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As the doors pour open, I scream, “Graham!”
When I don’t hear anything, I step inside and gaze around carefully, making sure to check the hallways. I may be pissed, but I won’t let him catch me by surprise. Holding my bat tight, I push open the doors, but no one’s here. It looks deserted. Has it always been like this?
I admit, I barely know anything about this guy. Only that he’s a bastard, using and selling people as he pleases, all for the money. As clients, we didn’t get to see the regular entrance or the insides of his compound. We were limited to two rooms, and that’s it.
But I expected him to have hordes of helpers, men who also benefitted from his scheme. Except no one’s here. Did he scale down or stop entirely? Or was it all just a ruse and did he make me believe there was more behind this whole operation than his crooked soul?
“Graham?” I shout out again, hearing my own voice echoing off the walls.
Water drips from the pipes, but I don’t let it distract me.
That’s when I notice the man stepping out from a room ahead. He’s cleaning his hands with a towel, throwing it into the room and closing the door behind him.
It’s him.
Accompanying Song: “Roomful of Teeth” by Courante
“How did you get in here?” he asks.
I snort. “That’s the first thing you ask?”
“I locked the doors tight,” he says, raising a brow.
I narrow my eyes. “Doesn’t matter.”
He bites the inside of his cheeks as he saunters closer. “No, you’re right. What does matter is … why are you here?”
“I’m one of your clients.”
“I know,” he muses, pointing at his face. “I can tell.”
The mask. He recognized it? His memory must be amazing then. Or maybe he taped us while we were there, which wouldn’t even surprise me. It’s a smart move. But wearing a mask was even smarter, in this case. Still is.
“Are you unhappy with your purchase?” he asks, approaching.
Even though I’m holding it beside my body, I still clutch the bat tighter. “She … has a birthmark.”
He stops in his tracks and licks his lips. “Hmm.”
I wonder what he’s thinking. If he finally understands what it means. If he’ll tell me the truth, or if he’ll lie.
“The exact same one,” I say.
A pause follows.
The air is thick with volatile electricity.
Slowly, he begins to nod.
The air is sucked out of my lungs.
“The other woman … was she her mother?”
The nodding doesn’t stop, and I’m left with no breath … and feeling like I have no pulse.
No spark left inside my body except rage.
“You could’ve just asked me,” he says, chuckling a bit.
My blood is boiling. “What did you intend to use her for?”
“Babies. Obviously. What else?” He shrugs as if it’s no big deal that he would make her have babies … and then sell them all. “But she was infertile, so I couldn’t use her at all. Shame because I had plenty of potential men in mind to inseminate her.”
In a fit, I grasp him by the collar. “Shut up!”
He holds up his hands. “Calm down.”
“No. Tell me about the other two you’re keeping in here. The others who were next to her in that cage. Are they still here?”
He jerks himself free from my grasp and adjusts his clothes as if I sullied them. But it’s not me who tainted him. He was already disgusting to begin with. “They’re still in there … safe and sound with me.” His nostrils flare. “But that’s none of your business. You’re not getting them. They’re not for sale.”
I clench my bat tighter, and in response, he pulls out a knife from his pocket. “Careful now …”
He cocks his head. “Don’t want to play this game with me?”
I spit on the floor. “You’re disgusting.”
He shakes his head. “So are you.” He chuckles again. “We’re two sides of the same coin, you and me.”
“I am nothing like you!” I scream. “Do you hear me? Nothing! I kill people like you.”
As I raise the bat, he swiftly swipes at me with the knife, barely scraping the skin around my ear. A small trickle of blood rolls down … along with the wire holding my mask together.
And it drops … to the floor.
Fuck.
I scramble to pick it up. Too late. A grimace and then a grin spread on his face like wildfire.
In a desperate attempt to hide, I push the mask to my face, holding it in place while I tread backward. He has cameras everywhere. If they even caught one glimpse of me, I’m done for.
Too late to think about it. Too late to do anything because he’s following my every footstep. And he’s replaced his knife with a gun he pulled from his pocket.
“Get out,” he hisses, stepping closer.
I march backward, clutching the bat closely to my body to protect myself. “I’ll destroy you,” I say.
