C H A P T E R 10
C H A P T E R 10
NOT EVEN IN DEATH
Puppet
A m I dead?
I'm choking on life as it suffocates my airways, seeping back inside my throat. My nightmare is glaring back at me. Speaking foreign tongue as she comforts my panic, the clown is watching me, studying me as I gasp for breath, how ? How am I even conscious right now? My blurred vision squints to adjust my fuzzy sight as I pan the room. I'm still here, why am I not dead? Darkness cocoons me, but a glint of orange catches my eye.
My Hypopen ?
“I thought I’d lost you there.” I'm still drowsy and my hearing is muffled only just about making out her words. Fuelled with every emotion as my body accustoms to the air around me, my heart shallow but beating, my breathing gentle but heavy.
I need to eat. I need sugar. My arm climbs through the gravitational pull as I lift it in an attempt to make contact but my words are timid and breathless, rolling my head like a stiff doll. I'm seized up and brittle, beyond freezing and trembling at the thought of breathing oxygen. I was ready to let go. I was ready to die. Why am I still alive?
“You didn't think I'd let you slip away from me that easy did you?” I barely have the energy to scowl as I roll my stiff neck, facing her with only protruding hate. I don't understand, why couldn't she let me go . I was making her life easier! Not that she deserves it. And for that, I will make her regret my kindness.
“Why?…” I ask in search of an answer but I don't know what I want to hear. I don't even know what time of day it is, or if I'm dreaming. Is this my eternal loop of misery for choosing the easy way out? I'm stuck with the monster who is going to grant me pain for trying to run away from my body. Not even in death can I escape her.
“You need to eat and then rest.” She speaks so formally and without care, yet the contents of her words speak something entirely different and I cannot work out if I should be angry at her for saving a life that did not want to be saved in some freak attempt to win my company back. She is delusional if she thinks this will change anything, and if anything it’s made me resent her more for taking away my death as well as my life. What is she playing at? But right now, I have no energy to fight with her, only succumb to her twisted submission.
She vanishes for fifteen or so minutes and although I am currently uncuffed with a means to finally escape, my shrivelled-up corpse like state with a weak pulse is craving the comfort of this age-old bed with my sweat, blood and tears etched into the mattress that I know has seen far worse than me. I can feel it in the ridged springs beneath me, years of sleepless nights. I nuzzle my head into the stained pillow, crawling underneath the crumpled-up duvet at the end of the bed as she walks back in with a bowl of something steaming from the rim and my body heats just looking at it, although the thoughts of consuming it leaves me heaving. I’m currently stagnant with little life inside me and my body is fighting just to keep me breathing. Let alone eat. I stare down at the bowl of pasta she puts beside me and a subtle soft smile slips, one I didn't intend on, but I'm embarrassed to still be here. I was hoping I would have kicked the bucket by the time she came back. In fact I was, until she plunged a needle inside me.
“Where did you get it?” I glance at the pen on the bed side table, racking my brains trying to understand where the hell she got it from. Does she have contacts?
“That's not important right now.” There are so many secrets she's hiding. Things she doesn't want me to know and it only makes me more frustrated. There is no way she went all the way back home? Right ? That would be absurd.
“Now eat.” She glances down at the bowl, directing me with just her eyes through her black holes.
“How long was I out for?” I don't remember when she left, I barely remember our previous conversation, did we have one? I hope I didn't say anything stupid.
“Enough questions.” I barely have the energy to finish the bowl but I manage to take it down leaving me more exerted than before. She has stood watching me the entire time like a creep. Not uttering a word. She's used to the silence but so am I so it's strangely comforting, when you ignore the fact that my blood is heating my body purely through rage. I want nothing more than to hurt her but that is not possible right now, so I place my half empty bowl down on the bed side table and let my exhaustion straddle me, cupping me by the throat, squeezing until I see my temporary end to seek momentary peace. Darkness pokes at the corner of my eyes until I see black.
??
I ’ ve been in and out of consciousness the last few days. And every time I wake, she's either sitting watching me or there is remnants of her presence scattered across her room, glasses and wrappers on the floor. She's barely left my side and I don't know if I should find comfort in that fact. Being watched by a serial killer for days on end without my knowledge is practically stalking. She is a freak . I go to rub my temple to shift the stiffness of my face and my disorientation when I look down, reacting to the heavyweight binding my wrists.
Chains .
She's extended my restraints with chains? How considerate. At least I can move a little more freely now I guess.
I hear dull music coming from behind the bedroom door, it's faint but angry, thudding through the building like an earthquake followed by a rhythmic beating, but it's not the music. That's fists . She's punching something and a knot sits in the back of my mouth at all the possible reasons I am not her punching bag right now as I lay here wrapped up in a blanket like an ill child being looked after by a parent. She's a serial killer. She's a murderer. She murdered my parents yet I'm sitting here fighting against all the reasons I should feel grateful right now. She put me here. This is all her fault. I nearly died because of her . No. I did die because of her, but why do I feel drawn to her Walmart version of kindness. This isn't your typical killer, none of this is as I expected and I certainly didn't think she'd save my life.
