Chapter 39 Monroe
MONROE
Five Months Prior to Present Day,
Night of the April Full Moon Ceremony,
Junior Year,
Sigma
“Open your mouth,” Kieren tells me, holding my pills for the evening.
I open, extending my tongue.
“Water,” I grimace, waiting to swallow. As Kieren turns to fetch a bottle from the small fridge in his room, I maneuver the pills under my tongue. He twists off the cap and hands it to me. I take a small sip, letting him see my throat bob.
“Show me.”
I open again, displaying my bare tongue.
“Good.”
Kieren grabs his ceremonial mask off the bed and walks into the bathroom.
Carefully, I spit out the pills and silently place them inside my partially unzipped backpack.
I wasn’t sure which mirror Kieren would use to adjust his mask, the standing floor-to-ceiling one in his bedroom or the one over the sink in the bathroom.
I got lucky. He picked the bathroom. If he hadn’t, I had planned to say I needed to pee one final time before heading to the basement.
Since Kieren returned, I've barely been allowed one minute alone, although bathroom usage doesn’t count, thank God.
When I’m in his room, I’m chained to the bed.
When I’m in class, Harrison is with me. My phone has been confiscated.
The only device I have is my computer, and when Kieren does leave the bedroom for a few scant minutes, he unplugs the Internet router set up in his adjoining common area.
Besides, the time to email Gabi and the other girls has come and gone.
Months ago, I was too embarrassed to tell them I had taken Kieren back, and I don’t have the heart to email them now.
I don’t want to drag them into this, not while they’re abroad and having the time of their lives. But that leaves me with no one else.
Tonight is perhaps my one and only opportunity.
Jace will walk me upstairs after the Ceremony, and maybe I’m wrong, but I refuse to believe Jace is cut from the same cloth as Kieren.
He’ll lock me inside the room, but I don’t think he’ll chain me to the bed.
I’m not sure how aware Jace is of my situation, but I hope his ignorance is of the honest kind.
While Kieren is busy with his disgusting initiation duties, I’ll make my escape. Darkness will be on my side. I’ll run.
A loud knock raps against the door.
“What?” Kieren barks, striding from the bathroom. I can’t believe there were moments when I found this masked version of him, exuding power and greed, to be desirable. I can’t believe I let myself love him.
“One of the elders wants to speak with you,” a voice outside the door says.
Kieren opens the door halfway, and I crane my neck to see a masked Jace standing in front of the man who wears the gold-horned demonic mask. Is this X?
Kieren looks back inside, and I quickly look away, though I fear not quickly enough. The door abruptly closes.
“What is it?” I overhear Kieren ask.
“Your father tells me you will not share your pet.” The other voice rakes down my arm like steel knives. The same demonic, inhuman voice I remember from the last Full Moon Ceremony, and I can only assume by ‘pet’, he means me.
“No.”
A small exhale of relief leaves my lips.
“Offer her tonight then.”
Offer me? Offer me to who? I thought Kieren just said he wasn’t going to share.
“I’m not done with her yet, and we have a more pressing offering to deal with.”
Done with me? None of this makes sense.
A hollow laugh rings in my ears. “Moloch doesn’t want dissenters. You displease him. Remember, boy, I can make your life disappear with the snap of my fingers. Your family will lose everything.”
What do I have to do with Kieren’s family losing everything?
“She will be offered next month – my grandfather’s birthday, no less – but I get to spill her blood. Not you.”
I’ve stopped breathing. I must have misheard. Please tell me I misheard. Thoughts of Rory, the girl who went missing last month, flood my mind. Oh my God. They’re killing us, aren’t they? Picking us off one by one like fish in a barrel.
“You don’t want to play this game with me. You will lose,” the man snarls.
“You forget something. You’re in my house. My rules. Threaten me and I’ll bring us all down. You think I give a fuck about my family? I don’t even give a fuck about myself.”
“Your father was right. He warned me about your… temperament.”
“My temperament?” Kieren laughs. “By all means, push me. I’d love it if you did.”
I cower, shaking, as I sit on Kieren’s bed in my black lace panties and bra.
It all makes sense. This… this is real, isn’t it? But why? Why kill innocent women? For the fucking sport of it? Fire rages under my skin with the heat of a thousand suns, and in this moment, I get why women cut off men’s dicks.
