Chapter 27 #2
“Please, Norah, please. You don’t have to untie me, just loosen the rope so I can use the bathroom and clean myself… Please… I’m begging you…”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Hell! What do you think I’m going to do?” I shouted, out of my mind. “I can barely hold myself up here, I’m weak and sore. Let me clean myself, please.”
“Do your business right there. I’m not slipping up with you.”
I stared in disbelief, furious, as she turned her back on me, placed the bag on the table, and lit a couple of candles. Norah also set something I couldn’t see on the bed.
“I need to clean myself, Norah,” I insisted, forcing a gentle tone when what I really wanted was to scream at that lunatic, unleash all my fury on her. “Please. Let me use the bathroom. I won’t go anywhere except there.”
“Bathroom?” she laughed loudly, then marched over and opened the door. There was nothing there. It was just a damn useless cubicle. I began crying again, devastated. “Do you think this is a spa? There are no showers here and I’m not risking taking you to the river.”
She stopped abruptly, as if she had said too much.
Norah left and then came back and threw a little bucket in the corner.
I didn’t eat.
I barely closed my eyes.
In pain beyond measure.
My wrists wounded by the rope.
I was filthy. Reeking.
Every day more humiliated and terrified by reality.
I tried to keep track of the days.
I didn’t refuse food. My stomach was churning, but I forced myself, thinking of my baby. It didn’t work. I vomited almost everything on myself.
Norah cursed a lot and left, and when she returned, she was holding a bucket and a small cup. She left the things near me, her look warning, the threats clear.
“I’m going to loosen the ropes. If you try anything, I’ll be forced to act, so don’t make me, you little slut. Do you hear me? Don’t make me hurt you.”
Norah came toward me, the knife in one hand.
I trembled from head to toe, then went tense, barely breathing.
She loosened the ropes, helped me stand, and gave me time to stretch my muscles, atrophied from disuse and from the position I had been in. I thought that was a good thing. People had breaks and could come back to normal, Pietra had told me that.
I didn’t speak.
Norah guided me to a corner.
“Take off your clothes.”
I looked at her.
“Take them off now or you’re going back over there and staying dirty until the time comes.”
Time for what?
“You have one second to start taking off your damn clothes.”
I took them off, humiliated. Tears burned in my eyes, but I didn’t cry. The second I was naked, she threw water over me without warning. It was cold and I was shaking, my teeth chattering. Norah looked at me with contempt before moving away.
“Don’t move.”
I wanted to have enough strength to fight her, to run, but I was weak and slow. I wouldn’t get very far before she caught up with me and brought hell down on me.
Going to a corner, she picked up a bag I hadn’t seen before and took out some cloths and clothes too, then threw them at me. I used a piece of cloth as a towel and put on a shirt that didn’t cover my whole belly, and a pair of gray sweatpants.
“Go over there.” She pointed to the corner opposite where I was.
“Norah…”
“Go, now!” she roared, her face deranged. “You little slut, don’t mistake my kindness for stupidity. Go over there now, the easy way or the hard way.”
When I took too long to move, Norah came for me and grabbed my hair, pulling me toward the stinking mattress.
I screamed, raising both hands to hers, which was clenched in a strong fist in my hair.
Norah shook me hard until my vision blurred and pain shot through my skull.
When she felt me give up, Norah shoved me onto the mattress and I fell, hurting my hand in the process of protecting my belly.
I held my injured hand against my chest, biting my lip hard to contain the tremble of my chin and the cry of pain filling my throat.
“I told you not to defy me. See what you did!” she shouted.
I don’t know how many days passed. My muscles were stiff with tension at every small movement I made and aching from lack of use.
My swollen hand throbbed. I tried to tear a piece of the cloth I had used to dry myself so I could wrap my hand, but I couldn’t, so I used it to clean the filthy, foul-smelling mattress where I slept one night when Norah left one of my wrists loose. Soon she tied both of them again.
Part of the time, I spent lying down; the other part curled up as best I could against the wall in a half-sitting position that was not comfortable at all.
Everything hurt.
I wasn’t hungry anymore, but I forced myself to eat, which resulted in a series of vomiting fits. Even so, I was trying to keep the bare minimum in my stomach.
