by R. Linda
She was the one.
As much as she didn’t want to be there, and as much as she hated me for what I’d done to her, I knew that on some level, because of our initial attraction to each other, she understood why it was her. Why she was the one to end all the pain.
She was the one.
I looked at her briefly, seeing the fear in her eyes. She was terrified of what this ‘honeymoon’ meant. I knew that as much as she pretended to be okay with everything, she wasn’t ready to have a child, which was clearly on her mind as I took her hand and led her over to the sofa in the corner, just beside the bedroom.
“Hendrix, I—”
“I know, love. It’ll be okay. We’re not going to do anything. Don’t worry. I’m not putting you in that position,” I told her honestly. I didn’t know how long we could pretend for, though. Surely Ray would start asking questions in a few months if Lucy wasn’t pregnant, which meant I only had a short amount of time to come up with a solution.
There was no way in hell Lucy was having a baby in this house. There was no way in hell she was going to bear my child.
I wouldn’t let it happen.
I grew up here. I knew what it was like, and I didn’t want my child or Lucy’s having the same life I had. If either one of us were to have a baby, it would be out of love, not out of a need to survive. There was no way.
I sat down beside her and didn’t speak. Neither one of us needed to. It was a time to process what was going on and a time to think of alternative possibilities.
We sat there for the longest time until, finally, Lucy spoke. “What did he slip into your pocket?”
“What?”
“Ray. He slipped something inside your jacket and said it was for the honeymoon.” Lucy looked at me questioningly.
I had almost forgotten about the small pouch he’d slid inside my pocket before he left. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know,” I told her.
“Hendrix, please,” Lucy pleaded with me, her soft brown eyes looking so sad.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small pouch. Six small white pills were inside.
I had seen those pills before whenever Ray decided that my mother at the time was not willing enough to satisfy his needs.
Lucy snatched them from my hands before I could say anything. “Are they what I think they are?” she asked.
“I think so.” I ran my hand through my hair and grabbed the pouch back. “I think they’re roofies.”
“What? Why?” Lucy gasped and jerked away from me.
“It’s Ray.” I shrugged as if there was no other explanation even though I knew there was. “He wants me to drug you.”
“Why?”
“So I can get you pregnant,” I stated bluntly. Lucy took a sharp breath. I could feel her trembling beside me. “It’s the only explanation. But it’s not going to happen,” I told her as I toyed with the small plastic zip-lock bag in my hands.
“It’s going to happen, eventually. You know it and so do I. We can’t lie to Ray forever. Either we have a baby or I’m dead.” Her eyes were grave, downcast. Lucy had resigned herself to the fact that she would ultimately give my father a grandchild. But not if I could help it. I had to get her out of here before that happened.
“No.” I stood up and stormed out of the room.
I flushed the small pouch of white pills down the toilet and returned to the room to see Lucy sitting there wide-eyed with her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. “He-he wanted you to… he’s crazier than I thought. You shouldn’t have flushed them. He’ll know. He’ll be watching,” she stuttered out when I went to sit beside her on the bed.
“I don’t care. I know he’s insane, but I’ve reached a point where nothing he does surprises me anymore. I’m sorry, Lucy. We’ll figure it out.” I put my arm around her shoulder to comfort her. She was clearly panicked because I’d disposed of the pills, but I’d never drug her or do anything against her will—except for abducting her, obviously. I sure as hell wouldn’t knock her out and ‘use them wisely’ like Ray had told me to when he slipped them into my jacket in the first place. The moment I’d seen what they were, I knew what he expected. There was no way. I wasn’t forcing Lucy into that position.
“Hendrix,” Lucy said after a few minutes of silence.
“Yeah?”
“What are we going to do down here for two weeks?”
“Enjoy it?” I offered, sceptically. We were trapped in the basement for two weeks. On the one hand, not having to see or deal with Ray for that long was like a dream come true. On the other hand, with nothing but a TV down here to keep us busy, we’d go crazy. At least in the house I had a job to do. I knew why he’d done it and what he expected us to be doing the whole time, but there was no chance in hell he was getting what he wanted.
I would not give him a grandchild.
“A break from,” she paused and pointed up, indicating Ray, “would be lovely, but two weeks is a long time to be stuck down here. I have no chores, nothing to keep me busy. You have no work to do.” Sometimes it was like she could read my mind.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” But I knew she was right. There was only so much entertainment the TV could provide. We were going to go stir crazy down here.
Hendrix
“FAVOURITE FOOD?” Lucy asked, placing one of her cards down on the table face side up. Queen of Spades.
“Kat’s roast potatoes. They’re the best,” I answered, placing my card on top of Lucy’s. Three of Clubs.
“They are pretty good,” Lucy said as she put another card down. Three of Clubs, “Snap!” she shouted with delight, giving me a childlike grin.
“You cheated.”
“Did not!”
“You flipped the card over so you saw the face first.”
“Prove it!” She stuck her tongue out and flipped over another card.
“Favourite colour?”
“Pink.” She gave me that look that said ‘duh, it’s obvious isn’t it?’ and flipped over a Ten of Hearts. “What about you?”
