by JB Duvane
I spent that evening laid out in the master bedroom, my phone in my hand, watching her until I fell asleep. I wanted to bring her out of the room but I wasn’t sure what she would do. I knew she was going to fight and that wasn't going to make things any easier with the servants.
Mama had her methods. She said that if a woman was disobedient you hurt her. If she was good, you appreciated her. Obedience was the standard in the Valice home and as an adult, I was used to getting my way. But Charlotte was her own woman, and every act of disobedience brought on a strange mixture of excitement and anger.
I wanted to see how far I could push that disobedience in her. I wanted to feel her squirm and resist but then beg me for more. And I knew she would. She would have to.
Because as things were now, letting her go would mean she would have to die.
Chapter Ten - Charlotte
Time moved at a snail's pace. There were no windows in the room, just a small bathroom with an enormous bathtub in one corner, so I had no idea how long I had been there. I wanted to smoke like a maniac but none of my stuff had been brought into the room. Apparently I was quitting cold turkey.
While I was asleep, food had been brought to me and put through a hole in the cinder block door multiple times but I hadn’t touched any of it. I was starving but I didn’t trust these people.
I was too amped up to sleep more than an hour or two at a time, but the room was kept cool, so rather than pace around, I found myself huddling under the covers and counting dots in the flocked wallpaper to pass the time. I picked the small shards of glass from my feet and legs and arms while I waited for someone to come. Someone had to come eventually.
While I lay there, my mind went over everything that had happened, and all of the things that led me to this place. Then, of course, I moved on to my father. I thought of how he was probably suffering already, dying of thirst or hunger. Maybe he was searching through old carryout boxes for something edible, cursing me for leaving him. Why I cared I don't even know. But I did. He was the only one who had ever meant anything to me. He was all I had, and I was all he had.
There was Maddie, the club, all of the girls that walked out onstage, but they weren't the same. They had their lives and people they cared about. They had their own families to worry about. They didn't need some girl tagging along looking for a mother or sister she never had.
At some point I hoped that maybe my mind was like a cup being tipped over so that all of the water inside it slowly trickled out. That eventually there wouldn't be anything left to ruminate over. But that wasn’t the case. My mind spiraled out of control, running over the events of my sad life over and over and all of the people I wished cared about me.
But it was clear to me that this was where I was meant to end up. This was what I deserved. I had been born a killer and I had lived my life hoping for redemption, but there was none of that for me. There was no amount of running I could do to escape my life. This was my life.
After years of sadness and longing I was now left with nothing. Mind-numbing, maddening, nothingness. It’s what I deserved, but I didn't know if I would be able to take any more of it. Even in my cell I had to do something. I had to fill the spiraling void with something.
Even people like my dad, who spent years on the couch had to have something to keep his brain active. To distract him from his reality.
I got up with the comforter wrapped around me like a protective shell and stood over the vanity drawer that was sitting near the pile of glass. Inside it were fine ivory combs and hairbrushes. There was a set of old-fashioned curlers and a box of bobby pins. In another drawer there were fancy bottles of fingernail polish.
“Oh, you want to me make myself look sexy!” I yelled, almost playfully.
I grabbed a bottle of dark red fingernail polish and opened it up, pouring it onto the floor. “How's that for fucking sexy motherfuckers?”
I took another dagger-shaped shard of glass the size of my hand and wrapped it in my pillow case so I could hold it while I approached a space between the front door and the dresser they'd set up for me. Then I used the glass to cut a gash in the paper. It peeled away, revealing that same solid gray brick behind it. This gave me something to do. A project.
I couldn't help but think how meaningless it was, peeling away the felt and the paper, scrap by scrap with my bleeding sore fingers, but it was just stimulating enough that it made me feel like I might be able to make it through the monotony. Just enough activity to distract me from my infernal thoughts.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than one of the gray bricks on the door pulled away.
More food, I thought to myself as I watched a silver tray appear through the hole.
I scurried over. “Hey! Hey! Let me out of here!” But within seconds the hole was sealed again. In front of me sat a muffin with flecks of streusel on top, along with a grade-school carton of milk.
I took a look at the muffin. It was bigger than my hand with chunks of almonds, and when I peeled the wrapper off I noticed that it smelled like cinnamon and apple. My mouth started to water and I picked off a small piece.
At least it wasn’t gruel or rotten scraps from the garbage can. As far as I was concerned, my hunger strike was over. The broken mirror was proof that whoever was holding me here didn't care whether I lived or died. And if the food was poisoned maybe that meant I would die sooner than later. So I decided to eat.
I took it back to my bed along with my milk—which turned out to be chocolate—and began peeling away the rest of the wrapper slowly. I put the piece I had torn off into my mouth, savoring the sweet taste. I closed my eyes and sipped the chocolate milk and felt a dreamy haze fall over me.
I opened my eyes, and tipped my head, the room looking like it stretched on for miles and miles. It grew darker and darker as the lights dimmed until there was nothing left. I tried to sit up and grab the glass shard, but an overpowering warmth and something sweet like a good cocktail were swimming through me, so I decided to lie back down instead.
