Page 68 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
My face grows hot, thinking of her mocking me for a dismal thread of hope I held onto in my teenage years that one day I could be free.
“And if it’s known as asafe haven,”she mimics the way I said the words and my pulse trips, “won’t Writhe find it immediately?”
“No. It’s…not connected to that world.”
“If you know of this place, if you used the internet from 44 Ritual fucking Drive, won’t Stein know of it too? He barely let you breathe. He only allowed you outside of the house when you were like, eighteen. What the fuck,Scully?”She says the name like it’s a contagious disease; the one Maude used because it was my username when I escaped into the forum at night while Stein slept.
I never truly planned anything. Karia is right. Stein would not have given me that much freedom. Just like the labs he apparently knew about. I think he loosened the leash to gift me an illusion of hope I never really had.
“I don’t trust her,” Karia continues on. “I don’t—”
“I don’t trust anyone,” I say evenly, holding her gaze.
Her eyes flicker, a moment of shadow creeping across them, and her body grows stiff, as if I hit her. “This is true stupidity,” she says with a vicious little snarl, her top lip curling up. She gestures around the room, then folds her arms over the trench coat again, tapered at her waist, fitting her figure so gorgeously. I shouldn’t have spent so much of our money on it, but I can’t refuse her anything. It’s disgusting. “We can’t stay here. They’ll be on their way in minutes, if they’re not already.”
“Then leave.”
She lifts her brows. “Are you kidding me right now?”
No?I roll my eyes and turn my back to her, crossing past the bed, heading toward the door that leads to the bathroom. I glance at the paper bag but I don’t feel like stopping and pulling out the food. I don’t feel like doing anything except beingalone.Sometimes I would steal minutes of sitting on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor back on Ritual Drive; the only place aside from my lab I had a semblance of privacy.
Yet, before I can walk into the dark checkered tile bathroom, Karia spits something else out at my back.
“Was she like, your internetgirlfriend?”she hisses.
I stop, furrowing my brow.What?I don’t look back and I don’t say anything, but the question is so hilarious, I don’t continue my retreat.
“Did you ever exchange nudes? Did you fantasize about strapping her down in a chair too? Or biting her? Or—”
“What?” I can’t keep it in as I turn to face her. “What are you talking about?”
She looks angry, jaw clenched, still rooted in the same spot she’s been in this entire interrogation. “Do youlikeher?” She jerks her chin toward the black door at her back, the one we all walked through.
I glance at it, thinking of Maude. She is pretty, and kind, and I did not believe this would actually work out. That years later, this place would exist, if it even existed in the first place. I meant what I said to Karia; I do not trust anyone, and this is not a safe haven forever. But we have no other options right at this moment. It’s the best I could do, and it’sfree.
Butlikeher?
“I don’t understand you,” I say through clenched teeth as I stare at Karia. “Do you mean do I like her in the way you like Cosmo and Von? How you let them fuck you? Cosmo’s head between your thighs and you drunk out of your mind? Do I like her that way, is that what you’re asking?” As I imagine it, as I speak it, my voice hardens in my own anger. I am nearly vibrating, thinking of watching her with them, and I do not know how I held myself back all these years. If Von Bentzen or Cosmo de Actis walked through that door right now, I would not hesitate to disembowel both of them. It is as if now I’ve had a taste of Karia, however unwilling it might’ve been given from her, I can’t imagine anyone else ever having the same. Despite the fact I know this is a temporary fantasy, I can’t help my feelings.
“Yes,” she says, no remorse in her answer. “That’s what I mean.”
And it’s only then, right now as we stare at one another in a strange room above a strange shop, that I understand what she’s feeling.
Jealousy.I have lived with it my entire life, watching her smiling, happy face, surrounded by all of her friends, while I cloaked myself in bruises and worse, hiding in the dark.
She isjealousof Maude. Over…me?
“Why are yousmiling?”she snaps, her face flushing pink as she stomps her foot, a harsh clack against the hardwoods.
The smallest laugh leaves my lips at her reaction. “Karia,” I manage to say, very calmly as she glares at me. “You should be very upset that she isnotthe object of my affection.” Then I turn away from her and disappear into the bathroom.
Chapter27
Karia
Iget deliriously, gloriously drunk.
It is what I always do when I do not want to be in control anymore. And while Sullen was in the bathroom, I rooted around in the minifridge of this odd room and found a full bottle of wine. Something dark red with a black label that only said,XxX.
