The plush carpet pad beneath my feet cushioned my steps as I made my way down the hallway, careful to remain in the shadows, just in case.
The long hall was punctuated by closed doors. I padded silently to the first door and saw that it wasn’t locked. No sense in wasting time looking there as they wouldn’t keep any of us in an unlocked room.
I tried the next door and saw that is was locked. I slowly turned the lock so that it didn’t make a sound. I slipped quietly inside and closed the door, my heart pounding. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw a lump in the bed. The room was the same as mine, utilitarian and functional but nothing that screamed luxury. I tiptoed over to the bed and knelt beside the sleeping figure.
The figure shifted in the bed with a small moan. My heart leaped. Relief washed over me as I sensed that it was Dylan. I gently covered her mouth so she didn’t scream, whispering, “Dylan, it’s me, Nicole. Don’t make a sound.”
The moonlight streaming in from the window cast a bluish-grey light on the room. Dylan sat up with difficulty, as if she were in pain, and peered at me in confusion. “Nicole?” she croaked, her voice clogged with sleep. “What are you doing here?”
I was so happy to see her, I didn’t mind that it was Dylan I found first when I’d been hoping to find Tana. “I snuck out of my room,” I explained in a hushed tone. “I had to see if anyone else was here like me. Olivia wouldn’t give me any answers no matter how many times I asked. They’ve got us locked in prison cells. Something feels off. Are you okay?”
Dylan rubbed at her eyes, becoming more fully awake. She winced as she moved to a better position. “Yeah, I guess. Sore. You?”
“I’ll live,” I answered. “Has Olivia said anything to you about when you get to leave? Our five days is almost up.”
“No. I haven’t seen Olivia. A guard shoves a platter of cold oatmeal at me and then locks the door again.”
“Oatmeal?” I repeated in confusion. “Why?”
“How the fuck should I know? Maybe because they don’t want to spend any more money on us and that includes decent food. I fucking hate oatmeal but I’ve choked it down because I’m so hungry.”
“Did you get a check-up from the doctor and an STD shot?”
“No, I was just stuck in this room even though I’m beaten to shit. I swear I think that fucker broke a few toes and definitely a finger but they haven’t sent a doctor to check me out. Why?”
I felt a sense of foreboding as I shared, “A doctor looked me over and gave me an STD shot today. I’ve also been getting better food. Not four-star restaurant but chicken and mashed potatoes, that kind of stuff.”
“What the fuck?” Dylan exclaimed until I shushed her to keep her voice down. Dylan glared as if somehow it was my fault. “Why? What makes you so special?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully “but something tells me being special in this place isn’t necessarily a good thing.”
She conceded my point grudgingly. “I think you’re right. What if they’re planning to keep you here for other clients?”
The idea made my blood run cold. I’d die first before I let that happen. “No fucking way. I’ll chew my way out of here if I have to.”
“I don’t know if anyone gets out of here. We’re in a prison. The only thing missing is an ankle bracelet.”
“Look, I’m going to see if I can find the other girls and then we’re going to get the fuck out of this hell-hole, got it?”
With a sudden urgency, she asked, “Did you find anyone besides us on this floor?”
I answered with wary confusion, “No? I mean, yours is the first locked door I opened. Why?”
She exhaled, looking away, saying, “I don’t know, I mean if we got roped into this deal, there’s probably others, too.”
I wasn’t leading a revolution. I just wanted to get the three of us out. “Yeah, well, I don’t know but it’s pretty quiet. It seems like it might just be us.”
Dylan swallowed, nodding. “Yeah, probably.” She met my gaze to ask, “Why didn’t you just run while you had the chance?”
“Because I couldn’t leave knowing you guys were still stuck here.” That was partially true. The harsh truth was that I probably would’ve ditched the other girls if Tana had been behind that door. I was a little ashamed but I couldn’t lie to myself. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to leave without Tana. Now that I’d found Dylan, I was committed to finding Jilly, too. “Listen, just act like nothing is different,” I instructed. “I don’t want Olivia getting the sense that we’re up to something. Right now, she’s thinking that I’ve accepted her word that we’re going home but I can tell she’s lying.”
“You think so?”
I nodded. “I can’t explain it — call it my gut instinct — but they have no intentions of letting us go much less paying us and I’ve got a bad feeling about how they get out of paying.”
Dylan stared at me. “But we signed a fucking contract,” she said.
“I think that was just for appearances. I mean, it was pretty convincing, right?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said faintly, processing. “Fuck. It was all a lie.”
“Which is why we need to get the fuck out of here.”
I paused, my eye-catching the dark bruising on Dylan’s face as my eyes further adjusted to the dim light. Dylan caught me staring. “Stop,” she said, looking away. “I know I look like shit.”
“What happened?” I asked, my voice softening with horror for Dylan. “What did he do?”
Dylan shook her head, a slight catch in her voice as she answered, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I hoped they all rotted in hell for what they’d done to us. I swallowed, allowing a moment of silence between us. I understood why Dylan would rather bury the memory than relive it.
I didn’t want to talk about my ordeal either. My physical body might not have the same bruises as Dylan but I felt the pain in my soul. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, my understanding the only solace I could offer. We might not like each other but we were bonded by our shared trauma. “We’re going to get out of here,” I promised her.
Dylan looked away but not before I caught the sheen of unshed tears in her eyes. For some reason that brief reveal on Dylan’s part gut-punched me harder than I expected but when she said in a choked whisper, “He didn’t like questions. He…”
I gently gripped her hand in mine and she gulped back her words as I said softly, “You don’t have to tell me. I understand.”
She jerked a nod and we let silence absorb our hurt for the moment. I never knew what real monsters roamed the earth hidden behind the protection of finely tailored suits and privileged connections until now. Scary stories were supposed to have vampires and werewolves or some kind of supernatural bad guy but in reality, people were the ultimate villain. The cost of my ignorance was more than I could bear but for the moment, I had to let it go.
The shame, the terror, the rage — I couldn’t afford feeling any of that right now. I promised myself a proper freak-out, melt-down when I was free of this horrid place and I could collapse in the privacy of my own space. Not here and definitely not now.
I drew a shaky breath. “Look, we’re going to make them all pay. I don’t know how but we will. First, we need to find our way out. I need you to keep playing whatever part keeps them comfortable.
“Have you heard anything about Jilly or Tana?”
“Not a word. No one answers any questions around here. Especially the guards. Bunch of dicks with guns. There’s one fucker that’s a real asshole. Probably has tiny dick syndrome and tries to make up for it by beating up on people weaker than him.”