She has read somewhere that red is the color of passion and adventure. It’s an interior design magazine and the author is of the firm opinion that red should only be used for kitchens. Family rooms shouldn’t be that bright, living rooms should be more sedate and if bedrooms were red, no one would ever go to sleep.
“Tell us about the Wild Hunt.”
The disparity in the case of the Greek god Pan and the Roman god Bacchus is intriguing, especially since they come from the same source. Or perhaps what is more interesting is the myth and lore surrounding satyrs. Horses she can understand, but goats? When did goats come into it? The Greeks and Romans sure had weird imaginations.
“Tell us their names.”
Names are so weird. They have meanings, accumulated over a lifetime of memories and each name has an inherent bias. You can dislike or like someone based on their name. It won’t be rational, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. She is the same – the owner of the bookstore she frequents is named Jessica and she always thought that name belonged to a prissy girl but the bookstore owner is very sweet and nice and has large, round glasses and a librarian sweater. It just goes to show.
There is a pause this time and pauses are good. Sometimes they’re used as a literary device, a way to separate two ideas. Sometimes it can be dramatic, an increase in suspense and tension. Or perhaps it’s just to stop something to be continued at a later date. Pauses are versatile.
The door slams shut, a sound that breaks the monotony of the routine and she jerks straight. In the brief moments when sanity returns, she feels the magnitude of her situation press down on her. How much more pain can she take before her mind shatters forever? It has clearly already cracked and the cracks are spreading with every question they ask and the last ditch attempt of a fractured consciousness to direct away from the answers they want.
She isn’t sure whose secrets she’s keeping. She isn’t sure she’s keeping secrets at all.
But then her mind goes down a tangent on salacious secrets and spies and dead drops and what even is sanity anyway?
Her throat is hoarse. Is she still talking or is this entire conversation in her head? She can’t tell. There is screaming, all the time, an unbroken wail that never ends. She’s gradually gotten used to it, but she can’t figure out where it comes from. Maybe that’s inside her head too.
Is an insane person better at keeping secrets?
She giggles at the thought and a stray piece of hair falls in front of her eyes. She frowns at it. The hair itches. Snorting doesn’t blow it away and, with a deep, put-upon sigh, she brushes it out of her face. She hates when hair gets in her face.
She studies her hand for a moment – her nails need to be cut, they are already half-torn from clenching into the wood, and there is a deep red mark on her wrist. She needs to wear looser bracelets.
Wait a minute. She doesn’t wear bracelets. But then where did the red mark come from? Her gaze drifts down to the arm of the chair, where an unlocked handcuff catches the light, silver and useless.
Unlocked.
She sucks in a sharp breath as the room reasserts itself. Her handcuffs are unlocked. She pulls her other wrist free, marveling at the sight of her two free hands. She really needs to moisturize them. When she gets back, she’s going to the – no. No. She needs to focus. She needs to get out of here.
Delia takes a deep breath and stands up. Her knees are shaking and she feels like she’s been hit by a truck but it’s fine. Her muscles are just sore. Delia knows how to ignore that pain – it barely registers in her mind. Someone is still screaming.
She totters a few steps in front and surveys the room. She’s made a list of escape routes long, long back when she didn’t have pretty, shiny tangents to chase down in her pain. Distracted by the butterfly. When she was in kindergarten, their classroom had seen a few caterpillars grow into monarch butterflies. They had been so pretty and orange.
Wait. She’s been thinking about – right. The list. Two doors, both steel, impossible to penetrate unless she turns into Wonder Woman or manages to display hitherto unknown lock-picking skills. Wow, she was snarky when she was in pain.
A window. Similarly unreachable unless she grows two feet or turns into Spiderman. But she doesn’t have to grow two feet. She has a chair.
