Just before Tom had walked in and stopped their talk, Cilla had said that she wasn’t as bad off as some of the others. Not all the women had survived the procedure. Some had almost no steady control of their bodies. Some couldn’t speak. Others couldn’t remember anything new. Still others simply sat and stared like empty vessels.
She also said that they were using modern, guided, medical surgery. It wasn’t an icepick above the eye or anything like that. No matter how sophisticated the actual procedure, Cilla had been emphatic about one thing. Miranda is next and she has to get away.
The problem is that Miranda has no idea how to do that. Tom has the keys to the only car. She’s in the countryside without a clue as to which way to drive toward safety, and to top it off, she’s in a nation that isn’t her own. For all she knows, she’ll turn the wrong way down the drive and go right into the arms of someone in Tom’s little group of psychopaths who chop up women’s brains in order to keep them alive and docile.
And all that is nothing to the real problem. She can’t bear to leave the house, can’t tolerate the touch of the sun without flinching. How is she supposed to venture out into that fearful unknown and search blindly for safety?
As the kitchen fills with the scent of spices and tomatoes, Tom breezes in, a smile on his face and his arms filled with eggplants from the downstairs garden.
“Does this mean we’re going to be feasting on moussaka, curry, and eggplant parmesan? Please say yes.” He dumps the pile on the counter and hurriedly grabs for one before it can roll off the counter. Then he makes a pleading face and says, “Pleeease.”
The innocence of it is so at odds with what she knows that it’s hard to marry them in her mind. It freezes her in place.
“Miranda? Are you okay?” he asks, all his smiles gone and his eyes concerned.
Shaking her head, she forces a smile onto her face and looks down at the pot as if it needs her undivided attention. “Oh, yes. I was just thinking about all the other things I’d need. You know, we might be able to make up a big batch of my Everything Curry, then freeze up bags of it for quick meals, like lunches or when nothing else sounds good. What do you think?”
She knows she’s babbling, trying to cover up the knots of unease boiling around inside her like a pot about to explode. She risks a glance at Tom, still smiling, but he isn’t smiling anymore. He looks worried. She has to stop being so tense. She can’t let him know that she knows what’s coming. She’ll lose her best option for escape: surprise.
Forcing her smile to widen, she wipes a finger under her nose and says, “What? Do I have a giant booger or something? If so, you should say something or else I might drop it into the pot.”
The worry loosens a little, so she drives it home. “I mean, if you want me to use more salt, there are easier ways than me dropping boogers.”
With that, he makes a face and laughs. “Okay, okay. No, you have no little peepers in your nose. I just thought something might be wrong.”
“No, nothing. Well, it’s a good problem to have so much produce you have to think of creative ways of using it, so I don’t consider it a real problem.”
Tom lines the eggplants along the back of the counter so they won’t keep threatening to roll away. He chuckles a little, then says, “You know, it might be nice if we made up a big batch of that curry and I handed it out at services. Might be a nice change for everyone. And, it won’t hurt when it comes time to barter for extra cream and butter.”
She points at him with her spoon. “Now you’re thinking.”
Inside, her body feels as tight as a wire, but as Tom carries on around the kitchen, he gives no hint that he senses it. Setting the table and bumping elbows with her as he sets the pot for the noodles to boil, he seems entirely himself. Kind, solicitous, good humored, and just generally nice.
Could this man really be planning to let someone drill a hole in her skull and literally scramble part of her brain? Why? Is she so unpleasant to be around? Is she such a burden? Worst of all the options, is he doing it because he genuinely thinks it will help her? Is Cilla right? Are they doing all of this because they’re helpless to keep the ones they care about alive any other way?
Somehow, that last option is the worst. Love and affection are great, but when that leads to monstrous acts in the name of caring, then it becomes madness bearing the pretty label of love.
As Tom helps her finish compiling their meal and shows her the wine with a flourish, like he’s a sommelier and she, his best customer, Miranda’s mind is halfway out the door.
One way or the other, she will escape.
Charlotte
Though she’s tempted many times to share what she saw in the images, she doesn’t. Instead, she saves the many false images she finds on her own tablet, a savings account of proof that grows at a rate far better than average interest rates.
Is she entirely sure about her suspicions that there is no town for women being built? No, but the more she sees, the more certain she grows. Or, perhaps it’s only that the images are manufactured and a real town is being built, truly secretly and without images that might give away the location. That’s a distinct possibility, but it seems so far-fetched. Is it any more outlandish than an endless number of faked photographs because there is no town? Not really. They are equally likely.
All she does is
