Then the scene changed. He was covered in blood, surrounded by people carrying a baseball bat, a metal rod, and knives. They rushed him all at once.
Adrian was strong, but there were too many of them. Even badly hurt, he kept shouting at me, ‘Run! Chloe Bennett, run!’
I ran toward him instead. Somehow, with every step, he got farther away.
Then I woke up drenched in cold sweat, my clothes sticking to me. I decided to take a shower.
An older man was on night duty by the gate. When he saw me, he didn’t immediately order me back inside. He asked kindly why I wasn’t asleep.
‘Just woke up,’ I said. ‘I’m going to shower.’
He nodded and motioned for me to be quick. I thanked him and headed for the communal showers.
He was still there when I returned, my hair dripping. When he noticed I hadn’t dried it, he led me over to his station and handed me a hair dryer.
‘Young people never take care of themselves,’ he said, giving me a stern look. ‘Then they catch a cold and learn the hard way. Dry your hair.’
I smiled, and we got to talking. His name was George Mercer. He was in his sixties and said he’d given up retirement to work here because he felt sorry for the young people confined inside.
The last person assigned to his watch had already left. George said the young man had been a good kid, always smiling, bright as sunshine. He’d been in love with someone who genuinely loved him back.
But last month, just before he was due to leave, someone had assaulted him. Afterward, he believed he was dirty and didn’t deserve the person he loved. He jumped from a building.
George’s face filled with regret as he told me.
Before I went back to my room, he warned me that this place was dangerous and told me to be careful. I nodded and went inside.
George hadn’t told me the whole truth. Pity for the people here wasn’t his only reason for taking this job. There was something else he hadn’t said.
[July 4 — Overcast]
I dried my hair too late yesterday morning and somehow caught a cold. Since when did I get sick this easily?
I reported it to the staff, asked to be excused, and spent the day in my room. The nurse who came to look after me was Claire Whitmore. She was twenty-three, sweet-looking, and worked for her uncle here caring for anyone who fell ill.
We got along so well that I found myself excited just to have someone to talk to. Better still, there was nothing strange in the way she looked at me. No disgust, no pity, no contempt.
She treated me like a normal person.
Chapter 3
‘Don’t you think I’m disgusting?’ I asked.
Claire fell quiet for a moment, then looked straight at me. ‘If I really disliked someone, I wouldn’t bother talking to them. Do I look like I dislike you?’
‘You don’t think there’s something wrong with me?’
She considered that. ‘Does being attracted to the same sex make someone abnormal? Does it make them mentally ill? If you ask me, the people who think that way are the ones with something wrong in their heads.’
I couldn’t think of an answer. I admired her for saying it.
Before I knew it, we’d talked all morning. We only stopped when her boyfriend came to pick her up after her shift.
I lay back on my damp bed, one arm beneath my head, and thought: It’s been a long time since Adrian came to take me home.
My tonsils were inflamed, and my cold had gotten worse. My nose was running clear, and my head was pounding.
Why wasn’t the medication helping at all? I felt awful…
I missed Adrian.
I remembered another time when I’d caught a cold and developed tonsillitis. I couldn’t eat anything. Even swallowing hurt so badly it felt like my throat was being cut open. Since I couldn’t manage food, I got through those days on glucose solution and nutritional fluids.
Adrian’s family had money and influence, but money and influence couldn’t do everything. When I couldn’t eat, all he could do was stay by my side every second.
I still remembered how he followed me everywhere during those days. If I hadn’t kicked him out of the bathroom, he probably would have followed me in there, too.
And whenever I didn’t need to use one of my hands, he would hold it tightly. I couldn’t pull free, so I simply let him.
During those days, Adrian loved to sit quietly and watch me. His eyes were full of worry and guilt, and his whole face seemed to say, “My wife is sick and suffering,” and, “It’s all my fault for not taking better care of her.”
My throat hurt too much for me to speak, so I would often give his cheek a gentle pinch, trying to comfort that deeply remorseful puppy of a man.
After I was discharged, Adrian stopped letting me eat things that were likely to irritate my throat. From then on, my work bag always held several boxes of traditional Chinese throat lozenges and sterculia-seed throat remedies. No matter how much I hated the taste, he insisted that I let one dissolve in my mouth after every lecture.