Rose
I want to stay awake, so I can see Abel after he does his nightly reconnaissance, but my eyes are closing, no matter how hard I try to fight it. Who knew being locked away in a dungeon every day for the years could be so tiring? That’s the last thought I have before slipping away into slumber.
I feel as though I’ve only slept for a minute when someone is shaking me awake and I jerk to sit up. It’s dark and quiet, the room shrouded in shadows, but Abel’s voice slices through the still silence before I can react.
“, baby, it’s time to go.”
He calls me “baby” and I don’t want to be called anything other than that by him. I don’t register what else he said for a moment because I’m held captive by that one word— baby.
He tugs me from the bed because I haven’t gotten up yet, still stuck on the affection in his tone. I glance around the room, but I don’t have anything I want to bring with me. This place has taken enough from me and I’m ready to leave it all behind. I clench my fists and I swear they still ache from my time in solitary, but they also remind me that all I have in my future, should I remain here, is pain.
“What about our slippers?” I whisper, staring down at his shoeless feet. He shakes his head, hissing something about not wanting to risk the noise and I let him tug me out of the room, looking both ways before we take off.
I think about Joe as we tiptoe through the halls in our socks, following some sort of jagged path to avoid the cameras. He squeezes my hand before each time he stops, as if making sure there are no nurses or anyone around to catch us.
I wonder if Joe will miss me, if our years together meant anything to him. How he’ll feel when he sees we’re no longer here. How long will it take for him to call the police? Because I know he will, I am quick to dismiss emotions for anyone other than the man leading me to my freedom.
We turn a corner and Abel squeezes my hand as he slows down in front of me. I glance at him, with the question in my eyes. Is this it?
He gestures around another corner, to the right, and I peer around and down the hallway.
The door is slightly ajar at the end of the hall. The door that seems to be the only thing standing between us and freedom.
“It can’t be this easy,” I whisper to him, my palm feeling clammy against his.
He only shakes his head for a moment before I hear someone coming from the other end of the hall.
No. Two people.
As they near, I see it’s Allison and one of the male nurses.
She’s shaking her head as he brings her closer to the cracked door. When she starts to pull away, he yanks her to him and covers her mouth with his hand. I hear a whisper of a sob and my hands start to shake.
Allison doesn’t deserve what he’s about to do to her.
“We have to do something,” I tell Abel as another man enters the door and closes it behind him.
“We can’t risk it,” he whispers back to me, as if that’s final.
But I don’t care. I step out from our hiding place and charge down the hall. The closer I get, the more shuffles and grunts I hear from the other side.
Then arms bind themselves around my waist and I’m pulled back. I try to jerk away, but Abel refuses to relent.
“You need to calm the fuck down,” he says, his words hot against my ear. “Calm down and let me get us out of here.”
This odd sensation pulsates through me, from my chest, down to where my hips give way to my thighs. That space there wants too badly to be filled by Abel.
But my rage…it never goes without a fight.
I hear a thud against the door and I try one last time, in vain, to get away. “Do something ,” I practically beg him. Anything to keep my monster from coming out and ruining our plans.
“Fine.” He sets me down and looks around, winded from subduing me.
I’ve gotten to know Abel in our time here. I know his fondness for swearing and his terrible upbringing. But I also know that he is often underestimated, looked at as some idiot. Abel is the smartest kind of man: resourceful and quick on his feet. He’ll get us out of here.
“Stay here,” Abel tells me, pinning me with his gaze for a moment before turning away.
But before he slinks off, I grab his arm, admiring the strength under my hold. “What are you doing?”
“Providing a distraction.”
He’s gone before I can ask him what he’s going to do. I watch him disappear around the corner and look back at the door.
Without him here, it’s so much easier…
I rush toward the door and yank it open. Allison is against the wall, the male nurse thrusting into her as she cries out against the hand he has covering her mouth. I grab him by the back of his neck and push him with as much force as I can down the stairs. He goes down hard, his head thumping against several concrete edges and I can already tell he isn’t going to walk away from this fall.
Once he hits the landing, he’s still, his mouth ajar and his eyes glassy and vacant; his head is angled unnaturally away from his neck. What a terrible way to die; with your penis out for everyone to see.
Allison is quiet as she turns to look into my eyes, her chest heaving. I want to brush her hair from her sweaty face and welcome her. My monster would love the company.
But I refrain as I watch her adjust her pants so they cover her once more.
The exit sign paints us all red and I think to myself, my righteous red. My righteous vengeance.
I hear someone coming down the stairs. The second man who’d entered the stairwell—a janitor by the looks of it—takes one look at the two of us and turns to leave.
I’m surprised to see Allison grab him first. She throws all of her weight on him and when he falls, she kicks and kicks him, her stomps now landing on his face, neck, and chest even as he tries to cover himself with his arms. I want to tell her to stop screaming like a madwoman, but that’s what sweet violence does: it shows us who we are.
She is so beautifully painted in her truth—hair wild, mouth open in triumph as blood spurts from somewhere on his body but she’s relentless, painting the walls red.
More blood, dark and slow moving, leaks from his head and I step away, pushing off from the wall I hadn’t realized I was leaning on.
Abel , I remind myself. I need to find out where he is because no doubt someone is coming after Allison’s screams rang through the stairwell.
Once I’m back outside the door, with no sign of Abel, I start to count.
One, two, three…
The hall is still empty, and I edge back toward the corner we’d started at.
Fifteen, sixteen…
I hear someone carrying keys. They’re coming down the hall and if they see me, that’s the end of this. I’ll never make it out of here. My hands ache at the thought.
Not after the events in the stairwell. Not ever.
Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one...
I try to breathe quietly but with each footfall, I’m closer to more time in solitary. More counting. More Joe and more nurses pricking me and leaving marks on my body.
I’ll kill this person in order to avoid that fate.
Thirty-six, thirty-seven…
The keys jingle closer and I’m bracing myself when I hear a shriek. The person headed my way stops, turns, and runs the way they came.
The fire alarm sounds and I only hope Abel hasn’t been caught. I’m about to walk back into the stairwell when I feel a hand reach out and grab me, pulling me away from the wall.
“Let’s go,” Abel says, his voice breathless.
I can barely hear him over the shrill of the alarm. He pushes me, and we start running, our hands joined as if we could never let the other go. As we enter the stairwell, I try not to stop and rejoice.
“The fuck happened here?” he asks but doesn’t stop.
Not even as we see a sobbing Allison still kicking the janitor’s dead body. And not when we step over the other dead body at the bottom of the landing.
Our steps are light and quick, Abel is pressing his index finger against his lips, but we’re moving as fast as possible. We hit the final landing and Abel is illuminated by the fluorescent lights and the red exit sign above the door he’s about to push open.
I want to remember him this way forever—eyes hopeful, grin boyish, touch guiding.
But he pushes the door open and the moment is gone. And so is the sound of the fire alarm.
I’m breathing in fresh air and I want to celebrate but Abel takes my hand and we keep running.
Running away from the cattle farm and into the world where I can be whomever I’d like.
I’m not thinking about anything other than how amazing this moment feels.
Freedom.