Ella

When I come to, my head feels like it’s exploding. I feel so drowsy, and when I try to open my eyes, everything is blurry. I shake my head to try to make it go away, but it doesn’t work.

Crap.

“Stay still …”

That voice brings chills to my body.

It’s Graham, but I can barely make out his figure hovering over me.

“This’ll only take a few seconds.” He’s so close to me right now, yet I have no idea what he’s doing.

It’s freaking me out to the point that I want to flail just to get him off me.

Except when I try to move my hands, they won’t budge. I’m stuck … literally. He bound me to the wheelchair with restraints. My legs too. I can’t move.

Oh, God.

“I said stay still,” he growls, putting his filthy hands on my wrists. “You’ll hurt yourself if you don’t.”

I don’t listen. I have to get out. I have to free myself. I don’t know what he’s doing to me, but I can’t let it go on. So I fight with every bit of strength I can muster.

“Stupid girl,” he growls.

The binds around my wrists and feet tighten again to the point they’re painful.

My lips part, but no sound comes out. I can’t form the words in my mouth even though I try so hard to speak. To scream.

“I told you to stop moving so much,” he says. “Are we going to behave or not?”

My vision is getting better already, and I can clearly make out his hand as it comes closer. He’s holding a needle.

“If you’re going to resist again, I’m going to have to put you under. Do you want me to do that? Hmm?”

I shake my head.

“No?” The needle comes dangerously close to my skin.

I beg with just my eyes, desperately wanting to escape.

When I look at him, I can see the fire dancing in his eyes. The excitement at seeing my pleading face. And the wretched smile that appears a few seconds after.

“Good. Now hold still and be a good girl.”

He places the syringe down on a desk, and I calm down a little. While he’s not touching me, I quickly scan the room. It looks like a small office. There’s a desk, a cabinet, a bookcase, and even a computer. Is this where he spends most of his time?

Graham grabs a bottle of liquid from the desk, so I raise my brows and stare at it.

“Alcohol.” He pours it on a cotton pad and says, “This’ll sting a little.”

He dabs it against my hand, right where a wound is from banging on the glass. It burns so much, I hate the feeling, but I’m also wondering why he’s doing this.

I watch him like a hawk as he picks up a Band-Aid and sticks it around my hand, right on top of the wound.

“There,” he says, holding my hand in an eerily soft way as he checks it for more scratches.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he says.

He makes it sound as if he’s doing me a favor.

As if I owe him something when, in fact, he was the one who took something from me.

My freedom.

“Now …” He pulls the wheelchair so close to him I wanna sink back. He picks up something from his desk. Photographs. “I want you to look.”

He holds them out in front of me, one by one.

All the pictures are of girls.

“See them?”

I nod.

He places them back on the desk and scoots even closer to me. So close, his disgusting breath seeps into my nose, making me cough.

“Remember those faces, Ella,” he says. “All four of them.”

Who are they?

“Wanna know why you have to remember them?” He narrows his eyes, clutching my arms. I feel sick from his touch. “They’re the girls who came before you …”

I swallow as he says the words, the realization of what it means hitting me like a brick to the face.

“Let’s just say they didn’t go back to their families.”

I want to puke.

I can already feel the bile rising.

Shit.

“And you …” He points his finger at me and chuckles. “You’re pushing it too.”

This isn’t just a warning. It’s a threat.

I might disappear.

I stare at the pictures of the girls, wondering where he buried them. But he grabs my chin and forces me to look at him.

“Do you want to end up like them?” he asks.

I vehemently shake my head.

“You’ll stop banging the glass until you bleed. You will do exactly what I ask you to. No objections. Got it?”

I nod harder than I ever have in my life.

No matter how much I hate this man for ruining my life, I don’t want to die.

He cleans up the stuff he used and returns the items to the drawers. While he’s busy, I secretly look around again, and my eye catches a bunch of papers lying on the corner of the desk. The top one has my name and photograph on it.

