Entangled

Chapter 5

Liatta had been walking through the hallways of the mansion for at least twenty minutes. She was lost. Walking through the halls, she had seen many employees working.

Liatta tried to ask one of them for directions, a woman with short brown hair in a maid outfit polishing a window with a mechanical intensity. She called out her, but the maid didn't look back.

Hesitantly, she tapped the woman shoulder. The woman stopped polishing the window and looked back at Liatta expectantly. But from the moment their eyes met, Liatta lost her ability to speak. Her eyes... there was nothing there.

It wasn't that she was tired or bored, that would imply there was something within her to feel tired or bored. It was something deeper. Liatta couldn't even compare those eyes to a corpse because a corpse at least was once something before. As Liatta looked into the maid's eyes the maid looked back. But inside Liatta was certain that this maid was not seeing her any more than a camera sees its target.

Instead of asking the maid anything, Liatta had run away. When she calmed down, she tried asking the other workers for help, but they all had the same vacant eyes. When she finally found someone that recoiled at the sight of her Liatta couldn't find it in herself to feel anything but relief.

It was one of the guards that had thrown her out before. A huge muscled man, almost as wide as he was tall, dressed simply in a black shirt and pants. Liatta called out to him only to be ignored. At first, she thought he was just disgusted with her.

She understood. She was a mess, naked save for a sheet held up by her bruised wrists. Her eyes were wild and frantic as if one more straw would be all it took to leave her well and truly broken. She looked like a particularly miserable ghost. How could she not understand why someone wouldn't want to be around her. Liatta didn't want to be around herself.

But she still followed him. Liatta couldn't afford to indulge in shame. She had no idea where she needed to go and the idea of asking whatever the workers were for help...she just couldn't. So, she followed the man as his pace sped up to try to shake her off. Liatta wondered why if he wanted her to stop following him so badly, he didn't just turn around and tell her to leave him alone.

It wasn't until they made a sharp turn at a corner and she caught a glance at his expression of barely disguised fear that Liatta stopped following him. She didn't know why he was so scared, but she didn't want to be the person that caused it.

So, Liatta walked through the mansion alone looking for Mr. Arach. She had drifted from hallway to hallway, almost in a trance, searching until she found herself here.

Back where she started. The mansion's halls looked easy to navigate at first glance, but appearances were deceiving. The mansion's interior was as easy to get lost in as its exterior.

But Liatta didn't understand why, outside everything looked the same there was nothing she could use to find her way, but here every hallway was decorated differently. Yet she was just as lost.

She had started walking only twenty minutes ago and had found herself back to this hallway three times. Liatta's lip trembled. She couldn't even find her way out of a hallway. Was she really that worthless?

"Ah! Why are you in here?" Liatta whipped herself in the direction of the voice.

It was the guard Liatta had met at the gates. She believed his name was Yates. Liatta wiped her eyes and hoped that he didn't see she was crying. If he did, he made no comment on it.

Yates looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on her bruised wrists and teary face long enough for his eyes to harden slightly.

"Did you break in again?" His words were accusatory, but his tone was gentle. Liatta shook her head