by Kayla Krantz
I feel a poke on my shoulder. Convinced that it’s Kaylee coming to criticize me—again—I turn around, rather stiffly throwing on my best fake smile. I’m surprised to see a young man, maybe a year older than me, with bleached-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. My eyes trail over his black three-piece suit, and I snort to myself as I continue to stare.
Even his clothes are fancier than mine.
“May I have this dance?” he asks, stretching out his hand to me.
Such a straightforward question, but I have no idea how to respond. I glance over at Miranda. She’s standing alone on the edge of the crowd. She hasn’t been asked to dance yet. My gaze shifts back to the boy, and my fake expression returns.
“I’m sorry, you’ve made a mistake—Miranda is over there.” I point to my sister.
He lifts an eyebrow, confused by my reaction. “Ah, Madame… I saw her, but I would like to dance with you.”
My own confusion only grows at his statement. I step back from him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Destiny and Miranda’s availability usually determines my level of participation in events like this.
“Yeah, alright,” I finally agree.
I put my hand in his and let him pull me into the middle of the dancing crowd. I glance around again, trying to catch a glimpse of my sisters, Kaylee, or my father. I want to see the looks on their faces, but the crowd is too thick for me to even see through, let alone pinpoint the location of my family.
Gently, the man swings me around, and for a moment, I’m almost able to forget where I am…and who I am. For the first time in years, I feel happy. It’s unsettling. The song comes to an end and he bows to me, a smile lighting up his beautiful features. I smile back at him, but quickly let it drop. Every little bit of good in my life is usually countered by something bad.
Would this evening wind up as another case of Murphy’s Law?
“Thank you, ma’am. Would you care for another?”
I graciously decline, fearing for his safety when I catch glimpse of Kaylee’s straight red hair nearby. I’m not used to people taking interest in me, but it will be bad for him if my father sees it. My sisters are the stars of the family—I may as well be a troll. The man seems upset, but doesn’t say a word. I want to ask him his name, but I can’t work up the courage to do so. I squeeze his hand before abandoning him in the crowd and heading straight for the buffet table. I grasp a paper cup, trying to push away my biting thoughts. I drain the punch completely before crumpling the cup and moving to the outer edge of the party. My gaze sweeps over the crowd of people, but the man I danced with seems to have disappeared.
I think about him despite myself—who was he? What’s his business here?
Miranda and Destiny aren’t plagued by these kinds of thoughts. They are in the center of the crowd, laughing and dancing as they pass from partner to partner. Like a disease, I think to myself, watching them eat up every ounce of attention they get from men and women alike.
For just a moment, I envy them.
Their lives are so carefree, so fun. They never feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. The spotlight falls on them, and them alone.
I drag my eyes away and see that Kaylee has vanished again. I assume she found her way back to my father and the reporters.
Maybe I can skip out after all, I think, glancing toward the open glass doors beside the foyer. They overlook our garden, and at night—when the moon shines overhead—they reflect the pond in the distance.
The tension in my shoulders eases as I wander away. The noise of the party fades into the distance. I sit on the small stone bench beside the pond. A sigh escapes my lips as I gaze into the deep darkness of the water. I enjoy solitude more than I ever will the company of my family. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I make sure that no one has noticed my escape, and I travel deeper into the garden.
I suck in my breath sharply and a sudden pain fills the back of my skull as I’m sent flying into the dirt a few feet away. I groan, struggling to prop myself back up again. I touch the back of my head, and pull my hand back, only to see my fingers are covered in blood. A wave of nausea washes over me, but I hear the sound of something closing in, footsteps behind me. I try to roll over to catch a glimpse of my attacker, but all I see is a brick in the darkness before my world swirls to black.
***
I REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS, my breathing hot and rugged. I open my eyes to nothing but blackness, and that’s when I notice the burlap sack over my head. I swallow roughly and try to move my arm so I can rip it off, but my hands are bound behind me—and so are my feet. I try to wrench any of my limbs free, and when that doesn’t work, I resort to screaming—which I could if it weren’t for the gag stuffed into my mouth. My breathing becomes quicker; I’m on the verge of hyperventilating. The air leaves my lungs faster than I can draw it back in.
This is how it ends! I think, slipping to the verge of consciousness once again.
I try to take another strained breath when the bag is ripped off my head. I’m blinded by the light, then I begin to adjust to my surroundings. The room is eerily clean and beyond white—the brightness radiates from the walls and ceiling. The floor is covered with a beige carpet and there is a metal desk beside me. That leads me to believe I’m in some sort of office building.
“Good to see you’re awake,” a voice calls from nearby.
I swallow hard as I turn toward the source. My eyes widen. It’s the boy I danced with only hours before. The collar of his button up shirt is undone and blood runs down his chest.
I know it’s mine.
“Wh-what do you want?” I ask, the gag muffling the sound.
“Hello, Doll. I’m sure you have plenty of questions,” he says, pointing a gun at me. My eyes are so focused on the weapon that I don’t notice he has approached me until the gag is pulled from my mouth. I draw in a fresh breath of air, feeling the panic begin to ebb.
