Chapter 17 #2
I forced myself to blink one more time, seeing the white fur of her tail as she ran, before everything went black.
Cold air stirred me awake.
Still drowsy, I reached for my blanket to pull it higher up my body. My hand felt nothing but a hard, chilly surface.
A shrill tore from my throat as my eyes opened. I slapped my palms against the surface beneath me, not feeling the softness of my mattress. Instead, they met concrete.
My body shot up as I looked around in dread. Four concrete walls felt like they were closing in on me in the small space. I searched every inch for a door, a handle, a window, anything to get me out of here, but there was nothing.
Only gray walls and a low ceiling.
I turned toward the source of the chilliness, spotting a fan in the corner blasting cold air directly at me.
My body ached as I began crawling toward it, needing to unplug the damn thing. I only made it a few inches when something pulled me backward.
Metal clanked against the floor, bouncing off the bare walls.
I cried out, pounding at the floor, when I twisted around and found the heavy chain wrapped around my ankle. The other end was bolted to a hook drilled deep into the wall.
A strange haziness settled over my brain as I slumped back against the concrete, my head spinning. Everything felt slow, distant, like I couldn’t form one coherent thought.
They’d drugged me.
Something had been in whatever they stabbed into my neck.
I tipped my head forward, noticing I was only wearing a black bra and a pair of panties. Someone had changed me out of my uniform. Assholes could’ve at least given me socks so I wasn’t barefoot in this cold room.
My jaw clenched at the thought of any of them seeing me naked.
I did another scan of the room, noticing a small metal table was the only thing within my reach. I sucked in air through my teeth while scooting my ass against the rough ground toward the table.
A gun and a single bullet were intentionally resting on the table. A note sat next to it, along with a glass of water and a bottle of bourbon.
I picked up the note to read it. The handwriting matched the note Enzo had left after destroying my dorm room and cutting my ribbons.
If you hit your breaking point, that bullet is yours.
I snatched the note, ripping it into shreds, and threw them away from me. Salty tears trailed down my cheeks as I slouched against the wall. I sniffled, brushing them away, and rocked myself to get what little warmth I could.
How long did I sleep?
What time is it?
Hell, what day is it?
I clutched my arms around my knees, but that hold loosened when the fan shut off with a dramatic click. Rugged breaths left my lungs as I made another sweep of the room, looking for more clues, and spotted a camera in the upper-right corner.
My hands were stiff as I waved them toward the camera. “Hello!”
I wasn’t prepared for the loud banging and screams that came from the walls. It was like a tornado, hurricane, and semi drove through them all at once.
When that stopped, I heard nothing but creepy whispers, like what they’d done in the woods.
“Let me out of here!” I screamed.
The crackle of static made me lift my chin. My heart lurched when it cut off, and music spilled out from speakers I couldn’t find.
Not just music.
A certain song.
Ice, colder than the concrete, trickled down my spine.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
The volume wasn’t blaring, but I recognized the lullaby. While it wasn’t her voice, it was almost an exact replica.
I shook my head, attempting to distract myself from the lullaby, but it became louder.
“If that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
I wrapped my arms back around my knees again, this time rocking forward for another reason while staring at the wall.
Am I hallucinating this?
I am. This isn’t real.
No way can it be.
They’d drugged me—I was sure of it.
Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me.
Maybe the lullaby was just a cruel hallucination.
The volume rose, and I sprang to my feet.
It went higher.
Higher.
Now blaring so loud that I couldn’t even think.
Couldn’t even feel myself breathe.
My eardrums burned, so close to bursting, as the one song I hated assaulted me.
“Turn it off!” I screamed at the top of my lungs while holding my hands to my ears. “Turn it fucking off!”
It paused for a moment, and I heard an evil chuckle before it played again.
Louder this time.
Then louder.
Louder.
Louder.
Louder.
My legs gave out, and I slid down the rough wall. Tears poured down my face as I cried uncontrollably. Snot pooled at my lips as I desperately pleaded for them to stop.
