Chapter 32 - Scarlett
Scarlett
We never read the entire last book of the Good Book in church, just a few verses here and there, and I never got that far in the real Bible to do my own research on it.
I realized all of that yesterday when Pastor Gordan started speaking of the Heavenly patterns that the Good Book speaks of.
It even appeared within his sons and daughters, before they married. Four sons, three daughters.
7 was a holy number.
Did Malachi believe that by creating seven of his churches, it would somehow make them holier?
There were patterns here, too. The clients that came in after the services, there were 21 of them.
Lady Elise had us eat breakfast at 7am. There were seven men here, watching the place during the day. I didn’t know the names of the other four, but I had heard them during my meals.
Always 7.
Sometimes I wondered that if there was a god, would he be angry that Malachi had used this holy number in such a way or would Malachi repent and get into Heaven anyway?
I wasn’t sure where the others ate during mealtime, but me?
I was always brought down to the kitchen where I ate alone with Kat watching over me.
I was then taken to the service and made to watch the clients use the men and women as they saw fit before I was taken back to the kitchen to eat to lunch alone.
After lunch, there was another service, I watched the clients use the people again until dinner, and then there was an evening service, and evening visits from the clients.
After the clients finally left, Kat took me to the bath and scrubbed me down. He wasn’t kind, and he didn’t care about privacy. He scrubbed every inch of me until he was sure I was clean. Which sometimes meant lingering on certain areas.
The anger almost got the best of me, but the second he started scrubbing where only Azrael had seen before, a switch flipped in my mind and suddenly, I was with Azrael and I realized that they couldn’t hurt me when I was in his head.
The routine was the same every single day.
Nothing eventful happened outside of that, and I was starting to wonder if perhaps they were told to treat me differently due to who I was to the church.
Unless this was their tactic. Force me to watch, build up the idea in my head of what was going to happen to me, but never let it happen.
Once my guard was dropped, she would throw me into the lion’s den.
Did she do that with all of the Favorites that were shipped here? Psychological warfare, Azrael had called it once. Was this that?
I thrummed my fingers across my thigh as I watched the sun rise over the trees. I had already been standing here for a while. Maybe an hour, but I really liked watching the sunsets and sunrises.
I had never noticed it until I moved home, and I had to ask Azrael to verify, but the days became longer in the Summer. He also told me that in the winter months, it was dark for far longer.
It was only August, so the days were still pretty long.
The sun started to rise around 6am and didn’t set until around 8:45pm, which was fine.
I liked waking up with the sun. It gave me nearly an hour to myself before Kat came to collect me.
An hour to wear clothes. An hour to steady my mind before the day started.
An hour to plot.
It also prevented Kat from dousing me in a bucket of ice water in the mornings.
They locked the bedroom doors at night, but I had finally managed to pick away two good pieces of wood from the windowsill. Perfect size to pick the lock tonight and look around when I wasn’t being watched.
I had spent the last 3 days studying what I could.
There were no cameras anywhere, it seemed.
I thought it strange at first but then realized that there wasn’t a point to them needing cameras.
We were locked in this house, and by the look of the others, they were too weak and too hopeless to try to escape anyway.
There was no reason to watch us, which would play to my benefit later on.
I turned to the open closet. I had worn one dress since coming here. It was the only dress out of the closet that actually fit me, although it was still a little short. So, I wore that in the mornings to watch the sunrise, only to immediately take it off when Kat came to get me.
For bed, I wore the dress I had been brought here in. Besides my scars, it was the only thing I had left that tied me to home. Some may think it useless to change from my dress to another for only an hour, but it gave me a sense of routine. Something normal to do in this abnormal situation.
The only thing, at this point, that seemed utterly strange was the fact that the other bed was still empty.
From the stories we had gotten, we knew that the churches were going through Favorites like candy, so much so that they had to kill some of those that had been staying here, so why was this bed still empty?
I walked over and ran my fingers across the old blue comforter. The room suggested it was another girl, but since I never saw the others go into their rooms, I had no idea if the boys and girls slept in the same bedrooms.
The thought only reminded me of Poppy. Her foster home had been no Absolution, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been her own personal hell.
I sat down on the bed and looked around the room slowly.
I had already searched it twice and found nothing.
Although, I wasn’t completely surprised.
Most who had come here had already been beaten down by their Pillars.
The want to leave a trace of evidence just in case someone was searching for them was far from their minds as it had been far from mine, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something to be found somewhere in this room.
I was no longer the same woman I once was, but I still remembered who I had been in that church.
However far I ran, I would never forget what happened.
I remembered what it was like being in that headspace.
I remembered the lengths I went to hide my drawings in that house so that the cameras wouldn’t see me.
I remembered how desperately I had wanted just a sliver of privacy.
I still drew, in fact, Azrael had put up some of my drawings in our room.
He put some in his desk, Havoc, Alaric, and Bishop all having their own drawings plastered to their workspace.
Moving in with him had only made my desire to paint grow, but it had helped me immensely in that house before Azrael too.
In a place like that, a person would do anything to escape, even if that escape was in their own mind.
There had to be something here, but where? I checked in the dresser, under it, in the closet, under the beds, in the toy chest. I had searched the floor and the walls for any secret compartments, just in case, and there had been nothing.
Maybe the girls who had been here before me had never bothered with privacy. Maybe they just didn’t care. Maybe their want to escape disappeared once they came here.
With a breath, I fell back onto the bed. I wasn’t doing a very good job here at all, was I? Azrael would have found something by now, I was sure of it.
I turned on my side, wondering what it would take to get into another room and search—
The sound of crinkling met my ear.
I froze for half a second before I leaped from the bed and turned to face it. I had checked under the bed but not under the sheets.
Without wasting another second, I ripped back the blanket and the sheet and felt my heart skip a beat when I found a large manilla envelope crinkled and worn, perfectly placed on the stained mattress.
Someone had left something. A clue, a letter, art. Something to give to Azrael once I finally got out of this place.
I grabbed it and immediately transplanted it to my mattress. I didn’t want to wait, but I didn’t want to take the risk of losing track of time before breakfast either, so I would wait until I was locked back away before going through the contents.
I remade the bed so Kat wouldn’t ask questions, and sat down on my own, my eyes returning to the window, my heart racing.
“I found something, Azrael,” I thought towards him.
“It might be important. I’ve been keeping the names too.
I don’t have a pencil and paper, but my memory has always been good enough. ”
I gazed at the sunlight streaming in through the windows, lighting up the dust particles floating in the air and I swore in the whispers of those rays, I could hear him speak back to me. “Well done, darling sinning doll.”
~~~
The door opened and I immediately sat up, looking over to see Kat holding a bucket of water.
His face was twisted in annoyance. I suppose I would be annoyed too if I wanted to dump water on someone and found, for the third morning in a row, that they were already awake and dressed. “Let’s go, breakfast is a little early this morning.”
Not much earlier, I noted, standing up from the bed, a smile already on my face.
I couldn’t meet them without my full attire.
One was never fully dressed without a sharp smile, and in a time when I was not allowed to wear clothes, the smile was all I had, so I wore it whenever I was in the presence of anyone, only dropping it when I was sure I was alone.
I took off the dress and placed it on the bed before walking by him and straight into the hall.
As always, my eyes glanced over every door, my ears straining. I assumed they were all having breakfast in their rooms, but I was special.
I was always special.
The Chosen One come to bless their perfect little lives.
“You live in silence,” Kat said just as we reached the stairs, “but they are instructed to stay silent. It was never made an official law, but it works in our favor.”