by Anne Malcom
It would’ve been nice to live such a life without all the baggage, all the evil and hatred, the darkness that simmered beneath the surface.
But her life was what it was.
Nothing nice. Nothing sweet. Nothing easy.
Maddox parked in the lot of her building. “I’ll walk you up,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt.
“You don’t need to do that,” Orion said quickly, desperately.
It would feel too much like a date then. It wasn’t. She wasn’t going to kiss him at the door, invite him in, even if small, foreign parts of her wanted that. She knew that sex was never going to be normal for her. Never right. Articles online had told her that eventually she would come to enjoy it, with the right person, but that seemed like a load of bullshit. The right person? Does such a thing even exist?
“Orion,” he said, voice firmer now. “It’s dark. You live in a good building, with good security, but I’m not taking chances with this shit.” Something changed about him then. He was no longer easy, willing to follow her lead. No, this was a man that was in charge, in control.
It sickened her.
And excited her.
Then she was sickened with the small part of herself that found it attractive. Men who liked control were men who liked handcuffs and pain and suffering.
Orion sank her teeth into her lip. “I think I’ll manage the short walk without you accompanying me, since, you know, I managed ten years without your protection . . . or any other cop’s, for that matter.”
It was cruel and mean to say it, but she didn’t care. She needed to mark this night. Stain it. It couldn’t end nicely. That was too dangerous for her. Too enticing.
“I know,” Maddox said, voice tight. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not walking you to your door. Even if it’s a few steps back. Even if you slam that door in my face. I just want to make sure you’re safe. That you’re always safe.”
She scoffed, hated the strength in his tone, but also the surrender. He wasn’t going to fight her. Wasn’t going to call her out for her cruelty. So, she needed to push further.
“I blame you,” she whispered, the words not needing to be shouted to make their point. “You didn’t keep me safe back then, you didn’t keep me safe the ten years I spent in that hell. How the fuck are you going to keep me safe now?”
Maddox opened his mouth to speak, pain in his eyes, but she silenced him.
“I blame you for kissing me. Making me ride home late. Not riding home with me. I blame you for not finding me, and fighting for me, and making sure that fat piece of shit got the justice he deserved. I blame you for a hundred things. For existing in the first place. Because if you didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have been biking home that day.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “Even though none of this is your fault. Even though the blame lies solely on the shoulders of the monsters who took me, locked me up, beat me, and raped me, I can’t help but still blame you. I can’t help but look at you and see them. I hate you a little bit, Maddox. And that’s hurtful, and it’s ugly. But ugliness is all I know now.” She paused. “Ugliness is all I am. And it’s all I’ll ever be.”
She should’ve gotten out of the car right then. Should’ve made that the note she left on. But she didn’t.
“I don’t need you to be pretty, Orion,” he said softly. “I just need you to be you. To hurt, and cry, and ask God, and me, and the whole fucking world, ‘Why? Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you find me? Why does this keep happening to little girls?’ I want to hear it all, and take it all, because, despite what you think, I can handle ugly, and I can handle the anger and the resentment. I can take it. And Lord knows I deserve it. I’ve blamed myself every single day since I let you leave my house alone. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it.” He took a sharp breath, his look intense, brooding. “Now, would you please let me walk you to your fucking door?”
Going against her better instincts, she did let him walk her to her fucking door.
Thirteen
One Week Later
“Jac?” Orion called, unlocking the door after about five minutes of pounding from the outside. She figured that Jaclyn was either sleeping or had her TV up so loud that she couldn’t hear the knocking. It was the new norm.
She had solidified a routine of eating all the foods that had come out in the past decades, all the TV shows recorded, songs released. Jaclyn was on some kind of mission to replace all her memories of The Cell, to sate her hunger throughout the years.
Orion had made sure she visited every few days because she wasn’t convinced that Jaclyn wasn’t going slowly insane. She was worried about her. The visits did not betray this, of course. She came to join her in a meal, a movie, sometimes video games, neither of them mentioning the conversation they’d had about revenge. About Doctor Bob Collins. It was like it never happened.
Neither of them were very good at talking about their feelings anyway. Not Jaclyn or Orion, at least. Shelby seemed to be better than all of them, checking in daily with texts, fucking inspirational quotes. The one part of their little threesome Orion was so sure would be wearing a straight-jacket and living in a padded room was faring better than they were.
It became too hard to try to keep up with Shelby, put on an act for her. Put on that fucking ankle chain every time she spoke to her.
So, they started to talk less and less, all three of them. Drifted apart. Orion couldn’t have expected they would stay in contact forever. They were connected by an invisible chain that would never be broken and would trail after them everywhere they went and everywhere they’d ever go, but that didn’t mean talking to each other didn’t make the chain rattle a little bit louder, make the pain hurt a little bit worse.
Shelby’s family lived two hours outside of the city. None of them had driver’s licenses yet, but Shelby’s father was teaching her. Orion didn’t know how well that was going.
Neither Jaclyn nor Orion had someone to teach them.
Being in the car with April had told Orion everything she needed to know about her skills as a driver. As it was, she was almost certain April had managed to talk her way into the license, because there was no way her driving skills got her there. Maybe she flashed some cleavage and dished out some compliments.
