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WARNING:

This chapter contains reference to sexual abuse, abuse, foul language, and descriptive violence towards the end. 

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EPISODE TWENTY TWO

'the real wendy cain'

"CAN I HAVE a glass of water at least?"

The only indication that she was surprised by what I said was the lost of menace in her face. Apart from that, there was no shift in her expression. Instead, she tilted her head, assessing every facet of my face but I wasn't exactly faking it.

"You drugged me. My head hurts and my mouth feels like I'm sucking on cotton balls." My heart was hammering, but my body kept steady. I was afraid, there was no doubt about that, but humans had a funny thing of working harder to live when they know that they'll be dying soon. It was the panic, the adrenaline, and it was coursing through me with an erratic beat.

"You have a point," she finally said, standing daintily. "I'll ask the boys and have one of them check your pulse. I'd check it for you, but I don't really trust getting into people's personal space. At least, if you have something sharp, you'd have to stab one of them and get killed right after by doing something so idiotic. It'd be fun to see you try though, so be my guest." She chuckled briefly as if that was a joke she'd like to see.

But as soon as she swung the door open, I let my head rest on the wall and closed my eyes. I felt like crying. Crying and vomiting. Thoughts ran across my head. What do I tell her? Where was everyone else? Was I the only one taken? Is anyone going to save me?

I felt alone and sick, thinking how could everything turn flip so much in mere hours. I had told Leon Song I liked him. I had told him that I loved him. I had danced with him. I had seen him laugh for the first time in days.

And now I was alone.

When the door swung open, I sucked in a hostile breath, raising a weak leg in protection as one of the man came back with a bottled water. The mere movement felt more taxing than it should be, like my muscles had melted and my bones had become brittle. Aoi was nowhere to be see, but the door remained open and I could hear sounds of movement and stilled life. Shuffle of feet and conversations I couldn't make out.

"Can you hold the bottle?" he asked, his face impassive as he knelt in front of me, closer than I would've liked. My heart was hammering but he only raised an impatient eyebrow.

When I nodded, he handed me the bottle and my movements were slow and weak, but as I gulped it down, he put two fingers on my pulse. I stilled, but he only checked for the hammering of my heart, the heat on my forehead with the palm of his hand, and then checked his watch before he seemed satisfied.

He waited until I had finished drinking before he took the bottle again and left without another word. In replace of him was Aoi again, closing the door with a loud thud. She waved a phone in greeting as she sat back down, crossing her legs while she adjusted the skirts of her dress.

"So, Miss Cain, are you ready to bare your soul?"

I swallowed. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything about you. How you came to be, how — in the panicky situation you found yourself — you're still studying me, trying to find answers as a form of self-preservation. And of course, how you found yourself tangled in all of this. All I know is that you're Leon's little girl from that castle his mum bought in somewhere town countryside. Horrendously dry information."

"How you came to be is a difficult question."

"Not really." She tilted her head, smiling slightly. "Ever been sexually abused?"

I nearly choked. "No. I've never been."

Her returning smile was more teeth and bite than smile. "Lucky bitch. I was taken two years before Dominic. His name was still Thomas then. He fought for that name until they broke him. Until he felt ashamed of using that name. It took a while for them to break Tommy's spirit, you know. He was resolute that he was going home. That his family would find him. While it took me hours to realised no one was saving me. Men are a lot more handsy with little girls. I was thirteen. It took Tommy weeks even after they purged his body in drugs. Changed him. Fixed him. It took him his third customer before he realised no one was coming. No one was going to save him."

At the expression on my face, she laughed. "Oh. I think I've said too much. It's your turn. What happened to you that you know how to study people? And be honest. I'll know if you lie."

"My mom."

"What'd she do?"

"She was... unstable at times." My throat was dry. "She had schizophrenia."

"Ah. A crazy. How unstable?"

"She wasn't crazy," I replied sharply. "She just... sometimes she refused her medication. That was the only time she'd... become volatile."

"Hmm. Boring. Having a mother who's unstable isn't enough. You have to give me stories."

"How is this relevant?"

Aoi laughed. "Everything is relevant when your life is on the line, darling. I need to understand you to let you live. And you need to be interesting for me. So far, you're boring me."

"Boring you because I wasn't abused?"

She smiled. "A bit."

"Well, I don't know how..." How do you make your life interesting so you wouldn't die? I exhaled at her stare. There was simplicity in her expression; it was not guarded nor open. It was just... blank. Someone who's listening. "My mother was... she was a brilliant woman whose mental illness broke her at times. Who thought she didn't need the drugs. She hated them. She hated that she had to take them. So sometimes she didn't. She hid them or threw them away, and when an episode happened, it was... it was rough. Especially on my dad. No one knew when she had episodes until it swallowed her whole. When that happened, she had already spiralled into a worse condition. And whenever it happened, my dad was the only one who could calm her down."