She smiles at the chair, extremely proud of herself for making that connection. She suspects it’s very difficult to do with a pain-addled mind. There are handcuffs on the chair. They locked her in there while they whispered in her ear and shoved needles in her arms and no, no, no, please not the pain, it hurts, IT HURTS –
The floor is rough and cold underneath her. Delia presses her forehead against it and takes a deep breath. She repeats the things she knows, out loud. The screaming is definitely in her head. “They’re torturing me,” she says, her voice hoarse and cracked. She needs a glass of water. But first things first. Escape. “No one is coming for me.” That is a bit harder to say and there are tears in her eyes but it’s true. She can’t wait here for a rescue. “I need to get out.” A fact and an order. Find a way out. They haven’t managed to break her yet.
Delia breathes in and out and tries to hold onto her sanity. It’s slippery and she loses strands of it every time she shifts her grip but she keeps those three facts in her head.
They’re torturing me.
Pain, pain, unending pain and the questions, oh god the questions, she doesn’t want to betray anyone please don’t please –
No one is coming for me.
I’m keeping your secrets I’M KEEPING YOUR SECRETS come and find me and get me out but you won’t you won’t you told me you never wanted to see me again –
I need to get out.
She drags the chair to the wall and stands on it. She’s just high enough to unlatch the window. It’s a small window but that’s better. She has something to brace against as she grabs onto the window frame. She takes a deep breath and kicks off the wall, pulling herself up before her arms can utter a squawk of protest. The window is small but she fits through with a bunch of ungainly scrambling she suspects she would’ve been embarrassed about.
It’s hard to feel embarrassed when you’re biting your lip and clenching your fists to drown out memories of pain.
Delia’s in an alleyway. Sanity stops struggling, stops slipping out of her grasp.
She’s in an alleyway. It’s night. It’s cold. The connections are coming faster now, away from the room she’s been tortured in. She places one stumbling foot in front of the other as she walks away from the basement window. She keeps her head down but peers up through her eyelashes, trying to observe and not be observed at the same time.
She suspects it doesn’t work. She suspects she stands out like a sore thumb – a girl in sweat-soaked clothes walking around in the dead of night with no jacket and no shoes. She suspects the no shoes is important but right now, she can walk over broken glass without a flinch.
Perhaps she already has.
No one is coming for her. No one will save her. But Delia has never been a princess in a tower, never contended with dragons and knights and so, even though every part of her body is crying for her to curl up and go to sleep, she will walk. She’ll walk until she finds a sign telling her where she is, until she figures out which direction to go, until she crosses a highway and sees the sunset and walks and walks.
Until she’s climbing up the steps to her apartment. She stares at her door. It’s closed.
And right now, she doesn’t have the energy to reach out and turn the knob.
She crumples to the floor as the screaming finally stops. She feels arms around her and voices muttering gibberish in her ear but it doesn’t matter.
She’s lost her mind somewhere between here and there and here again.
She closes her eyes and lets the darkness swallow her whole.
~#~
Waking up feels like coming out of water as in the sense that her senses are waking up and unpleasantly. There is a full-fledged argument happening not four feet from her ears and the sound has gone from muted to blasting. Someone is trying to intervene and is failing, horribly. Delia might feel sorry for them if she isn’t so irritated.
It hurts. Everything hurts. There is a persistent throbbing in both her upper arms and her wrists feel chafed and sore. Her feet burn, like she’s walked barefoot for seventeen miles and it’s only when she hunts down the strange number does she realize she has.
Oh god. She’s been tortured and she’s escaped and she, in a particularly delusional decision, has decided to walk all the way back to her apartment, seventeen miles from where they’ve been keeping her.
She tries to console herself by saying she was tortured but the stupidity still makes her cringe.
Unfortunately, all her attempts at self-recrimination are interrupted by the argument that is growing ever louder. She might recognize those voices but her mind is being especially uncooperative today and she sighs, deeply, before opening her eyes.
She’s lying on a soft surface at level with her coffee table so she’s assuming she’s on the couch. The armchair opposite from her is occupied by a girl who’s wanly staring at the floor, silhouetted by what is definitely afternoon light. Delia must’ve made a sound because Erin immediately jerks up, staring at her. At first, her face is blank, then her eyes widen and her face splits into a smile.
Because Delia is very much not in the mood, she cuts off whatever bubbly reply Erin is about to give and snaps, “What are you doing here?”
