by Anne Malcom
They passed people. Orion knew this. She saw them in the peripheral. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, she guessed, and she became familiar then, for the first time, with a sickening feeling, something she’d later know as PTSD. The way her skin crawled when strangers were around her, a hot, tingling sensation that made her sweat. She tried to focus on Maddox, and the pained way he smiled at her as they approached.
“Feel better?” Eric asked, pushing the elevator button as he eyed their new attire.
“Not the most comfortable or flattering thing you could find, I’m guessing,” Jaclyn said, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, those are Clark County Sheriff’s Department issued,” Eric said, smiling.
Orion floated in and out of their conversation, her attention still focused on Maddox and the pain in his eyes. Sounds around her were distant, almost muffled.
Until a conversation rang in her ears. A familiar voice came from behind her.
“Why the hell didn’t you delete the emails? She was bound to find them.”
“I know, I know.”
Something in Orion pinged, something sharp. A recognition. A memory. She looked at the shoes of the doctor who spoke. The first, chastising one. They were so shiny the lights on the ceiling bounced off them. His pants had tight creases on the front of them and a Rolex glittered on his wrist. A familiar glitter. She saw his eyes then, pale blue, and the memory clutched her throat.
Laughter. Not happy. Something born in a cruel, depraved place. Chains clinking. The room is dark, and it reeks. Shadows come forth. She’s immobile, trapped. He shushes her like a child. That shadow, the glitter of a Rolex from his wrist. He tries to quiet her screams.
A piercing ding of an elevator jerked her from the memory. The nightmare.
Orion watched the doctors enter, her eyes fixed on the man with the pale blue eyes and the laugh that followed her to hell. She stared at his badge hard enough for her vision to blur. Her feet moved toward the elevator of their own accord.
She would’ve entered if not for the hand that grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back from the abyss.
She jumped at the contact. Unwelcome, always unwelcome. There was never going to be a point in her life when someone touched her, and she instantly relaxed into it. The first three seconds would always be dirty, painful, and nothing short of torture.
Her first instinct was to swing, to fight, even though she’d stopped doing that against them years ago. Even though she learned the hardest of ways that fighting got you nothing but more pain.
The hospital disappeared with the grip on her arm.
She was back in the room with the shadow.
The shadow who is a man.
The man who is a monster.
He has pale blue eyes and he wears a thick overcoat. He never bothers taking anything off. He simply unzips and takes his forty-dollar prize. Thing One had told her once, in a fit of rage, that that was the going rate for her agony. Forty fucking dollars.
Orion is on a bed.
It’s dirty. Stained. Some of those stains belong to her. Liquid that used to be hers, drawn by these men. Stolen by them.
Each of her legs is cuffed to a bedpost. Her hands are over her head. Sometimes they liked to let her fight. They enjoyed that. Others didn’t want to bother with the farce, they wanted to take, painfully and easily.
He is one of those.
Orion wants to squeeze her eyes closed until it’s over, dream of other places, other lives, but she keeps them open. A leftover from a stubbornness in her former life. Her former self. Her eyes stay open so she can remind herself this is no dream.
And that’s why she sees the badge tumble from the overcoat pocket and onto the bed. In slow motion because everything here is in slow motion.
Clark County Regional Hospital, Dr. Bob Collins, Oncology.
He snatches it up quickly. Quick for him, maybe, but not Orion. She cements the image in her mind. Even when he tries to beat it out of her.
The room was gone.
The stains, the smell.
There was only Maddox, or the man that Maddox was now. Hands held up, palms facing her. In surrender? Shock?
Those were the hands that went to her shoulder. Those hands were what yanked her back into the past. No, it was Dr. Collins.
“Sorry, Orion,” Maddox said, eyes wide and troubled. She scared him. What she had turned into.
Good.
“That one was going up,” he explained, nodding to the elevator. “We’re, uh, we’re going down.”
Orion nodded.
Down.
Made sense.
But she turned her gaze to the elevator. The doors as they closed.
Dr. Bob Collins. Oncology. It was him alright.
She was lost in this new world. Since the past ten years of her life had been about getting out, she never thought about what she’d do or how she’d feel if she ever did. But now she was out and she didn’t recognize anything going on around her. The small screens in everybody’s hands. The feel of all the lights on her, blinding her, exposing her. Even the stars in the sky, that she took in for the first time in ten years when Maddox and Eric rushed them into the back of the van, were foreign to her, like some distant dream she’d wake up from at any moment, her face once again using a concrete floor for a pillow.
She didn’t know where she was going.
But she knew where she had been, and she knew that the stain of her captivity wouldn’t be something she could just wash away, or talk away to some asshole with a psychiatry degree, or hide away in some distant part of herself, to never see the light of day again. No, these scars were permanent, tattooed on her soul, and she knew it then, for the first time, that her only salvation would lie in the destruction of those who robbed her of herself.
Blood could cleanse her.
And revenge now had a face and a name.
A job title.
Dr. Bob Collins.
And now, now Orion had a purpose.
