After I have Peyton wrapped up in a blanket, I head into the living room and see Eric is standing by the door with his jacket on waiting for me. “We’ll have to be quick about this,” he mutters lowly, like the seriousness of what we’re about to do is finally settling in.
“I know, and we will. We’ll get out of this, Eric.”
He turns to look toward me, scans over my body. “You’re sure you want to do this? You want to leave?”
Immediately I nod. “I can’t stay here anymore . . . I can’t . . . not with . . . not with the t-things . . .” I lose track of my words as a chill runs through me at the memories.
A hand over my mouth. Cloth being wrapped around my eyes so I couldn’t see. The hand being replaced with duct tape, and then hands . . . so many hands going over my body. It was hands . . . and then it was other things . . . then my clothes were being cut off and . . .
Eric’s fingers against my cheeks pull me back into reality as he wipes my tears away. “You were thinking about what they did again, weren’t you?”
I don’t nod, but I do lock eyes with him.
“I told you not to think about it. You were chosen, Vanna. It was to be viewed as an honor, not a trauma.” Eric said he understood my feelings after it happened, how he knew I was afraid, petrified of even leaving our small two-bedroom house. But in times like this I don’t think he understands at all. It’s almost like he’s defending them for their actions.
Instead of replying I hold Peyton in my arms and walk out the door. Eric follows closely behind me and we make our way through the hole in the fence. I hand Peyton over to him while I squeeze through and then he passes her to me and I hold her while he makes his way through, then covers up the hole with some old shrubbery so it doesn’t look suspicious.
“I hate it when you act like it was okay for them to do it,” I tell Eric as we make our way through the field, now a good distance away from the compound. Kansas has never felt like home to me, but that place . . . it felt like Hell. I might be half a mile away from it, and still it feels like my body is now relaxing, knowing I’ve made it out of such a horrid place.
“They were elders who chose you, Vanna—”
Lights surround us and my heartbeat intensifies while an unsettling feeling sinks deep in the pit of my stomach. I clench Peyton to my chest tighter and rush off to the right, but I’m swiftly grabbed by the back of my hair and my precious baby girl is ripped from my arms.
“No, no, no! Eric!” I scream my husband’s name. “They have Peyton, they have—” and it’s that moment I realize the person who’s holding Peyton in his arms is none other than my husband.
It all sinks in, how he betrayed me . . . what he did here . . .
How could he do this?
“You never take a child that belongs to our family from us, Vanna,” Matthais states with an authoritative voice. He’s the leader of these lunatics. I call them lunatics because I’d never call them people. They kill women who are unmarried and dress provocative, those who they deem are filth that walks the earth. Their favorite way to end their lives is to drown them, believing they’re cleansing their souls and the Earth as well. Ironic how these fascists kill women for being promiscuous but will rape wives of their members. Yet the wives are told it is a great honor.
It’s anything but that.
It’s horror.
“How could you do this to me?” I question my husband, finding it difficult to swallow this pill.
“I’d never do anything to harm our daughter, you foolish woman. How stupid are you? She’s in the safest place she could be here on the compound, not out in the open with all the violence . . . all the sick people out there who’d want to hurt her. How could you fall into such a doubtful mind, Vanna? You were such a believer, and now . . . and now you’re nothing but a void, a shell of a woman I used to love so much.”
Tears stream down my face, not only at what Eric’s done, but what he’s condemning our daughter to. I know it’s more than likely I won’t make it out of here alive, but to force her into this life, into a life where she’ll eventually be raped too when she’s of age . . . it sickens me. There’s no way I could’ve stood back and let this happen to her. I needed to fight, and at least I tried . . . I only wish I tried harder.
Out of nowhere a strong throbbing sensation strikes at the back of my head and within moments my vision is blurred. Soon enough the darkness takes me.
Blinking my eyes repeatedly, it takes me a few moments for my vision to focus in on the scene around me. I tug my arm in an attempt to wipe the beading sweat off my face, but quickly realize I’m bound to the chair. Looking down, there’s duct tape wrapped over my mid-arm, confining me against the arms of what I believe is a wooden chair.
A drilling sound comes from my left and I instinctively turn to look at the sight, but as I turn my head my chair’s being turned in the direction of the sound. Instantly, I know I’m not alone in this room. The drilling sound comes to a sudden stop and I breathe in deeply through my nose. The eeriness flooding over me is enough to make me nauseous, so nauseous I could throw up right now.
I look through what appears to be glass and on the other side is a woman with light brown hair. She’s strapped down to some sort of medical chair and the straps remind me of what you’d see in the movies, especially those old school asylums.
The drilling sound suddenly comes back on at full force and the woman in the chair screams, thrashes her arms, legs, anything she can. It’s now, I realize her mouth is forced open with some sort of contraption, and the man in the room with her must be a dentist. Either that or he’s one of the people Matthias hires to torture people . . .
“Do you know what’s happening right now?” Matthias’ voice comes from behind me and a chill runs straight down my spine. Suddenly, the breath I took a few moments ago escapes me. I knew I wasn’t alone, but I had no idea it was him who was in this room with me.
“I don’t have a clue,” I tell him honestly, keeping my eyes fixated on the woman before me, even though the way she’s thrashing around is killing me. The last thing I want to do is watch this, whatever this is . . . but I won’t look at this sick man. I refuse to do such a thing.
“My friend in there is filing down her teeth, making them look identical to yours incase the investigators go that far.” His words come out callous, bone picking cold, enough to make a grown man grow nervous.
Matthias has some sort of plan, but what the plan consists of I have no idea. I’m not sure I want to know.
“Vanna, the woman in that room, she’s nothing but a sick individual, offering her body as a way to pay for her next meal. She will be put down soon enough, but I thought she looked quite similar to you . . . similar enough to work. I’ve even gone the extra mile and got a fake I.D. with your name on it attached with her photo, and when the investigators find her, they’ll believe it’s you that’s dead.”
Investigators? When they find her? What is Matthias getting at?
“What are you doing, Matthias?” The man loves nothing more than when people question him. I’m confident he gets some sort of ego boost from it all.
Matthias turns another light on in the room and as he does his sneer tells me whatever he’s about to do is sinister.