It’s darkness, complete and total darkness.
I hear the door open, my entire body stiffens, and I chance looking over my shoulder. It’s the maid. She smiles at me warily before she sets the drinks down and begins to back away. Holding up my hand, I stay where I am, too scared to take a step in her direction, worried that I’ll spook her.
“Is he okay?” I whisper.
She dips her chin. “He is.”
Nodding my head, I clear my throat. “Have you thought of what I’ve asked?”
“I will do what I am able to,” she whispers. “And I will not cause any waves, no matter what happens around me.”
“Thank you,” I exhale.
She presses her lips together, then sucks in a deep breath. “Do not thank me. I am not worthy of thanks. I have seen many things here and I am not brave enough to stop them, do not thank me for being weak.”
“Sometimes in weakness, there is strength.”
She doesn’t respond. Turning around and leaving, she closes and locks the door behind her when she does. I stay where I am, watching the closed door for much longer than I need to.
Shifting my focus from the door, I cringe at the sight of the drinks. One is for nutrition, the other is going to make me shit my brains out and I’m just not ready for all of that.
With a heavy sigh, I walk over to the drinks and bend down, taking them in my hands. Inhaling deeply, I start to chug the shit my brains out one, then chug the nutrition one. My stomach begins to gurgle just moments after I’ve finished both drinks.
Placing my hand against my stomach, I moan when it begins to cramp, then I run to the bathroom, thankful that I have my own private one. I stayed glued to the toilet seat far longer than is healthy, then I immediately take a shower.
When I’m cleaned up, at least on the outside, I collapse on the bed, completely starving and exhausted from my day of shitting.
Seriously, it’s disgusting, but there’s nothing that I can do about it. If I refuse to do the cleanse, and the senator finds out, then I’m fucked. No telling what kind of twisted punishment he would come up with.
So, I take the damn laxative, just in case I’m fucking stuck here for a while. I’m not about to screw up my chances of seeing Hawk and trying to free him. I will get him out of here, if it’s the last thing that I do, I will free him from this fucked-up situation.
I doze off, unaware of the time, uncaring because I can’t do anything or go anywhere anyway. A noise wakes me up and I gasp at the sight of the maid standing in the doorway again. She has two more bottles in her hand.
“How long has it been since you were here?” I whisper.
“It’s been another day,” she breathes. “He will be coming to you in a few hours. After you’ve… expelled.”
I snort. Expelled. That’s a kind way of saying shit my brains out. “Thank you,” I breathe.
She dips her chin, leaving the drinks behind, and locks me back in my room again. I down the drinks quickly and don’t even wait a beat before I walk into the bathroom. I don’t have to expel right away, so instead, I look at my reflection in the mirror.
I’ve already lost weight. Apparently, no food and laxatives do a body good. I snort to myself, there’s that destructive eating disorder rearing its ugly head again.
After I finish going to the bathroom and showering all over again, as if I didn’t do this exact thing just yesterday, I sink down onto the bed, just as exhausted as I was yesterday.
But today there is no rest for the weary. The door flies open and it’s my nightmare coming to visit me yet again.
“You look better,” he announces as he jerks his chin toward me.
I look weak, pale, and thin. Good to know that he’s into that. Also, my hair is a fucking disaster, my extensions are going to have to be cut out if I ever get out of this mess. Maybe I’ll just get rid of everything that’s fake if I survive this.
“The doctor is here to see you. Stay right there,” the senator announces.
A man walks in, he’s not wearing anything that makes him look like a doctor and I didn’t realize that plastic surgeons even made house calls. I wonder if he’s board certified. Wouldn’t that be my fucking luck? The senator would force me into all this shit with some whack job and he’d botch me all up.
The doctor asks me to stand, then turns to the senator and starts to ask him questions about what he wants done to me before he starts drawing on my skin with a Sharpie. Every stroke from the marker makes me feel like I’m dying just a little bit more inside.
After my body is marked, almost everywhere, the doctor asks the senator if he wants to see it all unfold on his iPad. He pulls it out of his bag and takes a picture of me, then touches the screen a few times before he shows it to the senator.
I listen to them discussing me and my body as if I’m no more than an inanimate object in front of them. Once they’ve made the changes that they want, the senator tells him to turn the device toward me.
“Show her just how beautiful she’s going to look,” he demands almost giddily.
The doctor turns his iPad toward me, the screen stares back at me and on it a body and woman that I don’t recognize. I look ridiculous. I look like a life-sized Barbie. It’s unattainable and outlandish. It doesn’t look human. I look like a cartoon drawing, like a creation.
My breasts are
