Page 199 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
I fucking failed her.
A meek, “Help me, Ambrose. Please!” crawls through the door and pierces my heart.
I struggle to take a breath, looking for any way to help her... but I can’t help her from in this room, and I can’t get out of it.
Moving away from the door, I scan the dark space. There’s nothing down here to help me. My mind races one million miles per minute, and my heart struggles to keep up.
Time isn’t on my side, and that hurts, knowing what’s to come and being unable to stop it.
My pain shifts to anger as I hear him put on the song that shakes me to my bones.
She’s probably on the sofa right now, terrified and trembling, shielding herself, trying to find comfort in that dirty pillow the same way I did, hitting him with it, doing anything to keep him away.
I can’t hear her crying over the music. I can’t hear the greasy fucker singing along. I only hear the splashes of water as I kick and splash like a maniac down in this flooded room, searching for anything beneath the water that may be of some help.
That song continues in my head, the same words over and over. Colin’s wife’s voice fades in and out with memories of him putting part of him inside part of me.
A rush of vomit covers the surface of the water. Bigger chunks of stomach lining sink first. I move around them, continuing to search the basement floor for something I can use as a weapon because I’ve found one there before.
Coming up empty, a scream rips through me.
I punch at the brick wall with a wet fist, not caring as my skin breaks along each knuckle, not even feeling it.
I can’t risk hearing her scream, so I continue, drowning out any noise, but it doesn’t help me feel better.
Trembling, I step away from the wall, looking for something else to destroy, but there’s nothing down here but water and dust and that fucking wood-burning stove that scarred us.
The orange flame is back today, and it taunts me for only a second before I yank the door open. Little embers flutter onto my skin, but I don’t feel them burn. I don’t feel a thing outside of my need to get upstairs to Dollie before that monster touches her.
I reach in, ignoring how hot the wood is, and pull out a log with my already scarred hand. I race back up the stairs and hold the burning log to the door. I watch the paint peel beneath the flame, and then a rush of orange engulfs the old wood below. I step back, waiting close to the top, listening for the sound of the fire alarm, which I know is in the kitchen because this creature burns his toast every morning while we starve down here.
The alarm rings out, screaming over the music, which stops almost instantly. The noise is replaced by Dollie crying, but Ifocus on the door and the cackle of the flames spreading and how I’m gonna charge through it any second, knowing I’ll make it when on the other side because, for whatever reason, this thing keeping us prisoner won’t let us die.
Maybe that was Mom and Dad’s request.
“What the—” shock fills Colin’s voice. He rushes through the kitchen for the extinguisher he keeps near the back door.
I see him rush past to get it. I see the whole room as the fire chews through the door before me.
Barricading my face with my arms, the log still in hand, I throw my weight at the door and fall through it onto the stone floor, which diminishes the fire eating away at my left arm but not the flames blazing through the back of my T-shirt. The wet patches barely slowed it down.
The log rolls away from me as I come to a stop, and the tiny orange flame, still burning on the corner, jumps to the dirty cabinets and grows.
Foam coats my back and smothers the flame, giving me no time to focus on the pain before it’s gone, leaving scars and melted pieces of my shirt on my skin.
Colin stands with the extinguisher aimed at me, and I watch him through the oven glass as he spits hate down at me, too.
“You little prick. I shoulda let you burn to death,” he fumes, spinning with the extinguisher to put out the fire spreading from the basement door and around his kitchen.
But the extinguisher stutters out the last of its foam, and the fire grows, stretching to the ceiling.
I roll onto my ass, watching as his white face follows the blaze. His mouth hangs low and stays like that until he turns back to me, with a hateful glare on his face.
He throws the extinguisher at my knee, going for my weak spot, and because that’s exactly what it is, I’ve no chance to move it before it suffers more damage.
A hiss sounds between my clenched teeth. I twist at the waist and reach for the log that set his cabinets alight. An image flashes in my head of how his face will look after I hit him with the hot log. I smile over the idea of an ugly scar and cringe when I think he might look just like me.
The log gets farther from my reach as Colin, positioned behind me as I’m crouched over, digs his dirty nails into my lower thighs and pulls me toward him.
