Page 13 of Triple Threat

“Just go away!” I screamed, and he did. The door gave a softwhumpas he shut it. There was no click of the lock this time.

I stayed in the room.

* * *

He came backto find me just as I had been, only I’d huddled beneath the blankets this time. He set a tray of food on the bedside table and left as quietly as he came, and I didn’t move a muscle. Instead, I closed my eyes again, despaired some more, and slept again. When I woke, the tray was still there, but the room was dark. I pushed myself into a sitting position, ignored the food and pills on the tray, and staggered to the attached bathroom.

I relieved myself, huddled in the shower, and let the hot water pelt my head, shoulders, and back, watching the water, tinged blue by the cheap dye in my hair, run in rivulets over my arm and wisp to the circular drain set in the shower’s floor.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, but the hot water never seemed to run out even though it was my intention to just chill there until it did.

Eventually, my vacant staring even got on my own nerves and I got up, leaving the shower and wrapping my hair in one of the big white towels, winding another around my body.

The bathroom was almost as big as the bedroom. It had a big bathtub, an even bigger glassed-in shower, a long counter with a sink and another, separate lower counter with a big, cushy stool that looked more like an ottoman in front of it. This counter had a big mirror with recessed lighting around it, and I pictured some rich lady sitting at it doing her makeup.

I sat on the stool and stared into the mirror. I wasn’t rich, nor did I think I could be considered a lady and I damn sure didn’t know why I was here.

The only thing I could think of was that I was here to be trafficked. That I was here to heal up, be fattened up, only to end up fucked and fucked up. Used until I was no longer palatable before I was killed.

I mean, that’s what the Brit had said. That he had all these kinds of skills used to kill people… so why not me too?

I covered my face with my hands and tried to breathe around the panic that was threatening to overwhelm me.

“I suppose now is as good a time as any to do something about that dreadful hair.”

I jumped and shrieked slightly and looked up in horror at the Brit’s reflection in the mirror behind me.

“You haven’t eaten.” His tone was merely an observation, nothing accusatory or otherwise to it.

“Why? What are you going to do with me?”

“I’m going to see you well, keep you alive,” he said. “Nothing more.”

“Then what?” I demanded. “Are you going to sell me?”

“Sell you?” he echoed, then laughed as though it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

“Okay, I get it,” I mumbled both embarrassed and a little affronted. “I’m too ugly for that, or something…”

“Now I didn’t say that,” he said and stared me down in the mirror.

“Then why was that so funny?” I asked.

“Funny? More ironic, and never mind that. May I?” he asked and held out his hands slightly, gesturing at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Your hair,” he said. “I was left instruction to fix it; back to your natural color.” He took a step, and I flinched.

“You don’t know what my natural color is,” I said.

“You’ve enough root showing now, besides that, I was told it’s brunette.” He pulled the towel from my head and tsked lightly. “You’ve quite damaged it, now haven’t you?” he said, and I held very still as he ran his fingers through it.

“Please don’t,” I said softly.

“I think it will look better when I’m through,” he said.

I shook my head. I mean, it looked like crap but I couldn’t find a care for it. I didn’t care about anything except not getting raped again… I didn’t even care too much about dying next to that. Some things were worse than death and that was honestly one of them. I’d had close calls before at the foster home. It’s why I’d left, but my luck had eventually run out in the bottom of a dry, abandoned swimming pool at a defunct YMCA in a sketchy part of Indigo City, shortly after I’d become homeless the first time. I’d been twenty-three.

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