A month, and no more calls to Father Tomas. A month, and she’s not scared of me even though I’ve given her every possible reason to be.
When I’m nearly shivering from the cold, I start to see a little light ahead. It’s a glow of sorts, yellow and muted, but it’s enough that I can see this isn’t a cave at all.
I stop walking, glancing around.
The floor is brick, not dirt. I should’ve figured that shit out myself, but I was so eager to get my hands unbound that I didn’t pay attention. The walls are rough, but they’re brick, too. The whole place is made of bricks. These are underground hallways.
Interesting.
Nothing the 6 could throw us in would really surprise me at this point, but this seems like a lot of work. Although, then again, they probably had nothing to do with it.
I press on, hand off the wall now, continuing toward the glow at the end of the hall. And when I get there, I realize it’s coming from a room with no door, but a room, nonetheless.
I step into it, darting my eyes around. The light comes from strung up bulbs, stretching from the back corner of the ceiling at the far end of the room to the other, in a line. It’s a little creepy, but nothing like the single room my brothers and I were confined to for three entire nights last year. In fact, this is pretty spacious, compared to that.
I turn around the room, eyes on the ceiling. No cameras that I can see, but I’m positive those could easily be hidden. Still, it’s not as if there’s much to hide. They can’t see inside my head in here.
Will they harass Sid? Will Sid be able to hide Ella quickly enough in Lucifer’s panic room if she has to?
Do the 6 know about the panic room?
There’s nothing I can do about it.
Let it go.
Ella’s taunts come back to me, about wanting to knock Sid up to save her. I didn’t want that with Sid, but I should’ve done it with Ella. But I know she’s on birth control, and I’ve seen her take the pill religiously every single morning. I’ve taken her to the pharmacy for refills.
I could hide it from her.
Flush it all away.
Does that make me a monster?
I almost laugh out loud. I don’t need to flush her birth control and potentially knock her up to be a monster. I just am one.
I pull the index card out of my pocket. The blotter paper has a sigil on it: the fucking Leviathan cross, because of course. Father Tomas probably blessed this shit or something. I feel a little guilty over the fact I haven’t responded to any of his messages checking in on me, but then again, he was probably only doing that because he was feeling guilty.
For a second, I think about the first time he whipped me. Not hard enough to draw blood. I was only a kid after all. I’d like to think if my mother and father had seen lacerations on my back, they would’ve cared.
But they were gone a lot. It’s why we had the nanny in the first place. They were gone, Brooklin was always at some camp or another, and it was just me and Malachi in that house.
I can barely remember him now, and that scares me.
I put one of the tabs on my tongue, close the rest in the index card and shove it into my back pocket. I don’t have time to be scared of the past right now. There’s a very real, very uncertain future ahead of me and maybe this trip will give me some insight.
Maybe I’ll bash my brains against the brick wall in here or tie the string of lights around my throat and hang myself and that’ll solve my problems, too, so whatever.
I head to the dark corner in the room, rest my back against the wall and tilt my head up, closing my eyes.
There’s no water in here, no food, and although I might find both if I search long enough, I don’t really feel like doing that.
Instead, I just wanna drift away from here.
Pretty soon, these bricks might seem like they’re closing in on me, or maybe they’ll seem like the gates to fucking heaven. Thus, the nature of psychedelics; like a box of chocolates, you really never know what you’re gonna get. But my brain is infected with darkness, so I have a pretty good idea.
Either way, it’ll help me pass the first night, and that’s good enough for me.
I didn’t scream when he fell.
I didn’t scream, and I didn’t look.
He screamed, though. He screamed all the way down, until suddenly, he just…didn’t.
But she was still coming.
When she saw he was gone, she stopped, eyes darting around the balcony as if he was hiding under the table or the chairs. I was against the edge, the railing digging into my back, my arms thrown wide, gripping the cool metal.
Brooklin.
I thought about Brooklin, because she would know what to do. Brooklin would’ve never let this happen. Brooklin was always mouthy. Always loud. She was younger than me, the middle child, but she…she would’ve punched this woman right in the face.
I was breathing hard when she stopped looking for him. When she realized the screams we’d heard, the thud afterward…when she realized he was gone, she screamed, too.
She was all violent hands and locked closets and taunting threats and neglect, but she didn’t want to kill us. No, that would ruin the fun.
And I’d just ruined hers.
Her wide brown eyes connected with mine as she stepped closer.
“Maverick,” she scolded me, her chest heaving, dark blooms of sweat under her arms as she fisted her hands on her hips. I could smell her, even with a couple of feet between us. She smelled like sweat and baby powder, and I wanted to vomit.
“Maverick, what did you do to your brother?”
My mouth fell open.
My stomach churned.
My pants were already wet and cold against my skin, and I couldn’t help it. I let go again, and it trailed hot down my leg.
Her eyes followed the trail, the puddle on the balcony.
Her thin lips twisted into a smile. “Aren’t you too old for that, Maverick?”
I couldn’t move. I was frozen in place as she stepped closer.
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
I did. I did know what it meant. It meant I’d go back in that closet, and my brother’s body…
I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what else to do. I screwed them up tight, but all I could see behind my closed eyelids was the television in her bedroom. When I wasn’t locked in the closet, when Malachi was taking his nap, I was in her bed and she was in control of the TV.
I saw strange things. Whips and chains and women screaming and angry men and I saw things I didn’t think I was supposed to see. I saw a woman gagging on a man’s penis, saw her eyes full of tears, saw her gasping for breath.
I saw her get sick.
And my nanny laughed. She laughed, and she watched me watching. And one day, she said she wanted to act out what we saw. On me.
We did. I had been eight then, when that started.
It was just a game, she said.
Just a game.
I didn’t complain. I was frozen then like I was standing outside on that balcony. Because if it was me, it wouldn’t be Brooklin when she came home from tennis camp or ballet or wherever she’d been sent to. It wouldn’t be her, and it wouldn’t be Malachi.
Malachi could eat fruit snacks and take naps and laugh and watch cartoons and build forts with me. Malachi wouldn’t get hurt.
My nanny touched me then, her hand against my cheek, soft and kind. My eyes flew open, and she crouched down so she was on my level.