I closed my eyes again. If something in the room moved it didn't matter to me. Everything felt so good. I was drifting on an amber cloud of opiates and I never wanted to leave. I floated in dreams where I ran through fields of flowers and laughed at the birds in the sky. In my dreams there was someone there, someone watching and smiling down at me. Someone who wanted to take care of me. To take away all of my pain. Someone who wanted me.
“You're beautiful.” There was a warm kiss on the forehead and a gentle finger grazing my jawline as I lay in a field of grass. “I hope you know that, Charlotte. I hope you really feel it. I do. And I'm sorry.” Sadness and warmth rolled together as the cloud of opiate bliss swelled around me.
My eyelids fluttered open and I sat up to look around.
How long had I been asleep? I thought as I realized what had gone on around me while I dreamt of freedom and beauty and the touch of someone who loved me.
Everything was back the way it was when I got there. The door was closed, the vanity and everything on it replaced, and when I felt for the shard of glass, my hands hit a piece of paper. It was rough, and made a scraping sound when I dragged it across the pillow.
It reminded me of a king's decree, or an ancient letter written to a long-lost love. The parchment was meticulously yellowed and frayed at the edges with green, reflective script, etched expertly by a man who understood the art of penmanship. It said:
Dearest Charlotte,
I know you're angry and afraid, but there is no reason to be. You are here because you're worthy of admiration. You are safe. You will not be harmed or forced to do anything against your will. Please, enjoy yourself and should you need anything, just say it out loud and it will be given to you.
R
“You've got to be kidding me,” I said to the piece of parchment in my hands. “Enjoy myself? I want six tons of C4 and a fucking machine gun, you sick fuck!” I tore the paper until the pieces were too small to tear. Then I threw th
em at the door.
The cinder block was pulled away again and a green package wrapped in black silk ribbon was pushed through. I ran over to the door but the cinder block was replaced before I got there. I picked up the box and slammed it against the door. “I don't want shit from you.” I slammed it again. “You hear me? Let me the fuck out of here! Now!” I screamed as I let the package fall to the floor at my feet.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked the cinder block walls.
I couldn't cry anymore. All of my tears had been drained, and there was no way, aside from screaming, for me to express the way I felt and the things I was feeling—the righteous anger, the overwhelming helplessness—they needed to be expressed, because expression meant release.
But that was the only release I would ever get because I knew I was never going to be let out of this place.
Chapter Eleven - Charlotte
It wasn't that I didn't have the ability to fight. I was going to fight. I was just too drained from all of the screaming, the yelling at the air, and that ever-present force. I had felt it all along and now I knew. He was watching everything I did.
I fell back against the wall with the gift-wrapped box in my hand and slumped over until I was sitting on the ground with my knees in my chest. The dim light from the chandelier hanging above me caught the box, making it seem like a glowing emerald.
I knew what was inside, not really of course, but I knew what it meant. It was another game for me to play so I could give in to his sick fantasies while he watched, with his tiny prick in hand, as I played out whatever fetish had driven him to lunacy.
I was there to press the button that would make his cock quiver, and I wasn't going to let that happen. The problem was that I didn't know what that button was. Was the fight a part of his fetish? He'd planned everything out so well. He constructed this doll house for me to live in, hired men to abduct me and all so he could test his hand at dark psychology. The man was probably smart enough to know that I was going to be as destructive as humanly possible.
That was probably why he'd gone to all the trouble to make replicas of what I was starting to refer to as doll furniture. That's probably what I was to him: a moving doll, one that he would probably want to control, but the infuriating thing was that I didn't know how he wanted me to act. If I knew then I might be able to figure out what he wanted from me so badly that he had to go to all the trouble of kidnapping me and sealing me up in this ridiculous prison. And maybe I could use it to get out.
The box might have a clue. It might not. He was probably really good at this game. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was going to end up getting his dick hard no matter what I did. Control was probably what got him off.
So I set my defiance on the back burner, turned it on high, and waited until it boiled over while I acted on curiosity and opened the box. Inside was a pair of my plain old jeans, frayed at the knees, and at the bottom an old Tweety Bird shirt I used to wear around the house.
Sitting on top was a note reading: Come as you are.
“No!” He saw my hair. He saw my insecurity. He had been inside my home. “No.” I looked up, my eyes darting toward the corners of the room. “What do you want from me?”
I wasn’t going to let him get away with this. There was no way I was going to play his fucked up game. Even though I knew that no matter what I did I was forced to play. I got up and walked toward the vanity, kicking it against the wall. The mirror didn't shatter immediately. Instead, it cracked. So I kicked it hard and the glass burst out, sending a long shard flying past my leg toward the side of the bed. I slowly wrapped the shard in silk, using every bit of fabric I could to make sure that it was sufficiently covered. Then I walked back with my weapon in hand toward the pile of clothes near the door.
“See this.” I grabbed the shirt and held it up, spinning it around in case he didn't have a good look. “I'm going to make something fucking clear to you, you piece of shit. If I have to spend my entire life here in this demented prison, then I am going to spend every second of it defying you.” I stabbed through the shirt, and drove the glass down, shredding it in the middle.
