Page 112 of Servitude to Serpents

Who knows?

As if she can feel my anticipation, she shifts on her feet, tugging her cardigan over her slight shoulders. Tighter and tighter, she tugs, like that thin barrier might keep something out—or something in. I’d forgotten how similar her and Renee’s eyes had been. The sight of them makes my chest ache.

It’s Ms. Durian that breaks the stalemate. “We’ll give you some privacy.” Her eyes turn to my father with a loaded look, and suddenly, it makes more sense. Why else would they fly all this way just for the daughter they cast out?

They’re here to help.

Not me, of course.

Never me.

“Chloe...” My dad’s voice is thicker than I expected, but I swallow past the lump in my throat because she still hasn’t looked at me. Only my lap, at my scarred hands. After all these years, she’s looking at them directly.

For the first time, maybe.

“We were so worried about you,” he offers, and maybe it’s true, but she’s still not looking atme.

I swallow again, begging my voice to stay steady as I ignore him. “What about you? Were you worried?” The questions is loaded, quipped.

It’s unlike anything I ever asked them before, and it works. Her eyes widen before snapping to me. “Of course, Chloe. I was sick the moment your work called and said they hadn’t seen you. We reported you missing right away. I haven’t been eating. I couldn’t sleep these past years—I’d lost another-“

She stops herself, but the words hang heavily in the air. Suffocating.

The ones she wasn’t strong enough to say.

She’d lost another daughter. That should mean something. Before, it would’ve meant everything. I would’ve clung to that unspoken word like a fly clings to shit.

Despite that, they just stand, their backs to the wall, as far away as the tiny room will allow.

It’s Dad who speaks up again, taking the weight off her shoulders the way he always has. I used to think of him as invincible, so… strong. He’s the same age as Warrick, I’d recently found out, and comparing the two… He looks as frail as a snow-heavy twig. If the situation was different, I might blush thinking of all the things my master did to me while my father stands right here. If only he knew the way his little girl, his only remainingdaughterhad been deified, the ways my soul has gathered up each unwanted touch, each abuse, and used them to transform into somethingother, something unreckonable and hedonistic. I gathered up all the terrible, ugly, and wonderful things and made them my own. “They said the man who held you…that you might be able to help find him.”

The words are spoken so carefully, like saying them out loud mightmake them real.

But they are real; whether or not they can stomach it matters very little. That man who held me turned my world upside down. He adored me. He healed parts they damaged then damaged parts of his very own. Damaged parts I love, becauseheloves them.

“I can’t help them,” I answer honestly, because it’s true. I can’t.

I have no clue where he is. His means could take him anywhere, but inside, deep down, I like to pretend he’s close, that he’s watching me still, that I have the blanket of comfort that offered me when I’d walk the halls of our home without a person in sight. I was never alone, never without his guidance. I always had his eyes, his protection.

He nods, opening his mouth to speak before my mom’s voice interrupts. The room falls oh so silent, even the machines whispering their incessant beeping, hers lingering like sediment in my lungs.

Did they rape you?

Something bizarre happens in my chest, a bubble that escapes as a laugh barrels up my throat, spilling out into the room. Ilaugh. Not the fake cynical kind, but I genuinely laugh, jarring all my aches and pains. My parents’ eyes go wide, their shocked expressions making me laugh harder. I laugh hysterically until tears are streaming down my cheeks, and theirs too, although they don’t get the joke yet.

I’m sure the humor would be lost on them either way.

“The rape was the fun part,” I choke out between tendrils of manic laughter, because it’strue. Of all the torment, at least,thatI learned to enjoy. Learned to crave. At leastthatI could make mine, the tiny time I had any control at all.

“Chloe.” My dad sounds like he’s going to vomit, and Mom is sobbing now, loudly. “Help them catch this fucking monster!”

That dims whatever bizarre thing had overcome me, sobering my laughter. I sniffle, wiping my eyes with my free hands. Both are free now, much to the displeasure of Agent Benigno. “Why in the world would I do that?”

“What? What do you mean, Chloe?!” Mom screeches, making me flinch, memories of me locked in my room hiding under the covers as she’d scream atme through the door assaulting my mind.

My hands tremble as I tilt my head to the side, letting my long blonde locks fall into my face as I close my good eye. My vision blurs, and everything snaps into perspective. I can barely make them out, but my picture of them is crystal clear. “He’s the best thing that ever happened to me, Mom.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

---