Ramona is a tall, slender woman with the traces of what might once have been a hair lip. If it was, her surgeon was very talented. Raphael hands me over to her with a clipped and considerably angry burst of Spanish, and then I’m whisked away. The woman has to be in her late twenties, though the tired look in her eyes gives her the appearance of someone much older.
“What you done to piss him off?” she asks, though she doesn’t really sound like she’s interested. A good job, really, since I have no intention of making small talk with her. The sugary sweet smell I caught outside is even thicker inside the house. We walk down a long, narrow corridor, and Ramona stops at the end, opening a door on the right. Inside, a confusion of pastel tulle awaits—dresses upon dresses, hanging on rack after rack. An entire room full of forgotten prom dreams.
“What size are you, girl?” Ramona asks. She smacks some gum. I don’t answer. She rolls her eyes and storms into the room, yanking a yellow dress off the closest rack and thrusting it out at me. I can see the label—size six. My size. I take it from her, because I sense she’ll only go get Raphael if I don’t and I do not want that.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Five years,” she replies. “Five loooong, boring-ass years. Come with me.”
She takes me upstairs and down another long, corridor, right to the end again. She opens the door to the room that must be directly over the prom room. Most worryingly, she opens it with a key. “Go on. Inside.”
Inside, I go.
“Get washed up. I’ll be back in an hour to do your hair and shit. Don’t go trying to jump from the fuckin’ window or nothin’. Had a girl do that one time and her damn legs exploded.” With that very cheerful parting word of warning, Ramona closes the door, locking it behind her.
I am alone.
Despite what I was just told, the first thing I do is dump the hideous dress on the bed, and run to the window, checking to see if it’s open. My jaw nearly hits the floor when I find that it is. Why the hell would they leave the windows open if they were planning on kidnapping people and holding them hostage?
Because you’re in the middle of nowhere, a small voice in the back of my head reminds me. And how would you get down, anyway? That’s a big drop. A really big drop. It could be my eyes playing tricks on me, but I think I can actually see a patch of rust-colored dirt directly under the window. Do people’s legs actually explode when they hit the ground after a fall? I have no idea, but my stomach is balking at the prospect of giving it a shot. There’s no handily placed downpipe to shimmy down like in the movies. Nothing to gain any purchase on at all. Fuck.
I give up the jumping from the window idea, and decide on searching for another means of escape. The room is markedly bare, though. There’s a double bed, freshly made by the looks of things. A dresser against the far wall, though when I open the drawers, they’re all empty. A sink complete with dripping tap stands in the corner—the kind the Victorians used to put in every bedroom back before the introduction of the en-suite bathroom. My heart leaps in my chest when I see the mirror mounted on the wall above it. I could smash it and use one of the shards as a weapon. But I’m not even halfway across the room when I realize the mirror isn’t actually a mirror at all. Instead, it’s a highly polished piece of metal, screwed tightly into the wall. I try to prize the screws out, but I only succeed in making my fingers bleed. The nails don’t budge an inch.
A weak desperation sets in after that. I stalk the perimeter of the room, eyes scanning for something I may have missed. Something, anything, I can use to get the hell out of here. There isn’t anything. Once that really hits home, I curl myself into a ball in the corner of the room and I cry. I cry so hard I make myself sick, my stomach muscles trembling from the second round of purging. I’m rinsing out my mouth, my legs trembling underneath me like two frail stalks of corn, when the door opens and Ramona walks in. She doesn’t seem impressed that I’m not decked out in the yellow dress yet.
“Fuck’s sake,” she hisses. I move away from her so that my back’s pressed up against the wall, but she doesn’t seem to care. This whole thing feels a little rote on her part. With quick, rough hands, she takes hold of my soiled T-shirt and forcefully removes it from my body. I’m too stunned to struggle. She unbuttons my jeans next, and drags them down. My legs get a good hard slap when I refuse to lift my feet at first. I relent after the third strike, miserably raising them one at a time so she can bully my dirty, wadded-up jeans free from my body.