That fucking lullaby.
Fuck that fucking lullaby.
My mother had sung that lullaby to me once in my bedroom when I was five or six years old. We didn’t celebrate birthdays, so I didn’t know my real age until I was older.
Since I didn’t know any better, I sang it that day while doing my daily chores.
Someone overheard me and told my father.
He stormed into the kitchen, yanked the mop from my hand, and cracked the handle across my face.
I screamed for help as he dragged me out of the kitchen by my hair and tied me to a tree, telling everyone they needed to gather around.
They crowded around me and screamed.
Called me the devil.
Said I was evil.
I sobbed while begging my mother to help me.
When my father asked where I’d heard that song, I pointed at her. She shook her head and called me a liar.
She claimed I’d heard it from the Devil because the Devil lived inside me. With fake tears falling down her face, she told him she was scared to tell him all the evil things she’d witnessed me do, in fear he’d hurt me.
That day marked the moment my father believed I was evil.
That the Devil had sent me to ruin him.
To ruin everyone.
My punishment for the singing was confinement in a small, wooden shed for thirty days. He claimed it’d free me from the evil spirits within. Once a day, my mother would bring me food, a smile on her face, and then leave without saying a word.
Sometimes, I wondered if she was the one who had ratted me out for singing. If I’d known singing was forbidden, I’d never done it. I had been too young to know what I was doing.
I was just a little girl who’d heard music for the first time.
A small girl who’d learned how cruel the world could be that day.
And now, I was a grown woman who hated music.
The song repeated through the small room until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I jumped to my feet, desperately banging on the walls, and screamed until my voice turned hoarse.
The space plunged into silence the second the music stopped.
I collapsed onto the concrete as a broken sob ripped from my body. Tears blurred my vision as anger burned inside me.
I hated that they were watching me.
Seeing me fall apart.
“Is this what you wanted?” I screamed into the emptiness. “Screw you!” My arms unwrapped from my body, and I flipped off the camera. “Fuck all of you, crazy fucks!”
My words came out weaker than I’d wanted.
Because every inch of my body felt too drained and too fragile.
How did they know about the lullaby?
I felt like I was wilting every second I was stuck in this place.
For a moment, the silence almost felt like mercy.
My shoulders sagged forward, and I massaged my temples, trying to dull the pounding inside my skull.
The reprieve vanished just as quickly as it came when a square panel in the wall opened. A monitor pushed through the opening.
I kicked my chained leg toward it, wishing I could reach far enough to smash the damn thing. “Goddamn psychos!”
Snot slid down my nose. I wiped it away with the back of my arm.
The need to hit something surged through me. I slammed my fist against the wall, panic rising about what the monitor was for.
I was sure they weren’t about to give me TV time like a prisoner.
The monitor flickered to life, and my hand stilled mid-hit.
Someone on the other side was controlling it. I watched them flip through channels until they stopped on a preacher standing at a podium.
“Luke 11:24!” the preacher shouted, shoving his pudgy fist into the air. “When an unclean spirit returns with seven other spirits more wicked than itself.”
The video paused, rewound, and replayed.
My hand flew back to my ears, trying to block out the preacher, but it wasn’t his voice I heard inside my head.
It was my father’s.
He’d spoken those words to me countless times, along with his accusations.
“When the Devil enters a body, it multiplies, Blair.” I could hear the way he used to say it.
Like it was an undeniable fact.
To him, that was what I’d been to my mother.
She’d carried me in her womb, and I’d poisoned her.
“Please,” I cried out, kicking my legs helplessly against the concrete.
The same scene over and over and over.
Just like with the music, the volume kept climbing, each time louder than the last.
Then, suddenly, silence again, and the screen went black.
Before I could even catch my breath, the nursery rhyme blasted through the speakers again. At the same time, the wall in front of me erupted with light. Neon colors flashed against the concrete in violent pulses.
Red. Blue. White. Orange. Yellow.
Red. Blue. White. Orange. Yellow.
