The Master and The Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 2)

I’ve tried to ignore it, but the smell has woken me up. No one has let me out of my cage to relieve myself. I—I’m lying in my own feces, my own pitiful excretions, my own reminder that I am, in fact, still alive. It hasn’t been much because I have no food or water to release, but it’s enough to burn my nostrils and cause soft sores on my backside. Every time I reawaken, I hope to God that I open my eyes and see the sun and feel the wind on my cheeks. I hope to God that Dessin has finally come.

But, shamefully, I don’t want him to see me like this. My hair is a matted pigeon’s nest, and my hygiene is not far off from a disease-ridden rat. Has it been weeks now? I can’t recall. When you can’t see the sun come up, and the moon cools the sky, you can’t count the minutes that keep you captive.

Time is not my friend.

I don’t even care about escaping anymore. I just want a sip of water. I just want to talk to someone. To soak in a warm bath. To brush my hair. To take a bite of a piece of bread. I want the next breath I take in to be clean and without the toxic scent of urine.

But maybe this is it. This is where I die. They’ve clearly abandoned me in this room. I’m never getting out now. They locked me away and are waiting for me to starve or die of a bacterial infection. Dehydration is certainly a strong possibility too. When I imagine dying, looking into a light, slowly drifting away… it’s not the worst thing. In fact, give me a few more hours and I might beg for it. Isn’t that weak to say? I’ll beg to die. I’ll beg God to bring me home so I can shed this disgusting suit, this heavy, filthy body with welts, sores, and bruises.

I won’t have to wake up cold anymore. I won’t have to readjust my position in hardened fecal matter. I’ll spread my wings and fly away. I’ll watch over Dessin and my friends, and I’ll be their warrior angel that will fight for them on the other side.

It will be beautiful.

~

White blinding fire glows everywhere. It’s shining through the slits of my eyes, leaking past my eyelashes, making my eyes water and burn.

“You’re foul, girl. I’d breathe in through my mouth but then I’d taste it.” Absinthe. Absinthe! A person! Light! Oh my god! Can I see again?

I force my eyes open, to adjust to the lights painfully. As it comes into focus, I see that the light is not white, it is a soft glowing chandelier above my head. Golden crystals sparkling, hanging off the gaslit wicks, the golden arches. I scan the area, small space, mahogany walls, designs carved into the trim. I see a sink and a small, cracked mirror. My hands grip the surface they’re lying on; it’s an armrest. And there are wheels. I think I’m in a wheelchair. I look to my right and see Absinthe hovering over a copper bathtub, running water from an old tarnished faucet.

“Don’t even think about trying anything. I could’ve let you sit in your filth for several more days. But the smell was fogging up the mirrors in the hallways.” She hand tests the temperature in the bathtub. Her voice is strong, yet old and unstable with weakening tones.

“I won’t,” I say. Scratchy. Hoarse. Raw.

“’Cause I’d beat you dead if you did,” she adds. I believe her.

Absinthe steps in front of me and removes my gown. I sit in the wheelchair, completely bare, cold, shivering, waiting for the warm bathwater. For the first time in—days, maybe—dopamine seeps into my brain, tingling behind my eyes, spilling into my chest. It’s nearly enough to bring a smile to my face.

A bath. It’ll raise goose bumps from the back of my neck to my bare feet. I’ll lie in there with my eyes closed for as long as she lets me. I’ll ignore my stomach growling and my cotton tongue stuck to the top of my mouth. I will float, hum, relax, and when she’s not looking… I won’t miss the opportunity to drink it. I don’t give a damn if it’s in my own filth. I’ll die without a drop of water.

With her bony arms, Absinthe lifts me out of the chair. Her frizzy, gray hair grazes underneath my chin, and I catch a whiff, a quick inhale—the scent of licorice and mildew. But who am I to judge anyone’s personal stench? She grunts and hisses as her wilted skin touches the back of my disgusting legs. With a single heave and a close-mouthed groan, she chunks me into the tub. I’m silent before I scream. My body is stabbed in every direction. Tiny incisions are made, sharp sensations shake the skin off of my bones violently and I’m instantly wide awake.

“It’s colddddd!” I wail, throwing my hands above my head to reach for the edges of the tub. Flailing. Flopping about like the tail of a dolphin doing tricks. Help!

A choked gasp. “You splashed me! You awful girl! You stupid, ugly girl!” Absinthe spits on the floor next to me. She wastes no time charging from the other side of the wheelchair. I see the point of her pinkie knuckle first as her fist swipes across my left cheekbone. A shock of pain bolts under my skin, and it throbs like a heart, pumping blood to the wounded area before I can accept that punishment for what I did. But there’s no pause between assaults. No time for me to take a breath. Another punch to my jaw, slightly to the left of my chin. My head shoots against the side of the copper tub with the blast of her third swing. I am unaware of where she hits next, my whole face is screaming. Is she breaking my bones? Is she beating me dead? I can’t feel the coldness of the bath anymore. My skin is completely numb. But my cheekbones are being filled with sharp stabs, as if someone was hammering an ice pick into my bone. Between her next force of impact, I’m able to let go of the breath I was harboring in my lungs and scream like it’s the last time I’ll ever be able to use my voice.

“Enough, old woman!”

Her fist freezes in the air, a breath away from my nose. She leaves it hanging, gritting her teeth, panting with me. I lick my lips and taste the rusty metal that is my blood. My eyes fall to the cold water, and like drops of fresh ink, the crimson-red blood spirals around my body, like a murderous cloud. Like the washing of paint brushes.

Albatross yells again. “Did you hear me? I said that’s enough!”

