Behind the door is a long mirror. I step in front of it, and when I see the image in the mirror, I don’t recognise myself. I look like a puppet. I am not entirely averse to the colourful dress and the slightly playful side; I am all in for it, if not for the bitter taste that I am actually a puppet. A puppet, a prisoner. With the marks still lingering on me, like the blueish-red wrists that will stay as a reminder of what happened.
A memory of the pigeons flashes through my body like electricity, and I roll my shoulder back and shudder.
I put on the shoes to distract myself.
Then, I open the door. No one is there.
“Hello?” I ask. “I’m dressed! What do you want me to do?”
No answer. I lurk around the corner, down the stairs, but I neither hear nor see anything.
“Well, I’ll just sit here and wait then,” I say out loud and sit down on the upper stairs, not knowing what to do.
While I sit there, I take in what I can see of the house and the staircase. Everything in this house seems to be black. It’s shouting money, yes, but also the angel of death.
Suddenly, there is a commotion downstairs.
A female shouts something in a language I don’t understand, and another voice shouts something in English that sounds like “Calm down, or I will murder you!”
I slide down a couple of steps and crane my neck to get a better look at what is happening downstairs.
There is Kat, and a woman I haven’t seen before, both having each other at their throats.
“You don’t get to order me around here,” says the woman I don’t know threateningly. She has flat but thick blonde hair and wears a tight dress and heels. She looks very muscular and trained from behind.
“I do if you interfere with my plans, and you will not fucking touch her, do you understand, Adria?”
“It was her fucking father!” shouts the woman called Adria, “I am going to murder her like I will my father, pigghia focu!”
The older woman interferes.
“Adria,” she says, and speaks to her in a language I don’tunderstand. Adria scoffs, lets go of Kat, pushes her back like a bully and turns.
Her eyes fall on me.
Disgust radiates over me as she glances at me with a pursed upper lip, as if I were poop stuck on her shoe.
“So that’s the puttana,” she says and spits towards me. I don’t need to know the language to know she is insulting me. If looks could kill, I would’ve dropped dead immediately.
In any other situation, I would have said something, but here? I’d better keep my mouth shut. Adria leaves and throws the door into its hinges, a sound that cuts painfully through my ears.
Kat and the older woman both look at me. I don’t know what to do.
“I am dressed. You didn’t tell me what to do,” I say.
The older woman turns to Kat. “She’s not only slow, but apparently cannot think on her own at all. Your problem.”
I don’t know what makes me do it, but I will not let myself be labelled brainless and stupid.
“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” I ask as I get down the stairs. I am generally a nice person, but I am infamous for my attitude. “You fucking kidnap me because of shit I don’t know anything about, throw me in a fucking dungeon, torture me, starve me, pretend to torture my best friend to make me do things, lock me in that room, shout at me for doing nothing, dress me like a puppet, and when I do nothing, it’s wrong either?”
I am full-on shouting at this point, wildly gesturing with my hands. I turn in anger and see a man bleeding out on the floor, some of his skin missing. It is something I always dreamed of seeing as a profiler, and as a sucker for true crime and horror movies, I am not even taken aback. This is all a nightmare anyway.
“Seriously!” I shout and round on them. “What is wrong with you people?!”
They both look at me, a grin appearing on Kat’s mouth.
“See,” says Kat. “Told you she has the fire.”
