Chapter 27
Juniper
It’s been three days now, I think. No. Four?
Yesterday, they did something different.
They brought the other woman in to share our room, then they vanished for hours.
They locked us in after feeding us what I think was breakfast, because it was muesli bars and an apple, then let us relieve ourselves.
Their return was noisy, and I’m sure I heard a new male voice.
They fed us a late dinner and escorted us to the bathroom, but we’ve had no one visit this morning.
If it is morning. There are no windows, and they keep the lights dimmed until they come in.
I look beyond my hands where I’ve clasped them on my knees.
She’s young, maybe in her twenties, and so bruised and hurt.
They’ve given her flimsy underwear, bra and panties, and they’ve clearly let her shower.
I’ve been hoping they’d find me so disgusting they’ll leave me alone, but they have a habit of trying to mess with my head by hosing me down like a dog.
I could tell them that won’t work but I doubt they’ll listen.
Besides, if they leave me alone, it will be her turn.
Yesterday, she took one look around, curled up, pulled her thin blanket over her body, and closed her eyes. She hasn’t spoken yet, not even when Aaron and I talked to her or tried to coax her to join in.
I should try again. Later, when she’s ready.
When I’m ready.
My hands are shaking, and I grab one of them with the other to keep it still. I won’t think about the horrors they’ve done to me. I told myself not to.
Yeahhh, it ain’t so easy.
My fingernails are worn down and ragged. My wrists are red. I’ve marks all over my body and almost the only ones I truly wanted are the knife marks Aaron made. And a few others he made with teeth and flogger. I feel my mouth smiling and it’s like it isn’t even my mouth.
Aaron tries to keep me stable, tries to make jokes and be cheerful… That he cares so much after how our deal began is about the only good thing about this. He thinks he’s close to loving me. I smile again, and it’s one that I feel this time.
He’s snoring a few feet away. He didn’t sleep well last night. Probably due to having to talk me out of sobbing and shaking. I was a mess. I’ve always seen myself as strong but this… Fuck.
At least they’ve chained us closer to each other these past two days. Maybe so they can listen to our misery when we talk?
They will have missed the whispered conversations.
The monsters might have bugs in here, but they can’t be that good?
A flashback blows in. Their hands are on me, in me, violating me in every way.
The cuts, the bruises, the abnormal things they do.
I won’t think. I won’t think. The barbed wire flogger that left score marks on my legs until Aaron screamed at them to stop.
His scream still echoes in my head when I think of it.
To my shock, they stopped and only threatened to amputate my left finger instead.
I eye the circular cut that weeps there, flexing that finger.
It’s almost a certainty they will do it, one day.
How many days will this last?
Stop. Stop thinking about it.
Just. Stop.
Om mani padme hum.
I dedicate myself to breathing in and out in long, measured breaths. And when I’m calm, I see the girl and her bandaged finger, where the red leaks through the white. Hers is only a stump.
Fuck.
Om mani padme hummm. Is that from Buddhism? Or is it yoga? It’s a meditation chant of some sort.
I imagine myself googling it, tapping the phone, with the world at my fingertips, as it should be. One day, that will be true again. Soon, soon, soon.
I rock my head back until it bumps the wall behind where I sit, and I meditate some more.
I can’t tell if it is day or night outside except from the hints of their behavior.
Hours pass. Or I think they do. I’m bursting to go to the toilet again.
The other woman has wakened a few times, and opened her eyes, then closed them again. I should have said something. I think I’m afraid of hearing her story and how long she’s been here.
Maybe they aren’t coming back? If they don’t ever return, there’s another option for us—starving to death or dying of thirst. Years from now, they’ll find our skeletons still chained to this wall.
Everyone does other things in day-to-day life, so this will just be them going fucking grocery shopping or something.
Serial killer and rapists must need to buy groceries.
I hear a distant sound and find Aaron has sat up and is looking at me. He holds out his hand, and we intermesh our fingers, one of his looping over my cut one. I don’t flinch. I embrace the small pain. Anything for human contact with someone who really is human.
