The sedative was working too fast. The slowly encroaching blackness of oblivion pressed on my mind. Taunted me with more failure. More death.
"Willow, you're not trying hard enough," Ethan said. His eyes were so full of disappointment. And something else. Something I'd never seen before in all of the five years of our marriage.
Enjoyment.
Somehow, someway, in the last eighteen months of being divorced, he'd found some kind of sick, twisted fun in torturing these women. He spent more time playing with his subjects this time around. Less time recording his precious data.
I wasn't the focus of his attention. Or at least not completely. There were moments, longer spans of time than I could ever recall previously, that it was like I wasn't even in the room with him.
I blinked once. The
