by Megan Hart
That first painting had gone for so much because she’d actually painted it in Stan Andrews’s basement. She heard it was hanging in a billionaire’s entertainment room, which made her think she ought to have held out for more money, but at the time ten grand had seemed like a fortune.
Effie made a career out of skewed landscapes and still lifes, of things seen from the corner of the eye. Her paintings looked normal until you slightly turned your head. Then you saw the maniacal dancing figures, the squirming maggots. The destruction. And if you looked very, very closely, you could always find a clock woven into the design. Those details were what made the collectors go crazy. They were her bread and butter. But to Effie, they were not what made her paintings art. They had kept her from losing her mind, and that, she’d always thought, was the difference between a paint-by-numbers kit of an Elvis on velvet and a piece that someone paid thousands of dollars to hang in their entertainment room.
She hadn’t been genuinely inspired to paint anything in a long time. At least a year, maybe longer. It hadn’t bothered her, losing her muse. Painting on commission or regurgitating old themes for a few hundred bucks had kept her busy. Licensing her images for postcards and T-shirts had paid her bills. She and Polly didn’t need much, and so long as Effie was careful about putting money away for college, she didn’t feel bad about not taking her kid on expensive vacations or buying her all the latest trendy fashions.
“You can afford better than grilled cheese, Effie.”
She laughed and pushed a plate with a sandwich and some potato chips in front of him. His clothes were still in the washer. She’d told him to put on something from her dresser. God knew there was more than one of his shirts and probably a pair of boxers in there somewhere. He’d chosen the towel on purpose to get under her skin.
“Maybe I can,” she said, “but grilled cheese is what you get.”
He studied the sandwich, then smiled as if he had a secret. “You put pickles on it.”
“Of course I did.” Effie crossed her arm over her stomach and put her first two fingers of her other hand to her lips. She’d given up smoking when she was pregnant with Polly and had never taken it back up, but that posture had never gone away.
After the sex they’d just had, she wanted a cigarette. Badly. He would give her one if she asked, but of course like cookies or orgasms, one was never enough.
“You’re not eating?” Heath hadn’t taken a bite. He watched her, heavy dark brows furrowed. That mouth, his fucking mouth, pursed in concern.
She had to look away or else she’d kiss him, and where would they end up after that? His kisses were worse than cigarettes. “I have to get to work. Anyway, I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat,” Heath said flatly.
She looked at him then. Silent. He was one to talk. His hip bones were jutting. Every rib clearly defined. Heath was fit and strong, but she’d known him to be heavier than this. She, on the other hand, had been noticing softness and curves where she’d once been sharply angled.
He broke the sandwich in half and held up one piece to her. She frowned and shook her head. He set it back on the plate and sat up straighter on the bar stool.
“I can swear to you, there’s no ground glass in it. No hairs. No floor sweepings. No pills.” Effie’s throat worked at the thought of it, but she forced herself not to gag. She hadn’t been hungry before, and now she was a little nauseous.
“I know that.” Heath turned the plate around and around, then lifted a chip. Keeping his gaze on hers, he put it in his mouth and crunched loudly.
“You can open up the sandwich and look inside,” Effie said, too loud. Too harsh. Her voice cracked and broke. “Go ahead! Make sure!”
Heath was off the stool and had her in his arms in seconds. She fought him for a second, but it was a useless protest. When he pulled her against him, she relented. Her cheek pressed his chest. She’d left marks of her own there, half-moon slices that would scab before they healed.
At least those wounds would heal, she thought. Some never did.
“I thought you’d be hungry,” she whispered. “That’s all. And it’s from me, Heath. You should know that something from me would never... I would never...”
“I know. Shh.” His hand stroked over her hair. “I was just being an asshole, Effie. I’m sorry.”
Countless times Heath had said those words to her, but Effie couldn’t remember if she’d ever apologized to him even once in all the time they’d known each other. She clung to him, though, for a few seconds longer before she forced herself to let go. She pushed away from him as the towel loosened and fell.
“You need to put some clothes on,” she told him.
Heath grinned. “You sure?”
“Your stuff will be done in an hour or so. Aren’t you cold?” Effie went to the fridge to pull out two cans of clear cola that she poured into glasses and held both up to the light without a second thought. She turned to hand him one but paused at Heath’s chagrined head shake. “What?”
“You do it, too,” he told her.
She frowned and set the glass on the counter with a thump hard enough to splash the contents out. “Yes. Well. Not from something you made for me.”
Heath wrapped the towel around his waist again and took up the sandwich to bite into it, chewing slowly. It eased her a little to watch him do it. They weren’t going to keep fighting, then. At least not about that.
He ate slowly, deliberately, pulling the bread and cheese apart into bite-size pieces, but she didn’t call him on it. There were some things that would never go away, no matter how long ago they’d become a habit or how you tried to get rid of them. Like the way she stood even though she had no cigarette.
“I have some cookies if you’re still hungry,” she told him, but Heath rubbed his belly and shook his head.
When he held out his hand to her, she took it and let him pull her closer. Even sitting on the bar stool he was a little too tall to rest his head on her chest, but he managed anyway. He nestled against her, his hands on her butt and the heat of his breath seeping through the thin material of her T-shirt. Her dress had gone into the washer with his clothes.
