Everyone's Favorite Girl (17 page)

“Nothing.”

“So I guess you’ve got some free time, then.  Want to do me a favor?”  I held out the wad of hair.  Sean glanced at it and looked away.  “I want you to lock Kate up.”

“Where?”

“I don’t care.”

“The only cells we have are on Level E.  I no longer have access.”

It was the prostitution that landed Sean in the shithouse, I was sure of it.  That and James’s drug-induced charm.

“The Showcase Hall then,” I said.

Sean cracked a smile.  “You’re a sadistic cunt, you know that?”

“Tell her I’ll be down to see her in a little bit.”

“Is that an order?”

This time I smiled.  “I suppose it is.”

I started to walk away, but the change in Sean’s tone inspired an immediate fear of having my back to him.

“You know this thing with James won’t last long,” he said.  “Mr. Shriver misses having a son.  That’s all it is.  It won’t take long for him to get tired of having a nose up his ass. 
Tread carefully, you fucking twat.”

He stormed past me, but for a split second I thought he was attacking.  He scooped Kate off the ground with no effort and slung her over his shoulder.  Kate cried out in pain but she didn’t resist him.  She’d probably grown accustomed to the consequences of doing so.

I waited until the elevator returned from Level B.

Then I rode it upstairs and went to Patton’s apartment.

~ ~ ~ ~

I told him everything, starting with cutting the device from Flora’s arm.  It took ten minutes to get past this part.  Patton drilled me with questions as to Flora’s state of health.  Finally I resolved to bring her to him tonight for an examination.

He had a difficult time believing we were keeping James drugged—an even harder time believing I’d just done the same to half a dozen lab techs, then instructed them to ship out barrels of water in place of the Libido Drug.

“You’re crazy, Melissa.  Fucking crazy.  I give it three days at best before this shit comes back on you.”

“I don’t need three days.”

“What do you mean?  What are you going to do?”

I sighed and stood from the couch.  “I’m going to end this.  Even if it means bringing us all down with it.  Enough is enough, Patton.  Judy says she’s close to something that can save us.  If she doesn’t pull through for us, the next time I see Mr. Shriver, I’m going to drug him, take him upstairs, and kill him.  Who cares if we all go to prison?  Prison will be better than this place.”

Patton looked too tired to argue.  He looked like he’d spent all day weeping for Flora—the one I’d killed right in front of him.

“It comes down to this,” he said after a moment.  “Just killing him.  Something I could have done a long time ago.  Only I was too selfish.  I felt like I didn’t deserve to die or go to prison, so I just let this…evil…continue.”

“Well,” I said, with a long, awkward pause empty of consolation.  “At least it’s almost over.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Judy insisted that James come along with us to Level B.  She seemed eager, like a proud child coming home with all
As on her report card.  I hoped that meant good news and not a repeat of when she intervened in Brian’s conspiracy.  Sometimes the most dangerous people start out with good intentions.

We didn’t talk until we reached Level B.  All the lights were off, as per usual, but I still spoke in a whisper, knowing James, my loyal servant, would do the same.  Judy always spoke softly, so if anyone was around, they’d have a hard time hearing us.

I made my confession about the lab techs, ready to face Judy’s rebuke.  I expect her to inform me that she was incapable of keeping seven people drugged at all times, that my presumptuous blunder would cost us all our lives when we were so close to escape.

Instead, she just shrugged and said, “Good move.  I’ll take care of it.”

“How often do you have to drug James?”

She smiled.  “
Three times daily.”

A lump formed in my throat.  I hadn’t realized the lab techs would require that much maintenance.  When I got the idea, I figured all she’d have to do was call a mandatory employee meeting every morning and serve up the day’s dosage in a cup of coffee or a donut.

“Are you sure you can handle all that?” I asked.

“
I won’t need to for much longer.”

We came into the lobby and I broke from them long enough to step over to the pit.  Sure enough, the bartender was still there.  Since Sean no longer had access to the cells on Level E, and since I hadn’t instructed James to deal with him, this appeared to be the
poor bastard’s permanent home.

“I
’m thirsty,” he said, startling me a little.  With his slumped posture, I thought he was unconscious.

I walked away, expecting him to beg.  He didn’t.

“When we’re done, I need you to do me a favor,” I said to James, catching up to them at a door in the back left corner of the room.

“
Okay.”

Judy opened the door and James
went inside.  It didn’t even occur to him to ask what the favor would be.

What girl wouldn’t stockpile vials of Love Drug in her purse?

Judy was holding the door for me.  I couldn’t tell if she was being polite or stalling.  This was Brian’s bedroom.

Bracing myself to discover something horrific—walls decorated with creepy taxidermy, big glass tubes with failed experiments floating inside, human skulls mounted on the bedposts—I stepped through the door.

~ ~ ~ ~

When I reached the next intersection, I had to guess which way to go: left or right?  Luckily I made the correct choice, then again at the next intersection.  Up ahead I could hear the fan blowing.

And something else.

A breathy voice, directly to my left.

Without thinking, I shined my flashlight at the vent cover and my heart started pounding as I realized what I'd done.  I turned the light off and stiffened up, afraid to move, waiting to hear the voice again, certain I'd given myself away.

"Yeah.  Suck it baby."

Brian's voice.

He wasn't alone.

"Fuck yeah, that's it."

I breathed a sigh of relief.  He was preoccupied.  He hadn't seen the light.

"Slower . . . slower you dumb bitch.
  That's
it.  There you go."

In spite of my anxiety, I couldn't help but allow my hatred of him to resurface.  Some poor girl--some poor
employee--
giving him head in the dark, and he didn't have the decency to be nice to her.

