I brace, fully prepared to use any means necessary to protect myself and hold my breath, waiting. After a fewlongseconds, their footsteps retreat and they head up the steps, the door slamming as they close it behind themselves.
I climb from the cot, my legs weak, barely able to sustain my weight as I creep towards the door, pressing an ear to it. The handle doesn’t move as I press it down, but I already knew that, I wasn’t stupid enough to believe they’d leave it unlocked.
“Hello?” My voice is quiet, too quiet so I speak a little louder. “Hello?”
A cry answers me.
I wait for a guard or something to bang on the door, demanding silence but when that doesn’t come I speak again, “What’s your name?”
Her sobs break me, it’s filled with an anguish that goes soul deep, fills your body with so much sorrow you could weep for years.
“Tessa,” she replies.
“How long have you been here, Tessa?”
I was going to get this girl out, all of these girls out, even if it was the last thing I did.
“I don’t know,” she sniffles, “A long time.”
“Can you remember the day you were taken?”
Three breaths of silence and then, “December eighteenth. My twenty second birthday.”
Six months. She’s been heresix months.
“Okay, Tessa,” I say, trying to put as much comfort into my tone as possible, “We’re going to get out of here, okay? Do you hear me?”
“We’re not,” she replies.
“We are.”
“No, we’re not. We’re all going to die down here.”
Not a fucking chance.
I had no idea if Lex was coming and it didn’t even really matter if he was, I was no damsel, I didn’t need rescuing, I mean a little help would be nice, but I was getting out of here with or without him. There was no way I was dying like this, like a rat in a sewer. And none of these women deserved this fate. I was getting us all the fuck out of here.
“Hey!” A boom of a voice shatters the delicate silence between us, “Quiet down!”
Tessa whimpers. These walls are paper thin, the doors even more so. You can hear everything, the footsteps, doors creaking, floorboards groaning above. It’s why I notice the second set of boots hitting the steps. Slow, calculated, casual and then his voice penetrates the wall and my blood runs cold.
Father is back for another visit.
“Is my lovely daughter causing problems already,” he tuts as if I’m a petulant child, “well, I suppose it’s time to teach the girl some manners.”
The words are so carefree, so casual and nonchalant you’d simply think it was a father scolding a six year old and not a twenty three year old.
The last visit wasn’t pleasant.
This visit is going to make that one look like a walk in the park.