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CHAPTER6
CHRISTY
Stripping off my cotton nightgown, I lower myself into the huge bathtub, desperately needing to get clean, and grateful at least that I’m no longer wearing the chastity belt. I don’t know who removed it, and I don’t care. I’m just glad to be free of it. Resting my back against the porcelain, I bring my knees up against my chest and wrap my arms around them, wishing I could be enveloped in my mother’s arms again.
“Mama, why couldn’t I stay with you?” I whisper, tears pooling in my eyes as I rest my cheek against my knees and try to unravel my jumbled feelings of loss, anger, confusion and disappointment. I want to believe that what I saw, what I felt, was my mother reaching out to me from the afterlife, but if it was true and that was her, then why would she tell me to go back? Why would she askmeto healthem?Why would she want me to be compassionate and kind after everything they’ve done to me?
She wants me to fix the unfixable.
How can I? How can sheask me to do that?
They’re monsters.
A sob escapes my throat, followed by a loud keening. I sound more like a tortured animal than a human. Ifeellike an animal, caged, abused, beaten down, broken.
They hurt me.
They used and abused me.
They tied me to a cross and allowed another man to touch me.
I held up the damn mirror and what did they do? They smashed it to pieces.
They. Broke. Me.
I died.
Idied.
My whole body shakes as I sob. It won’t stop. I can’t stop crying. It’s a purging of my soul. It all comes pouring out of me. All of the frustration, the grief, the pain, the absolute loss of seeing my mother again and losing her once more.
It’s knowing that I’ll never leave this place. That I’m a prisoner who’ll only escape through death at their hands. It won’t be swift, there’ll be no mercy.
It will be painful.
“Christy, please, let me in,” Thirteen says, banging her fist against the door. She’s been there on the other side of the wood for as long as I’ve been hiding in this bathroom. It’s been hours.
“Go away!” I shout between sobs.
“Christy. Open the door! Please,” she begs, rattling the handle.
I don’t find any comfort in her voice. I feel numb to it. There’s so much I don’t understand about her role in all of this. Sinking lower in the water, I ignore Thirteen’s pleas. I ignore the echoes of my mother’s voice telling me to stay strong.
Instead, I search for oblivion, because there is no hope for me.
I can’t run because they’ll catch me.
I can’t stay because Grim and Beast will die if they come here.
There’s only one way out.
Making a decision, I slide beneath the surface of the water, finding peace in the muted silence as my eyes drift shut and I open up my mouth, accepting death onmyterms.
But that escape is taken from me, too.
Firm hands grasp my upper arms and yank me upwards, pulling me above the surface of the water before thumping me on the back, forcing any water I’ve inhaled out of my lungs. I cough and splutter, unable to feel the pain of it. Where normally the slightest touch to my back would cause unbelievable pain, now there’s nothing. I don’t have to switch it off, it simply ceases to exist. Is it because something more traumatic has happened to me and I no longer feel the phantom pain? Perhaps.
Blinking back the sting in my eyes, my knees collapse beneath me as I wheeze and gag, whilst a firm arm wraps around my waist. With every intake of breath, I mentally shut down. I fold in on myself, like a piece of paper made into a delicate origami bird incapable of flying away. I’m trapped, destined to crash against the bars of this cage, crushed bit by bit.
