Chapter 5
V
The lunatic woman returned me to the room where Sylvie had died.
She chained me to the radiator and left me there, trapped in the prison of my own mind.
Except for the few drops I managed to gather from the floor, I had not had any water.
My consciousness began to swim. Daylight seeped through the curtained window like a cruel mercy, the world beyond my reach.
Here, time was senescing with me.
Thankfully, I didn’t have long.
The thin fabric around my throat, the one the woman had forgotten to remove, felt unbearably heavy. I no longer had the strength to move or pull it away. Every swallow felt like glass wool.
Where had they gotten the handcuffs? They did this often, didn’t they?
Prepared to invade houses like mine. It was no coincidence they came here.
They had chosen this place because it was isolated, and because they could watch us without anyone noticing.
So I sat there, at the bottom of the world, chasing the same thoughts in circles.
Each time they returned, they were different, warped and distorted, until I could trust them no longer. Until I couldn’t trust myself.
Sometimes I heard whispers in the walls, or the scrape of bone across the floor, though nothing moved.
Sometimes I thought I had never been anywhere but here, chained in this stinking pit.
None of my memories felt real. Not the sun. Not the house. I couldn’t remember my own name. Even Sylvie, her gentle image, the only thing I kept clinging to, seemed like a mirage.
Maybe I had imagined it all.
The door swung open, and stark light from the hall stabbed my eyes like hot coals.
Every part of my body ached, but it was a dull kind of pain, muted by exhaustion and submission.
The madwoman came into the room barefoot.
Her gown was thin, gliding like a shadow with the iridescence of a butterfly’s wing.
She drifted rather than walked. Unnatural. Had she come to finish me?
“Hey there, sunshine.” Her voice was mellifluous, poison coated in honey. She lowered herself beside me. “I brought you something.”
At first, I thought it was a plastic ball, round and smooth. It rolled toward me soundlessly, coming to a halt in the dead space between us.
I didn’t move. Every muscle drew tight as I watched her, waiting for the sudden lunge.
“It’s for you.”
A tangerine.
I stayed curled in on myself, knees drawn to my chest, trying to shrink small enough to disappear. It looked obscene, too bright and vibrant.
She nudged it closer with the back of her hand.
Against my will, I yearned forward for the fruit. In my mind, I could already feel the spray of its sharp, citric oil between my teeth; the way the flesh would burst against my tongue like a haemorrhage. But it lived only in my mind.
It was too far. The chain reached its end, the iron snapping taut with a dull, final note before I gained even an inch.
Hatred burned through the fog in my head. This woman had taken everything. And now she stood over me, mocking what little remained of my humanity. With the last of my strength, I gripped the radiator behind my back and twisted, trying to swing my legs toward her, to hurt her somehow, even a little.
But she was faster.
Her hand caught the end of the scarf and yanked. The knot tightened at once. A sharp jerk crushed my windpipe, and the world shrank to that single point of pressure at my throat.
Then released.
My body collapsed back against the chain, shaking. For several long seconds, the air refused to come.
She was on me before I could return to my senses.
Faster, stronger, and impossibly heavy for her thin frame.
Her knees pinned my ribs, squeezing the air from my lungs until the world blurred.
One hand pressed my wrist flat against the floor, pinning me to the cold grain. The other held the tangerine.
I stilled.
“You will behave now,” she ordered coolly.
Still straddling me, she began to peel the skin.
Each strip of rind tore away with a faint snap.
The scent burst into the room, severe and sugary, mingling with the sour reek of my own exhaustion and the stench of waste soaked into the rug.
My mouth flooded with saliva, and my stomach twisted so violently I almost retched.
The fruit sagged in her hand. It was mottled, beginning to spot the way fruit does when it starts to turn.
Sylvie had bought them days earlier, after her dentist scolded her for not getting enough Vitamin C.
A bag of bright little suns had sat in the bowl on the kitchen counter; I hadn’t touched them.
Neither had she. Now, one had followed me here, half-spoiled, clinging to the last of its firmness the way my body clung to life against my mind’s will.
