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My gaze slowly lifted, ignoring my bare legs, the short hem of my skirt, the easy access it provided for hands - and other body parts - that wanted to do a different kind of damage to me.
No.
I couldn't think about that either.
The floor beneath my body was smooth in texture, marred with splatters. My gut twisted with the idea of blood, but they weren't the reds of fresh blood or even the brownish stains of dried. They were greens and tans and cobalt blues - paint.
Almost directly across from me was the staircase, long and narrow as it had felt descending in the dark, a railing holding on by one struggling screw, half hanging out of the wooden beam it was connected to.
The door at the top was wooden but maybe deceptive, maybe one of the security doors like Daddy had on all the outside entrances to our home, with metal bars inside.
Finished with that, with the impossibility of reaching them thanks to a chain that implied I maybe had ten feet of freedom. Not enough to get to the bottom, let alone ascend. My eyes drifted to the right, finding the source of the breathing I had heard before.
A woman.
Not like me.
Older.
Older by at least a decade and a half. Thirty, maybe, with the slight creases beside her green eyes to attest to the years I had yet to experience. Her brown hair was long and stringy, a mess of grease and knots around her wide shoulders, ends falling to toy with her round breasts, unconfined by a bra, nipples peaking out of the thin off-white material of her shirt, objecting to the cold of being below ground. Her face was angular, a cat's face, with eyes not nearly as keen. Unnaturally subdued actually. Drugged, maybe. It would explain the blank look to her face, the way her body slumped back against the wall, legs cocked out at a painful angle. Pain she wouldn't feel if there was something coursing through her veins to prevent it.
Her body was unmarked, though, not like mine, not bleeding and bruised and aching.
Her head lolled to the side, unobstructed by working muscles, making my belly feel wobbly all over again, cringing at the idea of that being my fate, an animated corpse, a body to torment while the mind went elsewhere.
I looked away, uncomfortable, the way a dying creature makes you feel wrong for watching it wither away, like it deserves the dignity of at least not being seen crossing over.
I didn't expect anyone else.
When my gaze went to the other end of the room, I expected emptiness, or useless things - old milk crates or boxes, musty forgotten belongings.
But me and the dead-girl-sitting were not alone.
This girl was younger though.
My age.
Faces like hers were deceptive, though, all soft and fleshy, one that said she would be carded well into her forties. Maybe she was sixteen, maybe nineteen.
But either way, pretty.
So pretty that, even in this ugly situation, I could still feel a twinge of jealousy at her shoulder-length blonde hair that was natural if her brows and lashes were anything to go by. Her lips were oversized, pouting almost, naturally so, by design, not choice, and the kind of pink that made you think lipstick, but judging by her greasy roots, I figured that was just their natural hue.
The eyes, framed with thick dark blonde lashes were a startling shade of blue.
And they were looking at me, watching me as I inspected her, as I looked over her like a judge to a dog seeking their AKC title.
Blank.
But not drugged, not unseeing, just not emoting.
Unreadable.
Her eyes didn't roam over me, didn't compare my straight-up-and-down body to her perfectly curved one, didn't notice my clean hair as I noticed her dirty, didn't take in the injuries to my body as I did hers.
The edge of her lip was scabbed over, a gash an inch long, a split that had to have been caused by a cruel hand. There was a band of blue around her throat, purple at the edges, rounded like fingers.
Choked.
Someone had choked her.
There were spots on her white top, too, dried blood drops around the deep U of her neckline, the material saggy and weak like it had been stretched to that shape, as though it had been forced wide to allow...
No.
I swallowed hard as I watched her watching me.
"Do you know where we are?" I heard my voice ask, quiet compared to my usual tone, but it rang out shrill and startling in the silent space, making the girl on the other side gurgle on her spit as this one jerked her head back slightly at the sound. "How long have you been here?" I added as she said nothing, just kept looking at me. "Are you chained too?" I tried, unable to see her legs as they were under her, cocked to the side.