The colors stabbed into my eyes so sharp that I slapped a hand over my face to shield them. Which meant my ears were no longer covered.
The nursery rhyme climbed its way back into my head.
My hands flew back to my ears.
But then the lights burned my eyelids, stars appearing in my vision.
Hands back to my eyes. Then back to my ears.
Back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth.
The room spun as the mental agony unraveled me.
A deafening scream blasted from my throat as I jumped to my feet and slammed both fists against the wall.
I was ready to break.
The nursery rhyme cut off as I looked at the table.
At the gun. The bullet.
The lullaby didn’t return. This time, a baby’s cry replaced it.
A shrill, relentless, piercing wailing.
I teetered forward and dropped onto all fours, crawling toward the table. My fingers wrapped around the glass of water, and I tipped it back, gulping it down.
Cold liquid spilled down my chin, dripping across my chest as I swallowed it. When the glass went empty, I snatched the bottle beside it.
The bourbon tasted repulsive, scorched its way down my throat, and landed in my belly.
I screamed when the monitor came back on.
This time, a cartoon version of the lullaby played on the screen. A mama bunny sang it to her babies as they hopped around her.
I clenched my hand around the bottle, wishing I could crush it, before screaming again and hurling the bottle at the screen.
The bottle shattered as liquid oozed down its surface.
My rage drained the last of my energy, and I collapsed to the ground. I pulled my knees against my chest and curled inward.
Every muscle in my body trembled while I begged them to stop.
Mentally, I believed I was stronger than this.
Nausea rolled through my belly, and I bent forward, dry-heaving and waiting for something—anything—to come up, but nothing did.
The sickness stayed trapped inside me, turning in my stomach like another punishment from them.
I was ready to crack.
Ready to grab that gun and end it.
But I couldn’t.
Even if I didn’t believe it at the moment, I was stronger than that.
I wouldn’t let these men break me.
I wouldn’t let any man break me.
“Focus, Blair,” I whispered harshly to myself. “Forget about this. Go to your place.”
I hadn’t gone there since I was a child. When my father had locked me in the shed during my punishments, to stop the pain and boredom, I had learned how to disappear in my own mind.
Shutting my eyes, I tucked my face tight between my knees and imagined myself in a forest.
Everything was peaceful there. No parents were allowed. No other children. Just me and nature. In that world, rabbits hopped up to the door of my tiny cottage, waiting for me to feed them carrots.
A bird perched on my shoulder, chirping a song, while I sat in the sun, eating strawberries. A fawn slowly emerged from the trees, approaching me so carefully. Her soft brown eyes met mine.
When she sank to the ground at my feet, I ran my fingers through her thick, plush fur, feeling the soft texture between my fingers.
This softened me. Calmed me. Grounded me.
Somewhere in the background, the real room went silent, but I was too lost in my peaceful one to notice.
Not until I opened my eyes and noticed nothing but the dark.
The door opened, and a slender beam of light came through.
I held in a breath so deep that my cheeks stretched wide when I made out someone entering the room.
“Are you ready, Blair?” a masked man asked.
I wasn’t, so I didn’t reply.
He crouched down beside me to unlock my ankle, and I rolled it once it was loose. The chain dropped against the ground with a loud clank.
When he offered his hand, I didn’t take it, so he thrust it closer.
Knowing I had no choice and not wanting to be in this room any longer, I grabbed it.
Another leather glove that felt rough against my palm.
He dropped my hand the moment I was on my feet, and I followed him out into a corridor that resembled a tunnel.
Crossing my arms, I tried my best to hide my cleavage while wishing I had an extra pair of hands to do the same with my ass, which was on full display.
The man walking alongside me wasn’t Enzo.
He was shorter and didn’t carry Enzo’s scent.
The one that had become my favorite.
I knew Enzo more than I wanted to admit.
When I slept, he visited my dreams. When I was awake, he occupied my daydreams.
“Keep surviving, Blair,” I whispered to myself, clueless as to what was coming next in this Initiation to hell.