Page 10 of Monster

“You squat, you pee, you’re back in the chair. Got it?” the man hissed.

I grunted in pain. “I take it you’re going to be accompanying me?”

He chuckled. “Not your thing. But, mine.”

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know how to feel. For the first time in my life, I wanted my mother bursting through those doors, scooping me into her arms, and saving me from all this chaos. I had prided myself my entire life on standing on my own. Making a way on my own with no help from anyone. I enjoyed my independence. I wore my stubbornness like a golden badge.

But as that man hiked up my dress, his fingertips sliding against the back of my thighs, I wanted nothing more than to cry out for my mother.

Peeing in front of a grown man getting off on it would have been enough for me. But, the second I was done, I found myself bound and back in the rickety chair they had me in. And every time I tried to look over at the girl next to me—the one who had stuck up for me—the man at the door growled at me to keep my eyes front and center.

Or else.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed, to be honest. I fell asleep and woke up three or four different times with a crick in my neck and a stiffness in my spine I’d never encountered before. And since there were no windows to judge whether the sun was up or down, my only guess was that I’d been wherever I had been taken for at least two days.

Possibly more.

More likely, more.

However, when I heard the door open, my head snapped up. And I watched an unfamiliar man come into the room. Were they switching out guards? Were we being transferred somewhere else?

Are they about to kill us?

“Get the girls ready. It’s time,” the man said.

Then, he left the room without saying—or doing—anything else.

I furrowed my brow. “Get us ready? For what?”

A woman’s voice appeared behind me. “I’ll take this one and come back for the other one later.”

I yelped. “What the fuck!?”

The woman behind me giggled softly. “Come with me.”

She started rolling my chair across the floor and my eyes bulged. How in the world had I been so out of it, I hadn’t realized I’d been sitting in a goddamn rolling chair!? I wanted to kick myself for being so stupid. For being so idiotic. And since everyone thought I was on a no-tech vacation, no one would look for me.

Not even Mom.

Tears rushed my eyes as I got rolled into another room. And while this room didn’t have the water damage or moldy smell that the other one had, it still wasn’t much better. The hardwood floors were warped. Paint peeled away from the walls. Pictures that I couldn’t make out in the dim lighting were crooked, exposing pristine white walls behind where they had been hanging.

Then I felt someone grip my chin. “Head straight, eyes forward.”

I studied the woman in front of me and she seemed way too put together to be someone else who had been kidnapped. The way she painted my face with expert precision told me she’d been doing this for a while. And the minty breath she had told me she had access to a toothbrush, confirming my original theory.

This woman wasn’t one of the kidnap victims.

She was working with these men.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She smiled. “Your beautician. Hold still.”

I leaned back. “I don’t need one of those. Now, who are you and what do you want with us?”

Her hand clapped behind my head as she pulled me back. “Move again, and you’re dead. Got it?”

She pressed the barrel of a gun against my stomach to drive the point home and I nodded.

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