Orion had been avoiding mirrors. She hadn’t looked in one since she was in the bathroom at April’s house when she was just a girl, fussing with her hair and biting her lips to try and make them redder, swollen. Kissable. She didn’t dare look at herself now. She didn’t want to know how ugly she’d become.
The Cell didn’t have mirrors. They didn’t want to give them anything they could attach identity to. Ownership.
The hospital had them, obviously. Windows reflected. Orion had caught snippets of her slim, long, womanly body. Raggedy almost. Her hair thin and dehydrated.
She hadn’t seen her face though.
Her hand wiped the condensation off the mirror, steam still rising from her skin after her scalding shower.
She forced herself to look. Her skin was faintly pink, slightly burned from the temperature. Hot water was all she could cope with; she was trying to get the water to melt the dirt from her skin.
Her face was blotchy, her freckles gone now. She had spent so much time in her childhood wishing for them to disappear. Trying to sneak her mother’s makeup to cover them up.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she muttered to the woman with clear skin and tired eyes.
Her face was slim. Gaunt. Everything was a hard edge. But that made sense. She had been lucky to get one meal a day for the last ten years, a can of soup usually, so everything on her body was gaunt. No fat. No muscle because they didn’t want them strong, able to fight. Orion suddenly promised herself she’d start getting strong. Building muscle. Running. Maybe this hotel had a gym.
She continued to stare at herself. Wet hair flat, clinging to her skin. It was long now, almost to her butt. She wanted to cut it, die it, rehydrate it, and she noted then to make a hair appointment when she had some money. Maddox said stipends would be coming soon, and more money than we would know what to do with eventually, once the bureaucracy of it all was worked out.
Her eyes were the worst part. There was nothing in them. Empty. She couldn’t do anything about that
though. No eye salon she could go to. She bent down and splashed cold water on her face.
A child giggled.
Toys clattered.
The room changed.
Memories from her childhood were fractured, almost gone. But not this one. The one where she played with blocks. Her mother watched her, but she looked different. Almost beautiful. Cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and unhappiness hadn’t chipped away at that beauty yet. Her baby brother gleefully played beside her.
“Oh, Ri, Ri. Momma loves you so much,” her mother says, pinching her chubby cheek.
Orion snapped herself back upright, back into the bathroom.
Her reflection was different now.
Not empty, but full of tears. Of lost memories. Lost lives.
Adam.
That was the last time she’d think his name. The last time she’d remember his smile. It would kill her, those memories. That loss. That blame. It lay at her feet. If she had been more fucking sensible, she would’ve made it home. She would’ve figured out a way to get her brother out. To protect him.
But she didn’t, and he was dead. Revisiting memories of him would do nothing but cause her more grief, nothing but bring thoughts of the things she wished she could say.
Orion snatched a towel from the rack and held it up to her face, inhaling the smell of cheap detergent, the feel of something clean and dry. She’d not had that in so long. Showers and clean towels.
Memories.
She forced them down like the vomit crawling up her throat at the thought of her mother.
Her dead mother.
Cancer, Maddox said. Orion would’ve put her money on an overdose. But since she didn’t have any money, she didn’t have any to lose. She hadn’t had a mother to lose either. Not really. Upon reflection, cancer sounded about right. Sickness born from her insides. Punishment for her sins. Or maybe she’d willed herself into it. If anyone could do something like that, it was her mother.
She always had an ailment. Her neck. Her back. Her migraines. Her fibromyalgia. Anything to get her a little attention, give her an excuse to lay in bed all day. Orion’s disappearance did that also. But then her father. Her brother. She hadn’t been strong enough to survive in this world alone. She couldn’t handle it. Orion could only laugh at the thought. Outsiders might’ve believed this story of a saddened mother, dying of a broken heart because all her family was gone.
Orion knew better.
Her mother’s love for her had died long before the cancer ate her up.
Orion forced herself into the clean, cheap clothes. Underwear that were simple and a little too big. They weren’t anything special. Cotton, plain. Probably from Walmart. But to Orion, they were precious.
She hadn’t worn underwear in ten years. A reminder that even the most basic necessity wasn’t hers.
She emerged from the bathroom to the smell of grease, of food, of that hotel cleaning solution. They had been given the opportunity to order whatever they wanted for dinner. Eric had showed them his phone—this rectangle with a color screen was a fucking phone somehow—and pulled up something called UberEats and had let them choose the restaurant.
It should’ve been a gift, that choice. But for three women deprived of choices for so long, it was cruel. Shelby likely had more experience with technology than Jaclyn and Orion, but she wasn’t exactly in her right mind. Eric hadn’t meant it to be cruel, of course. He was trying to do a good thing. Good things were lost on them, though. And the list of restaurants, of foods that they didn’t recognize—what the fuck was kale?—was too much for them. It had caused them all to retreat back to The Cell.
Shelby had started to shake uncontrollably, looking to Jaclyn for help. The strong woman just blinked at the screen, as if she were a robot malfunctioning.
Orion tried to speak, tried to save them all from looking like pathetic victims who couldn’t figure out which fucking food to eat. But the words were jammed in her throat, stuck like she remembered a potato chip might be.