They stayed that way for a minute or so before she tried to retreat, but Heath held her close. She sighed and shut her eyes, stroking the silky thickness of his dark hair. It had been too long since they’d been alone together like this.
And why? Stupid reasons. A disagreement that had turned into an argument, and both of them too stubborn to give in until enough time had passed that they could pretend it hadn’t happened.
Heath nuzzled against her. “Can I stay until Polly gets home from school?”
“I’m taking her to my mother’s.”
He looked up at her face, his expression so deliberately blank she knew he suspected something was coming that he didn’t want to hear. She didn’t have to say it, Effie thought suddenly. She didn’t even have to do it. She could stop herself. If she wanted to.
She traced his eyebrows with her fingertips, then cupped his face. “I’m going out later. Polly’s going to stay overnight with my mom.”
Heath didn’t flinch. He turned his face to press his mouth into her palm but didn’t kiss her. Not quite.
“Okay,” he said.
“Heath.” Effie tried to let go of him, but his hands came up, quick as spit, to grab her wrists and hold her in place. He didn’t open his eyes or turn his head. His breath was hot and wet on her skin. “Stop it.”
“With who?” he asked.
“You don’t know him.”
“Oh, I know him. He wears polo shirts and khaki pants,” Heath said with a sneer. “He works in an office and drives a sedan.”
Effie twisted in his grip, but Heath held her tight.
“It’s none of your business.”
�
��Has he met Polly?”
She’d met her date on LuvFinder. He’d messaged her first. They always did. Since signing up about six months ago, Effie had gone on a bunch of first dates, and this one would make it a baker’s dozen. “Of course he hasn’t.”
Heath released her. “Are you going to fuck him? Oh, wait. That’s why you invited me over. So you wouldn’t have to.”
She slapped his cheek. Lightly, not enough to turn his head. He didn’t flinch. She cupped his face in her hands and stared into his eyes.
“Fucking you now won’t make any difference in what I do tonight.”
Heath put his hands up to circle her wrists without pulling her hands from his face. “You’ll do what you want to do, Effie. You always have. All I can do is wait for you. Right?”
“I wish you wouldn’t!” Effie cried and pulled herself free of him. When he grabbed for her again, she was ready for him and danced out of his grasp. Backing up, she hit another of the bar stools with her foot and stumbled.
Heath caught her by the upper arms, holding her tight until she stopped trying to get away. “But I do. You know I do, Effie. I always do and always will. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
“You have to stop,” Effie said.
This time he was the one who went to his knees. He yanked down her cotton pajama bottoms and her panties, and when she tried to slap him again, to shove him away, Heath held her wrists at her sides. He pushed himself between her legs. The swipe of his tongue opened her to him.
She struggled for a moment, her wrists aching in the cuffs of his fingers. The right had been broken and left too long without proper setting. It hurt more than the other one, and his grip was looser. Because he knew. Heath knew everything about her. But he didn’t let her go, even when she pulled. He pressed his mouth against her, his tongue finding her clit without hesitation.
She didn’t climax so much as she unravelled. Sharp and fierce, the pleasure overtook her until she gasped and sagged, her knees weak. Heath let go of her wrists to support her as he looked up at her. He licked his lips.
“I will never stop loving you,” he told her. “If we live a thousand lifetimes, I will never stop.”
Effie disengaged herself from him, pulling up her panties and pj bottoms and stepping back. She wanted him to get off his knees, but he stayed there. She turned away so she didn’t have to look at him.
“We don’t have a thousand lifetimes. We only have one, Heath. Only this one.”
He stood then. She continued refusing to look at him. She thought he might touch her, and she braced for it, but he didn’t.
“Then this one has to be enough, doesn’t it?”
She’d told him to leave a dozen times or more in the past. She’d screamed it at him. Begged him. She’d been polite and cold. None of it worked, not in the long-term. He came back to her, or she came back to him, one the waves and one the shore. So this time she said nothing, letting the silence grow between them until he had no choice but to sigh.
“Tell Polly I love her. I’ll call her later. Maybe take her to the movies. If that’s okay with you,” Heath said finally from the doorway, and when she wouldn’t answer him, “Effie.”
Still she said nothing, not trusting herself to find a voice that didn’t shake and break under the weight of her emotions. She waited until he left, not slamming the door behind him but letting it shut with a slow, solid and undeniable click.
Heath’s love for her had been as solid and undeniable as the closing of that front door for almost twenty years. The problem was not that Effie didn’t believe him when he told her that he would never stop. The problem was that she did.
chapter three
“Don’t eat that.” The boy standing in the doorway is too thin for his height. Shaggy dark hair falls over his eyes and almost to his shoulders. He wears a pair of raggedy jeans, holes in the knees, and a dirty flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows to expose bony wrists. A black T-shirt beneath. “He puts stuff in it.”
“Like what? Spit?”
“Sometimes. Or worse.”
