Page 96 of Dance with Death

Vigo’s not happy with this though.

He places a hand on my chest and pushes hard. The fabric of the dress I’m wearing glides easily along the smooth surface and he pushes me until my back is resting against the far edge of the tub.

I’m rigid, my head shaking from side to side. Vigo grabs my cheeks and bends deep over the edge, touching his nose to mine. “All you have to do is sit here.” He kisses my forehead before he releases me and steps away.

I’m frozen as he walks into his bedroom.

Is he leaving me here? Like this?

I shut my eyes, squeezing them to blink away the remainder of the tears that form pools there. I open them wide again when I hear him return.

My head snaps to look at him and I see he’s come back with a cable tie. Instantly, my hands fly out to grip the edges of the tub, but it’s no use. In a flash, he grabs both my wrists and squeezes them together.

“No,no!” I cry and thrash, trying to wiggle free from his grip.

He’s quick, lassoing the tie around my wrists and securing it so tight that it digs into my skin painfully. It’s as if I can feel the bones of my wrists touching, grating against each other.

“Don’t leave me here.” I quickly descend into hysterics, sobbing and shouting, “Please, don’t leave me like this.Please!”

Vigo smiles, touching a finger to his lips as if to hush me, before darting out of the room again.

I’m getting out of this fucking tub.

I turn my body and stretch my fingers, doing my best to grip the edge with my crossed hands. I can’t get purchase with my feet as my narrow heels easily slip over the smooth surface.

I stop abruptly when Vigo comes in carrying an oversized standing mirror and something dangling from his fist where he holds the wooden frame.

He doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop, doesn’t even look at me. He just moves forward. He lifts the gigantic mirror, twisting it sideways, and flipping it toward me.

I shout and move back, releasing my grip from the tub’s edge just in time to avoid having my fingers smashed. He sets the mirror, glass side down, over the rim of the tub, covering it completely across the shortest length, the frame hanging off the edges. My spine presses to the back of the tub as I scoot away, but he keeps moving.

As he starts to slide it back toward me, I realize what he’s doing. He’s trying to trap me with it. He’s trying to cover the tub with a fucking oversized mirror.

The end of it shoves toward me until I can move no further. The top framed edge of the mirror crowds me, taps against my chin and I straighten to lift above it, but then he shoves it against my throat.

He grins at me above the top of the tomb he wishes to create for me. He yanks the mirror back a couple of inches and tilts his head down. “Duck your head.”

Air jumps in and out of my lungs in quick, short bursts, my chest hopping with the panicked intake of oxygen.

“No,” I tell him. “No!”

“Yes,” he says. “This or the injection, your choice.”

My face twists in pain at the impossible choice he’s giving me. I don’t think I can face the injection again, the inability to move while remaining awake. But I also don’t want to be trapped inside this tub. I know that’s his intention—I see the coarse rope he’s brought in now along with the mirror.

I choose without any choice at all, the words falling from my lips freely. “No injection.”

He nods. “Under you go, then.”

My entire body shakes, the epicenter of a quake radiating out from the pit of my stomach. Somehow,somehow, I let myself slip. I let the smooth porcelain take me as my body slumps down the back edge. Vigo slides the mirror over my head. It’s massive, large enough to cover the entire top of the tub, trapping me inside with my own dark reflection.

“Are you comfortable in there,bambola Russa?” he asks, then laughs.

The mirror shifts, sliding further over the edge by my head and light appears suddenly at the far end by my feet. He’s left a gap there.

He’s left a gap where the faucet runs.

He can’t.

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