Absinthe grunts and rolls her decaying blue eyes. “I heard ya,” she mumbles, leaning into me, nose to nose. “You make another fuss in here and I won’t stop again. Not even if he tries to break down the door.”

I move my head down, unable to lift it up again. Runny, warm blood trickles down my chin and neck. Tluck. Tlock. Tluck.

Absinthe grabs a bar of soap and a yellow sponge. She dips both in the water and rubs them together, sudsing the sponge with bubbles. There is no gentleness to her touch, although that doesn’t surprise me. Those gnarled, hard hands work like she’s scrubbing a pan of dried food and grease.

I don’t suck in a sharp breath at her lack of a sensitive touch, I don’t squirm as she washes my breasts violently. I hang my head in agony, watching the drops of blood saturate my bathwater, staining the shiny soap bubbles. My breaths are quiet, shallow, afraid to upset Absinthe by existing.

“Had any visitors in your cage as of late?” Absinthe’s tone is bathed in eager cruelty.

I raise my eyes to look at her. She gives me a sidelong glance and smirks with an ugly show of a sharp snaggletooth.

“Our minds invent monsters when there’s no light.” A garbled, throaty laugh. “Better get used to it, girl.” She flips me on my right side and scrubs the sores on my backside. I wince, leaning my head against the tub.

“Just don’t scream and wake us up when your mind attacks itself. Darkness drives us all into agonizing madness.”

I try not to tremble at her warning. This keeps getting worse and worse. How am I going to survive this? I’ll go insane before I see my friends again. If I ever do see them again, that is.

I make the mistake of wincing as Absinthe uses the sponge to scrub my private parts raw. She backhands my bloody face and the red residue splatters to the floor.

“Damn you, girl. I’m the one that has to clean up this mess.” She takes my face by the chin and uses that same sponge to wash the blood off of my face. I hold my breath and shut my eyes, trying my hardest to keep from whimpering under her feral touch. She’s about as gentle as an angry hive of bees.

She dumps a cup of ice water over me to rinse off the soap, then reaches for a stack of white towels. Absinthe studies my naked body with a raised eyebrow and scornful eyes.

“Can you stand?”

I release a shaky breath. “I think so.” God, I hope so. If I fall, you’ll only beat me again.

She nods and holds her hand out, those arthritic knuckles, the gray tone to her flesh, and dark-blue veins pulsing under the crepe skin. I extend my arm from the tub and let her support my weight as I push as hard as I can to raise myself from the water. The task would have been hard enough without the weight of the water holding me down like a human-sized paperweight. My legs are wobbly, and my spine might have been replaced by a spaghetti noodle. It burns every joint, every ligament, every muscle to try and steady myself successfully. But I know that the price of giving in to this weakness and collapsing back into the tub will only encourage her to fulfill her promise to me. She’ll beat me dead. She will.

When I’m fully upright, water cascades down my nakedness in a downpour, like dragging a wrecked ship out of the ocean. Absinthe scrapes the towels across my wet body and watches me for a pained reaction. I keep my face still, refusing to give her even a twitch of my eye as she rakes over my sores, my breasts, my battered face.

After I’m patted down and semidry, she puts my white gown on. I stretch my arms out and let her pull it over my head. Small drops of blood saturate the pure-white cloth around my neckline.

“Sit,” she orders. I drop my butt into the wheelchair, noticing that my arm is still connected to the IV.

Absinthe stops pushing the wheelchair and pauses. “Has a man ever touched you, girl?”

I would say yes, but what if she calls me a whore? What if she beats me again for letting a man touch me out of wedlock? “No, ma’am,” I mutter. Safe answer.

She doesn’t say anything. The wheelchair moves again and I let my head hang once more, letting the blood drip down my throat, hang from my nose, seep past my lips. I hope I fall asleep once more, close my eyes and sink back into my mind. She opens the wooden door and rolls me back into prison. And there’s the cage, the metal table, and the kneecaps in the corner. Hello, Albatross.

As instructed, I crawl back into my cage and get into position to lie down. Absinthe parks the wheelchair in the back of the room, then shifts something across a surface quietly. Opens and closes a door.

“Here.” She reaches her hand into the right side of my cage, above my head. A slab of raw meat, the size of a stapler in her palm. Red, plump, and even a little bloody. “Eat it before I get hungry myself.”

I take it from her hand hesitantly. Normally, I would never eat this. Kane always cooked my food before I ate it. I wouldn’t even watch as he carved the meat from the bone. But with my shriveling stomach, trembling limbs, and weak pulse—I could die. And this thick chunk looks like it’s packed with protein. I could really use protein right now. My eyes shift back to her, questioning, waiting to get a last sign of nonverbal permission to eat it. She raises her eyebrows and nods.

Not a second wasted. I shove it into my mouth, not minding the raw taste, not minding the blood and juices running down my chin. I work mindlessly to chew and chew and chew. Oh, it’s so good. It’s so heavenly. Oh, I’m so happy. Thank you, Absinthe. You saved my life.

A metal cup hovers through the bars of my cage. I look up at her again as I swallow the last of the meat. She nods once more.

It’s only a little water. But dear God, IT’S WATER!

I want to say thank you. I want to tell her that this has made me so happy. But all my body and mind will allow me to do is guzzle that small puddle of water down my throat. It eases the roughness of my tongue and soothes the insides of my cheeks… but I want more.

I won’t ask though. No, absolutely not. That might prevent her from ever bringing me anything again. It may even encourage her to continue the force-feedings.

“And how do you show your thanks, girl?”

I grip the bars frantically and hum my praise. “Thank you, Absinthe! Thank you so much! Thank you!”

A smug tight-lipped smile smoothes the crow’s-feet across her mouth.

“That’s right, girl. Very good.”