“Where am I?” My voice sounds rough and cracked as I move my head to scan the small room. If it was an office building, there’d be some sort of watercooler—the punch served at the dance seems a long time ago.
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that,” he assures me as he sits on a stool a few feet away.
“Why am I here?”
“I need you to make a little phone call to your Daddy,” he sneers.
His motive pops into my mind and the fear disappears. “Ransom. You’re holding me for…ransom?”
He nods.
I laugh, throwing my head back to exaggerate it all. My cackles echo around the room, sounding much like a madman. He watches me, eyebrows pinched together in confusion as he tightens the grip on his gun. Will he shoot me for my outburst?
“What are you doing?” he demands.
“I’m sorry, but your notion—it’s ridiculous.” Water streams from my eyes as I drop my chin to look at him.
“How so? The Senator is loaded,” he says, pointing the gun at the ceiling as he studies the details on it. “Your whole freakin’ family is.”
“Yeah, maybe so. But if you want a piece of it, you grabbed the wrong daughter.”
“It doesn’t make a damn difference. He’ll want any of his rich-bitch daughters back. Now enough of this. Time to make a phone call.”
“I’m telling you—it’s a waste of time,” I insist, dipping my head to the side.
He glares at me and holds the receiver to his ear, dialing the number. I try to pull off the binds tied to my wrists as he switches to speakerphone. We wait as it rings four times.
“Hello?” my father finally answers.
“I have your daughter, Mr. Abrams. If you ever want to see her again, deliver one hundred thousand dollars to the abandoned warehouse on the edge of town by midnight,” he orders.
“Please don’t hurt her,” he pleads, panic rising in his voice. “Put her on the phone, let me know she’s okay.”
At the sound of my father’s concern, I’m petrified. It’s a surprise to hear that tone
in his voice. It seems odd, foreign.
The boy stares at me. That’s your cue, his eyes seem to say.
“Hi, Father,” I mutter.
There’s silence on the line for a long time. I wonder if he has someone working to trace the source of the call.
“Victoria? You have Victoria?” He pauses for another moment. “You can keep her—you’d do this family a huge favor by getting rid of her!”
The line clicks, and he’s gone. The boy scoffs, staring at the phone for a moment before turning toward me, eyes blinking rapidly in disbelief. I bow my head, trying to keep the tears from flowing. I let myself believe he cared for a second, and now that even that has been ripped away, my heart literally hurts. I knew my father regretted my existence, but never had he made that fact as blatantly clear as he had tonight.
I bite down on my bottom lip.
“Might as well kill me off now. He ain’t gonna pay a dime.”
“What the hell just happened?” The boy asks, lifting the gun to scratch at his temple.
“Twenty years ago, Senator Abrams had an affair—and I was the result. He never meant to have me. Never wanted to take me in either, but then my mom died. It would’ve hurt his publicity to let me go into foster care. I’m the shame of my family—the Black Sheep, if you will. If you wanted your ransom, Destiny or Miranda would’ve been your targets. Even Kaylee would’ve been worth something.”
“You’re still his daughter…and he left you for dead.” He stares at the phone before standing to his feet. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah. What do you care?” I straighten my spine as I look at him.
“I know what it’s like to not have a parent give a shit. My dad bailed before I was born, and Mom—if you can call her that—was a serious heroin addict. Sometimes days would go by before I saw her again.” He turns his back toward me at the beginning of the speech. I’m sure he’s hiding his emotions.
“Is that how she died?”
“Why do you assume she’s dead?” he snaps, pacing across the room, refusing to make eye contact.
“You’ve ended up here—this story obviously has no happy ending.”
“Well, you’re right about her death, but drugs didn’t kill her. I did,” he says. “Out of spite. I couldn’t take it anymore. That place—those people…it needed to stop.”
“That seems a fitting nickname for you—Spite,” I laugh. “So that’s why you need money?”
He nods, turning toward me again as he slides down the wall. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
“Sounds like you don’t have much time to figure it out.”
He sighs and looks at the ceiling. I can see the frustration and worry in his eyes. Despite the binds holding me to the chair, I want to help him. I scrunch my face at the thought, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I’m still in pain from the wound on my head—the injury he had given me—but I feel sorry for him.
“If it means anything, I could get you the money you need,” I offer.
Spite shoots a glare my way, suspicion in his eyes. “Why? Why would you do that after what I’ve done to you?”
I shrug. “You actually need it—more than my father ever did. I don’t know you, but I don’t feel you’re a bad person. Just desperate.”
“That’s the truth.” He breathes through his teeth.
I wipe my chin on my shoulder to get rid of a stubborn tear clinging there. What will come of me now that my fate rests in the hands of an unstable, desperate man?
“I’m sorry your father is such an asshole. I—I felt bad, when I approached you at the dance, knowing I had plans to kidnap you. But it seems you’ve had it much worse before I came along.”
“What happens now?”
“I’m not gonna kill you, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says, slamming the gun to the floor.
“You’re just gonna let me go?” I ask, raising my eyebrows in surprise.