“I like yellow.” Ace of Diamonds.
“Yellow? Really?”
I nodded and watched her next card carefully. Joker.
“Why yellow?”
I shrugged. “It reminds me of sunshine and outside. Something I don’t get to see a lot of, unless…” I trailed off there, flipping over the King of Clubs. For the past week it had been almost possible to forget where we were and our fucked up situation. I didn’t want to bring up the past.
I watched her carefully for a reaction. There was none. Until she smiled and slammed her hand down on the pile of cards, again. “Snap!”
“I give up! You don’t play fair,” I said as Kat came storming down the stairs with our lunch tray just like she had three times a day since we’d been here. So far, we’d managed to keep busy playing cards with a deck I’d found in the TV unit, watching some DVDs that it seemed Ray had left for us, and we always welcomed Kat’s short visits; they broke up the monotony. But the look on Kat’s face told me something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Kat, what is it?” I asked when she placed our lunch on the table, complete with a small glass jar and red rose. How romantic. I noticed a third plate and wondered whether she was having lunch with us today. She shook her head and wouldn’t answer me. “Kat?”
“You’re not going to like it at all,” she whispered so softly I barely heard her.
“Why are you whispering?” Lucy asked as she made her way over to the table.
“Shhh… in case he hears,” Kat hissed again.
“He can’t hear us down here, Kat, don’t worry. The basement is soundproofed like the rest of the house.”
“Not anymore.” She shook her head slowly and a tear slipped down her cheek.
“W-what do you mean?” Lucy asked.
“He… there’s a guy. There’re microphones.”
“Microphones? Where?” I asked.
“Upstairs. A guy is installing
them. Ray told me to stay down here with you two for a few hours, but I saw the technician walk in. He’s installing microphones around the house.”
Fuck.
He couldn’t do that. We walked on eggshells already and had to be careful about everything we said or did. If he could see and or listen to us when he wasn’t in the room, we were screwed. No more secret conversations. No more lies. No more privacy.
“Shit.”
“What do we do?” Lucy asked, reaching for my hand and gripping it tightly.
“We think of a way to get out of here before this honeymoon is over. I’ve told you I’ll help you escape somehow. Now’s our only chance. We can’t do anything with him watching our every move or listening to our every conversation upstairs.”
“We can’t escape when he’s watching either, Hendrix. It’s useless,” Lucy cried.
“No, it’s not,” Kat said, her eyes lighting up. “He won’t always be here.”
“He never leaves, though, unless it’s to go to the garage. I’ve never seen him leave,” Lucy argued.
Kat was right, and so was Lucy. He wasn’t home twenty-four hours a day. He had a business to run, customers to serve, a facade to keep. We could do it. We just had to time it properly. Make sure everything was planned to perfection.
We ate our lunch silently. I was too busy trying to think of ways to get the girls out. To make them safe. Lucy looked defeated and Kat looked worried. No doubt they were resigning themselves to the fact they were probably never getting out of here. But I was determined. I’d put Lucy in this position; I’d get her out—one way or another.
“The bar,” Kat suddenly piped up.
“What?” Lucy asked.
“The bar. He goes to the bar and drinks until he blacks out,” Kat smiled.
“Only when he’s pissed off,” I reminded her. She smiled. I knew what she was getting at. If he went to the bar to drink, he wouldn’t be at home monitoring the cameras and watching our every move. It would be our only chance, but I could never just suggest he go and have a drink because he’d know something was off, and waiting for him to decide to go for a drink of his own accord would be like waiting for rain in a drought.
“So, we piss him off,” Lucy said eagerly, suddenly getting some long lost confidence back. “It’s not that hard. I seem to do it all the time.” She smiled mischievously and almost proudly. It was a rare sight to see.
I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but I did. She was right. She had a knack for pissing him off more than any of us. Kat started laughing too, and it wasn’t long before Lucy joined in. By that stage, I think we were laughing at the ridiculous situation we were in—stuck in the basement while my father installed cameras to spy on us and planning to make him angry enough that he drinks himself half to death so we can escape before he notices.
“It’s too risky. Whenever he’s that mad, one of us gets seriously injured,” I said, shaking my head.
“It’s worth the risk, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.
I shook my head. No, it definitely wasn’t worth the risk. I couldn’t risk Lucy or Kat getting hurt. If we were going to do it, I had to be the one to take the fall. I could take the risk, but I could never ask them to do the same. It just wouldn’t be fair. Women always end up dead when he gets that angry.
Now and then, part of me would wonder whether his anger problems came from losing my mother, or whether his anger was the reason for my mother’s death. I could never work out the truth. He loved her. I knew that much. And her death really took its toll on him, but was it more because of guilt or loneliness? I’d probably never know. And that was probably for the best. I’d like to believe that he wasn’t always this crazy, that maybe once upon a time, there were some redeeming qualities in him. Anything that would explain why my mother loved him.
Hendrix
“HOW WERE YOU able to come to the bar and see me every night?” Lucy asked one morning while we were lying in bed, staring at the ceiling out of boredom. The two weeks was nearly over and it couldn’t come fast enough. I enjoyed the peace and the time we could spend together alone but two weeks was a long time with nothing to do but play cards, and pretend to make out in bed in case Ray watched the cameras.
