"Unfortunately...no. When I was younger, I sought a remarkable number of psychiatrists hoping even just one of them would deem me certifiable, but alas...no. None of them did." His lips, which it hurts for me to realize that I still find rather beautiful, twist in a mockery of a smile. "All they could tell me was that I was damaged goods."
Tears sting my eyes, and I hate myself for it. I saw him literally cut someone's fingers off when he was a boy. You can cut a person's hair! Or nails! But fingers? Why am I fighting back tears for someone as crazy as Mr. Sinister?
"Just because someone hurt you," I say shakily, "doesn't make it right for you to hurt other people."
"I know."
"Then why?" My voice cracks, and my tears start to fall.
"You shouldn't waste your tears on me, my dove." He carefully wipes my tears away, his touch as gentle as his voice, but this only further scrambles my brain cells.
He's insane.
All that talk about psychiatrists refusing to certify him can only be lies. He has to be insane to do something like that so easily.
And yet...
Why do my thoughts stupidly insist on lingering on the nice things he does, like how gently he's speaking to me, or how carefully he wipes my tears away?
"You're in shock, my dove."
The endearment makes me flinch, but then the words before it sinks in, and my mind dwells on them like they're a medical diagnosis for someone else.
Is Sara in shock?
I think she is.
And so I hear myself say, "Yes. I think I am."
I must be, to no longer feel the urge to throw up even as I think about how I've let a man like Mr. Sinister kiss me. Touch me even, and suckle my breasts until I reached an orgasm.
Mr. Sinister slowly pulls away, but I'm unable to move even as my wrists are freed. All I can do is stare up at him, and all I can think of is how beautiful he is. So very beautiful, and yet so deadly in his insanity—-
"Have you ever heard of Ypeíko?"
Even though I know I'm still not completely right in the head, I find myself involuntarily flinching because the name he's mentioned is so vilely inhumane in its infamy.
"I can see in your eyes that you do."
That we're still talking about it makes me feel cold from within, and I start to shake.
"Don't cry."
I can't help it. Terror has reclaimed my senses, and my soul is its next target. "Were you..." Oh God, it's so hard to speak. "W-Were you a p-part of it?"
A heartbeat of silence passes, and the terror inside of me cackles.
"You think you already know the answer to that, don't you?"
I think I'm going to be sick again.
"But it's worse."
How can anything be worse than knowing the man who's kidnapped you was once a part of a sex cult responsible for the deaths of dozens of victims?
"Its founder is the woman I grew up believing to be my mother."
My world starts to spin out of its axis.
"I believe there's even the perfect quote—-" Mr. Sinister's gaze turns cold and empty just like how it had been in the video, and he was methodically cutting another man's fingers. "—-to sum up our relationship."
He may not have kidnapped me for my brain, but I do have one nonetheless, and that's why his eyes, oh God...
Those eyes of his that are Paul-Newman-blue—-
They've become the most agonizingly beautiful thing I've ever seen again because I know exactly what he's talking about.
"Mother is the name for God," I whisper painfully.
My kidnapper's beautiful face whitens.
"—-in the lips and hearts of little children."
His eyes close, and my chest tightens.
I've never seen him so vulnerable, and I wish, oh God I wish that I can turn back time so I wouldn't have said or done anything that would have led to this.
He finally looks at me, and I realize I might have done something unforgivable.
"Exactly," Mr. Sinister says tonelessly. "Exactly that," he repeats in a still-hollow voice, and I bite back a sob because I realize I've inadvertently twisted the knife that's still embedded in his heart.
The Boy Who Brought Down the Walls of Hell
Mr. Sinister orders me to get ready and meet him for brunch in the main deck. But unlike last night, he only gives me fifteen minutes to freshen up, and I think it's because he doesn't want me to have any time to think of other things.
If that is the case though, then he's bound to be disappointed. Multitasking is my middle name, and I already find myself recalling horrifying bits and pieces about the Cult of Ypeíko while rinsing the shampoo out of my hair.
I think I was ten or eleven that time when the cult made headlines all over the world, and I remember being so curious that I had ended up secretly going against Father's wishes. He had told me I was too young to know about such things, and it was understandable he'd say that. He didn't know about my dirty mind, and I pray he never will.