House of York, #1

by Charlotte Byrd

  Starving, thirsty, and tired, I sit against the wall and close my eyes. If I had the opportunity, I would kill myself. I can’t deal with this anymore. Just give me the chance.

  More time passes. More girls arrive. Terrified and loud just like I was.

  More men come to do bad deeds.

  I find myself checking out more and more. Reality is too hard to handle.

  As I drift away, I lose myself in my fantasies.

  My imagination is my only weapon. It’s my only escape.

  And then things get worse.

  It happens all of the sudden. Without warning.

  She dies.

  Small and frail, she has been coughing for many nights in a row. Sick from the horrible conditions. Sick from all the torture. Sick from a life underground.

  Her body gives out. When a new group of men arrive and choose her, one of them realizes that she’s not just pretending to be lifeless. She really is gone.

  The guards take her body away, and the men continue as if nothing happened.

  That’s when something inside of me snaps.

  Living in my imagination, pretending to be somewhere else, alleviates my pain temporarily. But it’s not a solution. Far from it.

  No, I can’t spend my days in a daze. If I’m going to be here, I have to summon the strength to fight. If I want to survive, I have to look for a way out.

  That girl had red hair, freckles, innocent eyes, and a broken heart. They took all hope from her. No one can live without hope.

  That’s not going to be me.

  I will not let darkness take me.

  I will fight with every strength I have against the dying of the light.

  But to fight the men directly is futile. There are too many of them. I am chained. No, there’s nothing to do but give in. But there are other ways to fight. I need answers to my questions. I need knowledge.

  I need to know what this place is.

  Where it is.

  Who these people are.

  I don’t know what I don’t know, but every scrap of information I can put together will give me the armor to protect myself and, maybe, eventually free myself.

  First thing’s first. I need to speak to someone.

  I search my brain for any words in Spanish that I can remember. I cobble them together into a sentence.

  Then I say them out loud. Loudly.

  No one responds.

  “How long have you been here?” I follow up my more than broken Spanish question with the translated English.

  “When did you come here?” I simplify the question in English.

  No one responds.

  “Everly,” I say, pointing to myself. “You?”

  The girl next to me repeats my name, “Everly,” and then points to herself. "Esme.”

  The next one does the same thing. After a few rounds, everyone can say everyone else’s name.

  It doesn’t seem like much. But it’s also everything.

  We are no longer sitting in silence. We are no longer pretending not to see.

  We have tried to keep our humiliation to ourselves, but that just made the attackers stronger. That’s all changed now.

  I repeat the process with my last name.

  “Everly March,” I say my name, pointing to myself. I repeat my name a few times and on the third time, everyone is saying it along with me. I turn to Esme.

  She smiles. Wide toothy. Surprisingly, white.

  “Esme Moreno,” she says. We all repeat her name just as we all repeated my name.

  We are making connections.

  Esme Moreno. Acosta Pimco, Kacha Sonjai. The list goes on. Everyone repeats every name and every name is attached to a face. We may not speak each other’s languages, but we know who we are. By the end, I know thirty-one names. And thirty-one women know mine.

  The experience seems to empower everyone. We are no longer strangers. Suddenly, everyone starts to try to talk at once. The ones who know each other’s languages a little bit talk the loudest. Others try to communicate using their fingers.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask again. Loudly. I’m pretty sure that I’m not asking this correctly in Spanish so I repeat myself in English.

  “Me?” I point to myself. “A month, I think.”

  They stare at me.

  Month is mes in Spanish.

  “Uno mes,” I say. I add a shrug since I can’t be sure.

  A lightbulb goes off. The ones who know Spanish make their estimations. Fingers go up to make sure nothing is lost in the numbers.

  Two months. Six months. Seven. Seven. Fourteen.

  My heart drops. Too long. Way too long. Perhaps, this is it. Perhaps, we will all be here until we die.

  Everly

  A glimpse of light…

  It’s difficult to make sense of a place that’s nonsensical. Regular rules don’t apply here. Wherever here is, after all.

  York.

  When the guards whisper the name, I can smell their fear. What are they afraid of?

  Others use it proudly. They wear it like a coat of armor.

  I have one experience of York. It’s a terrible, horrific place from which I yearn to escape.

  Yet, I know that there must be another. Otherwise, why would all those men be so proud?

  The next time that the guards come down with food, they arrive with M. I recognize her immediately, but I cower in her presence. She takes one look at me and shakes her head.

  “You do not belong here,” she says. Her gold hoop earrings twinkle under the fluorescent lights. Her lipstick is bright red and her hair is razor-sharp with a professional blow-dry.

  “None of these women belong here,” I say.

  M shakes her head.

  “I warned you.”

  “He attacked me.”

  I cannot say that I don’t regret what I did to Abbott. In retrospect, perhaps I should’ve given in. It was just him. There was no dungeon. No groups of men. But the darkness was still there.

