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“Fine.” I swallow hard as I watch Agnes slip the paper from the envelope and start reading. “Bye.”
Carolyn disappears out the door. I was the one that asked her to come this evening, but nothing seems to matter to me anymore besides Agnes.
My heart clenches in my chest as Agnes puts down the slip of paper and turns toward the largest of the gold-leaf mirrors, the one hanging on the wall above my great-grandmother’s old dresser.
“Fuck,” I hiss, running a hand down my face to grip my chin as I wonder how I can stop what’s about to happen.
I was complicit in all the challenge tasks as they were imagined then assigned to each participant. They are nothing that would cause harm, but they are intended to raise the tension, the fear, and our other, shall we say, enhancements, will only add to that.
I watch the grainy monitor and try to focus on her face. She’s upset. I can see it in the way she’s squeezing her lips together, then putting her fist against them, looking around the enormous room. She’s yet to make a sound since she entered but I swear to God I can hear her heart beating.
I hate myself right now. More than I ever have in my life. In fact, I don’t remember ever hating myself before. Everything I did, have done, I always had a reason. A justification. But, right now, I can barely hold back the gut-wrenching guilt of making her go through this stupid task.
Fuck. I can’t watch.
But I have to. She walks to the mirror holding the piece of paper, sits it down on top of the dresser as instructed…
Then she just stands, staring at herself. That’s not what the note told her to do, maybe she’s just taking a moment. Her task was one of those old legends about looking in the mirror while saying the name of someone that has passed away. Someone suspected to be still a presence. In this case, the name she was supposed to repeat while looking in the mirror was her great-grandmothers.
God, I’m an asshole.
Go to her.
I can’t, I’ll fuck up the whole deal. All the preparations, all that’s at stake, will be for naught.
Go to her. This time it’s not my own voice I hear in my head, it’s somewhere next to my ear, and I spin around in my chair as a chill races over my skin.
No one is here. You’re buying into your own bullshit.
I snap my head back to her monitors, she’s looking down at the note, then at the mirror…what she does next should infuriate me, should disqualify her, but I swear I fall in love with her instead.
She raises her right hand, clenches it into a fist then flips the bird into the mirror, then down at the note before snatching it up, tearing it into smaller and smaller pieces before grabbing it in her clenched hand and disappearing behind the door to the lavatory. The next thing I hear is the sound of a flushing toilet and I think I just came in my pants.
She’s a fighter. She’s not going to take any of our shit, money or not. She knows someone might be watching and she’s just told us to shove it.
I’m mesmerized.
The next hour, she sits on the bed, then moves behind the dressing screen we put in everyone’s room so they could at least have some privacy when they changed clothes.
Man, how I wish I hadn’t made that decision now. But, it’s too late, she comes back out after tossing the gold gown over the top of the screen, wearing a purple crop top t-shirt that shows off the bottom curve of her incredible tits and to top it off, she has these horrible, grandma sort of fuzzy slippers.
And her underwear. White cotton, simple bikini cut, dead sexy. All of it. Even the fucking slippers.
Fuck, she knows there are cameras. What if I hadn’t shut down the other monitors? Those fucks would be looking at her right now and I’d have to go down there and probably kill them all.
I’m frozen in place as I watch her spin and dance around the room, the crop top lifting when she lifts her arms, settling when she goes down low to sweep the floor. I get flashes of that fine ass when she twirls, the panties pulling up on one side when she lifts her leg, pointing her toes.
And her singing.
Man, she could sing lullabies that would calm the world. She could end wars with that voice. Is there no end to this girl’s talents?
I listen as she laughs, amazed by her simple joy in singing and dancing. Then she stops, turns to an imaginary audience and takes a long, low bow, before pulling a book from her bag, flopping into the bed and drawing the candle closer as I zoom in.
