Page 16 of Haunted Prey

There were five altogether: Rebecca, Jonsei, Adrien, Maria, and Sasha. Maria was the oldest, while Rebecca was the youngest. Every day they got together around the same time in the sunroom to hang out. I rescheduled my sessions with Leo so I could join them. We didn’t talk about anything important. Sometimes, we did nothing more than play board games and gossip but something about seeing how content they looked, how they laughed together, and their general uplifting mood, soothed me. It didn’t dawn on me till later how out of place they looked in a facility like Severfalls, not some washed up celeb or rich degenerate but normal, everyday women.

The only thing odd was the whole pregnancy thing. Some were more along than others. In the back of my mind, I wondered if they were carrying bastard children of some “well-to-do” politician or elitist who wanted them monitored but kept hidden for the benefit of their reputation. But I learned that wasn’t the case at all.

“I don’t remember it all that well, thankfully,” Adrien said when I got the courage to ask them why they were all here as expecting mothers. “I just know I woke up all sore and bruised. He picked the lock apparently.” She shrugged as if it was more an annoyance than a traumatic event. “We’d been in the same half-way house together. I even got to know him.” She shook her head, her thick black curls bouncing from side to side. “I found out I was pregnant a week later. I was pretty desperate after that and saw an ad for this place looking for single women in the early trimester for some new study. The pay was low, but they offered full housing here and full service. Not just for the baby either but with any recovery service we needed. I applied, seeing as I figured it would be better than being on the streets. Now,I’ve never felt better. Too bad I only have a few weeks left.” She rubbed her swollen belly. “But by then I’ll have financial aid, and a safer place set up to stay in until I can get a job.”

“We're gonna miss you, Adrien,” Maria said. “But you’ll be on your feet and with your little guy in no time, just like the rest.”

“The rest?” I asked.

Maria brushed a hand along her shaved head, then tugged on one of her hooped earrings in a sort of absent-minded gesture. “We're not the first in the study. Several other women have come and gone already.”

Rebecca brought her knees up as she curled in her chair. “Still miss Tonya so bad. Wish she’d text me back.”

“I’m sure she’s got a lot going on. She’ll come around,” Maria assured.

“What’s the study about?” I asked, curious.

They’d looked at each other, a few smirking like it was some big secret. Then Sasha piped up from the book she was reading in the corner with, “It’s confidential.”

“Oh, we can talk about it, we're all part of Severfalls in some way,” Jonsei remarked. She looked dazedly at one window. One of her eyelids was a little puffed up as if she’d banged it against something, but neither she nor the others mentioned it. Her red hair glinted in the sunlight streaming through the window, glowing like dark fire.

“It’s something to do with the growth of the baby they are monitoring,” Adrien said after Jonsei went quiet as something outside the window caught her eye. “We did sign some contracts not to go into full detail. But really, all you need to know is that.”

I couldn’t get much else out of them about the study, only that it had to do with the growth and development of the baby. They also told me they were taking Lulladex, which struck me as bizarre at first—until I heard their backstories. Each of themhad endured something similarly harrowing, just like Adrien. All traumatic. All heartbreaking. All dark.

Maria and Sasha had been sex trafficked at a young age and were now recovering from addiction. Jonsei had fled her home after years of abuse by her father and brother. Rebecca’s mother had passed her around to family friends. These were women who had been left in the shadows, abandoned to face unimaginable horrors, all alone, with no support.

Severfalls had taken them in, offering a place to safely carry their pregnancies to term in exchange for participation in a study that, at least on the surface, seemed harmless. Still, I had my doubts. I understood why they might need the medication, though. According to Jackie, it was perfectly safe—aside from a few pesky side effects, like any other drug.

“So I have a new theory about who's upstairs,” Rebecca said one day as we played a game of monopoly. By we, I meant me, Maria, Rebecca, and Jonsei. Sasha read her comic book, and Adrien played a game on her phone.

I hadn’t been the only one who noticed the third floor was off limits and that someone was definitely staying up there. We’d all seen the carts full of trays being taken up. The group liked to make guesses on who it was, assuming it was some high-profile individual.

“I swear the last cart I saw had a cigar tray on it,” Rebecca said as she moved to pass go. “It’s someone older, like an ex-president or something.”

Adrien rolled her eyes from across the room. “That is the laziest guess you’ve given all week. And not just older people smoke cigars.”

Rebecca shrugged. “Only kind of people I’ve seen.”

“Still too good to come down and hang with the likes of us whoever it is,” Sasha commented, flipping through her book.

“Okay, but is anyone going to consider why they’d let anyone here have a cigar? In a recovery ward?” Maria asked.

“Maybe they aren’t here to recover,” I added. “Maybe they aren’t a patient at all.”

It was never something they thought seriously about. I could care less, but I knew they were trying to find something to talk about that didn’t involve their babies kicking or being nauseous. Or having bad sleep.

They were good people despite it all. Survivors. It was good to be in their presence even if I still felt lonely and depressed. I didn’t talk to them about my story and funny enough they never asked. I wasn’t sure if it was because they really didn’t keep up on current events and didn’t know who I was or, if they did, they were just trying to be polite, to let me feel accepted, knowing what I’d been through. Either way I was grateful they never asked.

The only person I could bring myself to talk to about any of the things from the last few weeks was Leo. Not everything, though, I started to open up more and more with each session if only a little. He didn’t pry but he was a good listener—something every therapist should be good at regardless—and I felt like I could speak to him without judgment and not expect him to have an answer which I didn’t need. It made it easier to talk to him as time went on. And easier to answer his questions.

“Do you feel guilty for what happened?” he asked one evening. We sat in his office, a lush little suite with leather chairs, a wall of bookshelves, red lamps, and even a little fireplace. Pretty pictures of mountains lined one wall and a huge portrait of a lion hung over the fireplace. Through the window, I could hear the small patter of sleet and rain on the glass and the creek of wood from the wind.

“Yes,” I said after a while. I still had trouble telling him exactly how I felt about the whole thing, especially with Emery.And I realized there was that inkling of guilt because what we had, had been…unconventional, to say the least. And no one was going to understand it.

“Survivor’s guilt is common,” he said, one leg resting over the other as he sat across from me, his notepad next to him.

I turned my gaze to his. “That’s not what it was.”

---