The woman waddled toward the door, her arms cradled beneath a stomach so round it pulled the hem of her stained, tattered smock almost entirely up to her mustn’t touch. Her face was round as well, however her skin had a tint almost as yellow as the crumpled papers that made up her bedding. She looked old, tired, with dark bags hanging beneath eyes that held only the faintest shine. Her sickly pallor was thrown into even sharper focus by the strands of greasy, dark hair that clung to her cheeks and neck.
“You’ve got to help me… please. You were here last night, right? I saw you leaving as I was waking up.”
For a moment, Ocean could only stand there with her jaw gaping open. Questions flew through her head like a pack of startled flies, but somehow the words seemed to get lost somewhere between thought and expression.
“Who…” she finally stammered. “Who are you?”
“They call me Vessel.” The woman spoke in a rapid whisper, craning her neck, trying to peer around the barred window.
Being that close to the door, Ocean could smell the sour stench of unwashed flesh and the slightly musty odor of clothes whose fibers had begun the slow march toward decay.
“There’s no time, he’ll come. He’ll kill me. You’ve got to let me out. Please, let me go. Let us go.”
The woman glanced down at her belly to accent her use of the plural and Ocean could see that she was visibly shaking now, her faded, dull eyes brimmed with tears. The woman named Vessel looked as if she were only moments away from collapsing to the floor.
“I… I don’t understand. Who’ll kill you? Why are you here? You’re pregnant? You’re going to have a baby?”
Now that the initial shock had faded, questions spilled from her mind almost more quickly than she could ask them. Her eyes darted about the interior of the cell as if she could somehow find the answers scrawled across the dingy walls.
“Just let me out, girl, for the love of God, let me go. I swear, I won’t tell anyone it was you. You’ll never see me again. I just want to have my baby.” Tears streamed down Vessel’s face. “Understand? I just want to have my baby. I don’t care that it’s his anymore. I just want to hold her. I just want to see her grow up. I just want her to live.”
Ocean steadied herself against the door as the room swam in and out of focus, struggling to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, to arrange them into a pattern that made sense. Who did this scared, pregnant lady keep referring to? She said he and him… did she mean Gauge? No, she couldn’t mean Gauge. Could she?
“There used to be more. So many more but now there’s just
poor Vessel. Poor Vessel and her baby, see? Poor Vessel and her rapist’s bastard. But I don’t care, I don’t. I just want my baby.”
Corduroy. She had to be talking about Corduroy—it was all beginning to come together now. The way the sick bastard was always watching her, always leering from across the room. Why he hadn’t told Gauge when he’d had every opportunity to do so. He must have locked this woman in here, forced himself on her—
“Just open the door, girl. Okay? Open the door for poor Vessel?”
“I…”
Ocean glanced at the wooden plank barring the way. “I… I don’t know… I don’t—”
“Please, girl, please, please, please!”
Hiding her face in her hands, Ocean inhaled through her mouth as if she’d just run from the end of the north tunnel all the way to the south. She slumped against the wooden door. “Gauge,” she said finally. “I’ll go get Gauge. He’ll know what to—”
“No!” The woman grasped the metal bars so suddenly and tightly that it seemed she was trying to force her face through them. Her eyes and pupils were perfectly round now, and Ocean could see a vein in her neck throb with her racing pulse.
“No, didn’t you hear me? He’ll kill us. Like he did the others. When they got too old to… “
Ocean wanted to press her fingers into her ears, to shout until the sound of her own voice drowned out the woman’s frightened babble. She’s crazy. She’s locked up because she went crazy, that was it. Just some crazy woman who would probably kill them all in their sleep if she had half a chance.
“He… he wouldn’t. Gauge is nice, Gauge is good—”
“Gauge is a manipulative, psycho son of a bitch and the quicker you accept that, the better off you’ll be. Now please, open the door. Okay? Just open the door.”
Why the hell did everything have to be so damn difficult? So confusing? It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair that her mama had attacked her for nothing more than a bite of rat, that she’d been forced to murder her own mother and leave the only home she’d ever known. And then to find this place… to have found Gauge, to have known what it meant to be happy and content and loved. Why won’t anyone just let me be fucking happy? Was that so wrong? To want to feel as safe and secure as she once had in her father’s arms? Why was someone always trying to take that from her.
“You’re lying. You’re crazy and you’re lying. He saved me. He fed me and—”
“He used you, girl. Just like he used me. Just like he used the others.”
“Shut up!” Ocean had her face pressed right up to the bars now, so close that she could feel the warmth of Vessel’s breath on her nose. Her voice was shrill and piercing, and she could feel her nostrils flared with each forced breath. “Shut your lying mouth, you bitch!”
Part of her felt as if she would double over vomit right then and there, but another part wanted to reach through those bars and yank the crazy woman’s hair, to scratch out her eyes, and rip her tongue from her mouth.
“I’ll kill you my damn self!”
I just wanted to be happy…
Vessel backed away from the door and the two women stood in silence for a moment, each glaring at the other with fists formed into tight balls. Finally, Vessel took a slow breath through her nose, held it for a moment, and released it in a slow sigh.
“Of course… you love him, don’t you? God, I forgot what it was like. The power it has.”