The task occupied me for a while, and it fed my need for defiance as well as distraction, but it didn't take long for me to get bored and fall back down to the ground, tracing my fingers along the carpet.
I looked at the mirror in my hand and wished I could turn it on myself. Not yet anyway. Give me another few days in this place and I might just change my mind. It would be the ultimate defiance. I would take away the thing he was trying to keep all to himself. Did he know that I might not have the strength to do that, though?
The sound of the cinder block grinding and the fake door opening roused me. I sat up and another note was pushed through the hole. You will eat tonight in the dining hall or you will go without. Wear what you'd like.
It seemed that I'd found the button that would piss that prick off: stubbornness. He wanted to control, and that was not going to happen, so I walked to the bed, ignoring my raging stomach, and threw myself under the comforter.
I laughed. “I'm not going.”
Chapter Twelve - Charlotte
I sat up against the headboard with the comforter thrown over my body, covering everything. I was doing it to infuriate him. I decided that anyone who would do something like this was addicted to watching others, so I covered my body at all times.
I had also started up my hunger strike again. If the man did have an interest in keeping me alive, going without food long enough might spur a reaction.
I mostly spent my time on the bed, taunting the air. “Are you doing this because you're deformed?” My voice was raspy. “I'll bet you are, huh? You're so fucking ugly even the toothless bitches at the club wouldn’t fuck you. Oooh, I figured it out, didn't I?” I snapped my fingers. “What is it? Is your whole body covered in skin flakes? Do you have growths? I'll bet you're just some pathetic burn victim that's so ugly you can't go out in public.”
I went on accusing him of being a beast or a phantom or Norman Bates. Everything that was going on seemed to be straight out of some strange novel where the girl was held captive by a deformed madman, and I figured if the shoe fit …
“I think I hit a fucking button with that one, huh? Do you wear your mother’s hair like a wig and cuddle with her dead corpse at night? What was it like when you scalped her?”
I was laughing to myself, picturing a limping Quasimodo lurching through the dark halls of this place, when suddenly the brick door flew open on a hinge and crashed against the wall. I was shocked to see the massive barrier of cinder blocks move. I sat in the middle of the bed staring at the figure that filled the doorway.
It was a tall man, maybe five or ten years older than me. His shoulders were incredibly broad underneath a plain white button-up shirt. I was also shocked by how handsome he was. How his deep, dark eyes immediately hypnotized me and overwhelmed me. And the dark hair and eyebrows that framed them took my breath away.
He took a step toward the bed and I snapped out of my stupor, barely having time to pull the blanket up to my chest before I felt it being ripped off. I jumped off the side of the bed and grabbed the mirror sword I had tucked under my pillow. He hadn't been able to drug me with his food or milk since the last time, so thankfully my weapon was still there when I reached for it.
Before I could use it, the shard of mirror was flung to the ground and the sheet that I held to my chest was ripped away from me. He grabbed my wrist and held it tight as his eyes burned into mine. He had a square jaw with wild, cold, black eyes, not devoid of emotion. On the contrary; he appeared to be excited, his teeth clenching and his head lowered so that he was staring straight down at me.
“I am not Norman Bates.” He almost looked amused as the words came out of his mouth.
I took a step backward, careful so as not to antagonize him, but kept my eyes on his. “This whole time and you haven't even touched me. What do you want?” I grabbed m
y crotch like a thug, putting on one of my stripper personas to see how he would react. “Is it this? Why the fuck else would I be here?” I raised my voice, but I was careful not to get too carried away. I had no idea what his deal was. He could be a killer or a slave trader for all I knew. Or he could decide to leave me here to rot in this bizarre room if I pissed him off too much.
“You wanna pinch these nipples.” I pinched them and watched the tension bolt through him like a cartoon cat with ruffled fur. His face even flushed a little, which was odd for someone with his obvious control issues. “You've got money, I can see that. You've got power, or else I wouldn't be here. But I'm not what a man like you wants. I'm no catch.”
He let go of my wrist but continued to stare down at me, his eyes growing wider and darker the longer his gaze met mine. “That's not true.” He was being sincere. “You're perfect.”
“Perfect for what? What are you talking about?”
“I've been watching you for a long time, Charlotte. I've seen the pathetic home you lived in with your father and I've watched you many times at the club you work at.”
“Red's? Was that you there the other night? The private session?”
“Yes, that was me. I wanted to see you, Charlotte. The real you. I wanted to see what was underneath the acts you put on. They're all acts, aren't they? Even this one.”
I didn't have any idea what to say. I didn't understand how he seemed to know me so well. To understand. He had to be making this shit up. He had to be bluffing. But that night I had felt it. I had wanted to show him the real me, until it got too intense.
“Why would you say that? This isn't an act. I'm not putting on an act for you or anyone else.”
“Oh? I find that mouth of yours hard to believe. That beautiful mouth of yours that spews out filthy words just to get a reaction.” He reached out and touched my face with his hand, gripping my chin and pushing my lips out gently. “So beautiful.”