“I’ve decided to keep you for a few more days. I don’t want Thor to think I was a bad mother because of you,” she said one night when she brought dinner, which was basically soup and stale bread.
“Babies aren’t born like that, Norah.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No.”
She smiled, but it was a fake smile.
“Such a liar! Do you realize you fuck up everyone around you?”
“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Norah. I really am.”
“You took what was mine. What always was. It’s only fair that I take it back. And there are only two ways for her to come out…” She let the words fade slowly into the air and gave me a sadistic smile. “I’m not going to wait much longer. I’ve always sewn well. Thor knows that.”
“You can’t do that!” I snapped, my voice shrill. She had no intention of inducing labor the way I’d thought. Norah was going to… Oh, Dio. “You’re not a murderer, Norah.”
She gave me a steady look, her fingers tapping the old table.
“If you bleed to death, it isn’t my fault. It’s just a side effect.”
Her statement stole my breath, leaving me so shocked I didn’t speak.
My baby kicked hard and I exhaled through my mouth.
I wanted so badly to hold my belly, tell my little girl that everything would be all right, that her papà was coming to save us… Thor would appear at any moment.
I was so sore from that mattress, from the uncomfortable position.
I stared longingly at the bed she never used. If Norah slept, she did it when she left me alone. And when she was here, she was torturing me with her madness or just sitting there watching me with the cold, crazy eyes of a psychopath.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk… Don’t even think about it.”
“Norah, please. I’m pregnant.”
“You have the mattress.”
“I can’t feel my arms anymore. Untie me, please, let me put my arms down at least. I won’t run. I swear on everything holy. I don’t even know where we are, and even if I did, I don’t have the strength to run.”
Norah didn’t listen, and I began to plead.
“Per favore, Norah. Per favore.”
The glass in her hand hit the wall beside me hard, shards flying, cutting my skin.
I screamed. Norah shot to her feet, making the chair fall backward.
She stomped furiously toward me, and I tried to shrink away, with no success.
Norah crouched in front of me, her eyes furious, grabbed my hair, and pulled, climbing on top of me until her face was in mine. I began pleading again.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… Forgive me…”
“Did you hear me when I told you to stay away from my man, huh?”
She slapped me hard across the face but didn’t let go of me.
Pain burned through my cheek. I felt the old cut in my mouth open and the rusty taste of blood on my tongue. My eyes were swollen from crying so much.
“Did you hear me, little slut? Did you think of me when you crawled back into his bed while I was traveling to see my sick mother? Did either one of you think of me, huh?”
“You weren’t together, Norah.”
Wrong thing to say.
She tightened her grip on my hair so hard I thought it had all come out in her hand.
“Him, I understand. Thor is a man and has his needs, and you, such a whore, took advantage of him. I will never forgive you for that. Women don’t betray each other, bitch,” she shouted.
“I’m sorry, Norah. Please, don’t hurt me. I’m so sorry.”
***
I fought to escape the ropes the first few times Norah left me alone, but the more I moved, the tighter they got, so I gave up.
My wrists were raw.
My throat was rough and hurt badly.
I needed water.
But there was no one in the shack. The place was empty.
My whole face burned, swollen from the slaps she took pleasure in giving me.
I wished the strength of my thoughts were intense enough to reach Thor. He was looking for me. I knew he was. I prayed for it every day.
I had lost count. I had no sense of time.
Days could have passed, weeks, I didn’t know.
Time was my friend and my enemy. It gave Thor a chance to reach me, but there was also my pregnancy moving forward without interruption.
I had one contraction and then another, false alarms, that made me sick with fear.
I feared for both of us. Norah wanted my baby, and as crazy as she was, she could decide it was time.
Every day, she watched me carefully. She said it was almost there.
And I was always trying to convince her otherwise.
I even stepped into her madness. There was no use being rational with her.
Norah had one fixed idea.
Love really could kill. Norah loved with a potential that went beyond safe and healthy. It fucked with her sanity and turned her into a potentially dangerous sick woman.
I prayed for my Valentina to hold on. I was trying to stay calm so the stress wouldn’t hasten her birth. So difficult, but so necessary.
My little girl would be born in safety and comfort.
Please. Please, Thor, hurry.
I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on.
My body was so heavy. I wanted to collapse, but I had to keep fighting for both of us. I couldn’t give up. I would never give up.