“Then I would say you were justified in spilling that blood,” Chapel remarked, his smile fading.
“I need to get back to her. I need to save her. Stop them from hurting her more. I’m not there to protect her. She’s all alone. She—” I shook my head, thinking of Dolly. “She’s too fragile. She won’t be able to cope with what they’ll do to her. I know it. She . . . she’ll . . . they’ll destroy her. Not only her body, but her mind. She’s . . . different. Too delicate for this world.” I turned to the barred door and shook the metal. It didn’t move.
“We all have people to get back to, whether that be for revenge, protection or affection, but we have to bide our time . . .” Chapel said. “I just realized we did not learn your name.”
I didn’t turn around. I stared at the winding stairs that led back to the warden and his closed iron door. The door that led to the outside world. “Rabbit. My name’s Rabbit. The White Rabbit.”
“Well, Rabbit,” Chapel said, moving beside me. “We all plan to get out someday. And someday that will happen. Until then we wait. You will soon realize that all we do in this tower is wait. We plan and we scheme. We plan for the day we once again see the sun and seek revenge on those who thought they could hide us from the world.”
Three months ago . . .
The guards never came close to our cell door.
Eleven years. Eleven years I had waited. I heard the guards, of course. Heard them enter the other prisoners’ cells. Fuck them. Torture them. Do whatever the fuck they wanted to them.
But never ours.
Hyde and Chapel had made sure of that.
Hyde and Chapel had nearly escaped a year before I arrived. Hyde had ripped a guard’s throat out when he had come too close to the bars. The guard was too cocky. He had taunted the monster within Henry. Until the monster was freed and killed him where he stood.
“We won’t fail again,” Chapel had told me shortly after I arrived all those years ago. “When the next opportunity arises, we will succeed.”
So when a new guard started . . . a guard who couldn’t keep his eyes off Chapel’s good looks, opportunity burst in Chapel’s eyes.
A smile here.
A wink there.
The closer the guard came.
A fly to his sticky trap.
I twirled the needle in my hand, the one that Chapel had used to draw my tattoos. The needle thrown into my cell when an infection had almost killed me. The infection was bad, but I wouldn’t let myself die. I needed to get back to Dolly . . .
“Why are they helping me?” I asked Chapel through gritted teeth as I stabbed the needle into my leg.
“Those who paid a handsome sum to place us here want us to live. For living is punishment, Dapper Dan. A lifetime spent in a dank, dark cell. Most at some point have wished for death. It is easier than enduring this day after day.”
My eyes were steel. “I haven’t wished for death,” I bit out as cold shivers accosted my body. “I won’t die without Dolly.”
Henry moved to sit beside me, throwing his shirt over my body for warmth. “And that is what makes you different. You and Chapel.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “And Hyde. I would like nothing more than to be put out of my misery. I welcome the peace that death would bring. But Mr. Hyde within me won’t ever let that be . . .”
I sat back in the dark. The pack of cards I had drawn was safely in my pocket. All but one. The one of my Dolly. The one Chapel had used to draw the tattoo on my back. Her perfect image and likeness. The picture that kept her alive in my head as every day in the Water Tower grew longer and darker.
I looked up as the new guard passed by our cell for the third time in the last thirty minutes. Chapel was already on his feet, waiting for him. His shirt was off, his chest and torso bare. The guard’s eyes flared when they landed on Chapel. Chapel walked slowly to the bars, running his hand over his chest. Then his hand dropped further down to his cock. Hyde stifled a laugh beside me as the guard almost fell over himself at the sight.
When the guard moved away, Chapel came and sat beside me, waiting for him to return again. Every day, he amped up the seduction.
“You like him?” I asked, narrowing my eyes on Chapel. I owed him, Henry and Hyde everything. The guards never once touched me, out of fear of them. Chapel taught me math and literature and art. As an artist himself, with only sharpened stones and walls for his tools and canvas, he had taught me everything he knew. Henry prepared me for what state I might find Dolly in.