Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
These pajama sets are the only thing I’ve worn since my arrival. He’s seen me in them every day. He’s seen everything beneath them too. But right now, he looks like he wants to see it again. I want him to. I want to forget. I want to be reckless and feel the small thrill and warring hatred for myself that I feel when he touches me. When anyone touches me.
But he does not allow himself to give in this time.
“We are having dinner guests this evening,” he tells me as he rises. “They will not like you, but they will respect you.”
No sugar coating. Maybe that’s what I like about Alexei.
“You will need to play the part,” he adds.
I splay my legs apart a little wider, drawing his attention there as I speak. “The doting wife? Or the reformed whore?”
His eyes flash to mine, his lust barely concealed by his equal annoyance.
“Clean yourself up,” he orders.
“Do you have a fire?” I reply. “Because I’ll need one for that.”
I don’t know why I’m baiting him. But his indifference towards me today is annoying me. And all of the emotions I don’t want to feel are bubbling to the surface.
“A shower will do,” is his terse reply before he leaves the room.
I don’t know where Magda is at. She must be busy preparing dinner. Because usually, she is always near when I have a shower.
Today, she is nowhere to be found. And since Alexei stomped back to his lair, I am left to my own devices.
My eyes move over the bathtub with a dark sense of longing and despair. My fingers trail over the white porcelain, and like clockwork, I hear my mother’s voice in my head.
I kneel and put the stopper in. The same way she must have done that day. I wouldn’t know. Because I was last. But I should have known. Because she was happy that morning. And she was never happy.
I hum the song to myself as the water fills the basin, ripples distorting my reflection on the surface. The water is lukewarm when my fingers weave through it, just like it was that day.
My clothes come off in a heap beside me, and I grip the edges of the tub as I lower myself inside. Flashes of my mother’s face emerge from the darkest places of my mind. She was smiling and singing. And I was still dressed.
There was nothing on her face when I saw them lying on the bathroom floor. The horror washed over me when I realized what she’d done, and I wanted to die too. I didn’t even put up a fight.
I was in a daze when she pushed me under the water. I grasped at the distorted sound of her voice beneath the water. But then it was in my nose. My lungs. Choking me. I thrashed, and she held me under.
Like I’m doing now. My eyes are closed, and I’m floating. Perfectly still.
Silence.
I can’t hear her voice anymore. I can’t see the angel’s faces. The memories have stolen them from me. Distorted them.
I only remember their innocence.
And that it was my job to protect them.
I failed.
And that’s why I’m still here. Being punished. My little brother and my sisters got to fly away, but I never will. Because I didn’t protect them.
In this moment of clarity that’s what it all comes back to. I always thought that it was punishment. That’s why I survived. Why I was left behind.
My hair is a halo around me, like silk beneath the water, tangling over my face and arms. Just like mom’s was that day. A bubble of air escapes my lips. A test.
An urge to be close to them.
But something keeps pulling me back. Into the light and away from the darkness. A nagging hope. That maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve always been wrong. And maybe it wasn’t my fault.
But hope isn’t what saves me today.
This time, it’s a strong pair of hands, heaving me out of the bathtub and shaking me from my stupor.
When I open my eyes, it isn’t Alexei I find. It’s someone else. A small boy. Horror and unforgiving pain etched onto his face.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he roars.
The force of his grip is painful. His muscles are shaking, and it isn’t me he sees when he grips my face and screams at me.
“Why?”
When I don’t answer, he discards me on the floor and bends over to drain the tub. And then he pauses, breath heaving, and punches his fist into the porcelain with a level of violence even my eyes have not seen before.
When he turns around again, I’m in the corner, watching him cautiously. His fist is bloodied and swollen. Fingers probably broken. Because of me.
But it’s the expression on his face.
Hurt and rage.