“Eat it,” she commands. And I do as I am told. I do not mind this small humiliation.
She watches me eat, the peanut butter sticking to my mouth so I have to drink the milk. She knows I hate milk. I think about going to the bathroom to get a cup of water. To prove a point. Istill have some control. Some power. But then I decide to suffer and suffer big. I gag when I drink the milk and I watch her face change. She cannot stop the need to empathize.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I forgot that you don’t like milk.” This is a lie, but it doesn’t matter.
She leaves and returns quickly with a glass of lemonade.
The milk was an intentional act of cruelty. It provoked the intended response—pain and discomfort. That gave her the opportunity to fix it. To make it better. To bring me comfort. And that makes her feel powerful and important. She has few chances to do that, living alone in this house.
She made me suffer so she could get her empathy fix.
Thank you, Alice. Thank you for this piece of information.
She looks at me and smiles. I see tears well in her crystal-blue eyes. Tears of joy that she saved this mongrel with a glass of lemonade.
“Do you want to start your schoolwork now?” I ask her.
She nods. “We’d better or he’ll be angry.”
“Don’t worry—we’ll get it done before he gets home.”
The man comes home at different times, so this promise is a lie. Sometimes he comes home during the day. Sometimes he stays home late in the mornings. And sometimes he’s gone all night. On those nights, he locks Alice inside the room with me with her iPad and food. She seems to like those nights, the nights when we are prisoners together. This is good and this is bad. I need her to like me, but I need her to crave our escape. And I need Mick to want to be with us.
I smile at her. “Just this one time it will be done after lunch. It can be our little secret.”
Alice moves closer to the metal bars.
“There are no secrets here,” she says quietly. In a whisper.
“What do you mean?” I ask. A chill runs through me even before she answers.
She glances up to the ceiling, then back at me. I follow with my own eyes and try to find what has just drawn her attention.
I see painted molding, simple, running along the crease between the ceiling and the wall. It runs all the way down the hallway that leads to the kitchen and living room and the little room where Alice keeps her toys. It is coated with a thin line of dust, just like the floor, though not as thick.
I let my eyes follow the molding until it reaches the corner where the hallway ends. It is less than ten feet away. It is there that I see a small monitor.
“What do you mean, Alice? Why were you looking at the ceiling?”
“They’re everywhere,” she answers.
“What are everywhere?” I ask.
She glances again. “The eyes.”
A second chill comes and goes.
“What eyes?” I look again at the monitor. It looks like a motion detector for an alarm system. But I know there is no alarm that he sets. I study his movements when he comes and goes. The panel would be by the front door. He never stops there. I never hear the sound they make when they are about to be armed. We’ve had an alarm in our house for years.
But then I see something in the small box. A red light.
Alice lets my brain process what I’ve just seen. She can tell by my face that I have seen it.
“Dolly’s eyes,” she says.
“Dolly?” I ask. Then I remember. “The doll in your toy room? The old doll that sits on the shelf?”
She nods slowly. “Dolly has eyes all over the house. She sees everything and hears everything and she tells him everything.”