Effie can’t imagine something worse than spit in the small bowl of thin, cold oatmeal she’d found on the wobble-legged table next to the bed. The oatmeal had been waiting for her when she woke up, a scribbled note next to it saying EAT. No spoon. Later, she will understand just how awful the man can be, but for now, the idea of spit is enough for her to set the bowl aside. After all, she’s not starving.
Yet.
She should’ve been startled when the boy spoke, but everything right now still feels hazy, as if even if she blinks hard over and over, she is unable to entirely clear her vision. It’s the weird orange light from the wall sconces, but also the lingering pain in her head. She stares at the bowl in her hands. Then at him.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in a basement.”
She looks around, then sets the bowl back on the table and rubs at her eyes. The hazy feeling is fading. On her right thigh is a bruise that hurts when she presses it. Vaguely, she remembers a needle, and she closes her eyes for a moment. “He gave me a shot.”
“Yeah. He likes those. Sometimes it’s pills, ground up. But he likes the shots, too. They last longer.”
The boy comes through the doorway. The ceiling in this room is so low he has to hunch to stand, but although there’s a chair in front of her, he doesn’t sit in it. He looks around the tiny, dank space, then crosses his arms. When he looks at her, his face is a puppet’s. Blank, yet somehow menacing.
“How’d he get you?” the boy asks.
Effie doesn’t want to say. She feels so stupid now. She knew better than to believe the man when he asked if she wanted to see the cute puppy in his van. She knew never to trust a stranger. It hadn’t mattered, though, when she tried to run, because he’d caught her within half a minute. Her stupid shoes, the new ones her mom had insisted she wear, had given her blisters. She’d been limping. She could’ve run fast and gotten away, except for those stupid shoes.
“He told me my mom was in an accident,” the boy says. Too casual. As if he’s setting Effie up for a joke, but there doesn’t seem to be a punch line. “He said she’d been taken to the hospital and my dad sent him to get me.”
“That was stupid of you to believe him.”
The boy looks at her with bright green eyes through the fringe of shaggy dark hair, and incredibly, he laughs. Really laughs, as if she said the funniest thing he’s ever heard. As if Effie is the one telling jokes.
“No shit, right? I mean, my dad wouldn’t give a flying fuck if my mom was chopped into little pieces, and she sure as shit wouldn’t bother to tell him if she was in an accident. Even if he found out, he wouldn’t have sent someone to get me. I haven’t seen my dad in eight years. He wouldn’t even know what I look like now.”
Effie blinks. She has a few friends whose parents are divorced, but most are amicable with each other, at least enough. She doesn’t hang around with the sorts of kids whose parents don’t see them.
Her own parents must be frantic by now. She’s not sure exactly how long it’s been since the guy with the van grabbed her and put her in this room, but her mom goes into panic mode if Effie is even fifteen minutes late from art lessons. It has to be so much longer than that by now.
She rubs her hands on her pleated skirt, but they’re still sticky and gross. “So...why’d you go with him, then?”
“Because you always hope, don’t you? That it’s true?”
“That your dad sent someone for you?” Effie is confused.
“No,” the boy says. “That your mom’s been in an accident.”
Is he joking? Effie doesn’t know what to say to this. Somehow, being grabbed and shoved into a van and waking up in a smelly basement is not quite as creepy as the idea that she could ever be happy her mom was h
urt.
“That’s pretty messed up,” she says.
The boy nods, one side of his mouth twisting. “Yeah. I’m kind of a mess.”
“He grabbed me,” she says suddenly. “He told me he had a cute puppy in his van, and when I tried to run, he...he was just so fast. He grabbed my backpack and yanked me back and I lost my balance, and then he hit me on the head. He pulled me into the van, and he stabbed me in the leg with a needle. Then I woke up here.”
“Shit, he hit you on the head? You feel sick or anything? You’re not supposed to sleep if you have a concussion.”
Effie frowns sourly. “Well, it’s too late now if I do, because I’ve already slept. My stomach hurts, but it’s because I’m hungry.”
“Don’t eat that,” the boy warns again. He sits at last. His legs are so long that his knees seem to reach his chin. His hands are really big, too, when he rests them on the worn denim. His fingers play with the torn threads around the holes where his knees poke through.
“I heard you the first time.” Effie eyes the bowl again. “Everything? He does something to everything he feeds you?”
“Sometimes it’s just too much salt or pepper or hot sauce, stuff like that. But sometimes it’s pills or...other stuff. So you never really know. You just get so hungry you’ll eat anything, eventually,” the boy says. “But I try to at least pick through it, make sure there’s nothing really bad in it.”
“Worse than spit?” She can hardly imagine it.
The boy gives her a solemn look. “Oh. Yeah. Way worse than spit.”
And then, just then, Effie knows there’s no getting out of this. The man took her and he’s going to keep her and probably he’s going to do awful things to her that are worse than spitting in her oatmeal. Her stomach clenches and twists, but she forces herself not to choke or gag. She has to keep her head on straight. That’s what her dad would say. If she’s going to get away from here, she has to keep her head on straight.
“How long have you been here?” Effie asks.
The boy shrugs and looks away, again as if he’s telling her a lie but not with words; this time it’s with the things he doesn’t say. “I don’t know. A while.”