I swallowed my throat as the memories broke through my chest. "Sometimes he couldn't calm her down... Toward the end, she got sicker. As she continued to refuse the medication, she had gotten worse enough that my dad had no choice but to put her into an asylum, but once she was inside, everything got worse. Well, she got better for a bit. The nurses made sure she took her medication until things spiralled further and... she deteriorated.

One day, I was in class. I got called in the principal's office, my first time. I knew immediately something was wrong because I saw our neighbour, a close friend of my mum's, and I knew what was happening before I had sat down. Of course, I couldn't believe it. Not even during her funeral. Not even when I saw her body on the casket. It looked like she was just asleep. She had gotten thin and frail and so, so pale— but it looked just like she was sleeping. She even had a small smile on."

I inhaled through the few tears that prickled out of my eyes, brushing them from my cheeks. Aoi's face hadn't shifted. Not at all. "It was a few days later, maybe about two weeks, when I was alone at home. My dad was at work, at the site, and it was just me, in this big, empty house. I had looked around and I saw her everywhere. Like I was waiting for her to run down the stairs, smiling as she tied her hair, or singing loudly from her room as she did her makeup. Or smell something awful cooking in the kitchen, burn marks in her hands, a few new plasters on, with her tongue against her cheek in concentration. But she was nowhere because she was gone."

It took a while before Aoi realised I finished my story.

"Did you cry?"

"At her funeral? No."

"When you were alone."

I shook my head. "No, I just got overwhelmed."

She tilted her head, a teasing smile on her lips. "Did you love her?"

I glared at her. "Of course I did. How dare you?"

She sighed, exchanging a leg over another. "I dare because I have your life in my hands. The death of your mother, although maybe the most tragic occurrence in your life, doesn't answer why you're good at noticing the little ticks in people's faces." Her eyes glimmered; coal black and slanted with thick, sharp eyeliner. "Did she ever hurt you? Whenever she had her episodes?"

I stiffened. It was only for the briefest moment, but a slow, predatory smile raised from the corners of her lips. "How bad?" My jaw locked and she released a short, girlish giggle. "Oh, you'll have to tell me, doll. You simply have to."

"It wasn't... always. It was on her worse days, at the very worst of her sickness." The memories that seemed buried and forgotten, resurfaced so easily.

Aoi played a frown with a pout. "I want stories."

I exhaled. My hate for her was slow and steady rising. "There were... there were times when she couldn't see that it was me. That she'd think I was an enemy or something. She would scream that someone was after her. She bolted the house once and she had forgotten I was in my room. I was wearing headphones— I didn't hear her until a loud commotion. When I went down to investigate, I saw her muttering to herself, holding a knife by the end of the blade, tightly enough that her palms were bleeding. I screamed at her to stop, tried to pry it from her hands, but when she looked at me, she screamed bloody murder."

"She tried to stab you," she finished.

"She nicked my arm," I corrected. "I pried the knife from her and locked her in my dad's office so I could get help. I called my dad and got my neighbour. She helped patched me up while my dad talked to my mom, forced her to sleep after she drank her medicine. She didn't remember what happened and my dad and I agreed not to tell her how I got injured."

"That was the worse one?"

"My mother wasn't a monster. She was sick and she didn't like taking medication." I gritted my teeth. "Sometimes she'd... slap me and hurt me, but only when she was at her very worst. Most of the time she was my mom. She was elegant, lovely and lively. She loved dresses and jewellery and flowers. She was very feminine and she was a good person. She was— is, the best part of who I am."

"Well... I never met her so I'll take your word for it." She smiled. She was teasing. Then she sighed. "But if she died close to when you were younger, it's hard to see how good your perception is that way it is. Why would you need to be as perceptive anymore?"

"I..."

"Ooh, that's an interesting expression. That's guilt. And panic. And something else. Tell me."

I re-worked my jaw. "I learned to be... curious. About other people. My parents— when my father re-married, my stepmother liked parties. I liked noticing people. Their faces change with different people; you easily spot the narcissistic ones, the ones who have a connection with another person, the ones who can't stand someone else. It's not just in their faces, it's in their bodies. Little flickers. I learned to write them down. I learned to notice more things."

Aoi mused a smile. "I can understand that. They're open books once presented with interaction, and people are easier to deal with when you don't think of them as people."

"I never said I didn't think of them as people."

"You can't deny that it mirrors how we observe animals. People are easy to note once you start noticing them. Well, there's not a lot of excitement in your trauma, so I guess we'll hear how you met Leon Song."

"That's a long story." I hesitated. "It involves a dead body."

Aoi broke out in a thrilling laugh. "We have all the time in the world for a story with a dead body."

