My head slams off the concrete floor with a thud vibrating around my skull.
More thuds.
More thuds.
I can’t get him off me as my body becomes limp, my eyes rolling back in my head.
I’m proddedawake with a sharp slap against my chest as Helene stands above me, light from the open door filtering through, casting me in her shadow.
“Have you had time to think now?” she asks, dragging her stick back to her side.
I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be thinking about since she found me on the shore.
“You are broken,” she says, her lip curling. “I have no use for those who do not function correctly. I will allow you out of this torment if you take ten days of punishment without complaint.”
“Yes,” I rush out, not even leaving a gap between her offer and my response.
“Up, broken boy.” She slaps her stick against my shoulder.
My joints creak as I shakily stand. The skin on the tips of my fingers has been peeled away, scratches all over my chest, arms, neck. But she looks at me like I’m covered in shit as she holds her hand over her shoulder. “No matter what you witness or feel, you must see this punishment through. I will not rescue you again.”
I nod, staring at the black glove stretching through the open door to place a cloth bag in Helene’s hand.
“My patience is waning.” She throws it at my feet. “You have two minutes to be ready.”
She doesn’t leave the room for me to change as I empty the bag of the black military-style outfit. I don’t ask her to either, seeing as I’ll be left in the dark and she’s not trustworthy enough to let me out of this fucking room with the exact same dimensions as my cell. The cell I was put in as a fucking safety measure, locked away from everyone else, but it was a prison within a prison. Like nesting dolls, it got darker the further it embedded itself inside of me.
A heavy thud hits the floor as I finish getting dressed. There’s a pair of black boots, thick soles as though they’re purposely made to make the maximum amount of noise. They’re heavy as fuck, barely even moving as I push my feet into them and lace them up. Another piece of my outfit is given as she holds out a pair of black leather gloves. I take them, noting how thin the material is, the seams scratching the cuts on my hands as I pull them on. There isn’t a single inch of visible skin from my neck down.
I’ve become a shadow, just like Lennox calls me.
Then Helene steps back, picking up a mask from the guard at the door. She’s warmer as she instructs, “Come here, sweet boy.”
Relief takes over all of my fear as I walk straight through the doors into light. The walls are still stone but there’s no metal door locking me in. I don’t even give a fuck about what she wants me to do, it’s worth it for this small amount of freedom.
Yet Helene still fucks with it, proving she is the only person in control as she gestures for me to lower my head. It’s not until she’s secured a curved mirror mask over my head I notice the flat black metal bar forced between my teeth. I can’t speak as it painfully presses against each side of where my lips join, pulling them apart, making it difficult to swallow.
She tugs on my nape as she secures the back, zipping up each flap of the soft leather so it’s cushioned to the contours of my skull then pulls her hand back with the pull tab still clasped between her fingers so I can’t unzip it. The mirrored portion distorts everything, making it darker, grimier, more terrifying as she grips my shoulder to turn me.
“If you do not obey, this will become your home,” she says, surveying the bloody walls.
I nod once, too quickly, as my nightmare’s sealed away with a slam of the door. There isn’t a drop window on the front of it, but there’s a large electronic panel resembling what I tried to make when I was fifteen.
I spent months collecting old electronic parts, screens, anything I could strip and rebuild after Asher dared me to prove I’d be able to make a working camera. We couldn’t test it without a screen, but I took it as a challenge for myself. I wanted it to be sleek, no buttons, thin enough I’d be able to hardwire it into the wall without any voltage boxes sticking out.
The screen in front of me is the same, down to the dimensions and the carbon casing I took from one of my dad’s factories under the guise of caring about the family business. I never gave a fuck about manufacturing, I wanted to create something new, something mine.
Helene can’t see me staring at it through the mask as she walks ahead, her voice inside the mask rather than muffled through the leather covering my ears. “There’s something you may not remember,” she says, slowing down until I catch up with her. “My masks showed you the videos but there were others I kept back out of protection for your innocent feelings.”
I bite down on the metal bar at the reminder as she leads me through the stone hallway. The distant screams are picked up by whatever speaker is filtering the surrounding noises inside the mask. They’re too low for me to work out what the person issaying, and I couldn’t give a fuck about their torment, not when I’ve managed to escape my own.
We reach a staircase chiseled out of the stone and she places her hand on my shoulder as she carefully walks up. I gauge my chances of throwing her down the fucking stairs to really escape. Before I can determine the likelihood of getting away, she pauses in the middle and says, “As my descendent, I’ll give you all the information from the source. In order to do that, you must play your part—become a shadow. Can you do that, sweet boy?”
Intrigue is going to be the death of me because I nod instead of throwing her down the steps and stamping on her head like I should.
We enter the kitchen through a dimly lit pantry. We’re in Helene’s house. She hasn’t moved me somewhere else. Delilah’s mother is at the table, bruising under her collarbones as she sips from a gold-rimmed teacup, but there’s a hint of fearful respect when she sees Helene. I don’t look for Delilah. She’ll be on the window, hiding from everyone like we agreed.
I could study these fuckers for years yet never understand their dynamic. Helene seems to be their leader, but the Lerouxs only ever exuded power when I was growing up. They weren’t the family who fell in line with others or chased anyone else’s attention. They were the “it” family—the perfect daughters, the perfect couple, everything they allowed people to see projected the same image.