Unless she wanted to rely on someone else to drive her, Orion couldn’t go visit Shelby. And she didn’t want to. That trip with Maddox had been a one-off, total desperation type of situation. He was not her chauffeur. He was not her anything.
Shelby’s parents had seemed nice enough, but they made it as clear as they could that they did not want to be around Jaclyn and Orion. In their eyes, Shelby was still their innocent little girl, and they didn’t want her corrupted.
Or maybe they just wanted to rid themselves of all the reminders of what Shelby had been through, what she still carried with her.
Orion understood that. If she could give herself a lobotomy, she would.
Orion had tried to keep up with Shelby as well as she could, but she got tired of the effort. Got a little angry at Shelby for constantly demanding their attention when she had two parents to give that to her in excess.
They were all navigating their new normal, this new world, and they needed to do it without depending on each other.
A part of Orion desperately wanted to keep in touch. That was her secret. If she could buy them a house to live in as deranged spinsters for the rest of their lives, she would. She missed them as much as she hated to be around them. Needed them as much as she convinced herself she needed no one. It didn’t matter to her that they couldn’t heal with each other reminding them of their wounds. She was one seeping, infected fucking sore, and it wasn’t going to change.
She didn’t want it to change. She didn’t want it to scab over, to itch, to fade away.
She wanted to hold on to it all, every detail, every cut, so she could recreate it on those who hurt her, unleash the rage that engulfed her.
But she didn’t want to bring
the other two into her warped and dark world. She didn’t want anyone peeking around in there, because they were trying to heal in their own ways, and it was selfish and destructive of Orion to try and drag them down with her. To try and bring them along on her conquest for blood, down into the pit she was building, furnishing, and decorating with depraved and homicidal plans.
She wasn’t going to lie to herself, she had wanted them with her on this. She’d wanted partners, someone to share the load with. Share the fear with. Someone who would understand the visceral need to inflict pain on those who harmed them.
Though it helped that she was plenty used to not having any partners. She was alone. A loner. And the sooner she got used to that, the better.
That didn’t mean she was going to abandon Jaclyn. She was a lot like Orion—her family had been trash before all of this, and that was the one thing in this ugly world that hadn’t changed. The trailer trash stayed the same throughout the years. They were like mountains, unyielding, unmoving. Anyone Jaclyn might have in this world would only want to drain her dry and discard her. They only had each other.
So, Orion was carrying a bottle of Tito’s as a peace offering. Orion hadn’t touched a drop of hard liquor since she’d gotten out. She was too afraid of what it might do to her. Addiction lurked in her blood, it whispered to her, the thought of something making everything easier, simpler.
Orion understood why Jaclyn liked it. It was the easier way out, to drink away the pain, to not have to confront the ugly parts of yourself. Or to make the ugly parts seem more beautiful.
Orion decided she would try it for the night. One last effort to abandon her plans. To give herself a chance of living a life without violence. She didn’t have high hopes, but she was going to try. And she couldn’t handle the quiet in her apartment for one second longer.
Plus, she could go for trying some new junk food and watching movies she hadn’t seen yet.
That was what she figured when she hadn’t heard from Jaclyn these past few days, that she was neck deep in her “catch up on her lost years” phase she was still going through.
Orion was worried about her, truth be told.
Sure, it wasn’t really surprising that Jaclyn had dived headfirst into about a thousand different coping mechanisms, each more damaging than the last. Orion wasn’t really the picture of adjustment, fantasizing about stalking and murdering a certain doctor.
But with Jaclyn, it was worse. Every time Orion saw her, she’d lost more weight. Her hair looked flatter, paler, grayer. And mentioning it, as gently as possible—which, for Orion, wasn’t at all gentle—did not end well last time. Orion had never seen her so angry. So rabid.
Orion had given her space, even though it went against all her instincts. Not that she could really trust her instincts since they were all founded on memories of having Jaclyn six feet away and chained to the wall across from her.
“Jaclyn, you really should light a candle or open a window in here. It smells like—”
Orion stopped talking the second she rounded the corner into the living room. Air, words, and life was snatched out of her. Jaclyn’s white, rigid body sat on the sofa with a needle sticking out of her arm.
She didn’t scream. She’d screamed enough for twelve lifetimes. And it wasn’t a shock to see Jaclyn like this, not really. Hadn’t she seen it in her already? The weight loss, the empty eyes, the life draining slowly from her? Hadn’t she lost countless nights of sleep over this exact scenario?
Orion walked slowly toward the sofa, food packets crunching under her feet.
She reached out her hand to check what she already knew.
Jaclyn was cold, dead, and already starting to rot.
Orion left her hand on her cheek, cupping it with a gentleness that Jaclyn hadn’t known in her short, violent life.
Then she sank down to the floor, opened the bottle of vodka, and drank, sobbing like she was fourteen again, blubbering and messy. She cried out Jaclyn’s name into the nothingness.
She was surprised at how much it hurt. How deep the blade cut.