“How you doing?” He raises his eyebrows. Around his eyes is red, the same as mine must be.
“I’m okay? You?”
He shrugs. “I’ve had better days. Should’ve booked a different holiday.”
I snort-laugh at that, before my amusement dies under the weight of reality.
“Are they gone? The house is silent. Normally you hear them?” I’ve dropped to a whisper, like we’ve been doing.
He copies me, glances at the sleeping girl with the mussed-up red hair. “Maybe?”
“Are these at all like removable?” I poke the metal ring our chains are attached to. “Could we rock them? Dig them out?”
“Chewing off our hands would be more doable. You’d need a chisel. We don’t even have a belt buckle.”
“Oh.” Disappointment rings in that one word. “Damn. But, we have metal chains? Can we sort of wrap them around something and pull?”
“If we were Hercules, that might work?”
“Okay.” I inhale. “What are we going to do?”
We’ve discussed escape ideas before. Nothing that sounded possible came up.
He shakes his head and holds my hand some more.
It’s curious, but I think Aaron…Mr. Loxland—not sure what to call him now.
I think he’s suffering more than I do. I can block out all the shit they’ve done to me, half the time.
I fuel myself with fantasies of killing them.
But him, he’s trying hard to care, to protect, when he can do very little, and since he isn’t being damaged, I think it’s eating him up inside.
Mister Tough-stern-and-mean, has more good in him than I expected. Perhaps more than he thought he had? It comes to me that I should be taking care of him. The distraction might help me too.
In some ways, I’m stronger than he is. He’s wasting away. Maybe that’s because he needs to be the one in control. Me, I simply plan to survive to bite them where it hurts.
They’ve only been sticking their dicks in me, laughing, calling me names.
They’re like schoolboys with a frog they are torturing.
That, I can bear. I refuse to see that as horrifying or them as people I should heed.
The physical damage, though, the beatings and floggings, the electric torture, that tunnels into my psyche, my nerve endings, my brain, and that’s harder to ignore.
And that they may amputate bits of me. I shudder, grimace. Schoolboys who are fucking around with fire, that’s them. They’re not worth spit.
Blood, the stump of a finger, a girl hanging from a hook and spinning, slowly.
Om mani padme hum. Breathe.
I play with Aaron’s hand and the warmth, the tactile sensations, settle me as per usual. My prescription of Aaron.
“Thank you for this.” I nod at our hands.
“Easiest medicine ever.”
“Oh.” I smile, after a few seconds. A wan smile but it’s there.
He smiles back, though I can see the cracks in that, in his eyes, the way his throat bobs as he swallows, how he looks at my arms. “We’ll get through this.”
“Have you thought about why Tomás did what he did?” I ask.
“As in why he tried to shoot me in the head?”
“Yes.”
“Not much. I won’t dwell on that. It is what it is.”
“Uh-huh.” Maybe I’m bad at this therapy stuff. I told myself to care for him. I may as well keep going now that I’ve begun.
“What if he had a reason to think that gun wouldn’t kill you?”
“Like?” His mouth curves downward, and he frowns, shakes his head.
“Can’t you put your finger on parts and stop the mechanism sliding, so it doesn’t fire?”
“Where did you get that from? And no, I doubt it. It would still fire the one round. I heard the clicks anyway.”
“It was in James Bond or one of the books I read.”
“You and your books. Sure it wasn’t John Wick?”
I shrug. “Books are good. You’re the one trying to do that trick where they get their cuffed hands from behind them to the front.”
“That’s gymnastics and stretching, and it’s possible.”
“You’d need to be Elastic Man. What if Tomás figured they’d never want to kill you. There are lots of possibilities.”
“Look, he was a friend, or I thought he was, but right now—”
“We both need hope.” That shuts him up. “Think. Don’t just assume he will abandon us.”
“It’s false hope.”
