Chapter 19 Umbra Abulia
Sapphire
“You’ve upset my grandson.”
That horrible, awful, sickening voice jolts me awake. The light burns my eyes, but I can still make out her hunched posture and frizzy bun.
To my surprise and relief, Agatha is not talking to me.
“Wake up, boy!”
A hard slap to the face wakes him up. The sound of his distinct, sharp inhale is laced with violent rage. I wish it was strong enough to break through his restraints to break this woman’s neck.
“Now I have to deal with you! I thought that girl was going to be my only problem!”
Oh fuck, is she going to scrub his mouth out too?!
“What did your grandson tell you?” That controlled voice is smoke over coals.
Agatha grips his chin and digs her yellow nails into his flesh.
“Don’t talk back to me, boy.” Her crow’s feet deepen as she studies Niklaus from head to toe. “These will be your names from now on. Boy and Girl. And you’ll refer to me as Grandmother. When I address you, you’ll answer ‘Yes, Grandmother.’ Understood?”
Right when I think this experience can’t get any worse.
“I’ll drop dead first,” Niklaus says.
The back of her hand whipping across his cheek is expected.
Agatha pinches her lips into an aggravated smile. Like she was hoping there would be some defiance left before she beats it out of us.
Without warning, the old woman sticks his arm with a syringe, pressing her thumb down on the plunger until the white liquid disappears.
“Fuck,” Niklaus mutters under his breath. His eyes lift to meet mine before they grow heavy.
Agatha begins whispering in his ear, pointing aggressively and pausing as if waiting for him to respond. He winces away from her hot breath at first, then blinks slowly, feeling the effects of whatever she injected him with.
“I blacked it out,” he finally answers, lost behind those tired blue eyes.
Agatha whispers again, harsh and bitter.
“A group of extremists took me,” he replies.
Oh no.
“I kept asking for my father.”
Do I want to hear this? He’s never spoken about that time. It feels like a private moment I shouldn’t be forced to listen to. Sometimes I forget it happened at all.
“They made me stare at… gruesome photographs. Only given water when I’d say what they wanted me to say.” His jaw is tight, but there’s an eerie pain behind his blank stare.
Agatha whispers a question.
“They hurt me if I tried to leave. I had to lie in a grave if I cried.”
What the fuck?
His body flexes, chest lifting as he bears down. A long groan drags out of his lungs, muffled behind clenched teeth.
“Is your name Boy?” Agatha asks after influencing the hazy, delusional state he’s in with the thoughts she whispered to him so fervently.
“Yes, Grandmother,” he answers.
Niklaus flexes his arms against the restraints, hardening his entire body as he squeezes is eyes shut to escape the cluster of memories invading his mind.
I want to call out to him. Remind him of where he is. But in the same breath, I feel like an idiot for wanting to help him. Especially after his horrific words at the creek replay in my head.
After another hour of this, Agatha finally takes her exit, leaving me to watch Niklaus fall in and out of sleep. When he’s awake, he stares blankly at the floor, seeming to process the demons in his mind.
The decent human part of me has that nagging urge to comfort him. But there’s another side of me that’s so tired. My body aches and trembles from the beating and the drafty basement. The roof of my mouth and the inside of my cheeks are jagged with sores. All I want is to fall asleep and escape.
My eyes grow heavy, staring up at the ceiling in hopelessness.
What if I can never travel again? What if it was a fluke?
I’ll never see my brother again.
A warm breeze of breakfast tea and oatmeal brush over my upper lip.
I wrinkle my nose at the heat it brings, then at the sudden pressure over my mouth. I have no memory of dozing off, but as I’m pulled out of a dim, dreamless sleep—I jolt awake at the forceful pair of lips being smashed against my mouth.
A soft, whimpering groan vibrates against my face, and a slimy tongue pokes between my lips and into my mouth.
Every muscle becomes stone, flexing to the point of searing pain.
A pair of hands cup my breasts. Warm, damp, clammy, and kneading into my brassiere. The weight of his body. The scent of his grassy, sweaty body odor. It makes me seize under his bony figure pinning me to a mattress.
I jerk my mouth away from his and scream hysterically. The tears come as I thrash my face back and forth, fighting to breathe any air that hasn’t already been claimed by him.
Torn wallpaper. A grimy window with blurry streaks of rain pelting over the rolling hills of bright green grass and slanted trees swaying in the storm’s ferocious wind.
“Shhh! You don’t have to be afraid of that insect. He’s still in the basement,” Abbott shushes against my lips, panting in excitement.
I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.
“We can be together in here without him watching, okay?” Abbott’s scars are glaring at me, screaming my father’s name in raised pink flesh on his forehead. I wonder if I scream his name, would he come? Would my father come to save me the way he found my mother with this monster?
“Please, how about we take things slow?”
I want to be smart about this despite the way my heart gallops in my chest, sending floods of adrenaline into my bloodstream to fight until I’m dead.
To kill rather than be violated. But I’m still shackled.
Still restrained from defending myself. What good were years of training to fight if I’m helpless here?
There were so many stories of women and the history of lady-doll oppression back when my mother was my age.
They had to accept assault as if it were a part of their weekly routine.
I never thought…
“Please,” I choke out again.
“You feel it too,” Abbott assures me. And his lips jam against mine, this time with urgent, forceful pecks. With a freckled, shaky hand, he unzips his pants and lays his small, hard penis on my pelvic bone. The curly, carrot-red hair spiraling in a bush around its base.
I have no patience or self-control to try and be smart about this.
I always thought I would be able to fake a bond with a captor.
To make them like me and win their favor before I escape or kill them.
But being here is different than the stories I’ve read.
Being here is drowning and trying to remain calm.
Being here is lying perfectly still while someone sets my clothes on fire.
I scream again, this time far more panicked and desperate. The scream carries a cry I haven’t heard come out of myself before. The sound is raw, visceral, and heartbreaking.
It’s the cry of a woman about to be raped.