But, Kieren… He’s led me to this, duped me into believing we were in a relationship.
Every move he has made, every grand gesture, every word said that made me think he cared.
I played right into his carefully calculated plans until I didn’t.
And now, I’m his prisoner. I’m the prized cow, the one who fetched the first-place blue ribbon, waiting for slaughter.
“Fine. Next month,” the voice agrees.
The door blasts open. A black ceremonial cape flows out of the adjoining common room.
Kieren slams the door shut. His fury fills the room as he prowls to the bed, stopping inches from my feet.
I gaze up at my captor, drinking in his unfiltered, true self for the last time.
His unblinking dark eyes, the roiling swirls of gold on his mask, the tribal black tattoos down his torso that he has no ancestral right to bear, the bulbus Sigma ring on his pinky finger.
Kieren.
The boy I once loved.
The boy turned con man.
The boy who realized he would never be able to control his own demons, so he became one instead.
Standing to the right of the dais, I lower to my knees for the last time, because I’m getting the fuck out of this prison tonight.
The basement, decorated in shades of sin, looks different without the veil of psychedelics.
It looks basic, childish, like an oversized room was poorly decorated in the same shade of red cloth by boys who know no better.
I search for the details of finesse I thought I had previously seen.
My memories are of a plush, underground sex club, lavish and refined, and not of fraying curtains, carelessly constructed makeshift beds, stained chairs, and trays piled high with condoms.
In walks the procession of women, and my heart sinks. How na?ve we had been to think we were part of an elite club, led to believe we were taking part in something akin to a mystical midsummer solstice ceremony.
This isn’t a ceremonial room. It’s a feeding pen where the women are led to slaughter like sheep in a pasture.
In the back of the room, hiding like cowards, I see the ‘elders’, the handful of men who I doubt hold any real power in the world, so they have to take it from young women.
How disgusting it is to let these women believe these men wear different masks because they are seniors who take part in some harmless chanting at the end of the night.
A gold horn peeks in and out of view. X. The alpha controlling the pack, surrounded by his hyenas, waiting to feast on easy prey in their circus tent. I wonder their ages. Thirty? Forty? Fifty? All this because some sick old men want to cheat on their wives and fuck nineteen-year-old pussy?
My fingers instinctively curl into fists.
What have these old men promised in exchange? A guaranteed job upon graduation?
“But I get to spill her blood.”
Kieren’s words spear me like a pincushion. They are killing us. Why?
Why?! I scream to myself. Is the value of a life worth so little? But then I glance around the room, remembering those in my presence. Wealth, power, greed. A pyramid for the aristocratic rich, built atop the blood and bones of those like me, born without a cent to their name.
“Kneel,” Kieren commands, as he takes his position. Words flow from his mouth like poisoned honey. Words that we swallow because we are told they are medicine, and we recite them because we do not realize the severity of the words we willingly repeat.
“The spilling of Sigma’s secrets is punishable by death.”
“A death which I will gladly accept should I prove disloyal.”
“Should I be called upon in the name of Moloch, I offer my soul as sacrifice.”
“Let the Ceremony begin,” Kieren booms. Lights dim to the point of near darkness. Music thumps. Men and women move in a dreamlike state. Some couple right away. Some cluster together in groups. It’s as I remember, but the glossy sheen of lust and abandoned inhibitions is missing.
I know I’ll soon be called upon. I’ve mentally prepared for this moment.
Even though I’ve shared a bed with Kieren for the last week, we haven’t been intimate.
If he’s sober, he’s cold and uninterested.
If he’s not, he’s too high to care. I’ve come to know the type of mood he’s in by the way his footsteps sound as he approaches the bedroom door.
I can tell how high he is by the number of times his key scrapes the lock before making contact with the keyhole.
I know the mask I need to wear, the role I need to play, to placate his temper.
As heartbreaking as it is to see him out of his mind, he usually passes out within five minutes.
Once I hear the telltale sound of his soft snores, I’ll resume whatever work I was doing before he returned.
When he’s awake, I’m too on edge to focus.
I’ll pretend to read my textbook, and eventually, he becomes indifferent.