A.N. HII SO I SUCK I KNOW I SAID I WOULD DO A DOUBLE UPDATE AND I DIDNT IM SORRY. JUST LOSING AN HOUR TODAY AND THEN STUDYING AND EVERYTHING GOT IN THE WAY BUT I SWEAR THAT I WILL DO A DOUBLE UPDATE SOMETIME IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS SO IM SORRY AND THANK YOU :) PLEASE COMMENT AND VOTE ILY
CHAPTER 35
"I'm ready to talk."
We exchanged sideward glances. Dubious, yet slightly excited glances. Harry was amused, I could see it in the slight upturn of his full lips.
"About him," Jane continued when neither of us responded.
"About who?" Harry asked. Jane's wide pale eyes looked to his face as she spoke. I swear, no matter how hard I tried Harry got more of a response from people without even trying at all. He had a certain intriguing quality about him, and I didn't seem to be the only one cast under his spell.
"The one . . . the one that knows my name." Her small voice wavered slightly, but Harry nodded for her to continue. So she did.
"He wears one of those uniforms," she said, nodding toward a guard who was leaned up against the wall. "He's one of them. Or maybe he's all of them."
"What do you mean?" Harry softly asked. We both knew that the slightest thing might make her end the conversation, so he spoke with caution.
"Sometimes he has dark hair and dark eyes. But not always. Sometimes his eyes are blue, and his hair is more white."
I was puzzled, trying to dissect her insane words to make sense of them. But Harry wasn't confused, and if he was, he didn't show it.
"How does he know your name, Jane?" he questioned.
The troubled girl looked down into her lap and wouldn't meet our faces as she whispered. Whispered so quietly, in fact, that I could barely hear her tiny voice. "He comes to my cell sometimes."
Harry's eyes looked to mine a second time, our shared gaze worried now, anxious. Jane continued.
"When his eyes are blue he touches me. He waits until nobody is around, and he locks the door. I get scared. I always tell him I'm scared and I don't want him to but he doesn't listen. When his eyes are brown, he's more mean, and he makes me touch him. When I say no he threatens me. When he has brown eyes he is the worst. But both times he knows my name, he always says my name. He says it to try and calm me like my father used to. But it doesn't work."
"Bloody hell," Harry muttered under his breath. And then I realized; she was talking about two different men. She was a helpless, confused prisoner, and there were two guards here who used her as one. A sex slave to two disgusting employees. Trading her off, taking turns. She was actually quite pretty, especially compared to the other women here. And she was extremely vulnerable; the perfect target.
"How often does this happen?" I asked. This time she spoke to me directly.
"Every few days. Sometimes only once every week. But he always comes, and he always says my name."
Harry sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. "Do you know which one it was? Was it any of them here?" He pointed along the outskirts of the cafeteria, no doubt suspecting James as the culprit.
"Don't point!" Jane said. "He'll know were talking about him if you point." And then, more calmly she added, "but I don't see him." James was directly in her view, and her expression was unchanged when she saw him. So maybe it wasn't James, maybe he wasn't the only loathsome guard here.
Harry looked at Jane right in the eyes, and she faltered slightly. "Can you do me a favor, Jane? If you see him or find out his name, come and tell me, okay?"
She looked side to side, as if deciding whether or not to trust us. "He told me not to tell."
"Well you've already told us everything else. Just a name or a face won't make a difference, right?" I said. She thought my words over and then nodded.
"Okay."
The reason we had first spoken to Jane was because she might be an ally. A tool, a cover if we needed her later in our escape. But Jane had just become someone of much more significance. Apparently, if she was telling the truth, there were even more monstrous events taking place here than we thought. How many guards did this? And to how many girls? How many helpless, defenseless women had been subject to the violation of the employees? I was about to ask Jane if she knew, but Harry spoke before I had the chance.
"Why tell us now?" he wondered. "How come you wouldn't talk about it earlier?"
To this particular question Jane seemed to know the answer. It was an instant response, as if she had been preparing for us to ask. "Because the worst that they can do is just touch me again. Either that or kill me . . . and I'm not afraid to die anymore."
At that Harry and I fell silent. I mean, what were we supposed to say? Or better yet, what were we supposed to do about her appalling story? I couldn't come up with an answer to either of these, so instead I looked to Harry. But he had yet to respond. He looked slightly distressed, reaching in his front pocket for his ever-present box of cigarettes and pulling out a stick. I stared as he lit it in that fascinating way that he does. Even more fascinatingly, breathing it in between his parted lips, and then letting the smoke coil from his mouth when he exhaled. After all this time, I still wasn't fully used to the sight.