  I shake my head. No, I can’t think like that. That place only had the illusion of civility. When in reality, there was nothing close to it. I was locked away in a cell. Yes, I had a bedspread, carpeting, and a bathroom. But there were cameras. Locked windows and doors. The expectation to do as I was told.

  That place is no different from this place. There are shades of difference without a distinction.

  But I know better than to say any of this out loud.

  M peers into my eyes. She is looking for something.

  “What are you doing here, M?” I ask.

  “They are going to give you another chance.”

  I furrow my brow.

  “You remember the girl who died a few days ago? They found her body right in front of you,” M says. “I saw the fear in your eyes. The horror.”

  I nod.

  “That’s how everyone leaves this place. The dungeons of York.”

  Dungeons. Plural. Is this not the only one?

  I shake my head in disbelief. The girls around me listen to what we’re saying. They hear, but don’t understand.

  “We are all slaves, Everly,” she whispers. “But we are not all slaves the way women in the dungeons are.”

  I shudder.

  “You attacked Abbott York. He doesn’t look like much, but he is the son of the King. You gave him a serious concussion and he wants you dead. Or worse.”

  “So, why am I alive?”

  “Because he wants his revenge.”

  I feel tears welling up at the back of my throat.

  “I think he got it,” I say, shaking my head.

  “I think so, too. But he doesn’t.”

  What more can they do that they haven’t done already?

  “The King has been watching what you have gone through here. And how you have responded. And he is intrigued. To say the least.”

  “Why?”

  “Because others would have broken long ago. Others have. You were chosen for the competition. You were never i
ntended to be sent to the dungeon. The women who are sent here are from a different stock.”

  “Different stock? What does that mean?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “You ask too many questions. I have said more than enough.”

  I glare at her.

  “Well, thanks for coming, I guess,” I say.

  “You don’t sound very appreciative.”

  I shrug. For a crumb of sympathy? No, I’m not too appreciative. I’m about to say these words out loud, but I bite my tongue.

  “So, the King is intrigued by me. What does he want then?” I ask.

  “He wants you back in the contest.”

  She sends a signal to the guards and they remove the metal cuff from my throat. I look around at the faces in the room. Their eyes grow big. Wide. They plead with mine. I shrug my shoulders. I want to give them hope, but I don’t know what’s about to happen.

  When they lead me out of the dungeon, the girls cheer. We have not exchanged one coherent sentence, but I consider them my friends. Their names are tattooed into my mind.

  “No one has ever left the dungeon alive before, Everly,” M whispers in my ear. “You should consider yourself very lucky.”

  I inhale deeply and let out a big sigh of relief. And yet, my heart breaks for them. All those I’m leaving behind. I don’t know what will become of me, but I make a promise to myself. If I ever get out of this place, I will do everything in my power to free them.

  Everly

  A new beginning…

  M takes me a few floors up and leads me to a large shower room. She gives me shampoo and conditioner and waits as I wash my hair and body. After all that time of sitting in my own filth, fresh water running down my body feels like heaven. After I’m done, she hands me a towel and I dry myself off.

  “You lost weight,” she remarks. It’s hard not to, I think to myself. “The King will be pleased.”

  * * *

  M hands me new underwear, a long sleeve shirt, and a pair of pants. They look like hospital scrubs and feel just as comfortable. Following her down the hallway, I revel in my new clothes’ warmth and softness.

  M scans her palm and lets me inside the room on the far end. Inside the cell, I find a twin bed with fresh linens, a small pillow, and a thick blanket. On the opposite wall, there’s a toilet with a sink. A desk and a chair that’s bolted to the floor sits in the middle. On the corner of the desk, there are some books and a couple of pens.

  “Do not think of doing anything to yourself in here,” M says. “If you do, they will take you back there and, this time, you’ll never get out.”

  I nod.

  “There are cameras everywhere. They are always watching. If you try anything, they will know and they will stop you before you get the chance to…complete it. And then they will make you pay for it. With more than your life.”

  She doesn’t have to stress her point. I get it.

  The door makes a loud clinking sound after she leaves. Alone with my thoughts, I look around the room.

  There’s no persistent smell of mold. The light that streams above the bed is warm and comforting, a little brighter than candlelight. I sit down on the bed and wrap my hands firmly around my knees.

  Then I start to cry.

  I cry for everything that I’ve seen.

  I cry for everything that I went through.

  I cry for all those women who are still in that dungeon of horrors.

  But mostly, I cry for me.

  The hot tears streaming down my face are tears of relief.

  I’m not free, but I’m no longer there.

  Back in that upstairs room, with all of its amenities and luxuries, I didn’t know how good I had it.

  M tried to warn me, but I didn’t believe her. Who would? And then I learned about the true horrors of humanity. The true horrors of mankind.

  I wipe one hot tear after another with the back of my sleeve, but more continue to flood. They come from the anger that’s raging within me.

  In the dungeon, I was lost.

  Forgotten.

