by Lily White
Knowing the girl was younger than what I assumed was normal, understanding that her suffering would endure far longer than the rest of us, Ethan had gone against routine, against established rules, and had chosen a fate for the girl that would be kinder somehow.
I couldn't wrap my brain around it, couldn't grasp it in my palm without it becoming liquid and sliding through my fingers, but still, it was there and I struggled within myself not to look at Ethan differently, to wonder...
No. There wasn't even a touch of humanity inside him. There couldn't be if he was willing to direct these films day after day without so much as blinking an eye at their cruelty. He wasn't allowed to hint at a heart he didn't have. I wouldn't let him plant a seed inside me that would grow into doubt about what I already knew about him.
Not him. Not the Director. Not the man who existed in Hell just so that he could ensure it was as perfectly horrifying as it should be.
"No," I called out, forgetting about the agreement and all the threats that had forced me to accept it. "You can't do that. You can't pretend that you're doing something decent for these women by choosing how long they suffer. You can't pretend that you have potential inside you to care. You won't trick me into thinking you have even the slightest sliver of a soul."
Stopping again, his soft voice was full of ice. "Do you honestly believe the rules don't apply to you?"
I didn't answer because I wasn't sure how to respond. He'd taken the subject and flipped it without bothering to explain what he meant. Standing dangerously still, Ethan didn't so much as glance back at me while waiting for my response.
Weak as a mouse, I finally said, "I don't know what you mean."
Pivoting on his heel slowly, Ethan's gaze met mine, a sheet of ice crackling down my body at the malice coloring his eyes.
Creeping forward on casual feet, he smiled that lazy, dangerous grin. "I have already warned you what will happen if you refuse to cooperate. And yet, here you are, still arguing, still making comments that are above your place. I'm not one to repeat myself, Emma. One more word out of that rebellious little mouth of yours and I'll not only throw your friend to the wolves, I'll tie you to a chair, sit you in that room, and make you watch the entire thing."
We were nose to nose by the time he finished the threat.
"As for what I choose to do in this studio with the women who are dropped off at my door, that is none of your damn business."
His arm struck out, his fingers twisting in my hair as he pulled me closer. Tears welled in my eyes, the pain pushing them out as strands broke away from my scalp. Ethan's lips were pressed to my ear, his breath a warm blanket against my chilled skin. "And regardless of all that, who are you to accuse a person of pretending to be someone they are not? All I see when I look at you is a scared little actress wearing a pretty costume and saying practiced lines while desperately hiding who she really is."
Whimpering at the fire burning across my scalp, I let the tears spill down my face. Ethan didn't care, his deep voice pure menace. "Now apologize before you piss me off."
"I - I'm sorry."
He released me, the sudden movement knocking me off balance and dropping me to the floor. Ethan stalked off without another word, fully expecting for me to follow him.
Pushing to my feet, I did what was expected of me.
We were in his office before he spoke again, his hand snatching a stack of papers from the desk. "We'll be going to studio B in a half hour. In the interim, I need to go over the script. I suggest you sit down for a while. Quietly."
Warning given and received, I slunk to the couch, sitting at the farthest end to have as much distance between us as possible. Tears were seeping from my eyes, but not from pain or fear. That cord of anger inside me was now a full rope, one stretched so tightly that the smallest threads were snapping.
The knuckles of my hands were white from how hard I clasped them, my inner cheek chewed raw. But I knew better than to push him again. At that moment, he was drowning me in his contempt, pouring it over my head while holding my mouth open to swallow it.
I wasn't scared, though.
It's impossible to smother a woman with cold contempt when she is already fully consumed by her own.
For a half hour I stared at a wall, at my feet, my hands, anything besides the man pacing the length of his desk as he flipped through pages. Counting down the minutes, I fought to keep my face averted, battled against my own traitorous eyes trying to sneak over for a quick peek. But I wouldn't allow it. I refused to give him even a little ground by turning to him first. I hated him. Wanted nothing to do with him and it shouldn't have been so hard to keep from looking in his direction.
But it was. And I hated myself for that, too.
"Our thirty minutes are up, Emma," he stated without even a drop of affection in his voice. Solid impenetrable rock, Ethan was a smooth marble surface that sent you sliding if you dared to scale his defensive walls.
I turned to him.
Our eyes met.
"They're waiting for us in Studio B."
EMMA
The walk to be studio was perilous. Several times I barely managed to keep from tumbling over my own feet, from crashing against the icebergs and careening along the glaciers left in the wake of a man whose demeanor had turned deadly serious and restrained.
The stern set of Ethan's shoulders betrayed the thin precipice of control upon which he was barely balanced, the tension in his arms and legs obvious against the clothes he wore that were just one more weapon in his seductive arsenal. I fought not to stare forward at a powerful stride that not only injected panic straight into my veins, but also called to me on a level I was too cautious to explore.
Was he right to claim there was a common thread between us? What was it about his anger that caressed my soul rather than gripping it between punishing fingers and shredding it with razor sharp claws?
I hadn't spoken of Ethan with Melanie or any other woman trapped in the cages, but I had to wonder: Did they feel the same undeniable pull towards him when they were shoved to their knees and told to behave?
