Agatha moves like she’s stepped off a church pedestal, self-righteous and pious. Face a caricature of a villain. She stands to my right, holding a small canteen and a plate with a slice of sourdough bread. Her weather-worn face has creepy shadows cast across her wrinkles. And in this light, I’m unsure if it’s a hallucination or not.
“You deaf? I said open your mouth,” Agatha snaps.
I eye the contents in her hands again, then slide my gaze back to Sapphire’s swollen lips.
I shake my head. “I’d prefer not to ingest whatever you washed her mouth with.”
Agatha kicks my ankle, but I don’t react.
“Don’t get smart with me. This is water and bread. If you’d rather starve…” She turns on her heels to head back to the stairs.
“Wait,” I say abruptly, suddenly realizing how dry my mouth is. My stomach aches for even a bite or two of food. “All right. Yes.”
Agatha smirks to herself, taking smug steps back to me.
“But she needs it too.” I jerk my chin in Sapphire’s direction.
“Yes, of course. Dear?” Agatha glances over her shoulder. “Would you like some water?”
Sapphire tries to part her lips. Groans faintly.
“What’s that?” Agatha taps her ear condescendingly.
“She can’t respond. Her mouth is…” I have to look away from the sight of Sapphire’s lips, cracked like dry riverbeds. “Her mouth is raw.”
And that dooming silence is louder than a scream.
“If you can be obedient and answer me, I’ll give you food and water,” Agatha challenges.
That small, rebellious flame sparks once again in Sapphire’s red-rimmed eyes. Her jaw quivers at the hesitant opening of her mouth, but only a strangled, frustrated breath blows out. It’s raspy and rough then abruptly turns angry and loud. A moaning, dying, suffering animal.
I stare at the ground, as if that gives her privacy. As if it spares her even a little bit of dignity. Yes, she got herself into this, but I’m not a monster. This is inhumane torture.
“That isn’t intelligible, stupid girl.” Agatha’s sneer is venom.
Sapphire chokes. It sounds like her throat is made of sandpaper and glass.
“I-can’t-hear-you!” Agatha shrieks and sings at the same time, pushing her creepy old lady voice to a new octave. “Speak, girl!”
Christ, make this end.
I attempt to go somewhere else in my head. The pond I’d go fishing at as a boy. The rope attached to a great cypress tree I used to swing off in the hot summer months. But nothing quite drowns out the agonizing sounds of the copper-headed young woman I grew up with… groaning and gagging as she fights to say clear words to this old hag.
“Not a word? Not even for a sip of water to coat your dry, blistering mouth?”
Well, you can’t say this bitch didn’t deserve what she got when Sapphire’s father broke her spine in four places. She’s an actual sadistic psychopath.
Agatha twists back to me. “Open.”
I think about denying it if Sapphire can’t have some too. But that thought disappears as quickly as it popped up in my head. What good am I to her if I’m too weak to crawl?
I accept Agatha’s food and water without sparing a single glance at the girl who got us into this mess. I avoid her defeated, miserable glare as I drink down the water and chew the bread as quickly as I can.
And I continue to stare at the floor, even as Agatha returns upstairs. Even as the room is draped in darkness once more. I stare at nothingness, listening to Sapphire’s breaths grow heavy with sleep.
I offer no apologies. No explanations.
I just stare.