She gave Eric credit, it didn’t take him long to clock his mistake. A handful of seconds, really. Which was long enough.
“You know, how about I just get you a bunch of my favorites?” he said, moving the phone back, tapping at the screen. “I’m an expert at this stuff since I can’t cook. My job doesn’t give me time to go grocery shopping, and, well, I’m lazy.” He winked.
Orion knew it was a lie. A man with clothes that pressed and muscles that sculpted was anything but lazy.
But he was kind.
He ordered them a bunch of food they wouldn’t be able to get through in a week before disappearing. Maddox wasn’t with him. He’d left them once they arrived at the hotel, giving Orion a look that had words of his own jammed in his throat. Their reunion had been awkward and weird.
She was glad he was gone.
Shelby was picking at a donut amongst the fast food graveyard. Pizzas, burgers, pasta, soda, milkshakes, and fried chicken. Each thing more delicious than the last. The women had gorged themselves, hence Orion retreating to the shower, to wash off the grease in her pores.
Jaclyn stood from the bed, hand to her stomach. “I think I’m dying,” she declared, cradling her bloated stomach.
Orion chuckled. “That’s what happens when you eat an entire a burger that has donuts for buns,” she said, shaking her head.
Jaclyn glared. “Don’t be all high and mighty, I was just trying to be polite. Not waste food.”
They went silent, looking at the buffet amongst them. Even now, the scraps that were left were more than they got in a week combined. Once, Orion had been sick. From the air. From the abuse. From the half-rotted food, she hadn’t been sure. But The Cell had stank of vomit and her stomach clenched when Thing One brought in the food. She gagged at the smell. Couldn’t even look at it.
She soon was taught what wasting food meant in The Cell.
She jerked back into the room. Both Jaclyn and Shelby’s eyes were far away too. Despite the hotel room. The shower. The food. The beds, sheets, clothes, underwear. They were still there. Parts of them would always be there.
“Can I talk to you both about something?” Orion asked.
Jaclyn rubbed her stomach but reached for a milkshake on the nightstand.
Orion shook her head, cracking a smile.
Jaclyn flipped her the bird. “Spit it out.”
“I saw Bob at the hospital,” Orion muttered, her face going pale.
Both women froze, Jaclyn with her lips still around the milkshake straw. She swallowed roughly. “Who?”
Orion narrowed her eyes. “Dr. Bob Collins.”
She had shared the name with them when she was brought back to The Cell. When she could speak again, open her eyes without wanting to smash her head against the wall.
It had been shared between them in whispers. The name. They each held on to it, for whatever reason they held on to anything. The monster had a name, and that took away some of his power. That’s what they told themselves anyway. He still had the same power as before. All they had was his name.
“Are you shitting me?” Jaclyn snapped, slamming down the milkshake, pink milky liquid spilling over. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Orion blinked. “I . . .” She tried to figure out why she didn’t scream. Why she didn’t snatch the gun from Maddox’s belt and sprint through the hospital until she found him. Why she didn’t tell the two cops who had just promised to bring them justice.
Why had she just woodenly followed Maddox into the van and to the hotel?
“I was in shock, I guess,” she muttered, shame saturating the words.
“Are you sure it was him?” Shelby asked softly.
Orion evened her gaze. “Positive.”
There were things you forgot. Keys. Names of people who didn’t matter. The combination to your locker, if you were April.
But you did not forget the look, sound, and smell of a man who tortured and raped you regularly like it was his right.
“Why didn’t you tell the detective?” Jaclyn asked, not softly. Neither of the women had probed her on the familiarity between her and Maddox. Because they knew her. Knew she hadn’t begun to process it.
Orion shrugged. “I don’t know what I was supposed to say. We’re the victims, remember? Had just come out of imprisonment of the worst kind. He was a doctor sporting a fucking Rolex. I’m guessing he’ll spin some fabulous story about our mental states and our memories being damaged by trauma or whatever.”
Already, various therapists had been pushed on them. There had even been one there, waiting for them, offering to stay in the room with them. None of the girls could hide their disgust at that, and Eric had thankfully gotten rid of her.
“Well, saying nothing is worse than the fucking blue-eyed detective thinking you’re crazy,” Jaclyn snapped. “Newsflash, we are crazy. We’re always going to be that way, no matter how many shrinks they push on us. What were you thinking?”
Orion picked at a cold fry, out of shame more than anything. “I was thinking about other things.”
“Like what?” Jaclyn demanded.
Orion looked up, discarding the half-eaten fry. “Like feeding him his own cock,” she said blandly.
Jaclyn rolled her eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
Orion straightened her spine and narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious,” she bit out. “I want to kill him. I want to make him feel everything we felt in there.”
Suddenly, the need was overpowering, like starvation. A thirst for blood, for revenge. She hadn’t let herself think about this until just then. She’d numbed it all. But it was crystal clear to her. Because she was right. Even if she told Maddox, even if he believed her and tried to do something about it, the doctor would have lawyers, prestige, money behind him. Probably some Botoxed wife who stood by his side, defending him.
She was just a girl from the trailer park who got snatched up and ruined.