My body shuddered at the thought.
Fortunately, I wasn't given much time to roll that odd whisper of thought over my tongue to discover its flavor. The door to Studio B was there in front of us - the door that, per Ethan's words, led to the final performance of every woman who entered this place.
I didn't have to guess who the actress would be on that fateful stage, I could only imagine what it would do to me to see the fear on her young face. Would I recognize the exact moment she understood she was simply fodder for the gnashing teeth of rabid dogs?
Ethan opened the door and we stepped through silently, he a mountain that threatened to become a landslide crushing every person here, while I was the foreboding shadow at his back blanketing the ground.
The production crew went about their business seeing to the cameras, the set, the lights, while behind another door, I could hear a woman screaming - not in fear, I realized, but in unbridled rage.
Ethan stopped his forward movement at the whisper of sound that was growing louder with each passing second. I slammed into his back, my head turned toward it, the sound stealing my attention. Reaching around, Ethan caught me before I crashed to the ground, both our bodies held in quiet stillness as we listened.
"You stupid son of a bitch! Let go of me! I'll tear out your fucking throat and reach down to rip out your beating heart if you touch me again!"
My eyes rounded. Was that the young, timid girl from the entry room?
His fingers tightening over my hip, Ethan glanced back at me and mouthed, anger management problems.
I was so caught in the shock of it I'd failed to notice that our bodies were pressed tightly together. Stepping away just to gain distance, I rued the rush of disappointment I felt to lose the heat of his body against mine.
The disappointment was swiftly brushed away, however, when I glanced toward the stage, the fibers of that angry rope snapp
ing more to see the type of film being made.
The back wall was a canvas of green, intended for what purpose, I wasn't sure, but the theme of the film was plainly written in the lone dentist's chair positioned front and center. A stretch of sickly blue pleather, it was covered by a thin clear sheeting, the dulled and scratched metal base gleaming ominously beneath the stage lights. At the chair's side, a silver tray stood just taller than the seat itself, carrying what I assumed was an array of instruments I couldn't see from where I was standing.
The chair and the stage were two nightmares shoved together, the scene set for the young girl's demise nothing short of pure, malicious terror.
My eyes locked on that scene as the breakfast I'd eaten earlier threatened to make its quick exit all over my sky high ruby slippers.
Turning to me, Ethan canted his head to the side, humor tugging at the corners of his lips. Forgetting the contempt he'd force fed me since the moment I talked back, he reached out to slide a hand over my shoulder and pull me close. His voice was a bare whisper. "I'm wondering how this film is going to play out. Especially with this particular theme and an actress who can't seem to keep her mouth shut."
The screaming continued with several pauses, which I assumed were when the guard in the room lost patience. But unlike me, who'd come quickly under control once the butt of the gun had met my head, that girl only grew louder with her threats to eviscerate the man watching over her.
"Maybe you should use her in my place," I suggested. Surely, her anger would be more suitable for a woman who killed.
Ethan absently shook his head in disagreement, the wheels spinning as thought raced behind steel colored eyes and a handsome face. Even his voice was distracted. "No. She's not a predator, Emma. Not like you. While you're a hunter silently stalking whatever prey had the misfortune of passing by, that girl is a barking dog warning a mail carrier away from the door. There's no skill in that, no indecision. Just pure loss of control."
Silent for a moment, Ethan suddenly announced, "We need to talk to the male lead. Ensure he knows what needs to be done with a woman like that. This is a situation that can drastically spiral into a shit show of wasted film."
He marched off and I followed, my curiosity getting the better of me. "Who are the male leads? How do you find them? Do they live here?"
So focused on the film and all the intricate details that would make it a success, Ethan failed to censure the fact that I'd asked questions, and to my surprise, he answered.
"I have no idea who they are. The studio heads handle that. And no. They don't live here."
We entered a room to the left of the stage, Ethan allowing me to pass by before shutting a door behind us. A man sitting on a couch at the other end of the room stopped me in my tracks.
Dark haired and with sun-kissed skin, the man sat patiently in his seat, lifting a coffee cup from the table to take a sip. Pulling the cup away, he looked up at me with piercing green eyes. And while the color was stunning, especially beneath the low lighting of the room, there was no soul behind them, no warmth, no life.
I was staring straight into the eyes of a man with not one drop of compassion inside him. Just death, destruction - the shell of a human emptied out until all that left was a beast.
Ethan skirted around me, brushing me off like the insignificant shadow that I was. Moving toward the man, he extended a hand in greeting. Those dead eyes slid off me toward Ethan, a smile stretching his lips tight across his stern features. He stood to accept Ethan's hand and revulsion coursed through me. Not because the man was ugly, but because a small part inside me found him attractive.
Tall and lithe, he had wide shoulders and the chest of a gladiator. But where his upper half was well muscled and bulging, his lower half was perfectly narrowed down to the waist, every muscle in his abdomen tightly toned. He wore no shirt and had a dusting of chest hair. Another dusting of hair started at his midsection, the light trail leading the eye down to the black leather pants he wore.
