head and her body feeling like it was weighed down by a ton of bricks, Lyla blinked her eyes open to see a familiar ceiling over her head. The medical room at the complex. What was she doing there?
Light filtered in through a small window, but she couldn’t move her limbs to get up from the soft bed. It felt wonderful to simply lie and soak up the comfort, as her mind tried to recall the last thing it could remember.
Drugged. She’d been drugged.
A dark room. Cameras. Heat. Him.
Him between her thighs, devouring her over and over until she lost consciousness. She didn’t know how long he ate her out after that. The idea sent an odd shiver of thrill down her spine—the idea that she had been completely at his mercy to do as he pleased. The thought, with anyone else, filled her with terror and disgust. And yet, closing her eyes and imagining her invisible lover in the dark, she couldn’t completely throw the thought out.
She was an idiot, that’s what she was. A fucking idiot for trusting the most dangerous man she could find, who played with her, had no allegiance to anyone or anything whatsoever. And yet, he had showed up every time she had needed him. And though it had been a trap for him, he had come for her again.
What game was he playing?
Frustrated at herself for letting the question circle her mind, she tried to sit up, struggling under the heaviness of the lingering effects of the drug.
The door opened. Three entered the room with one of the girls she didn’t know but had seen in the building. The contempt on the woman’s face made her stomach drop. She looked at them both, trying to understand what had happened.
“I don’t understand what’s so special about you,” the older woman remarked, her lips curving in a sneer. “He has been lining the street with bodies in your wake.”
Three indicated for the younger girl to set a tray of food on the table beside her as she kept talking. “I don’t know what you got yourself into last night, but he killed Mr. H because of it.”
Lyla felt her breath hitch. “What?”
The older woman shook her head. “Yes, foolish girl. Mr. H died because of you. Do you know how good he was to the girls? How generous? Thanks to you, Set him on fire alive.”
Lyla stayed silent.
“Congratulations, the higher ups are going to watch you like a hawk now.’
A sliver of anger rippled through her.
How the fuck was any of that her fault? Mr. H hadn’t been a divine pagan of virtue. He had drugged her and touched her and she wasn’t sorry he died. She wasn’t sorry any of them died. But once again, someone else’s actions had impacted her life, and she just didn’t want to deal with it. But living in the world she did, trapped as she was, what choice did she have?
Three poured her a glass of juice and pointed to the food. “Rest for a few days, and then get packed. Orders. You have a new… assignment. You’re moving.”
Biting her lip, Lyla swerved her eyes from the girl at the door, back to Three. She knew better than to ask about her new station. She would find out when she was escorted to wherever she was going.
“Any news on Malini?” she asked her handler for the last time, knowing she would know or at least have some inkling of where the girl could be. If she was moving, she needed to ask for one final time.
The older woman’s eyes chilled. “She’s been contracted. I won’t tell you again.”
But it was odd for someone under contract to not come back for any of their stuff at all. Possessions, as meagre as they were, were important to every girl in there. She knew that. They were things they had collected over the years, little trinkets of comfort that mattered to them because nothing else did. All girls who were contracted were given a last trip to pack their stuff and say goodbye. But not Malini. She had woken up one morning, gone to work at an online auction, and never returned. While it was entirely possible that whoever had bought her hadn’t allowed her any time to return, something inside Lyla couldn’t shake off the feeling that it wasn’t that. Something else had happened to the other girl.
Keeping her thoughts to herself, she drank the juice and ate the toasted bread as Three left. The girl, a blondish, petite beauty, hesitated in the doorway, her eyes going to where their handler was disappearing.
“I don’t know where they’re sending you, but it’s not good,” the girl whispered urgently. “Just… be prepared.”
With that, the girl rushed out too, leaving her alone with her thoughts, a maelstrom in her mind. They were sending her… somewhere not good.
She didn’t know what was coming, but she didn’t know if she was prepared for it.
***
For the next few days, Lyla rested and let her body recover from the aftermath of whatever drug she had been forced to consume. She was given a few days off work, so she just rested and wandered in the house, eavesdropping on different conversations. That was how she stopped outside the kitchen, listening to the chatter inside.
“What do you think the deal is with the Shadow Man and Lyla?” someone asked.
Lyla pressed into the wall, curious to know what others were thinking about the whole thing.
“I didn’t even think he was real until all this. Now, I’m not sure what to think.”
“I think he’s just a client gone territorial,” another voice chimed in.
“Lyla hasn’t had a client since she came here,” a girl pointed out. “He takes them out.”
“Maybe he loves her.”
Lyla gripped her shorts, her heart racing. He wasn’t capable of loving, and she wasn’t desperate enough yet to imagine he could.
Two girls laughed inside, the sound chipping into her. “That doesn’t exist here, Millie. Maybe he just wants to get her out.”
“But why hasn’t he already then? It’s been like… what six years?”
Ouch. That hurt.
“I think he’s just using her for his own agenda, whatever it is. That’s all we’re good for anyway.”
Listening to the conversation, a large part of her agreed.
He had some agenda, and she was just what she’d always been—collateral with damage.
***
A week after the drug incident, she was thrown out of the complex figuratively, and her nerves were fraught. Not only because she was moving again and the girl’s warning was ringing in her head, but because he had been absent. She hadn’t seen him since the incident, or even felt him, and the absence was gnawing, spinning her mind, making her thoughts oscillate between him having an agenda and him genuinely caring for her in his own twisted way. The more the time passed without him, the more the latter thought flickered.
In record time, she packed her entire collection of material possessions in one box, and waited outside the building as one of the guards came to collect her. He put a blindfold over her eyes, routine if they were being transferred to some secure location, and it disoriented her, not knowing where she was going.