Orion was experienced in death, in having friends die. Having parts of herself rot away and decay inside of her.
She thought she had a place inside of her to retreat, to hide away from the cold, hard world. A heart of stone without emotions, reason, or weakness. One she needed to survive through all of that death and despair, if that’s what she was doing.
Surviving.
That’s what the media called them, survivors. Among other things. Orion had figured their novelty would’ve worn off by now. It had been long enough. She had learned that society had a short attention span, but when it came to serial killers and kidnapped girls, buried bodies and torture, it was focused.
Maybe because of all the other girls still lost. It gave the parents, sisters, and friends some kind of hope. DNA would be coming back anytime now, and the parents of those lost girls could get closure, and could start their “recovery.”
But there was no hope. No one ever came back from The Cell. Not really.
It took her a decent amount of time to call the proper authorities. She couldn’t seem to get herself up off the floor, to feel her limbs. She couldn’t seem to stop drinking the bitter liquid that made her want to vomit but also softened the edges of reality.
It took her back to The Cell.
“We have to get out.”
Orion rolled her eyes at Jaclyn’s words. She had been saying it since Mary Lou was taken away, as if she felt her own time was coming soon.
It was only the three of them: Jaclyn, Orion, and Shelby. Shelby was inconsolable. Orion had lost hope. Every single time they took her, she wished they’d kill her. She wished she’d never be dragged back into The Cell, even more broken and defiled than before.
But somehow, she endured. She closed her eyes and floated away, off to a distant land.
“We are getting the fuck out of here, Orion,” Jaclyn growled, fire in her eyes. Orion had not seen such vigor in Jaclyn in years. “No. Fucking. More,” she said through gritted teeth.
Jaclyn had been steadfast in that philosophy, and she believed in their ability to escape. She was the one who pushed Orion, the one who devised the plan. She lit the fire that had long since died within her. Her fresh eyes spotted the weakness, the places they could exploit. The fact that Thing Two was skinny, addicted to drugs, and would be the easiest to overpower. The times he’d come and get one of them when Thing One left the house. He had been caught and beaten by Thing One before, and he became more paranoid, more skittish. Jaclyn knew that was their chance.
She was the reason they escaped.
And now she was dead.
Orion didn’t know how to grieve her. She didn’t really know her. She’d known the version of her that The Cell had turned her into. Not who she was without all of that. Maybe she was nothing. Maybe they were all nothing outside of those chains.
Half the bottle was gone before she fished her phone from her bag. “She’s dead,” she said, voice flat and words somehow clear despite the amount of booze she had drunk.
“Where are you?” Maddox demanded. He was calm. She guessed he had his cop voice on. She hated that her friend had to die for her to hear it, because she much preferred that emotionless tone to anything she’d heard from him up to that point.
She couldn’t remember the rest of the conversation, but she knew there had been one, since after she told him where she was, he had given her an order.
“I want you to stay on the phone with me, Orion,” he said. “You don’t have to make any conversation, you don’t have to say anything else, I just want you to stay here. I’m going to talk, but you don’t have to answer. Just listen to my voice and know that I’m on my way to you and you’re not alone.”
Hadn’t she just been thinking about how she needed to be alone? How she needed to learn how to handle trauma by herself? Yes. But she stayed on the phone anyway.
The funeral was bad.
Orion
couldn’t imagine any funeral being good, but she would think at least they’d be better attended. As it was, the amount of people here was nothing short of depressing.
Shelby.
Her parents, because Shelby’s parents still hadn’t gotten out of the habit of going everywhere with her. No way could their sweet little daughter do anything on her own.
Orion wondered if they were thinking about how easily they could be attending their own daughter’s funeral. By the way her mother was clutching Shelby’s hands, that’s exactly what was on her mind. Orion worried that Jaclyn’s death would bring an even tighter grip from her parents around Shelby’s life, her existence.
Jaclyn didn’t have any family. No one slithering out of the woodwork with all the publicity and possibility of sucking some money from her. That was when you knew you truly had no one. When not even the leeches emerged for a payout. Orion knew what that was like because none of her family had done the same. In fact, her funeral would’ve had the exact same people as Jaclyn’s.
April’s hand was clenched in Orion’s much like Shelby’s mother held her daughter’s. They were both wearing gloves since the cold bite of winter crawled through any exposed skin, which was the only reason April was able to hold her hand. No skin touching skin. Orion couldn’t handle that. She was sure that meant terrible things about her recovery, but considering she hadn’t been to the shrink in quite some time, it didn’t matter. It was uncomfortable, but not unbearable. And, if she was honest with herself, she liked having something tethering her to this frozen ground.
She didn’t look behind her at the two last attendants of the funeral. She was doing her best to studiously ignore them, in fact. Well, she wasn’t studiously ignoring Eric. She didn’t have a problem with Eric. In fact, she almost, kind of liked him.
The man standing beside him, on the other hand, she didn’t kind of like. She was sure she hated him. Or was completely indifferent to him. Or was irrevocably confused about her toxic feelings toward him. Her toxic longing. Whatever it was, she was mad that he was there, distracting her from focusing on the fact she was burying one third of herself.