Leighton Mia - Hero

I sigh. “And still no answers.”

“I can’t promise you will ever get your answers; that’s up to the Master of the House. For now, dear, that will have to be answer enough.”

I swallow down the curse I’m tempted to hurl at him. Despite his involvement in keeping me here, I’m not so sure he has any more choice in the matter than I do. So far he’s been kind to me, and though I’m distrustful, it doesn’t seem that taking my anger out on him gets me anywhere. I decide to reserve that for Guy Fowler.

Even having slept much of the day, Norman is right that I’m exhausted. Sleep sounds welcoming. Carter fades into the shadows after a warning look, but Norman follows me up the steps to the third floor.

“Cataline,” he says when we reach the landing.

I turn and face him.

“There’s nothing much to see on your floor. It’s mostly guest bedrooms and storage. However . . .” He points up stairs that fade into darkness, where not a light that I can see shines. “Do not go to the fourth floor.”

“Why not?”

He inhales deeply. “That floor is meant only for the Master of the House, and when necessary, staff. He is very particular about his space.”

I shrug my shoulders with defeat. “Whatever. Goodnight.”

With that, I leave Norman and his sudden grimness at the mouth of floor four.

The equipment’s hum suits the room’s grey, steely surroundings. Machinery that never rests heats the space, but warmth seems inherently wrong for all the sharp edges. Indiscriminate file cabinets filled with data close us in. Files are labeled, alphabetized, slid, shut, and locked into place. Cameras guard the most important corners of the mansion and transmit here. From this underground security chamber, I am even more transcendent than usual. My shoulders depress with a deep and overdue exhale.

“I can handle this, sir,” Norman says to my back. “You have more important things to worry about.”

I ignore him as screen number four of twelve distorts, erratic scribbles marring the black-and-white dining room.

“I know how this type of behavior upsets you,” Carter mutters as he rewinds the footage.

“You say this isn’t the first time?”

“She has fits now and then. So far only during the day when you aren’t around.”

“She should be thankful for that.”

“Give her time,” Norman says. “There’s bound to be some wreckage until she settles.”

I turn to face him with an arched eyebrow. “It’s not the wreckage that concerns me. It’s the disregard for your authority and the lack of a routine. We don’t ask much of her. It shouldn’t be so difficult to acclimate.”

“Put yourself in her shoes,” Norman says under his breath. “It’s only been a week.”

“This is the time for authority. There’s no room for mistakes in our world, you know that. Even the smallest one can change everything. If I could ignore her antics, I would. I don’t give a damn what she does with her days. But disobedience has to be cut off at the source.”

“I understand, but all I’m suggesting is some patience. Maybe I can give her something to make her feel more at home. Is there anything in her apartment she can have?”

“Like I have time to go snooping in her apartment. She seems to like Mexican food—why don’t you have Michael make her some of those chicken tacos?” He frowns when I laugh. “Don’t treat her like such a child, Norman. She’ll adapt. If she doesn’t, I’ll just have to put myself in her path. How’s that for an idea?”

“Not a good one, Master.”

“If she behaves this way while I’m here, it’ll come to that. Once she sees tantrums won’t be tolerated, she’ll have no choice but to accept her situation. However, if she snoops, or if she insists on being difficult, she might unknowingly walk into a world she couldn’t even dream up. A world where I’m this,” I say, touching my chest and lowering my voice, “and that’s information she can never know.”

“Sir?”

I glance down at Carter and then the screen. Cataline sits in a tall chair at the dining table. She’s still for so long that I find myself studying her face. The camera turns her unblinking blue eyes a shade of grey. Her cheeks are probably pink to match lips that are too feminine, too shaped like a heart for my taste. As though she picked a rose from its vase and rubbed it over her white skin. In monochrome, her hair is a tangled inky web waiting for prey. Waiting for me.

“Is everything all right, sir?” Norman asks.

“Why?”

“You made a noise.”

I raise my eyebrows just as Cataline’s body jerks into motion. Without warning, she lunges across the table, reaching out for something.

“Here we go,” Carter says.

