One week hospitalized

On Friday afternoon I arrived at the old stone house with a small backpack and my heart pounding in my chest as if it wanted to escape before I did. I had requested a full week of vacation for this. Seven days outside the world. Seven days without a phone, without a watch, without my own name. Seven days in the service of Master Gabriel and Mistress Beatriz.

The train journey had been long, damp, gray. Cantabria dissolved behind the windows into mist-covered mountains and silent forests. During the trip I could barely read. Every time I tried to concentrate, I ended up thinking about the message Gabriel had sent me three nights earlier.

“When you cross the door, you will stop making decisions.”

Nothing more.

I had read it twenty times.

The house appeared at the end of a narrow road surrounded by trees. It was not an extravagant mansion or a theatrical place. It was worse. It was real. An old house, enormous, sober, perfectly maintained. The lit windows cast warm rectangles onto the fine rain.

When I knocked on the door, I had the absurd impulse to run away.

Mistress Beatriz opened it.

She was wearing a simple black dress and her hair was pinned up. She was not smiling. She never needed to smile to impose authority. There was something in her gaze that made one want to lower one’s head before even understanding why.

“You arrived on time,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Her eyes slowly scanned my body. The backpack. My wet shoes. My tense hands.

“Come in.”

I obeyed her.

The house smelled of old wood, leather, and something like incense. Everything was silent. The floor creaked softly beneath my steps. She closed the door behind me, and for an instant I had the strange feeling that the world had just become very far away.

“Kneel.”

I did so immediately in the entrance, still wearing my coat.

I heard her steps around me.

“Look at me.”

I raised my eyes.

“During this week you are not going to improvise anything. You will do exactly what you are told. You will eat when you are allowed. You will sleep when you are ordered. You will speak only when it is appropriate. Understood?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Your chastity begins now.”

I felt my stomach lurch even before I saw her take out the small leather pouch.

She noticed my reaction.

“Nervous?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good.”

She told me to go upstairs. I followed her to a spacious room where the walls were covered with shelves and closed cabinets. It did not look like a theatrical dungeon. It looked like a place designed by people who knew exactly what they were doing and did not need unnecessary decorations.

Master Gabriel was there.

Standing by the window.

Tall, serene, dressed entirely in black. H...