Chapter 8
Seraphina
The burning hot water from the shower hits my head, and I close my eyes, letting it enfold me in its warmth. Each drop pummels my skin and sinks into my freezing insides, and I can pretend for a moment it’s warming me up.
I crouch in one corner of the shower, in a fetal position, curling myself into a ball as I allow my tears to mingle with the water.
It’s the only time during the day that I allow myself to feel. Thoughts of Damien, of his love, or at least, of the love I once believed he felt, wash over me, and I try to pretend I’m back with him, that I’m once more experiencing those months of bliss.
But the bliss inevitably turns to a nightmare, images of the voluptuous blonde girl crowding everything else out.
He didn’t choose me. He never would have chosen me, and I was crazy for believing it.
He chose her, and all I ever was to him was a hole to sink his cock in, a mild annoyance that turned into something so grating he ordered my death.
Twice.
The first time, he failed, and I went back to him cheerfully. During those months in which I was happier than I’d ever been, he was plotting to kill me again.
“Think about it,” Noel had said just before leaving, while handing me the keys to the apartment.
“People who’ve had shitty experiences remain victims all their lives.
When you’re abused as a kid, you go back to the same type of monsters.
I don’t know much about all that psychobabble, but I know enough.
I get you’re blindsided, but you should’ve accepted it a long time ago.
Just stay away from men, sweetheart, because they’re all going to fuck you over in the end. It’s inevitable.”
Since that day, I carry his words in me like a motto. They’ve even replaced Mama’s. Men take what they want, then leave you lying in the dirt.
After letting me get accustomed to my new place, Noel took me to meet the owner of the gas station he’d gotten me a job at.
“Now you can start your new life,” he’d said. “You won’t see me again. You won’t see any of us ever again. You’re free.”
And true to his word, I am.
But turns out, I hate being free.
I wonder what it says about me, that the happiest moments of my life are the ones I’ve spent in captivity. Now I have to make my own decisions. Use my job at the gas station to buy the food I’ll have for dinner, decide which necessities I can afford this month.
Every day is a long list of decisions, and I’m far too tired to make them. My heart aches for the one who once made them for me, who took care of me, who made me feel like the center of his world.
Even though I know now it was all a farce.
Since Noel’s revelation, I’ve plunged into complete silence. I’d always been pretty quiet, but now, I can’t seem to access my voice at all. It’s lost deep inside me, and I know nothing short of a miracle could help me find it.
My boss at the gas station was initially exasperated at my muteness.
But he’s never heard me talk. He probably thinks this is just the way I am, and now, he’s used to it.
Apart from him, I don’t see many people.
The place I live in isn’t even a town. It’s a tiny little hamlet populated by a diner, a general store, and the gas station.
Beyond it are a few tiny houses, including mine.
Most places are further out, but I don’t have a car, and Noel found me a house just minutes away from the three businesses that make up the town.
I’m glad to live in this isolated area, after all. New York—the city—would probably have been a far greater torture. Every person I’d cross would remind me of Damien. It would have been a lot harder to wall myself in silence, surrounded by the noise and crowds that I suppose exist there.
Here, I see the same few people every day.
I’m just the newest crazy addition to the dozen or so people who spend their days at the diner, drinking beer and watching, with sad, glazed-over eyes, as their lives continue on without them, speeding toward some cold, depressing end. A life lived numbly, without meaning.
I know that feeling well.
Unless I’m working, I don’t even have to see people at all.
It’s easier, and cheaper, in this food desert, to head over to the diner for my meals during the week, but on weekends, I load up on bags of chips and old apples, and stay home.
Many days, I don’t even feel hunger. I’m aware I’ve lost about twenty pounds since arriving in this place.
Ten of those pounds I’d gained during the months of bliss.
The other ten, I didn’t have on me to lose. I’m a walking skeleton.
I stand up at last, turning off the shower. I towel quickly, dress, and hurry out of my small house, carrying the bag that holds everything of value I own. A wallet with a wad of cash, the money that remains from my last paycheck, and the passport card with a name inscribed on it: Sarah Conley.
