by Loretta Lost
But I can’t form a polite or coherent response right now. This house is suffocating me, and I just need to get out. When I am safely behind the steering wheel of my car, I find myself fuming. Seething. My blood is pumping furiously, and I never knew I could feel so much—while also feeling nothing at all.
I grip the steering wheel tightly, unsure whether I should drive in this state.
My greatest frustration is that I don’t have their names. When a phone rings beside me, it takes me a few seconds to register what’s happening. I look down, expecting it to be the Bishops, begging me to come back. But it’s Scarlett.
I reach down to press the button to accept, and then put her on speaker. I take several deep breaths before answering.
“I’m so glad you called, Scar.”
“No. It’s not her,” says a familiar male voice, and there is something urgent in his tone.
It’s Zack. What the fuck? What the fuck is Zack doing with Scarlett’s phone? What is he doing in the same state as her?
“Sophie has been abducted,” Zack says matter-of-factly. “Luciana and I are trying to find her, but we could use your help.”
My fingers loosen their grip on my phone, and I nearly drop it. After fumbling to catch it, I stare at the screen in horror. The digital clock ticks very slowly, tracking each second of our call.
All thoughts of my grandparents instantly leave my mind.
Chapter Eleven
Sophie Shields, 2016
Joy doesn’t know that she’s in danger.
She doesn’t understand that I’m being held here against my will.
I don’t know how to explain it to her, or even whether I should.
We are sitting on the floor and playing with her toys, while I am still wearing only a bedsheet and covered in bruises. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask her. “The city, or the state?”
She looks up in surprise. “Umm. I dunno. We drove in the car for a while. But there’s an ice cream shop nearby. I got my favorite! Birthday cake with sprinkles. What’s yours?”
Ice cream definitely doesn’t help me determine our location.
“Do you like mint chocolate chip?” Joy asks.
“I prefer coffee,” I tell her.
“Ooh! I never tried the coffee ice cream,” Joy says with wide eyes. “Everyone says it’s only for adults.”
Her excitement makes me smile. She is so excited about absolutely everything. “You probably won’t enjoy coffee for a few years. But when we get out of here, and I get some coffee ice cream, you can try some of mine,” I promise her.
“Can you also take me to a movie?” she asks. “I’ve never been to a movie.”
“Really? Well, that’s just crazy! We will have to go to a movie.”
“Do you know the best ones?” she asks.
“No, but I can look them up online.”
“I always wanted to see a movie with a princess in a castle,” Joy says.
Her words strike a chord in my memory. I remember Cole’s hands on my body, and the urgency in his voice. “Let’s make a baby. But if it’s a boy, we have to try again, because I really want a little girl so that I can show her Frozen and take her out for ice cream.”
It stabs me like a knife sliding between the valves of my heart. And twisting. It stabs again, in one of my lungs, puncturing it and stealing my breath away.
“Are you okay?” Joy asks, when she sees me holding my chest.
I nod, taking a few deep breaths. “Grown-ups are weird. We always get pains all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Serenity. That’s why I am never gonna grow up!”
“Just call me Serena,” I tell her, wincing at the sound of the word. “Only Benjamin calls me Serenity. It’s kind of long, and… I hate that name.”
“I get that. I hate my name too, sometimes.”
“Joy? It’s so lovely.”
“But what about when I’m sad?”
Her question makes me pause, and study her little face. “Do you get sad a lot?”
She looks down and then nods slowly. “Mostly when I’m all alone.”
“Honey, where do you live?”
“I live in a place with a lot of people,” she says, gesturing to indicate multitudes. “Lots of kids, mostly older. But they don’t talk to me much, except when this mean lady yells at me.”
I nod. “I used to live in places like that, too.”
“Did Benjamin save you?”
“Ha!” I respond, before I can help it. Did he save me? “Not even a little bit. It’s important that we find ways to save ourselves.”