“You’re so fucking stubborn.” I’m not really whispering but I am too angry to do that anyway. “Maybe he knew the gun was empty because it weighed less than it should.”
“One bullet?” His mouth opens, and his focus flicks sideways, then he stares at the wall next to me for a second. “Maybe not that, but if he did a quick check for a bullet in the chamber? Kinda plausible. He does know weapons.”
“Ha. See.” Whatever that is.
“That doesn’t prove he knew but…” He exhales. “It does give me hope, and you were right. I needed that.”
I open my mouth to say something, and the other woman speaks.
“It was in Resident Evil. Someone stopped the gun firing.” She pushes into a sitting position and rubs her eyes, shoves back her hair, before grimacing at her other hand with the missing finger.
“Hi.” I give her a wave. Stupidest reaction ever, but what else can I do? I never know how to say I’m sorry or be empathic and not say something dumb. “What was?”
“They used a hand on the slide to jam the other guy’s gun. Hi, from me. My name’s Georgia.”
“I’m Juniper, and this is Aaron.” I draw a deep breath. “I’d come over and give you a very gentle hug, but, well…” I hold up the chain.
“Mmm. I know this sounds terrible, but I’m glad you’re here. Forgive me.” She clears her throat, then holds it with her hand, for a moment, as if it’s sore.
I’m not surprised. I’ve seen them half strangle her with hands and rope. Gods, this is tragic. I want to tell her we will be okay, but how can I lie like that? I don’t know if we will be.
“We understand.” Aaron hunches forward. “If you want to share, anything, we’re here for you, okay?”
She nods, though the tightness around her eyes shows her pain.
He drops to a whisper. “And I want to say that as far as I’m concerned, I’m getting us all out of here. They’re going to release me soon. I will be back. Same as the Terminator.” He offers a kind look from under his brow. “If I disappear, don’t despair.”
I am praying like hell any bugs cannot hear that because if they have, he has doomed himself. If they know this, they will never release him. Someone must get out of here.
“Sure,” she croaks. “I was on a bike ride, and they grabbed me and, umm, and I don’t know anything about either of you, but if I don’t get out, my last name is Carthan, and I want my parents to know what happened.
” After rattling out those words, she brushes at her eyes as if tears have sprung up. “Please?”
“Sure,” I say softly, “but you’re not going to need that done. You’re coming with us.”
Aaron groans. “Don’t take this too badly, but I need to pee desperately. I might have to do it here.”
“Me too. Why did you have to remind me?”
“I wouldn’t,” Georgia murmurs. “They punish you if you mess up the floor.”
I look at her, and my anguish resurges, of where we are and all her hurts, and why we are here. My anger flares. The things she has suffered. The terrible things they have done. Someone must strike them down.
“What would John Wick do?” I ask.
“Probably drown them in a bucket of pee,” Aaron says.
We’re all laughing at that when we hear a sound and we go silent. A door creaked, somewhere in the house. I think a car door slammed earlier. They went somewhere again?
There’s a bang and then voices.
An inner door opens, and it’s the room next to this one.
The door to this room opens. “Time to play, girls and boys! Your daddies are here!”
Three men step through in single file.
Zasha and Shawn.
And the last man is Karsten Drummond. His gaze falls on Aaron then he slides it over and locks onto me. The small tilt of his mouth says he’s basking in the wrongness of this, that he’s looking forward to doing something to either me or the other woman.
“Hello, Aaron. I’m here to bring you home, but first I get to play.”
“You are a sick fucking asshole.”
My stomach lurches. That’s the wrong thing to say. You’re our only hope. That Star Wars misquote is the ultimate nauseating irony. No Jedi are coming to the rescue.
Karsten tsks. “Be nice or I might let them keep you. Lucky for her”—he jerks his head at me—“I’ve decided to have the other one.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Drummond.” Zasha chuckles. “Shawn and I have a little choosing game you must play before you get one of our girls.”
Our girls. I want to vomit on him.