When that is finished, I recite Poe.
And when I finally whisper the last line of The Raven, I sigh, my eyes growing heavy despite my stomach’s attempt to keep me awake with its hollow aching and loud gurgles.
I am nearly asleep, half-delirious, when the door opens and the sound of something scraping over the floor wakes me.
In the soft light illuminating the room from the bathroom in the corner, I see the glint of metal.
The door closes again before I can see if it’s Kincaid outside, and I sag in relief against the rusted springs when he doesn’t try to come in. I wait, listening to make sure he’s gone. Following his footsteps is a strange jingling. Like a tiny bell.
Once both sounds have gone, I relax, sliding from the mattress and lifting my weary head. On hands and knees, trying to see through the dizzy blur to make out what he kicked through the door, I crawl toward it. The skitter of tiny claws on wood tells me what I need to know only a second before the smell reaches me.
Food.
I race the mouse to my meal, frantic as I snatch up the plate from the floor and fall heavily onto my backside, crossing my legs and holding it high out of the rodent’s reach.
It squeaks, and I can see its tiny, shining black eyes in the dark.
“Sorry,” I croak, breathless. “You’ll have to steal crumbs from someone else.”
When I’m satisfied the little scavenger has left, I lower the plate to inspect what it carries.
My stomach groans loudly. I can almost hear it shouting at me to eat, but I don’t.
Not yet.
Salivating, I study the meager meal of stale-looking bread, a knob of butter, and a scattering of ripe red grapes. I grin.
With trembling fingers, I pull the bread in half, then in half again. I tug the corner of the sheet over from where it lies draped on the edge of my lumpy mattress and set the plate in my lap as I tear the sheet in half diagonally down the middle. It takes more effort than it should. My body is weakened. My fingertips numb.
I tuck three pieces of the bread into the middle, sandwiching a fingerful of butter between two of the chunks. I fold the sheet and drop in a few grapes, folding it again and then twisting it and tugging a bracelet from my wrist to secure the small bounty in a bundle.
My excitement quickly wanes. If left on the floor, or even on the bed, the mice can still get to it.
I consider emptying the tank of the toilet—I’ve used that trick once before—but it would mean being unable to flush. I can deal with that for a while, but it’s messy, smelly business, and I’d rather not.
Spying an old hanging hook protruding from the ceiling in the front corner of the room, I amble to my feet, plate in one hand, makeshift sack in the other.
There’s a small cut-in near that corner which may have once held a window seat. I use it to lift myself high enough to loop a corner of the fabric around the hook and tie it off, watching my plate below like a hawk until I’m finished.
Satisfied no mouse can steal from it this high off the ground, I smirk and settle myself into the nook, pulling the walnut sized chunk of bread from the plate for a tiny bite.
10
Two more days Kincaid leaves me in the room.
I awake only once more to the sound of scraping and a plate being shoved in. Joke is on him, though. I haven’t even finished with my first food hoard before the second comes. He’s a pitiful jailor.
I expected more from a Diablim.
It has been a full waking cycle and most of a sleeping cycle when I awaken the day after the last food delivery. It would be impossible to tell if it’s day or night for the lack of windows, but…the door is open.
Through it, I can see it’s dark. The house beyond the prison of this room is swathed in the eerie bluish hue of moonlight. I still, listening for any hint of sound.
When I hear none, I push myself to my elbows and rub my eyes, blinking away the film of sleep to make sure I’m hallucinating, or still dreaming.
I’m not.
The door stands wide open, and there isn’t a sound to be heard through the massive house. Not the creak of a floorboard or even the protests of old plumbing in the walls.
A miasmal silence spurs my pulse to pounding as I force myself up, wiping my clammy hands on the thighs of my jeans. My bracelets clatter together on my wrist, the black beads knocking into the white ones.
Grimacing, I cautiously remove each one, setting them down soundlessly onto the mattress. I can’t remember the last time I’ve taken them off without the intent to put them back on.
Each one marks a time when Ford allowed me to leave the house. Nine of them. Each purchased on my birthday—the one day a year Ford gave me whatever I wanted, save for my permanent freedom.
When I was fourteen, I asked to get my ears pierced. Ford hated that, but it was the one day a year he wouldn’t deny me a request.
So, when I was fifteen, I asked to get them pierced again.
It went on like that every year for my birthday.
He would give me a bracelet and then ask me what I wanted. I chose the things that I thought would annoy him the most.
Piercings.
A tattoo.
Pink and purple hair.
If it got me out of the house and pissed off Ford, then that was what I asked for.
It was the one day a year there were no repercussions.
Once the bracelets are off, I sigh, feeling like I’ve dropped fifty pounds from my shoulders instead of one pound from my wrist. Ford expected me to wear those bracelets. He caught me with them off only once and I paid for it. Once he was finished with the hose, he watched me put each one back into place and only left when I had all of them back on.
Ungrateful, he called me.
But he isn’t here to tell me to put them back on anymore. He won’t ever be here again. The thought gives me strength, even though some small broken part of me deep, deep down aches at his loss even though I’m trying hard to ignore it.
Ford was all I’d known for nineteen years…
I turn to the open door and lengthen my spine, curling my fingers into fists at my sides. I won’t wait nineteen years for escape to find me this time.
I’m not going to be a prisoner again. Sick or not, I am getting the hell out of here because the truth is, I’d rather die than waste my life locked inside for another minute.
Though, I can’t help noticing how much better I feel since the officers came to collect me on Ford’s doorstep. Not sick at all, but more alert than I’ve ever been. And even though I should feel weak from the lack of proper sustenance, I don’t—at least, not like I normally would. I feel oddly…healthy.
It has to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever felt.
On tiptoe, I creep to my store of food and step up onto the ledge to pull it down from the hook, wrapping the sheet around my fist. I’m acutely aware that the door didn’t open itself. That this is likely some sort of trap. Or maybe a test.
Ford tested me in much the same way.
Leaving my bedroom door and the front door unlocked several times to see what I would do—if I would attempt to leave.
I did of course.
Until he made me never want to try again.
I peer out the door, listening with eyes closed and held breath for anything at all. Tentatively, I slide one foot over the threshold, and let the air escape from my lungs when nothing happens.
No alarms trigger.