“Otherwise, he’ll track you in a second and kill you,” Noel had explained, handing it to me.
“I wouldn’t mind if he tracked me,” I had muttered.
“Well, he wouldn’t track you directly, of course. He’d just send a killer or two out here. You’re not going to see him anymore, sweetheart, so just accept it. You’ll live your life without setting eyes on him again. Now it’s up to you whether you live a long life or a short one.”
He was wrong. It wasn’t up to me; it was up to my survival instinct. I would have happily gone to meet my death right then and there, but something innate, deep within me, wouldn’t let me.
Which is why I’m still here, kicking, eight months later.
I sigh, entering the small gas station where I work behind the cash register five days a week. Bill Henson grunts a curt welcome, and I nod back. By now, he’s used to my silence, and he merely gestures to the inventory he wants me to put away on the shelves.
He turns away, his bald pate shining in the fluorescent lights, and heads to his small office, where he spends his day poring over inventory and doing whatever else he does with his days, glued behind his laptop.
He’s a small, thickset man with a triple chin pricked all over with two-day stubble, and his beady eyes make me uncomfortable.
I’m always glad to have a thick glass door separating us.
I turn back to my own tasks, which involve putting away the new items we’ve just received.
The door jingles, and a neighbor walks through the aisles, looking for something she doesn’t find.
She sees me but doesn’t try to speak, merely greeting me with a gesture that’s something between a nod and shrug.
Being known as the mute girl around town has many benefits. Beyond the obvious one, which is that no one expects me to talk, is the fact that people don’t talk to me either.
It’s one of those weird, unconscious things, like whispering back when someone whispers to you, or speaking loudly to someone who doesn’t understand English.
I don’t talk, so people don’t talk to me.
There’s something very peaceful about the silence. I sink into it, drawing it around me like a cloak, as I begin to put away the new items.
They paint a good picture of the sort of thing people eat around here.
Bags of chips, off-brand and synthetic, packs of beer and of soda.
There’s a crate of dirty, sad-looking fruit, which I’m the only one to ever buy.
The rest of the several aisles are dedicated to necessities such as toothbrushes, soap, tampons and the like.
There’s an aisle with cheap toys, but I’ve never seen anyone buy those.
There’s also an enormous pink and glittery teddy bear in one corner of the room. It surprised me at first, but now it’s just one more slightly weird detail in my new, slightly weird life.
There’s no clothing, but luckily Noel left me a pile of cheap garments, and I’ve been careful to take care of them well. I have no phone, no computer, no car: no way to order anything online or go to the nearest big city to shop.
Noel probably planned it that way to avoid Damien finding my trace, but I’m happy for more reasons than one. I don’t want to deal with deliverymen and I certainly don’t want to go into a big city.
Noel hasn’t come back since the day he left me here, setting me up for my new life, and I’m thankful for it.
Even though I believe that he doesn’t want to hurt me, he’s inextricably tied to the horror I’ve survived at the hands of Angel.
The first kidnapping, and Lazarus’ near rape; the second kidnapping that led to my being buried alive for five hours.
But his absence makes me realize just how on my own I am.
For all the loneliness I’ve experienced in my nearly twenty-one years of life, I’ve never actually been on my own.
Until I was fourteen, I was with Mama and the Beast. Then I moved in with the Monster for a month.
Afterward, I lived with Ben, until the moment I was captured by Devil, and my new life began.
As I let my mind travel far away, I finish putting away the inventory, then spend the next few hours standing behind the cash register, smiling vaguely at the three people who come in.
Two drivers who stop by for gas and a snack on their way to one of the bigger towns in the Catskills region.
A person who lives in our tiny village, and who’s doing her grocery shopping.
Shopping, for her, means a few bags of chips and some shelf-stable prepackaged meals.
Even for those who have a car, driving to the biggest town, an hour away, is always carefully considered.
The price of gas means you’re spending a lot of money before you’ve even begun to shop.
“Alright, it’s your break,” grunts Bill Henson, his eyes still glued to his computer screen, and I grab my thin coat and bag and head toward the diner for lunch.
