She didn’t consider them monsters at first because she was too afraid. Disorientated. Confused. There wasn’t enough clarity to understand what was going on. Maybe she didn’t want to understand. If she didn’t understand, didn’t force herself to face the facts, then she could pretend this wasn’t happening. That somehow she’d strayed into a nightmare like The Twilight Zone. She’d wake up soon.
But she didn’t.
The nightmare wasn’t in her head.
The nightmares had become reality.
She didn’t hear much of what they said, but one sentence stuck out to her, carved itself into her soul.
“Hush now, girl. You belong to us now . . .”
Reality became stark, lucid and inescapable with the first rape in the back of the van that first night.
A girl always remembers her first time.
She was kissed tenderly, lovingly, and amazingly on a perfect summer day by the boy of her dreams. On that nightmare summer night, her virginity was torn from her, painfully, violently, and terrifyingly in the back of that smelly van. Their sweat-soaked hands kept her screams bottled up inside and her arms clamped down at her sides. She fought until she could fight no longer. Her tired muscles gave out, she closed her eyes, and she used Maddox then for the first time as a sort of trance, a meditation . . . his beautiful smile, his tender kiss, his loving touch.
The other times, they weren’t as stark. Weren’t as memorable. Was it because the horror became monotonous? Or because her brain could only handle so much trauma? Maybe the drugs. She’d gotten used to the drugs.
They gave them to her that first night when they dragged her into the house. She was fighting again at that point, screaming, clawing at them. After the injection, they dragged her down the basement steps. Her vision was hazy, her body going limp, but she did see the cockroaches scuttling across the floor as one of them flipped the lights on. She saw the stained mattress, chains, and a large door in front of her, like the gateway to hell.
At some point she passed out, her eyelids too heavy to fight. She thought she saw other girls, thought she smelled blood, but she no longer could distinguish what was real and what was a dream.
The smell caught her a few hours later, like the roadkill she and April had found once when they were younger, poked and prodded the thing until the smell became too much to bear, the iron-y scent of dried blood, the musk of decay. Its pungency yanked her from unconsciousness, or maybe it was the pain. She felt it then in her side. Her ribs screamed with every small movement, every breath. It brought visions of the van, and the car she collided into, the fists that rained down on her and the clunk of her thin body against the basement steps.
It wasn’t dark. She thought that was cruel, on top of it all. To show her where she was, to light the bloodstains on the floor. Harsh fluorescent lights illuminated the concrete walls aged with filth. The floor—which served as her mattress—was cold, the concrete dirty. She observed the stains again, all various shades of crimson. She didn’t want to think about what they were.
She did anyway.
Wants didn’t mean anything in a place like this.
Ri tried to sit up, out of habit more than anything. She didn’t know why she should want to sit upright, be conscious, move from the stained, smelly floor. She wanted to try and lapse back into unconsciousness. She should just close her eyes and drift back to sleep . . . perhaps she would wake back up in her own bed. She’d never thought of home as home before, never wanted to spend any time there, dreamed of escaping and never returning. But now, now she begged God to be taken back, to be told this was all some horrible nightmare. She’d never spoken to that being, that thing people worshipped at the small church in town. Orion had thought it was all bullshit. But she was desperate right now, so she pleaded God for this to be a nightmare.
It wasn’t. And as she took in the metal clasp around her ankle and the chain that connected her to the concrete wall, she began to weep, wincing from the pain it brought her.
“Don’t try to move too fast, sweetheart.”
Ri jerked, the voice catching her off guard, even though it was soft and kind. She didn’t understand soft and kind anymore.
Ri searched the room for the owner of the voice, but the lights were too bright, searing her eyes, the back of her head, spots clouding her vision.
“Help me, please,” Ri rasped, sobbing through the words.
Someone scoffed. “There’s no helping you now, baby.” This voice was different. Sarcastic.
“Shut up, Jaclyn!” the first voice snapped.
A hand settled on Ri’s shoulders, gently helping her upright. She didn’t have it in her to flinch. The hand on her, no matter how gentle, all but peeled the skin from her flesh. Someone strange touching her, it caused the memories to rush back in. The van, the loss of her innocence at the hands of two vile pigs. She was dirty. Defiled.
That only made her sob more.
Through her tears, Ri took in the girl she’d come to know as Mary Lou. Her strawberry blonde hair was tangled, messy, but not dirty. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, which made the dark circles under her eyes all the more prominent, even in the dull light. She looked older, maybe in her early twenties, and the thought of their age difference sent a shudder down Orion’s spine.
How long has she been in here? she thought, her stomach turning.
Mary Lou smiled warmly, as if she could sense Orion’s turmoil. The smile—more importantly, how genuine it was—surprised Orion. Such a smile seemed foreign in a place like this.
Mary Lou placed her hand on Ri’s cheek. The gesture was meant to comfort, so Ri didn’t flinch away from the touch because of the girl’s kind smile. She didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
“Are you okay?” Mary Lou asked, a concerned wrinkle in her brow. “I mean, considering.”
She asked it like the answer could be anything. Like somehow, in this basement, this cell, with the rancid smell of monsters all over her, the rancid presence of them inside her wasn’t real.
Ri couldn’t fake it, couldn’t pretend to be strong. Before this, she’d always thought she was tough. She weathered abuse from her parents. Poverty. The ridicule from those at school who considered her to be trash. She had none of that strength now. It was stolen, scooped out of her like everything else had been.
“I hurt so bad,” Ri sobbed, all semblance of strength crumbling away from her like the weak shield it had been. “I’m so tired.”
She was. Exhausted. She wished she could sink into the concrete, the ground, and sleep forever. She didn’t just want to sleep, she wanted to die. It was the first time she’d wished such a thing, and it would certainly not be the last.
Mary Lou wiped the tears from Ri’s face. Ri regarded what the girl was wearing. A white hospital gown with tiny blue flowers covering it. She expected it to be dirty—they were surrounded by filth after all. But it was spotless. Ri looked down to see she was wearing the same thing. She was clean. How could she be clean? The dirt and grime clung to her, was embedded in her bones.
“Where am I?”
“That’s a good question,” Mary Lou said. “We call it The Cell. Not very original, I know.” She fumbled with a chain wrapped around her ankle. It was attached to the wall just like the one around Orion’s ankle. “Truth be told, we don’t know where we are.”