"Ethan Cole," his deep voice echoed as the two men shook hands. "I'm directing the film today and I wanted to warn you-"
More yelling burst through the walls from the adjacent room.
"Ah," Ethan grinned, "I see you're already familiar with the woman who will be starring opposite you."
The man grunted something I didn't understand, his cold eyes shifting to stare at me. Mine narrowed back on him. Attractive or not, there was only vicious violence inside that man.
The two men started discussing the film in a foreign language, and although I didn't recognize the language they used, I was oddly spellbound by the way it so effortlessly rolled off Ethan's cultured tongue. He was perfectly fluent in whatever it was, the sharp accents and soft cadence flowing within the deep timber of his voice.
It wasn't until Ethan looked my direction that I snapped out of whatever trance his voice had induced. Our eyes met as I was still blinking away the haze of it, his smile gone, his features stern with some unspoken thought. Breaking his stare, I flicked a glance in the other man's direction noticing that he, too, stared my way.
Ethan volleyed off a few more clipped words before stalking toward the door, wrapping an arm around my waist as he passed to guide me from the room.
"It's show time," he whispered, reminding me of the stage where I'd been the last time I heard those words. Releasing me, he sauntered off toward the center of the room, a buzz of activity fluttering around him, the shifting bodies never coming within his personal space.
"We're starting," Ethan announced with thunder in his deep voice. I stood back as the activity came to a grinding halt, each person ready and waiting.
The yelling in the other room stopped abruptly as well, my head turning toward the closed door wondering how the guard had accomplished that feat.
Approaching the stage, Ethan was very much in his zone, so focused that it trapped the breath in your lungs to see a man so firmly set in his ambition. The jokester I'd glimpsed in him was entirely absent, replaced by the professional, a man suited to this world and able to manage it with the ease of a flick of his fingers. While his movies were being filmed, every live body in this room was just another puppet whose strings were tied to his iron will, not one person daring to step out of line for fear of drawing his observant eye.
Stuck in place, I simply watched as he glided forward to stand between his cameras, listened as every distinct sound died off into a tense and patient silence. Nothing would happen until he gave the word and snapped his powerful fingers. Nothing at all would move until he nodded his head at the woman with her clapboard to shout out the title and slap the top down.
Nothing at all.
However, this time was different.
With everybody in place waiting on his command to begin, Ethan's body twisted my direction, his eyes meeting mine as he motioned for me to walk to him. My heels were a rhythmic click within the quiet, my mind frightened as the other crew stood confused. Coming within arm's reach of Ethan, I was surprised as he reached out to take my hand in his own. Pulling me to stand in front of him, he pressed his chest to my back, wrapping his strong arms around my shoulders to hold me in place.
He didn't say a word about what he was doing, but I already knew. Instead of just watching my reaction, he wanted to feel it, too.
Heart hammering beneath my ribs, beneath the point where his two arms crossed over my chest, I drew in a steadying breath just in time for the woman to call out, "Oral Fixation," and slap down the top of her clapboard.
The sound of that slap still whispered off the walls as the large man from the other room walked on stage, Joanna dragged behind him. Although her mouth was filled by a ball gag, she still mumbled beneath the plastic, her voice carrying as she fought against the man's hold.
Her foot impacted with the back of his leg, her left wrist wrenching free just as he approached the chair. The roar that emanated from his mouth when she scratched her fingernails down his face would have been comical if he hadn't p
icked her up and slammed her naked body down into the chair.
I tensed at the screech of the chair's metal base, Ethan's arms tightening around me as his head lowered down so that his mouth would rest at my ear. "Scream during this film, and you know what happens to your friend. This will only last a few minutes at best, but if you ruin it, your friend will suffer for days until her death."
Tears leaked from my eyes as I watched helplessly. Joanna fought with everything she had, the base of the chair shaking against the bolts holding it to the floor. The man above her bared his teeth as he held her writhing body in place. And while my eyes were filled with the vision of cruel death, the rope inside me snapped fully apart, the anger set free to heat my skin beneath Ethan's strong arms. How fucking dare he make me choose between the lives of two women? Force me to silently accept the one death in place of the other? I could do something now to help this girl, but I was bound and gagged by Ethan's clear warning.
I wasn't sure I could hate him more than in that moment, my hatred of him dancing and mingling with my fury at the man callously torturing a woman as helpless as the rest of us.
Several times she broke free of his meaty grip to slap at his face, yank his hair and go for his eyes. Successful only a few times, she was finally subdued when he lodged his palms against her shoulders, picked her up, and slammed her back down. A bolt broke from the base of the chair, the soft clamor of it hitting once before it slowly rolled off the stage.
I watched that bolt until it fell to the ground below, dragging my eyes back up even though I didn't want to see what would occur.
My body was shaking by this point, Ethan's tight arms no doubt recording every detail of my frantic pulse and tense muscles. And even though I was barely standing on shaky legs and painful feet, Ethan stood behind me calm as a cat lying in a beam of summer sun. His breathing was free and even, his eyes focused solely on the stage. Every so often he'd pull an arm away to direct one cameraman one way and a sound guy another, but that arm would always return to wrap around me and hold me in place.