— — —

Aoi only asked a few questions here and there, but for the most part she seemed amused by the story. She seemed to regard me with a naive light when I went along to follow Leon from a single conversation. After I had finished, I asked for water again and then the bathroom. Aoi deigned my request, asking the same man who had delivered my water the first time to escort me and hand me another bottle. Once I finished drinking, he covered my eyes and put a gag on my mouth, before he took my elbows and escorted me out.

It was a bit of a walk. I tried to strain all my other senses, but it felt like I was walking on empty hallways where my heels echoed with each click. But each time I was straining to note my surroundings, I kept coming back to the warmth feel of the man holding my elbows. His steps echoed as well, the sound is less pronounced than mine, but he walked close to my body which sent uncomfortable shivers down my arms.

We turned to a left, and then he warned me about stairs, going up. After that, I could feel the enclosed space, the sound of slow dripping water, and echo of tiles.

We stopped and he took off the gag. "You can take the cover from your eyes once I close the door. Knock when you're done."

Once I heard the door closed, I took out the eye cover and breathed, grasping my stomach as I tried to find a calm past my anxiety. The room is dank and small without a window but a singular, flickering bulb. It's grimy and dirty, and the toilet didn't even have the top part of it. Only a dirty, watery bottom.

"Breathe, Wendy, breathe." Tears sprang out of my eyes before I could stop them, and as I sobbed, I felt relief. I clutched myself, the tiled walls dirtier than a public bathroom, grasping my sides as I let it all pour out of me. It shaved away some of the anxiety that was twisted on my chest, but it felt good. I didn't care if I was loud and the man on the other side could hear me.

It took me a bit more time inside— with even the man knocking a few times to make sure I was still alive or isn't planning to kill myself since there was no way I could escape. I could tell we were in a building, and though I was gagged, I wasn't going to put all my cards on the fact that I could scream for help. My life was precarious, in the hands of a woman who had planned her revenge way before Dominic planned his. She had got her cards in play and her board was perfect. I was an extra she was still figuring out if she should let live or die.

Once I composed myself, he told me to tie my eyes back and we were once again back. Aoi was waiting inside, bright light emitting from her phone as she tapped on it with graceful fingers. He left as soon as he propped me back on the bed, closing the door with a stiff click.

"That took a while," said Aoi, not looking up but reverent in whatever was happening on her phone.

"I had a good cry," I said honestly.

Aoi looked up then, snorting. "That's good. Though that seemed to stop working on me a while back. I just feel like a fool crying now when things happen."

I didn't know what to reply to that so I just kept mum.

After a while, she clicked off her phone, the source of light gone, and she sighed. "I've got to give it to you, Wendy. Though you are a pit of lovely stories and your reverence to the young Song is naive and sweet at best, you're really just... useless in my plans."

My anxiety went all the way up, heart hammering. "I see," I choked out, my mouth feeling quicksand; dry and draining.

She smiled as if she read all my thoughts and organs. "You see."

We had the same conclusion. In the scheme of things, I was worthless to her; she didn't have to kill me. At the same time, silencing me, having me gone, was the safest option for her.

Then she burst out laughing that startled me. It was different from her giggles and thrilling, mused laughter— this one was manic. Like it came out from the deepest part of her core. Nothing about it was a happy sound. My body reacted despite the walls I put up to try and pry her off from noticing everything about me, from reading me so cleanly— I had backed away, terrified.

When she stopped, she drew a ragged breath. "That expression of fear, oh my. That's what I want to see from people who hurt me. That's what I want them to feel— that hopelessness. When you realised death is in front of you and you're backed in a corner, checkmate from all sides."

She sighed happily, as if I made her night. "You can relax a bit, Wendy darling." I flinched. "I said you were useless to my plans, but not at all worthless." She twirled the phone in her hands. "Cordelia knows you're with me. That girl has strong connections and she has been hounding me. Apparently, her little brother is losing his absolute shit without you. He has her working all her resources, so this is going to be a tricky little dance, but I'm curious to see just to how extensive his adoration for you goes."

"What?"

She only smiled, going for the door and calling out, "Get Kei." She turned back to me, that smile still in place. "Though you may be useless, Cordelia is not. I can't execute my plan with that bitch prying her nose, tearing all of England just to find you. So we need to put them on a leash. If they don't behave, then..." A knife was brandished, but she only opened the door further to let the same man in. He turned to me, blank and empty as canvas.

I pressed myself against the wall, fresh tears coming out.

"Your life will be the leash, darling Wendy," Aoi sung like a soft hymn. "I have a feeling that you're not all worthless to that man you so adore. Don't fight back," she reminded as he inched closer. "It gets worse the more you fight. We just need a small part anyway. You can scream if it makes you feel better."

I closed my eyes and locked my jaw, but as soon as the knife hit the soft flesh of my neck— the scream tore itself from my throat.

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NEXT

EPISODE TWENTY THREE

VICTIM HAS MORE THAN ONE FACE

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