I shook my head, scolding myself for getting distracted by Harry at a moment like this. This wasn't about the way he smoked his cigarette, this was about Jane. Who, to my surprise, had turned out to be a women of much more complexity than I had once thought. She was quiet, yes, but that didn't mean she didn't have a story to tell. She had a reason for being here and a reason for wanting to leave. At first I thought she had been admitted because she was unstable, because her brain didn't function quite right. But maybe it wasn't a lack of intelligence and rather an abundance of it that made her insane.
"I'm going to get some food," Harry said to break the silence. I hardly had time to look up before he was headed for the counter at the back of the room. Leaving Jane and I alone. Normally, I would've been fine with it, but she didn't seem to like me all that much. Or at least, not as much as she liked Harry.
"I like your friend," she spoke, as if to prove my point. The whisper of her soft voice never seemed to fade. "He's . . . he's different."
"Yeah," I agreed with a smile.
"At first I thought he was like you. I didn't think he was really insane. Maybe just a little crazy, but not like the rest of us."
I nodded along with her statement. It seemed as if almost everyone has taken note that Harry and I aren't like the rest, including Jane. Or so I thought; but she wasn't done just yet.
"But now I get it. He's so deranged that he convinced all of us. He's that smart type of insane, that kind that's like a bomb. Completely still and calm, and then one day . . . boom."
She was talking quickly, almost frantically. And sympathetically, too, as if she were familiar with what she had falsely accused Harry of being. "No," I corrected politely. "He's not really like that, he-" but before I could finish, Jane put her hands over her ears and began shaking her head rapidly. Her countenance held anguish, as if she couldn't get rid of whatever piercing noise was bouncing through her mind. And that was the end of the conversation.
While she sat there like that, hands to her ears while I stayed silent, my eyes searched desperately for Harry. His back was to me, continuing to fill two trays with whatever gooey revulsion was on today's menu. If only he would hurry up. I was good at mending patients wounds and giving them medication. But I wasn't one for consult or advice. At least not at times like this.
My eyes shifted back to the table and I jumped slightly as someone that was not Harry slid into a chair beside Jane. It was the woman I had noticed a few days ago. The new girl, the one that seemed much more normal than the rest. But after the occurrence of Harry's electrotherapy side affects and his declaration of love and many other distractions, any memory of her had dispersed from my mind.
She was pretty, with light brown hair and brown eyes to match. Not beautiful, but pretty. "Hi," she spoke curtly. Her voice was a little heavier than I was expecting. Not in a masculine way but in a demanding way that suggested authority.
"Hi," I spoke, my apprehensive tone weak compared to hers. "Who are you?"
"I'm Mikayla. Who are you?"
"Rose," I said, the end of the word sounding as if it were a question rather than an answer. "What are you-"
"Who's this?" Harry's voice interrupted. He stood behind me for a moment and I looked up. He was gazing the strange woman intently. Not in anger but in quizzical examination.
"Her name's Mikayla," I answered for her as Harry sat next to me. He slid over the tray he had been holding and although the food was disgusting, I forced it down, and although the water had that rubbery taste, I sipped it. The last thing I needed was to pass out again.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, getting right to it.
"Same as her," Mikayla answered, nodding toward Jane. She still hand her hands to her ears, but they were pressed to her head only lightly and she looked much more relaxed. "I just wanna talk," she said, but there was something hidden in her tone that implied different.
Harry nodded slowly, still deciphering what to do about this woman who had shown up out of the blue. He didn't look to me but I felt his hand rest on my knee from under the table. "About what?" He pressed on.
"Anything, really. Your two are the only people here that seem to be able to carry on a civil conversation. Plus, you seem . . . at least slightly normal. And you certainly know this place better than I do. So I figured that if I was gonna talk to anyone here, it should be you guys."
I decided to leave this conversation to Harry, too. He was much better at speaking with strangers than I was. "So you really just want to talk then? You just want some buddies to chat with?" he asked in a slightly mocking tone, as if he didn't believe her.
She nodded. But she was smart. You could tell by the confidence in her voice and the spark in her eyes. There was something she wanted. Whether it was actually just to be aquatinted with us or not, I wouldn't protest. She probably just needed us as a guide to help her adapt to Wickendale's cruel environment, to help her sort out how this place works. And who knows, she might be able to help us out later.