I’ve been bad. Locked in my room for five days because I tried to smash a dining room window with a candlestick. And when I noticed cameras in every shadowy corner of my room, I broke them all. They were replaced by the next morning, but I’ve been imprisoned ever since.

Days are beginning to blur together. I watch time pass on a desk calendar I sneaked into my room from the library. Each day I tear away a page, thankful that it isn’t one of those calendars with jokes or images of baby animals. I know I’m almost two weeks into captivity, and I can spend up to an hour tracing the bold, red date with my finger.

True to his word, Norman is either out of information or refuses to give it to me. Guy obviously pays him well, and I have nothing to tempt his loyalty. The thought always makes my shoulders slump, and my posture grows poorer by the day.

Norman brings me the things I ask for and checks on me from time to time. For good behavior, he has Carter free my ankle after a couple days. But he won’t engage me in conversation. Before I was confined to my room, Chef Michael was easier to get talking, but only to a point. It’s as if there’s a barrier in our conversations that nobody will leap—and it’s not very far from the starting line.

Tonight, I’m in bed, staring up at the mesh canopy. The more I want sleep, the more I need escape, the harder it is to catch. Every night I try to understand my new reality. If I’m to be sold or prostituted, why am I here? Shouldn’t I be locked up in a room with other girls, stripped of even my most basic rights? Is there some other use for someone like me I haven’t thought of?

My mind plays a constant loop of scenarios, mostly what I could’ve done differently. I imagine not holding Guy’s eye contact in the restaurant and not inviting him to sit with us. Not inviting danger into the booth next to me. I dissect my current situation, examining it for loopholes in much the same way I run my fingertips along all the mansion’s walls.

Before my outburst, I spent hours in the library finding escape in the pages of books. I also discovered a darkroom and asked Norman for a camera, which he promised to try and get from “the Master of the House.”

Since my punishment does not allow me even books, boredom infiltrates the days in my room—but anticipation rules them. I’m growing desperate to know what Guy’s planning, so much so that I’m tempted to investigate the fourth floor once I’m released back into the mansion. Sinister thoughts feed off my ennui, breeding fear and paranoia. I wonder if the cameras broadcast to the entire world. Maybe I’m an experiment, and people are watching me right now from their living rooms.

I must have fallen asleep, because I wake up to screams. Realizing they’re my own brings me no comfort. In my nightmare, the cameras transmitted footage right into people’s living rooms. They shoveled TV dinners into their mouths, watching as I stacked furniture to reach the camera in the corner. “Pretty girl like you ought to be more careful,” they said, ignoring my screamed begs for help.

I’m panting as the dream fades into the night and reality comes into focus. The bedroom window is open, and a breeze fondles the bed’s white drapes. My tight chest staggers with short breaths as sweat trickles down my temples. I pull off the comforter and take the few steps to the window, my only tenuous connection to the real world.

With my knees on the cushioned seat beneath the window, I hang the upper half of my body outside. It’s dark tonight, the mean moon a curved slash in obscurity, beginning and ending with two sharp points. I close my eyes to the night air’s caress. If I jumped, could I latch onto that crescent in the sky? Hang there until the sun rose? I wonder if it would matter, if daylight would frighten the monsters away or merely expose them.

I look down and down and down because darkness swallows everything beneath me. Still, I know the rosebushes are there. How fitting it would be to have my fall broken by a thousand thorns, painting crimson roses black with my blood.

I descend from the windowsill and go to the wall where I’ve defiantly marked the days I’ve been in this room. The slashes blur together, and I scream. My fingernails scrape away the wallpaper, peeling a path of coiled ringlets.

I’m at the bed, pulling at fistfuls of gossamer until my palms burn. Its heavenly appearance is unaffected by my earsplitting screams; it continues to invite, deceiving me to sleep under its feathery veil and awaken in velvet red and sunlight gold.

I release the stubborn fabric and sprint to the door where I alternate between beating on it with my fists and pulling the handle with my entire body. And it continues without breaking, this horrible screeching that starts in my stomach and destroys my throat. I want out. I want my freedom.