Joy chews on her finger shyly. “Everybody says I need to get ’dopted then I get a real family who loves me. Is that true?
I flinch at her words, knowing the likelihood of this happening. “Yes,” I say softly, suddenly optimistic. “That’s exactly how it works. And then you live happily ever after. You’ll be a princess in a castle, just like in the movies, and you’ll never be lonely or sad again.”
Joy smiles at me, her little face lighting up like Christmas morning. She stands up and runs over to me, throwing her arms around my neck in a fierce hug.
My body and neck are sore that her hug makes me wince, but I lift my arms to hug her back anyway.
“Are we gonna be friends forever, Miss Serena?”
“I hope so,” I tell her quietly. If I can somehow get us out of here alive.
At that moment, the door begins to unlock, and I tighten my embrace around Joy.
“Be careful,” I whisper to her softly. “He seems like a nice man, but he’s not. Don’t get too close to him. Don’t look directly at him. Just look at me, Joy. Okay?”
“Otay,” she responds in confusion.
When Benjamin enters the room, he presents Joy with a large teddy bear and a lifelike doll. I stare at him, warily. He seems like the perfect father, the perfect grandfather, as he dotes on Joy. He seems so normal.
He turns to me with a frown and barks out an order. “Stand up! Help me set the table for tea. Joy likes tea parties. Don’t you, Joyjoy?”
“I do!” says the little girl cheerfully. Then she remembers not to look at Benjamin, and looks at me.
I nod at her in approval, and stand up to begin setting up the plastic tea set. Benjamin places the new teddy bear in one of the chairs, before taking his own. It is a small plastic chair that he barely fits on, and I am not sure why he is so determined to have a young girl’s tea party.
For the first time, I find myself wondering about his past. About what led him to being like this. Was be born with these psychoses, and sick fetishes? Or did something terrible happen to him, maybe when he was very young, that made him start to do these things?
Stop that, Sophie. You’re not allowed to develop Stockholm Syndrome. You’re not going to make any explanations for this man. It doesn’t matter what he’s suffered.
“Are you going to join us?” Benjamin demands, and I see that he and Joy are already seated.
Reluctantly, I move to sit on one of the small chairs. At least I’m not tied up to a chair for this tea party. I’ll take it black, hold the sugar, hold the electricity.
“Would you like some tea?” Joy asks Benjamin, as she pours him an imaginary cup.
“Yes, thank you, dear,” he says with a smile, before looking at me. “Isn’t she adorable?”
I nod. “Absolutely.”
“And to think that we could have had one of these,” Benjamin says bitterly. He pours the contents of the empty cup into his mouth. “This is exactly why I do not believe in a woman’s right to choose.”
“Choose what?” Joy asks.
The young girl is having the time of her life as she feeds her teddy bear fake tea from a pink teacup.
“Abortions,” Benjamin tells Joy. “I do not believe that women should be allowed to have abortions.”
Inhaling as slowly as possible, I feel my lungs filling with ten kinds of rage and pent up fury. But I try to
exhale just as slowly, and release all of this before I can turn it into words that will only get us into trouble.
“You see,” Benjamin says to Joy. “Serenity here would have a baby of her own, if she hadn’t brutally terminated her pregnancy. A baby just like you, just as cute. Maybe she’d even have more than one. Am I right, Serenity? Did you have more abortions later in life?”
Fighting back my indignation, I try to be polite and keep my words to myself to avoid angering him. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him how he feels about extreme circumstances, such as statutory rape. But I believe I already know the answer, from firsthand experience. Calling him out on his bullshit will only earn me more injuries. Grasping the plastic teapot, I refill the young girl’s tea. “Maybe this isn’t the best topic to discuss in front of Joy.”
“Nonsense,” Benjamin says. “She needs to be educated on these subjects while she is young, so she doesn’t grow up to make the same awful decisions that you did. Women having abortions is barbaric and un-Christian.”