I'm left with so many conflicting emotions it makes me want to scream. I want to die. I don't want to be here; she needs to fucking respect that and finish what she started.
I hear a door unlatch, the high pitch grinding against the heavy bass, the volume increasing until the door shuts again, muffling the music. The bedroom door unlocks to reveal her in a black long tee, probably to cover any tattoos I could identify if I got out, and joggers with the pockets hanging out , she’s holding a glass of water and a packet in her hand that she slips into her pocket as she heaves like a worn-out dog. Not sweating enough to melt off her hideous face paint though as she puts the glass down next to me.
This has become her routine. I don't know how many days I've been out for. But it’s been enough to know this isn't her third, fourth or fifth time. I've been practically unresponsive. I don't see what joy she gets out of this when she could just put me out of my misery and carry on with her psychotic tendencies.
“Don't you have people to murder?...” I sit up slowly, feeling like a sack of bricks as my weak arms hold the weight of me.
“Bold of you to assume I'm not.” She dabs her forehead with the towel slumped over her shoulder as she takes a seat on her new bed in the corner of the room. She catches me off guard as she whistles at such high velocity my ears knot, followed by the sight of a four legged friend that strolls in, perching underneath her feet, analysing me like I’m a stranger and I am a stranger, but I am also sort of happy to see another form of life other than hers in my prison cell, despite the size of her canine friend. It’s practically twice the size of me and my guard comes back up for a brief moment.
“Are you?” I swallow and I don't know why I even asked, glaring at the both of them.
“Yes.” Without hesitation she responds, looking at me through black hooded eyes, darting across the room as she picks up a water bottle off the floor.“Does that scare you, Puppet ?” I deter my eyes, looking down at my shackles, fiddling with my nails to ease my nerves. It scares me, but the way she is so careless with murder fascinates me.
“Why…why did you save me?” She could get her fix right here but she chooses to do it elsewhere. Am I not her murdering type?
“Save isn't exactly the word I'd use.” I cock a brow as she leans into the chair, elbows resting on her knees as her fingers interlock. If that wasn't saving then what the hell was it? “The only person allowed to take your miserable life . Is me .” So she does want to kill me eventually. She's angry I tried to take my life so she couldn't get off to it? “What better kill than completing a triangle aye?”
She knocks her frame back into the seat smiling like a psych ward patient, running the arms of the chair between her hands, like just thinking about it is making her hot and bothered and I feel sick. I know exactly what she means. She means killing off the offspring to end the family name. Like that's a trophy achievement.
“You know. I was starting to think there was just a smidget of kindness inside of you. Turns out you're just like the rest of them.” My words are feisty, accentuating my letters making it known I'm disgusted by her but that anger quickly turns to fear as she shoots up from her chair making my lifeless body glitch, gripping my delicate throat in her burning hand as she reaches me, it sears into my cold skin and I lose my ability to breathe from lack of oxygen and shock.
“Let's get one thing very fucking clear.” She's squeezing tighter. I could retaliate right now. I have the arm room but for some reason I'm sat as still as the dead girl inside of me, peering into the eyes of my end. Finding comfort in the thought of blacking out for a few hours.
“Nothing about me is Kind . You think me feeding you and keeping you breathing is for your benefit? Keep seeing the good in people and watch where it gets you. You're a body bag. My plaything . I take great pleasure in keeping you alive because I know how desperately you want to die ,” my stomach churns with disgust, she is like the rest of them. She is a pig. She's vile and once I gather back my strength. I'm getting the fuck out of here, or I’ll die trying. My eyes well but not with sadness as of right now. With anger. My Plaything? I'm not a chew toy, I am a human being, I am a grieving girl, captured by the devil disguised inside a human body.
“Do I make myself clear?” My head is thrown forward as she tugs at my limp body, demanding a reply but I refuse to answer with words, so I nod sporadically as a tear slips free.
“Good girl,” her thumb runs over my left cheek, catching my tear gently before a sharp sting strikes my right cheekbone, slapping the grief from my face before letting me suck back in air.“But you’ll learn to use your words.”
She pulls away and takes the packet she was holding out of her pocket containing an insulin pen. She must have been doing it whilst I was unconscious. How does she even know what that is or what to do with it? How did she get it?
She attempts to try and do it for me but over my dead body will she punish me again with my own life as leverage.
“I will do it!...” I snap, narrowing my eyes as I pull my body away from the needle. Her eyes are so dead, like no one is home. Like she's inhabited the body of a corpse as she glares down at me, chucking it on the bed by my side.
“Suit yourself.” I take the pen, clawing it underneath my hand as I tuck my knees in on myself glaring up at her like a child who's been told to go to bed. I follow her as she bends to my level, taking the form of my own claustrophobia as her face paint rubs against my cheek.
“If you keep things from me, or lie to me again. I will show you just how ‘Kind’ I am.” she whispers with such aggression my heart flutters, sucking down my urge to test her but I won't.
Not yet.
“Or I might just let him tear you apart…” Her eyes dart to her left where her canine sits, glaring at the both of us and I know I’m not afraid of dogs. But I also know not to mess with one. Who knows what her dog is capable of when its owner is a literal crazy person.