Erin deflates, but only partially. “You’re alive!” she trills happily and when she leaps up from her chair, Delia realizes that she’s probably going to have to get up. The couch is soft and is very easy on her growing headache but she refuses to let Erin tower over her.
Also, there was a small, miniscule hesitation in the argument going on behind her and Delia is so very done with all of them.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Delia snarls back and she’s being rude, very rude, but she no longer has the energy to care. Erin pauses, her arms half-outstretched like she’d been planning to give Delia a hug.
“What question?” she asked, her doe eyes going wide.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Delia repeats, adding the profanity because it makes her feel better. Also, Erin is very much the baby and the Catholic schoolgirl of the group and her eyes go even wider at the curse.
“We’re here to help you!” she rallies admirably. The argument trails off, thank god, because Delia can’t think with all this noise. Then she registers what Erin said and – just – what.
She stares at Erin, waiting for a rejoinder. When none arrives, she arches an eyebrow. When even that doesn’t garner a response, she says, very politely, “Excuse me?”
Erin, she’s pleased to note, freezes at the calm, controlled tone.
“We came here to help you,” Adrian says and he’s one of the two that were arguing. His face is as smugly arrogant as it had been the last time she’d seen it and Delia considers it for a long moment.
There are many responses to his words and Delia thinks through them until she finds one she likes. “Get out of my house,” she says levelly.
Adrian’s smug smile doesn’t disappear. “You need our help,” he says, “You collapsed at your front door.”
Adrian clearly has to learn better self-preservation skills because Delia’s been captured and tortured and she still hasn’t given up these insufferable assholes and if he thinks he can test her now he is sorely mistaken.
Also, Delia’s mind is fraying and the part of her that realizes what a bad idea it is to piss off a group of superpowered mercenaries is in hiding with all their secrets.
She says, in the same level tone, “Get out of my house or I swear to the Devil himself I’ll poison the lot of you in your sleep.”
Adrian’s smile freezes and she doesn’t have to turn to Erin to see that she’s clutching her cross.
Catalina steps into view and for the first time that Delia’s seen, her smile’s unsure. “Delia, darling –” she starts off like she always does, but something in Delia’s glare must change her mind because she cuts off mid-sentence. She stares at Delia for a long moment before saying, in a softer voice, “You’re hurt. Let us help.”
Delia wants to let her help. She wants to let Catalina and her soft voice maneuver her into the shower and then give her soup and then tuck her into bed. But Delia’s undergone torture and the part of her that falls to Catalina’s compulsion is a part that’s floating around without any control. “Get out,” she repeats.
She can’t threaten them and there are already tears pricking at the corner of her eyes and if they see her cry she really will kill them. Delia is tired of being their token weakling, the girl they all try to protect.
Well, they didn’t protect her this time and maybe Delia’s realized that she can’t afford to be weak.
Catalina exchanges a glance with Adrian and turns back over her shoulder to a figure that Delia can’t see. Brian, of course, who had told her with his no-nonsense manner that she was a liability. Brian, who was just arguing with Adrian over something to do with her kidnapping and somehow, she doesn’t think he’s on her side. He’s hiding, after all, for a reason.
Brian is the one who fractured her first and the only reason she can be thankful that he’s in her house is because he will undoubtedly try to get them to leave.
“You heard her,” comes his steady, unruffled voice, “Let’s go.”
Delia is watching Catalina at the time, which is the only reason she notices the woman’s look of utter venom – a look that lasts for a half second before it smoothens back to her normal sultry grin. “Come on, Erin,” she says, and stalks out of the room without a backward glance.
Erin follows. Adrian is likewise giving Brian a nasty glare and he snarls, “You can’t be human. Because humans can’t live without hearts.”
“She asked us to leave,” Brian responds evenly and Delia is too tired to follow the undertones but not too tired to pick up on them. Something is going on here.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Adrian says in a tone that makes it sound like ‘go fuck yourself’. He stomps out the door.
There is a long silence. Delia is turned away from her kitchen, waiting for Brian to leave. For a panicked moment, she thinks he might say something to her.
But then the door clicks shut and Delia is left with herself and her demons.