  Death was my only relief. But something saved me.

  I am reluctant to give credit to a higher power. Would a place like that exist in the first place if a higher power were anywhere near York?

  No, it must be simpler than that.

  There’s going to be a competition. Someone here wants me to be a contestant. That’s why I’m no longer in the dungeon.

  I wipe my eyes again, and this time no more tears emerge. I lie down on my bed. My pillow is like a soft cocoon. I’ve been through hell, but the journey is not over yet. It’s only the beginning.

  Now, I know my place.

  I am a prisoner.

  A captive.

  A slave.

  I am without power.

  But I have other things.

  I have my head and my heart.

  I will learn the rules of this place so that I can play my best hand.

  It’s my only hope of getting my freedom.

  As time passes, my physical wounds start to heal. In the small plastic mirror above the toilet, I see my black eye fading away. The bruises around my arms and legs first turn a sickly yellowish color then slightly green before disappearing entirely.

  After a while, it’s almost as if nothing happened.

  Almost.

  Here, food arrives three times a day and there are vegetables, pasta, and fish. Every few days, I even get some dessert. A slice of apple pie. A black and white cookie. An orange.

  Here, no one comes to my cell besides the guards who bring the meals. At night, I still wake up with nightmares every few hours, terrified of what awaits me in the darkness.

  Are they just waiting for me to get strong before sending someone to my cell? Will tonight be the night? But as days turn into weeks, even the nightmares start to subside.

  Besides the guards, I don’t have contact with anyone else. Occasionally, I peer through the plexiglass window of my door for a glimpse of the outside world. There are other doors just like mine leading to other cells.

  Who is being kept there? How did they end up here?

  Kept in isolation, you have a lot of time to think.

  Mistakes you made.

  Things you should or shouldn’t have done.

  All the steps you took that might have led to you being here.

  I shouldn’t have said. He did this because I insulted him.

  I shouldn’t have worn that. He did this because of how short my skirt was.

  But why do I feel this insatiable need to blame myself?

  Is it because I’m a woman or a victim?

  Either way, it’s crap. None of this was my fault. Not a single thing.

  Someone who does something like what has been done to me is capable of evil. He’s a sociopath, incapable of having empathy for another. No amount of clothing or makeup or lack thereof on my part made him that way.

  Time continues to pass, however slowly. I don’t know how long I will be here, but I start to think of things to do to occupy myself. I need to get strong. Both in mind and body.

  I’ve never been one to enjoy working out, but within the confines of this cell, it feels like a relief. I start slow. One day, I do ten lunges. The next, I do twenty. Then I add ten push-ups. I struggle through them, but within a few weeks, I can do fifty a day. Soon, I spend at least an hour a day on physical activity. Running in place. Jumping jacks. Crunches. Stretches. And then yoga. It feels good to stretch my limbs every day and challenge my body.

  In addition to working out my body, I start to work out my mind. I sit down at the table and pick up the pen. I begin small. I arrange words into sentences. Then sentences into paragraphs.

  I don’t want to write about this place, though. York is too dark and dreary.

  I want to take my mind somewhere else.

  At first, I struggle with even the simplest things. I stare at the blank page. Write a sentence. Cross it out. Write another. I don’t know what to write; I
just know that I have to write. But I persist.

  Thoughts are swirling around in my mind and I need an outlet.

  Part IV

  A Different Kind of Prison

  Easton

  Dancer in the dark…

  I hate York. I hate everything it stands for. I hate everyone here. They are greedy, possessive. Damaged.

  But who am I kidding? I’m greedy, possessive, and damaged. I learned from the best, of course.

  My father. The King of York.

  Out in the real world, he is just the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But here, on this island, he is the King. Whatever he says goes and you will be damned if you go against him.

  As I wait for my name to be called, I hate myself for coming back here. Of course, I didn’t have a choice.

  I am the son of York. It doesn’t matter that I am the youngest and the black sheep. He is having his biennial competition and everyone from the royal family, no matter how estranged, has to attend.

  To understand my father, you have to understand insatiable desire.

  For money.

  For power.

  For women.

  For sin.

  Nothing is ever enough and no one is ever enough. Well, there is one exception.

  Abbott.

  Abbott is my older brother and he is a carbon-copy of our father. Same ravenous desire to make his mark on the world. However painful and deep.

  “Easton?” Mirabelle comes out with a clipboard.

  She’s in her fifties and has been my father’s secretary ever since I was a baby. Mirabelle dresses modestly and always wears her hair in a French braid. She is pretty and kind and I have no idea how she has worked for such evil for so many years. Or what my father has on her to keep her in her position.

  I follow her down the hallway toward my father’s quarters in the house. The island is about ten miles across, and our residence is, of course, the largest place here. It’s over 30,000 square feet and sits on over twenty acres. In addition to the main house, it also has a number of guesthouses on the property for visiting family guests and dignitaries. My father occupies about 10,000 square feet of the house with his private rooms.