The anger was gone from Vessel’s face now, but Ocean still felt her own surging through her veins like a fiery poison. Her teeth ground against one another and the muscles in her shoulders felt as if the weight of the buckets was still bearing down on them.
“He tells you that you’re beautiful, doesn’t he? Calls you sweetie and honey? Touches your cheek and smiles? I remember how wonderful that used to make me feel. Like I was the only girl in the world.” Vessel’s voice was soft and distant now and she closed her eyes as if she could contain the sadness that suddenly lit in them.
“He makes you feel so special, so warm. I bet he told you about the Food Wars, didn’t he? Got all misty eyed and made you feel so sorry for him. Like you’d do anything just to keep from ever seeing that pain on his beautiful face again.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Ocean meant to hurl the words at the woman, to spit the venom in her soul with each syllable. Instead, they came so low and flat that she wasn’t entirely convinced she’d actually spoken.
“Oh, I’m afraid I do, honey. I know all too well. Has he kissed you, yet? No? Judging by the meat on your bones, it wouldn’t have been much longer.”
Why didn’t those words carry the joy they should have? Ocean had so often dreamed of Gauge parting his lips and slowly lowering them to meet her own, of that magic moment. Someone saying it would happen soon should have sent her whirling in a delirium of happiness. So why then, did she feel so hollow and empty inside?
“Don’t you see, girl? You’re nothing but a replacement. Spare parts. Hell, they’re down to just me now, just poor Vessel. As soon as you get a little fatter, a little healthier, you’ll be right down here with me.”
Ocean felt something hot streaming from her eyes and she blinked rapidly as her throat hitched with words. “Why… I don’t… why?”
“Why does he make you fall in love? Maybe it helps ease his conscience when he finally comes ‘round to force himself on you. Maybe just to be cruel.”
“No… no.”
“Or did you mean why would he lock you away like some rabid animal? The babies, girl. For the babies.”
“For Baby? What about Baby? What does Baby have to—”
Vessel walked back toward the door again, shuffling her feet in an almost parody of a walk.
“Not Baby. He calls them all that. I guess it’s better if they don’t have names. Easier, perhaps. Does he have you taking care of it? I bet so. That way no one gets too attached.”
Levi’s voice surfaced in Ocean’s memory: we eat well around here. But only this well every few months.
She was suddenly colder than she’d ever been, even during the height of winter when the seats of her bedroom would be frosted and her breath plumed in the air. She felt numb and sick, she just wanted to be back there within the circle of cars, beneath the blue tarp, with both her parents still alive, and for all of this to have just been nothing more than a dream.
“You’ll be locked up. You’ll be raped. And when you give birth, they’ll take that child away and you can smell it, even all the way down here, and you’ll hate yourself because you know what that smell is but you’re so damn hungry your body betrays you. You salivate. You get hungrier. You try to escape into sleep, but even then it follows you into your dreams. And once the scent fades, you try to tell yourself that you never felt that way. That you couldn’t feel that way, but then the whole thing just starts all over again.
“And I want to keep this one, see? I want her to live.”
Ocean’s entire body felt as if it were tingling. Just like her legs used to when she’d sit on them for too long. She was vaguely aware that she was crying. Vessel’s hand snaked through the gap between the bars, seeming fuzzy and unreal. The woman’s palm touched the side of her face, but it didn’t really feel like her face, more like there was a thin barrier between her flesh and the woman’s hand, muting the sensation.
“I’m sorry, honey. I really am. But now do you see why you’ve got to let me out of here? Why I’ve got to get away before it’s too late?”
Ocean watched, detached, as her own hands lowered to the plank. She observed her fingers wrapping around the rough wood, barely noticing when a splinter jammed into the soft webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Funny that she couldn’t really feel that. There should have been more pain…
She saw herself lifting the piece of wood, heard the slight grating as it slid from the troughs that held either end, the slow creak as the door swung open.
Vessel was hugging her then, holding her tightly against that firm round belly and petting her hair with long strokes.
“We’ll get out of here,” she whispered. “Me and you, girl. Get out…”
Ocean nodded her head slowly, realizing there were no more tears. It was as if she’d wasted every drop of water within her body, and she wondered if she would ever be able to cry again. If she would ever want to.
“Come on, honey. Let’s go.”
Vessel put her arm around Ocean’s shoulders and gently guided her. Together, they turned away from the cell, toward the metal door that had hidden this dark secret for so long.
Ocean wasn’t surprised to see Gauge leaning against the door frame. After all, it only made sense. If there was ever a chance that she could begin to find happiness again, surely even that would be taken from her.
Any kindness she’d once thought had graced his features was gone now. His face was as blank as the concrete floor under her feet and his eyes twice as hard and cold. He studied the two women silently for a moment and then shook his head slightly.
“I told you, Ocean. I told you not to open this fucking door, didn’t I?” Gauge raised his hand and his eyes seemed to study the graceful curve of the sickle he carried, the little nicks where blade had sunk into bone. “You should have listened, sweetie. You should have listened to me.”
He took a few test swings and smiled as the tool swished through the air.
Without another word, be began to walk toward them, his weapon swinging lightly by his side.