“When I saw you, I thought you were rich and snobby. But during our dance, I saw the real you. Something was different about you. You were so…uncomfortable…unhappy. Now I see I was right—you’re like me, born into a crappy life you don’t deserve.”
“At least you understand what it’s like. Untie me, I want to help you.”
His eyes cloud with suspicion again. “How? How could you do that?”
“I have a debit card, and I know my father’s bank information. I can get the money, and you can go on your way just as you planned.”
“Y-you would do that for me?” he asks, stumbling to his feet.
“Yes, I would.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?” he snarls, folding his arms across his chest.
“Look at me…do I seem the type? You heard my father, he doesn’t care if I live or die. I’m not going back there—I can’t take another day of it.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying if I get you that money then I’m coming with you.”
He plasters a toothy smile to his face. “You have yourself a deal, Victoria.”
***
MY HEART BEATS out of control as I wait in line at the bank. I feel like everyone has eyes on me, though not a single person looks my way. When I come within range of the security camera, I duck my head into my coat to keep my face from view. The clothes that Spite loaned me are baggy on my slender frame. For a moment, I wonder if this is what it feels like to rob a bank.
“Next!” the teller calls.
I approach and give her the Senator’s account information. She glances between me and her computer before asking for ID. After confirming my name on the account, I withdraw twenty-thousand dollars, convinced he would barge in at any moment to stop me. I watch her count it all out in hundred-dollar bills, silently praying she would move faster. When she finishes, I smile, stuffing the money into the duffle bag Spite had given me before I thank her and rush out the door.
Spite waits for me in a black Buick LeSabre, pushing the door open as I approach. I climb into the passenger seat.
“You get it?” he asks, peeling out of the parking lot.
“Twenty-thousand. I know it’s not what you asked for, but it was the best I could do without him noticing it’s gone right away.”
“It’s perfect,” he says, reaching out a hand to grasp my thigh.
“Once he finds out it’s gone, he’ll come after us,” I caution.
“We can get out of here and leave that all behind,” he says, moving his hand back to the steering wheel.
“Not quite—one last thing.”
He raises an eyebrow, casting me a sideways glance. “What do you propose?”
“We fake our deaths and leave these awful lives behind for good.”
Is there a Heaven or a Hell? How are we so sure we aren’t already in one or the other?
What’s paradise to some is damnation to others.
The Empty Glass
“HELLO, VINCENT?” I call, standing in the open door of the freezing room. No response. I wonder if he went on his lunch break already.
I never seem to make it in time to escort him. I frown to myself, glancing over my shoulder as I step further into the room, prompted by curiosity. I turn on the light. Shockingly white tiles glare back at me from the walls and the floor. I’m almost blinded for a moment as I stumble a few more steps forward.
I’m not supposed to be in here without a doctor’s supervision, but my urge to explore is top priority. Vincent won’t mind—though I’m not sure what the other doctors will think. A sense of unease prickles through my spine as I wander through the white room, trying to keep my eyes off each of the four distinct corners.
I know what waits in them. It’s a chilling thought.
Bodies lie on cold, gray gurneys. Three of them, each in their own corner, as if they shouldn’t be too close to one another. Most people would feel sick at the sight of them, but death brings me peace—it’s familiar. I come to the medical examiner’s office a lot.
My fiancé, Vincent, interns here, giving me the opportunity to spend a lot of time in this cold place, watching the nameless faces pass through on their journey to burial.
They have names, of course. I just never bother to learn them.
I wander slowly toward two of the bodies. One of them has already been partially dissected for his autopsy. The deep gash runs from his collarbone down to the base of his stomach, dividing his torso in two. His organs are no longer there. They’re set in a bowl on the other side of the room. Only his hollow body remains, looking almost like a slab of meat—if you can ignore the sallow face perched just above it.
My eyes trail upwards to the last remaining human part of the man—the part that still shows emotion, even in death. His neck is bent at a crooked angle. It almost looks painful, then I remind myself that he cannot feel anymore. His eyes are glazed over with blown pupils as he stares into a void forever. I observe him carefully. Even though he can’t see anymore, I still feel as if he watches me hovering above him. His blank expression is permanently fixed on nothing. I can’t help but wonder what kind of a person this man had been in life.
I tear my eyes away from him and look toward the gurney in the other corner. An old woman lies there. She has the same stillness of the man I had just observed. She’s a larger woman, her body rigid from rigor mortis—obviously a recent death. Her life passed through God’s fingers only hours before, so soon in fact that her autopsy hasn’t been started yet. She lies here, in the same position she had been at the time of her death, and in the same naked state of her birth. One of her heavy arms seems frozen by her side at an awkward angle. I guess she died curled up in the comfort of her sleep. Luckily for her, she hadn’t suffered.
I shiver, looking around this cold room of death. Seeing the bodies in the office always makes me feel both hints of sorrow for the inevitable, and gratitude for the life that I have been given. While our bodies are left to stare into nothing, where do our minds go? Our souls? Do they wait near their bodies, watching what is left of themselves in the world they have left behind?