“Oh … you saw that?”

I pretend I wasn’t looking at it, but of course, it’s too late now.

Shit, I’m caught.

“Yes …” he says, deviously smiling at me. “I did my research. You were perfect.”

Perfect for what?

Suddenly, he walks away, leaving me alone in this small office that feels more like a closet than anything else.

Panic rises to the surface, and I feel the urge to break free from my bonds, but no matter how hard I try, it’s no use. Despite having regained a bit of energy that I lost to the gas, it’s not nearly enough to work out of these leather straps. And I can’t reach them with my teeth either.

Dammit!

The stomping behind me stops me immediately. He came back with a smile on his face … and a dress in his hands.

“Like it?” he asks.

It’s a navy blue, floral dress that looks like it belonged to a girl similar to my size.

“I think it’ll fit.” Graham places it on my lap with something else. Lipstick.

I want to shove it off and erase their mark from my body because I don’t know how he got these.

What if these belonged to one of his victims?

It makes me want to scream.

“Tomorrow’s a big day,” he says, his underlying tone twisting my stomach.

Tomorrow. What’s happening tomorrow? Something I’d need a dress for. A dance? Or is he taking me outside?

The questions are killing me, but then he grabs the wheelchair and spins it around.

I can’t make eye contact with him, despite wanting to so desperately. I need to know what he meant by ‘tomorrow.’ What will happen? Why did he give me the dress and lipstick?

Right before we exit the room, he grabs a piece of cloth and stops to tie it around my head. Not being able to see makes me nervous. I want to know where we’re going and if I need to prepare for something, but not seeing anything makes that impossible.

He brings me somewhere … comes to a stop … and I hear a soft beep. We wait. A rattling of metal. He pushes me again and stops. Something closes. It must be an elevator. I know for sure when I feel the familiar sense of gravity intensifying for just a second. We’re going up.

It doesn’t take long to come to a stop again. He pushes me out again and keeps going. It feels like forever until he stops again, and a clicking noise is audible, followed by a creak. The wheelchair lifts and is pushed over something. A loud bang behind me makes me jolt in my seat.

“That’s just a door,” he says, chuckling as if he finds it amusing that I’m scared shitless.

I’m pushed again through another door and then into another one. After which he pulls the cloth away from my face.

And I’m back in that familiar glass cell again.

The only place I didn’t ever want to return to.

But when I turn around and look at Graham once more, I know any place—even this place, this glass prison—is better than being anywhere close to him.

“Tomorrow you’ll put on that dress and lipstick. Understand?” he asks.

I nod, hoping he’ll get me out of the restraints.

Maybe I might even be able to catch him off guard and overpower him. Attack him. Throw the wheelchair at him. Anything.

But then he pulls out a cloth and a bottle from his pocket, dabs the cloth with the liquid, and holds it over my mouth. The same disgusting odor enters my nostrils … and it reminds me of the night he took me.

I struggle. I fight it, I really do. But it’s no use. Within seconds, I feel drowsy again, and my limbs don’t respond to my intentions to move. My vision is hazy, and I fade in and out of consciousness.

I can feel his hands on my wrists and legs, freeing me from the restraints. He lifts my body, holding it close to him as he carries me to the bed and lays me down.

I feel like a puppet on strings.

From the corner of my eye, I can see him walk off with the wheelchair through the door he brought me in. Too late do I regain any bit of control over my body. Too late … because the door’s already shut tightly before I can make my way to it.

I shove the dress and lipstick off me with what little energy I have then I try to clean up. I can’t even sit up straight without seeing the world revolve around me.

“You’ll feel better in a minute,” Graham says as he walks past my glass chamber.

I want to say, “Fuck you,” but as always, my mouth fails me.

I just sit there in silence, waiting for the drugs to leave my system.

Another door closes, and I know by now Graham must be gone. I’m back inside the lonely cell again, but it’s not like before. Something’s changed.

There are three people now.