“Fuck,” Niklaus mutters under his breath. His eyes lift to meet mine before they grow heavy.
Agatha begins whispering in his ear, pointing aggressively and pausing as if waiting for him to respond. He winces away from her hot breath at first, then blinks slowly, feeling the effects of whatever she injected him with.
“I blacked it out,” he finally answers, lost behind those tired blue eyes.
Agatha whispers again, harsh and bitter.
“A group of extremists took me,” he replies.
Oh no.
“I kept asking for my father.”
Do I want to hear this? He’s never spoken about that time. It feels like a private moment I shouldn’t be forced to listen to. Sometimes I forget it happened at all.
“They made me stare at… gruesome photographs. Only given water when I’d say what they wanted me to say.” His jaw is tight, but there’s an eerie pain behind his blank stare.
Agatha whispers a question.
“They hurt me if I tried to leave. I had to lie in a grave if I cried.”
What the fuck?
His body flexes, chest lifting as he bears down. A long groan drags out of his lungs, muffled behind clenched teeth.
“Is your name Boy?” Agatha asks after influencing the hazy, delusional state he’s in with the thoughts she whispered to him so fervently.
“Yes, Grandmother,” he answers.
Niklaus flexes his arms against the restraints, hardening his entire body as he squeezes is eyes shut to escape the cluster of memories invading his mind.
I want to call out to him. Remind him of where he is. But in the same breath, I feel like an idiot for wanting to help him. Especially after his horrific words at the creek replay in my head.
After another hour of this, Agatha finally takes her exit, leaving me to watch Niklaus fall in and out of sleep. When he’s awake, he stares blankly at the floor, seeming to process the demons in his mind.
The decent human part of me has that nagging urge to comfort him. But there’s another side of me that’s so tired. My body aches and trembles from the beating and the drafty basement. The roof of my mouth and the inside of my cheeks are jagged with sores. All I want is to fall asleep and escape.
My eyes grow heavy, staring up at the ceiling in hopelessness.
What if I can never travel again? What if it was a fluke?
I’ll never see my brother again.
A warm breeze of breakfasttea and oatmeal brush over my upper lip.
I wrinkle my nose at the heat it brings, then at the sudden pressure over my mouth. I have no memory of dozing off, but as I’m pulled out of a dim, dreamless sleep—I jolt awake at the forceful pair of lips being smashed against my mouth.
A soft, whimpering groan vibrates against my face, and a slimy tongue pokes between my lips and into my mouth.
Every muscle becomes stone, flexing to the point of searing pain.
A pair of hands cup my breasts. Warm, damp, clammy, and kneading into my brassiere. The weight of his body. The scent of his grassy, sweaty body odor. It makes me seize under his bony figure pinning me to a mattress.
I jerk my mouth away from his and scream hysterically. The tears come as I thrash my face back and forth, fighting to breathe any air that hasn’t already been claimed by him.
Torn wallpaper. A grimy window with blurry streaks of rain pelting over the rolling hills of bright green grass and slanted trees swaying in the storm’s ferocious wind.
“Shhh! You don’t have to be afraid of that insect. He’s still in the basement,” Abbott shushes against my lips, panting in excitement.
