Part Eighteen: Quarterly Reports
"So let me get this straight," said Tabitha, seated across from me in my living room. It was just the two of us now, the other girls -- and boy -- having been banished to Megan's house until I was ready to deal with them. "You bought this Serenex compound to make Taylor be a better student. You say. Then you accidentally had her, then her sister, ingest it, and discovered its indoctrination properties. Through a series of snowballing missteps, they both become infatuated with you, though in the process also alert Mrs. Brown next door. To find out it's her that's attempting to blackmail you, you poison Officer Barbour and, somehow, her girlfriend? Is that right?"
"It's not poisonous, and... yes."
"Correction: you
drug
Officer Barbour and Ms. Salata. You misidentify Cassie as the perpetrator," she said, leaving no doubts as to how probable she found that prospect, "allow your brainwashed sex slaves to turn her into
another
brainwashed sex slave, then go on to use her to poison -- sorry, drug -- her own mother. Whom you subsequently turn into, again, a brainwashed sex slave."
"I'm not sure I'd categorize it all like that."
She tucked her hair back neatly behind her ears. "Let's not get bogged down in semantics, Mr. Canon. So then you erroneously believe you've cowed Officer Barbour, and that Ms. Salata shares your predeliction for -- oh wait, I skipped where you compelled her to put on a sex show with... was it Abbie? or Taylor?"
"Abbie."
"Sure. So Ms. Salata then makes you believe she's also into that, the two of them reel you in with an offer of a threesome with two women you know to be avowed lesbians...? And you bought that?"
"Cut me a little slack, OK? I had a lot on my mind. And let's not make it sound like I'm the only bad guy here. They're the ones who tried to poison my food to turn me into some... soulless husk of a man!"
"Right, so suddenly it's poison. But you manage to evade the trap, use three highschool girls as a distraction for the armed police officer so you can slide into Ms. Salata's DMs, compel her to betray her partner in order to allow you to squelch what's left of her independence, such that now the two of them are, for all intents and purposes, your brainwashed sex slaves."
"Hey, they dosed me too, remember -- that wasn't me!"
"Of course. After Abbie snared Cassie Brown and her own sister for you, who could have predicted such an event," she retorted dryly. "So then, you say without your knowing, they proceed to continue to recruit other members of the student body to be, as I understand it, your brainwashed sex slaves. At the very least myself and Justin Diggs, plus an unknown number of others."
"We don't know that there are others. I'll get to the bottom of it, though. This was never my intention, and I'm not going to stand for it."
"Respectfully, Mr. Canon?" When she waited for permission, I gestured for her to proceed. "When was any of this ever
not
your intention?"
"I know how it looks, Tabitha. And I can't even imagine how you must feel, what you must be thinking of me. But I got snared up in all this, too. Abbie put all this macho nonsense in my head."
"Ah yes, the 'don't be a pussy' thing you mentioned." She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the term.
"Yes. But that's not all. She's made me allow her to use the stuff whenever she wants -- which is fine -- I mean it isn't, but I can't help... But yeah,
she
did that. Not me."
"And so far, she's exclusively used this stuff to bring you more brainwashed sex slaves? Would that be a fair summation of her endeavors?"
"Look, I don't know what all is in my head, frankly. I shouldn't need to tell you, considering what happened earlier, that it all
feels
very normal when it's happening. It's hard to step back and be objective."
At last, the skeptical mask Tabitha was wearing showed a crack, if only slightly. "All right, I'll grant you that. When they told me there was a study session here tonight, I thought it sounded crazy, but I figured worst case scenario, I surprise you on your doorstep, pay a compliment and leave with an awkward apology. It becomes a funny little incident, ha ha. Then when I got here and she said..." Her lips twisted downward. "Well, I certainly played the part they intended me to play, didn't I."
"And again, my apologies. I swear, I barely understand myself how you got wrapped up in--"
Tabitha forestalled the rest of my repetitive apology with a gesture, then folded her hands in her lap, smoothing out the pleats in her skirt. "You've already apologized. Keep doing it if it makes you feel better, but it's really unnecessary." From her tone, I inferred that it was unnecessary less because an apology wasn't merited, and more because she was tired of hearing it.
Which was itself curious, her attitude. "You know, I have to say, considering what they did to you, I'm surprised you're so... yourself. Normal, that is. The rest of them -- and me too -- we all caved pretty hard, pretty much instantly. But you're... well, you're..."
"I'm... what?" Tabitha arched one of those high narrow brows inquisitively.
"Let's just say the others applied a lot less scrutiny than you are."