The lady behind the counter is a fascinating creature. I’ve never seen such red hair before. It’s a vibrant, bottle color that’s matched by her bright red lips and long acrylic nails. Her name is Wendy, and like Bill, she’s grown used to my muteness and my lunch order.
“Burger and black coffee!” she calls to the cook, and a moment later, she’s placing the large plate with the greasy burger and even greasier fries in front of me.
Then she pours me a cup of coffee from the heavy coffeepot she keeps on the counter.
I drink it down, wincing at the bitter dregs.
She’s given me the end of the pot, but the hot liquid still clears my mind, helping me to concentrate.
There’s nothing to concentrate on, but it still feels good to emerge just a bit from the constant haze that surrounds me.
I’m not very hungry, though. I never am.
I order this meal out of habit and because it’s expected of me.
I have a thirty-minute break and nothing else to do.
So I nibble on the side of a greasy fry, my stomach churning as I force a few of them down.
It’s not just that it’s expected of me. It’s the survival instinct that’s still got its claws in me.
If I don’t get at least a few fries in me today, I will lose more pounds, and I can’t afford that, if I want to live.
I know just how scary I look these days.
I choke down four fries and manage two bites of the burger, then push the plate away. Wendy doesn’t even look surprised, like she did in the beginning. Now she simply shrugs and takes it back to the kitchen.
I take advantage of her turned back to study her.
I never pictured any Wendy looking like her.
My heart always clenches when I think of the childhood story that first got me dreaming of a Peter Pan to come save me.
I ascribed that role to Damien, and when he discovered how much I loved that story, he had a mural painted of Peter Pan in his apartment.
I spent hours there, gazing at that painting, imagining myself to be one of the silhouettes flying in the sky. Damien was the other one.
Peter Pan and Wendy.
Only Peter Pan turned out to love a blonde girl with curves, and Wendy is a fake redhead in a diner. As for me, I’m not even part of the story.
I sigh, raising my eyes toward the large clock that hangs over the door. The small needle is nearly at 1 p.m., and the long one is nearing the hour. It takes me exactly one minute and forty-five seconds to return to the gas station, and the shift starts in two minutes. I can leave.
Leaving a few crumpled bills on the counter, I gather my things and head out.
I’m already retreating further into my numbness, my thoughts turning with a passive sort of acceptance toward the afternoon that awaits me: rearranging items in aisles for hours on end, in a stupid attempt to look busy, and ringing up the very occasional customer.
There may be warning signs, but I don’t see them. In these past eight months, I’ve sunken into a sort of bored acceptance. I hurry toward the gas station, hugging my coat around me, doing my best to fend off the freezing drizzle that seems to reach my very heart.
I open the door, listening to the familiar jingle, and head toward the front register. I glance around, looking for Bill, who’s usually there waiting to punch me back in, but he’s nowhere to be found. He’s probably out back, or in the bathroom.
Still, I should probably let him know I’m here.
Bracing myself for the goosebumps that pebble my skin every time my eyes cross his sleazy ones, I walk toward his office.
As I enter it, I stumble on something large and nearly fall.
Weird. Did I really leave inventory lying around?
That’s not like me. There’s so little to do around here, I usually jump at the chance to put away new stock.
I train my eyes toward the floor, and that’s when I see it.
The crumpled form of a man on the floor. His head is bald and shiny. He’s small and thick, and I have a sinking feeling as I flip him so that he’s on his back.
His eyes are turned toward the ceiling, glassy, unseeing. He looks mostly normal except for the thin trickle of red bubbling from his mouth and the oozing wound on the top of his head. I look down and notice his chest is damp. The finger I touch him gingerly with comes back to me bright red. Blood.
I guess Bill Henson is dead. I feel an odd, detached sort of sensation when I take him in. It would be easy to retreat back into my usual numbness, except for one thing.
One thing that makes my breath catch and my body thrill.
The mark that I suddenly see on his head, under the puddle of blood that’s formed there.
A face etched out with a knife, two horns, a pitchfork… the Devil.
Well, fuck.