She knew it was the fallout from that night, she knew it had something to do with Mr. H’s death and whatever message it sent. She just didn’t know if it was good for her or not. The guard deposited her in a vehicle and she heard the ignition start, driving away from the longest housing period she had been in. She had been seventeen when she had come to this Complex, eighteen when she’d met him for the first time, eighteen when her life had changed on one fateful night.
With the blackness behind the blindfold, she could remember the thunder and the raindrops splattering her as she’d run into the woods around the complex, desperately seeking escape when she’d collided—
The car jerked, breaking her thoughts, splintering them until she took a deep breath and centered herself. Memories, her memories, were a powerful vortex that sucked her in every time, taking her to dark places. She couldn’t remember a single moment in her life where she felt happy without the pressing weight of something terrible. She didn’t know how to smile anymore, the lines between her eyebrows becoming more permanent than they were not.
“Who are we going to?” she asked, just to break the monotony of her thoughts, not really expecting a reply.
“Don’t know,” the guard told her. “I’m just the delivery guy.”
Nice.
The car came to a stop after a long time. She heard the guard opening his door, before coming to her side, and hauling her out. She felt the sun on her skin for a split second before he guided her up some low steps. Still blindfolded, she stumbled her way through, her only box of possessions clutched against her chest. He took her down a long walkway, the ground under her flats solid, like concrete of some kind. Musky scents assaulted her nostrils, too mixed up together for her to discern.
Finally, after what felt like hours of walking, she was pushed into a chair.
The blindfold was taken off, and she blinked rapidly to let her eyes adjust to the sudden light, realizing she was in some kind of warehouse office, in a room made of wood, one with a brown table that was so rough and scratched it was probably older than she was, and—she counted—four chairs around it.
Wondering what this new place was and what her role in it was going to be, she took it in, waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
After a long time, a door opened and three men, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, walked in. Nervous energy filled her, her feet tapping the ground as she looked at the three strange men, not knowing who they were. But they looked menacing, rough, one of them even more so. The mean one was bald, his head gleaming as he took a seat at the head of the table, wearing a ring with the same snake design as the man from the club that night.
The other two deferred to him, coming to stand in front of her chair.
“You’ve cost my bosses a lot of money and a lot of men, Lyla,” the mean one, the leader clearly, spoke. “What should we do with you?”
She stayed silent, her heart pounding, a sense of dread infiltrating her veins as she looked at the men.
“You’re too important to let go of, but too useless to the business. You were leverage against some powerful people, and now you’re also leverage against the Shadow Man.” The eagerness of the man’s voice scared her. “Do you know who he is?”
She shook her head quickly. She genuinely didn’t know who he was.
The man studied her for a long minute. “The Shadow Man came out of nowhere about ten years ago. He became a legend in the underworld. Disrupted our path again and again, and to this day I don’t understand what his end-goal is. So, let me rephrase. Do you know anything about him?”
She shook her head again.
“You wouldn’t be lying now, would you?”
She wasn’t lying.
“Good,” he smiled, his face creasing in laugh lines that should have made him look nice. “We have traveled a long way to see you. Why don’t you get on your knees and make us feel better?”
Swallowing, she looked at each of them, finding some semblance of strength inside her. “That would be signing your death warrant. He kills everyone.”
One of the men stepped closer, suffocating her space. “We’ll risk it. If he cares about you, maybe he’ll find us. If not, it’s our gain.”
Grabbing her by the arm, he dragged her to the bald man.
Lyla looked around the room, knowing she was trapped, knowing there was no escape, feeling claustrophobic because day after day, there had been no reprieve. And this time, she knew in her gut he wasn’t even aware of what was happening.
The man with her arm pushed her to her knees, the other took out his camera.
“Make the feed live,” the bald man instructed from his place at the head of the table. “Let him see how we break his little toy.”
Lyla closed her eyes.
No.
He wasn’t there to save her, not like he’d told her, showed her, promised her he would be. And she couldn’t save herself. He had lured her into a false sense of safety until she started relying on him, and now she was trapped because he had endangered her.
He had lied.
And he may kill everyone he wanted afterward, but it wouldn’t be for her. It would be for himself, and it would never bring back the last piece of her that broke.
She closed her eyes, and let the black hole swallow her whole.
***
Her bed was small.
Her life was small.
And it didn’t matter.
She didn’t matter, nothing mattered.
She was the black hole and the black hole was her, endless nothingness with no capacity for light.
She didn’t know who came to her room, who left, who did what to her.
She felt nothing; she spoke nothing; she saw nothing.
She just stared at the cracked ceiling, recognizing the cracks within herself, widening, sharpening, lengthening.
Purposeless.
Endless.
Lifeless.
***
The ceiling stayed the same.
Months passed.
The ceiling got worse.
Time became meaningless.
The last sign of life in her body came when her box fell over, black roses scattering across the floor, sparking something.
She flew across the room in a rage and tore them apart, crushing the petals, bruising them until her eyes began to burn and her throat locked tight.
She wanted nothing of him. No reminders. Nothing of the man who had made her believe in an illusion of safety, only to push her into danger himself. He had betrayed her, time and time again, leaving her behind for the jackals to feed off her flesh.
Standing up, she went to the bathroom and grabbed a razor from the cabinet behind the mirror. Looking at herself, at her sunken eyes and her pallid reflection, at the hair he had been so fascinated with, she began to hack away at the long tresses she had never cut before. With each lock of hair that fell, she felt herself go, felt who she had been disappear as a silent doll took its place—good to use and play with, pretty to look at, but completely lifeless.
Cutting the last lock of her hair, she let him go, let herself go, let everything that connected them go.
The ceiling cracked.