I feel Snow lurch inside me. It takes great effort to restrain her from grabbing one of the rubber forks and trying to stab Benjamin in the eye. Women?! she screams in my mind. I was a twelve-year-old girl! Is this modern day America or the fucking Middle Ages?
“What’s babotion?” Joy asks as she uses a fake knife to spread fake butter on fake bread.
Benjamin is about to respond, and I try to interrupt quickly to save her from whatever dreadful explanation he is about to give. Children are so impressionable, and if he says the wrong thing, it could taint her thinking for years to come.
“It’s something that you’ll learn about when you’re older,” I promise her. When I see Benjamin beginning to speak again, I quickly try to make up a definition. “It’s a medical procedure for women’s health, performed by doctors. When a man plants a seed in a woman’s belly, it is supposed to make her very happy. But due to certain circumstances, it could make her very sad. For example, if he didn’t ask permission and she wasn’t prepared. Also, sometimes things go wrong and it makes her very sick—and she needs to remove the sickness. It’s a sad but necessary option.”
“It’s murder,” Benjamin whispers angrily. “It’s murder plain and simple.”
“No,” I tell Joy quietly. “Nothing is ever that simple.”
“Murder?” Joy asks attentively. “Of the sickness?”
Benjamin makes eye contact with me, and he looks angry. “We won’t discuss this any further. But Joy, please know that abortion is never, never acceptable.”
The muscles in my jaw clench at this Draconian statement. I love how he doesn’t even mention situations where it might be required to save the pregnant woman’s life. But to someone like Benjamin, who considers women his property, to capture, rape, and control, of course it would never be an option.
Owning a female body is like owning a piece of land to him. Or a kitchen appliance. It’s like owning a sports car, or pair of shoes. Something to plant your seeds in, bake your cookies in, whether or not it’s comfortable being used this way. Something to ride as hard as you feel like riding it. Something to walk all over.
“What do the doctors do?” Joy asks. “Where do the seeds go?”
“You ask too many questions,” Benjamin tells Joy, crossly. “Drink your tea.”
“Otay,” she responds happily.
She doesn’t realize how grave the conversation is. She doesn’t feel the heavy tension hanging in the room. She doesn’t understand what Benjamin is capable of doing. Or even what I’m capable of doing.
She only understands love.
It makes something deep in my chest quiver and ache.
Poor Joy.
I can tell that adults have not paid her much attention, for she is so eager for our approval. She is so excited when we talk directly to her, no matter what we say. She’s the perfect victim for someone like Benjamin: someone so vulnerable that he can brainwash her into accepting his cruelty. Someone so malleable that he can twist up the fabric of her mind as she grows.
Someone who needs him so badly that he can actually convince her that his abuse comes from a place of love.
Someone like me.
Like I was.
It’s frankly terrifying to witness Joy’s innocence, and to think that I was ever possibly similar to her. Watching it happen from the outside is almost worse than having it happen to you—because you are more aware of the ramifications of the process. Before this man, I was a good person. I was a whole person. I know I was. I must have been.
Now, I’m broken. Broken into pieces.
But as I gaze, at Joy, I feel a deep affection and desire to protect her stirring inside me, and I know that the important parts of me are still whole.
“Joy, can you please stop doing that,” Benjamin says suddenly.
It takes me a second to figure out what he is referring to, and then I see that she is nervously chewing on the nail of her index finger. She looks up in surprise, and doesn’t seem to understand, either.
“Joy,” Benjamin says with warning. “That is a nasty habit, and I don’t want to ever see you do that again.”
She pulls her finger out of her mouth slowly, looking at me anxiously. “I’m sorry.” When she wipes her wet finger on her dress, Benjamin stands up and roars.
“Use a napkin!”
He reaches across the table to grab her by the neck.
I watch his palm opening and moving forward as if it is happening in slow motion. I feel my body lifting out of my chair, one inch at a time. My eyes are so focused on his hand that I am not capable of blinking. Still, the world starts to go dark, as if I have closed my eyes.