“He let me out.” I rolled over to face her.
“And you never thought to alert anyone in the bar?”
I smiled sadly at her and reached over to brush a strand of hair out of her face. “He’s been doing this undetected for a long time, love. Most nights he’d follow me and sit in the parking lot, watching. The night I took you, he was in the bar. He gave me his nod of approval.”
Lucy gasped. “He had it all planned out, didn’t he?”
“He’s been doing this for twenty years; he’s careful. He knows what he’s doing and how not to raise suspicion. When he abducted Kat, he locked me in the house for three days with no food while he crossed two state lines to find her. She was on holiday, which was why he picked her. He knew the police would focus their search for her there and not consider that she could have been taken by someone out of town. He’s smart.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was smart. Too smart. He’d never give up the security code to the garage door willingly and was too clever to be fooled into it.
“Why me, Hendrix?” Lucy’s voice trembled, her eyebrows pinching together as she frowned.
Why Lucy? There were a million answers and not one of them would make her feel any better. I thought about what I wanted to say, and how I could explain why I’d chosen her.
But there was no way to put it in words. It didn’t matter what I said, it would never make it right. Everything about having her here was wrong.
“I can’t answer that, Lucy. I’m sorry.”
“Did you hate me?”
“No.”
“Was everything before that night a lie? Were you just trying to fool me into thinking you were actually interested in me?”
“No. I’ve never lied to you, Lucy. Not once.”
She stared at me expectantly, but I didn’t know what to say. How could I tell her that I had chosen her for the simple fact that I actually did care for her? It made no sense–not to me and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense to Lucy.
“Do you remember the first night I came into the bar?” I asked her, hoping that she didn’t. It wasn’t a good night, but she nodded.
“Yes,” she whispered. “We’d run into each other at school and you showed up at the bar that night, like a stalke—” her whisper turned to a gasp as realisation sunk in. “But, that wasn’t the first time I’d met you, was it? I’d seen you before and didn’t realise.”
I could almost see her thoughts as she pulled away from me. I reached my hand out and wrapped it around her waist, bringing her closer again. I liked feeling her near. It was a comfort and I had a feeling we were both going to need it.
“You were dirty. Mud was caked on your boots. I remember because I cursed you all night for making me clean the floors after my shift.” She let out a breathy laugh while I remained silent, letting her work through the details alone. “Your face. You had a bloody lip, dirt on your face, under your fingernails. Blood. You had blood on your shirt and hands. I asked if you were okay and you shrugged. Ordered a whiskey and said you were better than the other guy. Hendrix! I assumed you’d just been in a fight in the parking lot. But you hadn’t, had you?”
“No, love.” I shook my head solemnly. A tear escaped Lucy’s eye and I wiped it away.
“Who was it?” She sniffed and stared straight into my eyes, determined to get the truth.
“Her name was Amy. Ray picked her up from a park one night. She was homeless—no one would notice her missing.”
Lucy bit her lip to stop it from trembling. “And?”
“You don’t need to know this. Not the details.”
“I want to. Please?”
“He brought her home, showered her, cleaned her up. Kat looked after her for a few days. Fed her, built up her strength. And s
he was so… so grateful that someone had stepped in to help her get back on her feet. But, she had no idea what she had stepped into.”
Another tear rolled down Lucy’s cheek. I hated seeing her sad. Pulling her closer until her head was resting on my chest, I wrapped my arm around her and continued. “She was sweet, innocent. Thought Ray was just looking out for her. Until he mentioned the wedding. She was supposed to be my wife. And in some ways, I wish she was.”
Lucy flinched in my arms, no doubt hurting that I’d said I wanted someone else. “If she were my wife, you wouldn’t be here. You would be safe, working, studying. Living your life the way you were meant to. But at the same time, I’m glad—” I paused trying to think of the right way to word it. “Glad she didn’t work out. I’m happy you’re here.”
“Why?”
“Truth?”
“Yes.”
“You might not like it.”
“I need it.”
We lay there in silence for a few minutes, my hand twirling the ends of her hair and her soft breaths tickling my skin. I thought she might have fallen asleep until she raised her head and looked at me. “Well?”
Rubbing a hand over my face, I mumbled, “I can’t do this without you.”
“What?”
“You. I need you. I’ve tried, so many times in the past but I’ve never been able to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Play happy families. Those girls Ray killed because they weren’t good enough to be my wife. Their deaths are on my hands. I couldn’t convince Ray that it was real. I couldn’t convince them to go along with it. I couldn’t even talk myself into trying harder. They’re dead because I didn’t care enough about them to do whatever it took to keep them alive.”
That was the cold hard truth. Lucy jerked out of my arms and sat up, curling into a ball, she bit her fists as she let my words sink in.
“But, Kat? She’s still alive.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Kat’s not mine. She’s Rays. She’s strong and doing what she must to stay alive. Would I try to save her? Yes. Protect her? Of course. Over you? Not a chance.”