"So, who runs this place?" she asked. "Who's the warden or whatever?"
"Ms. Hellman," I said. Mikayla's expression asked for elaboration. "You'll know her when you see her. She's the one in charge and she'll make you well aware of it."
Jane hadn't spoken in a while, but her eyes were engaged in the conversation. Not talking, but listening.
"Okay . . . and what's the deal with the guards?" Mikayla pressed on.
"They're pricks," Harry said a little harshly. Underlying his tone there was evident hatred, and the flicker of Mikayla's eyes showed that she had caught it.
"Yeah, I got that part. My little babysitter has already shoved me a few times. They're mean, but not really demanding. From all the prison movies I've seen, they're not as bossy as I would've thought."
"That's Ms. Hellman's job," Harry clarified. "To be bossy. She hires people like that for a reason. She wants guards who will stand up to the patients but won't stand up to her. They know if they start barking orders and telling patients what to do, Ms. Hellman isn't gonna like it."
"This Hellman lady sounds like a bitch."
"You have no idea," I sighed. Mikayla's eyes didn't stop shifting between mine and Harry's.
"And what happened to that guard over there?"
James. We both knew that she was talking about James without having to look. He still wore a neck brace and there was a white bandage over his nose. One of his eyes remained swollen without a falter in the puffy dark purple color. It had gone down in size a bit, but that was the only mark of any sort of recovery. And, looking at him more closely now, something about the bones of his face seemed to be misshapen. I wasn't sure what but something was off-putting in his features. Like he had broken a bone somewhere. His jaw, maybe.
Neither Harry or I responded right away. I don't think Harry was prepared to tell that tale and I certainly wasn't. The fear I felt while Harry had maliciously beat James was a memory better left forgotten.
"I'm not sure," Harry answered. But it was a slow answer as if he had to think out each word. And again, Mikayla caught on.
"Huh," she said. "I'm not sure if I believe that. You guys know something."
I looked to Harry and he shrugged, but neither of us responded.
"Oh come on, its not like it matters. And I'll probably find out, anyway."
"Okay, fine. He did it," I said, nodding to Harry. We didn't need to tell her the how and the why of it, but there was no point in hiding the general facts. There wasn't a reason to concealing information that was already known to the institution's public.
"Woah. You did that to him?" She questioned. Harry nodded, his expression neutral. Mikayla looked to the both of us in confusion and concentration, as if her first assumption of us had to be recalculated. She was sizing us up, but this time with a little more respect. "Who the hell are you guys?"
"They're Harry and Rose," Jane said, finding this time the appropriate one to join the conversation. "I know their names. They know mine, too. They're nice."
Each of our expressions turned slightly amused at Jane's childlike contribution. "Good," Mikayla said.
Jane gave an exaggerated nod to show her agreement. Although she was older than me, her small voice and wild blonde hair made her seem almost cute. I wondered what this girl could have possibly done to land her a spot at Wickendale.
"I think I'll sit here from now on, if you don't mind," Mikayla said. "You guys are a hell of a lot more knowledgable of this place than I am. And I can't stand to sit in that corner by myself anymore."
She definitely didn't seem like she was asking but rather just informing us of her decision. So there went the sliver of privacy Harry and I had, which hadn't really been private to begin with. Kisses and talks and laughter between just Harry and I would be scarce with our new company. But what we were supposed to do, kick her out and not let her sit with us like high school bullies? Plus, we needed as many "friends" as we could get if we wanted to escape. It would be stupid not to let her talk to us. But it was still slightly disappointing.
And the only thing to distract me from that disappointment was Jane's shocked gasp. "That's him!" she harshly whispered. Mikayla was unaware of who her statement was geared toward, but Harry and I did. She was talking about the man that dishonorably came into her cell each week like she had previously described. Both of our heads moved in the direction of her worried stare and we found the guard that she was mentioning. He was directly in her line of vision, standing alone in the corner, watching along like the rest of Wickendale's security. Except there was something all too familiar about this man, something that made my skin crawl.
He wasn't just any guard, but he was the one that took me to my cell and back each day. My guard. And if he did those things to Jane, who knows who else he will assault.
Everyone was silent for a long time. Mikayla was confused, Jane was scared, and I was filled with a heavy worry and dread. But it was Harry who finally spoke. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."