I know I haven’t.
This time, I can feel my body for a few seconds longer, as if I am sharing it with Snow. Her will and mine are so intermeshed that we are almost one person, for a fleeting instant. Then, I suppose, her ultra-violent nature takes over, and I find myself locked away, safely back in the basement.
I breathe heavily, panting from the exertion of what I almost did. From what I wanted to do. From what I am doing. This anger is so powerful—much more powerful than the heroin. It seizes me with a vicelike grip, and I need to breathe carefully and slowly to dispel the fury and come down from the high.
It pains me not to know what is happening upstairs, in the daylight. I hope that Joy isn’t too scared. I hope that Benjamin is getting what he deserves.
But I am absolutely sure of one thing.
Snow would never let him touch Joy.
She would die first. I would die first.
“Serena?” says a voice from my side.
It gives me a little chill to be spoken to, down here. In the basement. No one ever speaks to me down here. I turn to my side, and I am horrified to see Snow standing there, looking at me with a confusion that mirrors my own.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her in shock.
“I—I don’t know,” she whispers.
“You should be up there, fighting him!” I tell her. “I thought you were—”
“I tried,” she says with amazement.
“Snow!” I exclaim. “What the hell? What am I doing here, if you’re not up there? I could have done this on my own! I was in the process…”
“Serena,” Snow says softly. “It’s worse than we thought.”
“What are you talking about? Snow! Someone took over my body. I thought it was you.”
“I think—I think there’s someone else who lives down here with us.”
“What?”
“Yes. And I think she’s angrier than I am.”
Chapter Twelve
Cole Hunter, 2016
Sitting on the living room sofa at the Bishop home, I am holding an ice pack against the side of my face with one hand.
“I’m so sorry, son,” Mr. Bishop is saying. “We’re going to find Scarlett, okay?”
“Do you like shrimp fried rice?” Mrs. Bishop is asking anxiously as she shovels Chinese food into
a plate. “Maybe some nourishment will help you think.”
After hearing the news and sitting in my car for a few minutes to process the information, I found myself overcome with grief and aggression. I found myself screaming and punching the shit out of the steering wheel, causing it to hit back in the form of an airbag exploding in my face. It banged up my cheek and chin pretty good, and it looks like I’m going to develop a black eye again. Not the eye that was recently swollen shut due to having a bullet scrape by just below it, but the other eye. So, at least there’s some symmetry to my injuries. I also injured a few of my fingers that were in the process of continuing to hit the airbag, so I feel pretty defeated right now. Even inanimate objects can kick my ass.
At least I didn’t get shot today. I should probably consider that a win.
“I thought it was over,” I tell the Bishops. “This is my fault. She was worried about Benjamin—what he said at the party, and what he said during the interrogation. She had a feeling he knew she was alive, but I just wanted to stupidly reassure her that everything was okay. I wanted her to feel better, and be relaxed, when there was nothing to feel good about. It wasn’t the right time to relax. I put her in harm’s way. I just wanted her to be safe so badly that I convinced us both we were no longer in danger.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Mr. Bishop says. “You killed the person—or people—who were trying to kill you. Is it any wonder you thought it was safe?”
“It wasn’t them,” I say quietly. “It was just too easy. Those guys were nothing. They were just distractions. I should have known. And she came back to California and exposed herself for me. If I hadn’t faked my own death, she never would have come here. Worst of all... we really were safe, back in Nevada. For a minute, we had won. We were out. And now it’s just back to basics. Getting hurt. Getting separated.”
“Cole,” Mr. Bishop says firmly, “You need to stop blaming yourself. It’s not getting us anywhere, and it’s not helping Scarlett right now. For now, we need to put aside all our personal emotions and focus on finding her. Any information we might have that could help Luciana—this is a dire situation, and we need to act quickly.”
