“You! Sick! Bastard!” She screamed and shot the gun until she no longer had any bullets left. “Ahhhh! I hate you, you son of a bitch!”
Although he was dead, she still kicked at his lifeless body. When she became tired of doing that, she spat at the dead doctor on the floor.
“Tiara!” Elaya said, grabbing her arm. “He’s dead. He’s dead!”
She gently touched Tiara on the shoulder and stared down at what was left of Doctor Pierce’s face. She had never felt more relieved in her life. She and Tiara embraced for what seemed like forever and sobbed in each other’s necks.
“It’s over,” Tiara whispered.
“It’s finally over, Ti Ti,” Elaya concurred and pulled back from her friend so that she could stare into her brown eyes. “We have to go. Grab that other gun and help me figure out how to delete these security videos.”
The girls not only deleted the security videos, but they found a stash of sickening tapes that Doctor Pierce had. Apparently, he had been recording some of his “sessions” in that back room. There were about a dozen videotapes of him doing ungodly things to various patients. They found the ones that he’d recorded of them and deleted those too, but the others would be used as evidence. They sent copies of the videos to the police chief with an urgent 911 message and figured it was definitely time to get out of there.
It had been so long since Tiara had seen or smelled the air from the outside world. When she unlocked the main entrance door and felt that first gust of fresh air, she almost fell to the ground and kissed the concrete sidewalk. Elaya, who had been locked up far longer than she, actually did it. “Thank you, God!” she screamed over and over. “Oh my God! Thank you!”
Tiara hit the button on the car remote dangling from the keys she held and pointed them toward the parking lot in the front of the building. The lights of a small red Chevy Aveo blinked twice, and the girls ran thankfully toward it. Everything seemed so surreal, almost like a dream, and it didn’t truly hit them that they were all the way free until they had gotten into the car and driven for a good ten minutes. They were excited to get as far away from that evil place as they could.
“Hey, Ti Ti, where are we going to go?”
Tiara didn’t have an answer for her friend. She hadn’t thought that far. Her attention was averted from Elaya for a second because there were sirens and lights flashing as police cars sped the other way. She smiled, knowing exactly where they were going. Then she glanced over at Elaya in the passenger seat and shrugged her shoulders.
“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe a shelter or something? We can get jobs until we save up for a place. Then we can just live together and save money so we can figure out what we’re gonna do. I don’t know. The important thing right now is that we have each other. And we will be all right with just that for now.”
Tiara meant every word she said, and she truly felt in her heart that as long as they had each other, they were going to be okay. She saw the silver lining through all of the bullshit she had just gone through. If she hadn’t been brought to this godforsaken place, she would have never met Elaya. She would still be out there all alone. Tiara knew that she had found a friend for life in Elaya. She knew they had a true friendship that would last until they grew old and gray. Being able to just have somebody who genuinely loved her for her was enough to give her the strength to move forward in life. Separate, the two girls were like mud on a rainy day, but together, they flourished like the crops grown from it. Tiara was thankful to have someone like Elaya in her corner, someone who wanted to see her do well and pushed her to get there. What Doctor Pierce had done to them was horrible, but it wasn’t the end of the world, and it was all over. The two ladies were free to go out and find the happiness that they deserved.
Chapter 15
Present Day
Tiara used her key to get into the secured entryway, and before she went up the three flights of stairs to her apartment, she checked her mail.
“Nothing but bills,” she said to herself and sighed.
A&E helped fund her outlandish shopping addiction and kicking it with her friends while her job paid her bills. There was no extra money to live, like really live. She was almost twenty-two, and she knew it was time for her to make amends with the Rogers. She just didn’t know when. She took the elevator all the way up to apartment number 313. Her apartment wasn’t large and lavish the way she’d like it to be, but it was home, and she was proud of what she had.
She opened the door and threw the envelopes in her hand on the dining-room table. Then she locked the door behind her and began to strip off her clothes right in the doorway. Tiara wanted nothing more than to take a long, hot shower in her bathroom. All the lights in her apartment were off, and she made her way through it naked and based off of memory. Undisturbed, she flicked on her light. Suddenly she screamed, long and loud.
“Oh, what?” the man sitting on her bed said, smiling at her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, my dear Tiara.”
“W-what are you doing here?” Tiara stammered, covering her chest and her crotch with her hands.
“No point in covering up,” the intruder said, eyeing Tiara’s perfect body. “I’ve seen it all before. Tasted it all before. Fucked it all before.”
“Leave!” Tiara yelled, looking around frantically before