She broke off a slice and pressed it against my lips—not hard, but insistent. I turned my head, but her hand followed, patient and unrelenting.
“Open,” she cooed.
Instinct betrayed me.
Tart syrup awoke my senses. It was not what I had imagined; there was nothing refreshing in it.
First came a fleeting sweetness, then a deep bitterness, and finally a strange metallic edge, as though the fruit had begun to ferment from the inside out.
She watched me the way a mother might watch a child swallow medicine.
I chewed slowly, never looking away from her.
When I forced the piece down, she gave a small, satisfied smile and began to peel another. Her hands moved almost reverently.
She fed me one slice, then another. I wanted to stop, to retch, to pull away from her eyes, unblinking and too intent, but I ate because she willed it.
When the fruit was gone, I watched her and waited for the next cruelty, the next game. She shifted her weight, and the pressure holding me down eased.
“Get up, pup. Let’s go.”
She took my hands. They no longer felt or looked like my own.
They were obscene—a stranger’s meat, bruised and sticky with blood.
In comparison, Ophelia’s were cool and smooth, untouched by the filth and stench of me.
Not a single muscle in her face flinched.
I wondered what it felt like to be so composed.
With an irresistible insistence, she coaxed me up. My hands remained trapped in hers as she led the way. Step by step, we climbed into the dark of the third floor. The rooms there were empty and unfurnished. Bare walls, bare floors, nothing but the echo of our steps.
Candles burned everywhere. My eyes watered at once, stung by the smoke and aggressive light. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Like me, day and night had lost their meaning.
I blinked through the glare, straining for a glimpse of the outside, some sign that the world still existed.
The windows stopped me cold.
Each one had been covered with plywood and reinforced with thick planks. Nails bit through beams softened by decades of moisture. The boards crossed over the glass in tight lines.
Was this done while I was under? The sheer effort of it, to what end? Did they really think I’d leap from the third floor? Or did they just want to make sure I forgot the world existed?
Inside, there was only the house, closed in on itself, its timber creaking softly. The air felt close and stale; Whitmore had drawn a lid over itself, keeping me inside.
The bed, once stark, had been transformed. The mattress was a century-old ruin Sylvie and I had meant to throw away, but now it was draped in a deep-red sheet. Pillows sat atop the headboard—stolen from the couch downstairs. There was no duvet.
From the bedposts, chains hung in wait. Fresh iron, prepared for the sole purpose of holding me.
But Ophelia did not steer me to the bed. Not yet.
Instead, she led me to the bathroom. Unlike the rest of the house, this room was shrouded in a darkness so thick it felt sluggish.
A candle struggled near the mirror. No curtain shielded the tub, and no clutter broke the cold expanse of the counters.
A lone dressing table stood against the far wall, a small stool tucked beneath the surface.
On top, next to the candle, rested a single round object, its wood worn smooth by the passage of years.
An antique hairbrush. The handle was a silver-shadowed work of art, thick and intricate, with vines that coiled around the grip.
The bristles were stiff, set into an ivory handle.
The woman left me standing there, still dazed, and turned on the water. The tub began to fill. Steam slowly cushioned the cold air. When she looked back at me, her expression was calm.
“Let’s go, pup. You can brush my hair.”
She sat before the glass, very still, her hair falling over her shoulders like molten lava. Her face carried a strange, delicate youth, almost doll-like, yet her eyes remained empty and watchful.
She placed the polished bone in my hand.
The brush did not belong to me. It wasn't Sylvie’s either.
Though it was certainly something she would have loved to own.
She would have used it, too; she was the kind of person who advocated for using the fine china every day, never locking things away just to preserve them.
She loved beautiful things, but never as museum pieces meant to sit untouched on a shelf.
She wanted to demonstrate extravagance, even if there was no one to show off to.
She told me once how her mother would keep gifts wrapped because the paper was too beautiful to tear.
That was why Sylvie never wrapped anything for her.
When her mother died, and we were cleaning out her house, I saw the truth of it myself: dozens of boxes, the paper old and yellowed, thick with decades of dust. She hadn't cared for the things inside; she only cared for the getting, the hoarding.
Sylvie was the opposite.