I would love to see this piece of shit out in the world, at a bar, maybe, trying to pick up women.  I'd bet all of Ted's money the only girl Brian could land was one who had no other option.

"Come on, get your mouth around it," he said.  "It's not like it's that big."

I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh.  At least he was honest.

His breathing intensified.

"You know what to do, right?  Don't fucking nod!"

I was going to lose it.  I started to crawl away, but what he said next made me stop dead in my tracks.

"Tomorrow's a big day.  Mr. Shriver will be gone.  Slower.  Slow
down,
Judy, damn it!  Just because I don't say if for a while doesn't mean you should speed up.  You're going to learn to do it the way I want, understand?"  A pause.  "See?  You didn't nod.  You're learning."

My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest.  I'd held my breath for so long my lungs were hurting.  I blew the air out slowly, then inhaled open-mouthed so I wouldn't make any noise.

"Good girl.  Good girl."

I imagined him stroking her hair as he said that and it made me nauseous.  I was powerless to stop him.  I couldn't even tell Patton without explaining how I knew, and that meant giving up Clifton's labyrinth.

I couldn't do it.  It was too big a risk.  I needed to explore the rest of the ducts, find out if they might possibly lead to escape.  Some small part of me still held back one-hundred percent trust in Patton.  I couldn't hand myself over to him completely.  Not in this place--at least not yet.

I would have to take care of this problem myself.  No longer would I ask to see Judy in the morning.  I would demand it.  And Brian was going to oblige, whether he knew it or not.

"Anyway, like I was saying," he continued in the darkness.  "Mr. Shriver will be gone, along will Sean's guards.  After they take him to the airport, they've got a big job to do.  All the men from the party I told you about, remember?  It's time to dispose of some of them.  Sean's guards have to deliver each of them home one by one and stage a natural death.  It's brilliantly intricate.  If evil.  Wow, baby.  Look how good you're doing.  I might actually come tonight after all."

He stopped for a moment, I assumed to enjoy his blowjob.

"And I imagine Sean will be preoccupied tomorrow as well."  The sinister laugh that followed almost made me gasp.  It didn't even sound like him.  I could feel goose bumps forming all over my body.  "So starting tomorrow, you'll get a break from the beatings, since Mr. Stump Dick will be out of town.  And you will go to Melissa and tell her what's been happening to you.  You'll cry.  You'll let her embrace you.  And, if we're lucky, she'll do something very, very stupid.  Now speed it up and finish me off.  I can feel it.  I can feel it."

Silence ensued, and out of it rose the sound of him breathing through his teeth, faster and faster, until finally he grunted and exhaled.

"Did you swallow it?"

"Yes," Judy said, her voice as cold as I'd ever heard.

"Go over there and turn on the light."

~ ~ ~ ~

That memory flashed through my mind as I entered the room.  When Brian told Judy to turn on the light, I’d crawled away from the vent cover, fearing then what I feared now.

If I weren’t so bad about giving people too much credit, I probably never would have married Ted, never would have found the YFG business card in his pants, and never would have known this place even existed.

Instead of the quarters of a mad scientist, replete with torture devices and ghastly mutations, I found myself standing in a nerdy teenager’s bedroom that reeked of rotten food and dirty clothes.  Large and luxurious in design, yes, but atop the stately décor of the room were strewn the messy remnants of a smart but lonely boy.  Empty pizza boxes, twenty-ounce bottles of various sodas, dirty clothes left wherever they fell.  The bed was unmade.  Garbage can full.  He had probably a sixty-inch television sitting on the coffee table, so close to the couch it’s a wonder he didn’t go blind—before I stabbed him in the eye, that is.  He had several videogame systems and a laptop linked to the TV, behind which an extension cord ran across the floor to the wall.

It was disgusting.  The kind of room you know is covered top to bottom in dried up drool, pizza grease, and
jizz.

“This isn’t quite what I expected,” I said.

“He used to make me clean up,” Judy said, closing the door.  “He had a costume he made me wear.”

“French maid?”

She nodded.

I looked her up and down.  “I bet you looked cute as shit dressed like that.”

“He told me I looked stupid.  He liked to call me stupid.”

She seemed sad in a way.
  Some twisted form of nostalgic.  How much time had she spent in this room, giving Brian head and cleaning up his disgusting mess, all the while fearing the day he would decide to take her virtue along with her dignity?

“My dad would have kicked my ass if I left my room like this,” James said, kicking at a can of soda that proved not to be completely empty, even though it was turned on its side.

“Mine, too,” Judy said.  “We had white carpet.  You weren’t allowed to wear shoes in the house, and eating anywhere but the dining room table was the worst sin I could commit.  My mom would rather have found a boy in my room than a bag of chips.”

“Let’s get this over with,” I said.  “I don’t want to be in here.  I feel like I’m breathing in the dust of dried semen.”

“It’s this way,” Judy said, pointing toward the back wall, to the right of Brian’s bed.

She went over to the bookshelf, removed a few books, and slid open a panel in the back.  After punching in a code, she walked with the bookshelf as it slid to the side so she could return the books to their proper place.

Behind the bookshelf was an open doorway leading to a small room lit only by the glow of a computer monitor.

This time I went inside first.  I wanted to see what my fetal
self looked like.

The room was bare.  White tile and a stainless steel table upon which sat a cylindrical water tank lit up with under-lighting.  Floating inside with wires and tubes attached to it was my clone, its hands out, as though it were about to clap, eyes shut, head ducked forward.  A computer monitor displayed its heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level, etc.