Page 86 of If Looks Could Kill
Sarah, called Delilah, is gone by the time Rosie arrives to check on my progress. I’m still in my normal clothes. The salmon-colored silk obscenity lies on the floor. Rosie crosses the floor to deliver a stinging slap to my face. It knocks me sideways. She deals a slap to my other side.
“Let’s get one thing straight in your head,” she tells me. “Miss Tabitha .” As if my name is a mockery. “You belong to me now. You live here. You stay here. You do as I tell you. You eat what I give you. You wear what I tell you. You open your legs to whoever I tell you. Got that?”
My head is still throbbing and my ears are still ringing from the slaps.
“We’re going to start you off with a practice run,” she says. “Zeke’s going to take care of you. Which is why I told you to put that peach number on. So put it on.”
Zeke. He’s huge. The one who slugged me in the gut. Oh, God, please, no.
It’s easier if you don’t fight it. Less painful.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rosie tells me. “They all do. They think they’re so brave. I’ve got three men here, and I’ll use ’em to break you down if I need to. Your choice.”
“Do you hate yourself?” I ask her.
Something twitches in her heavily made-up eye. “Aw, no, honey,” she says. “I’m training you up in a lucrative business. And what was good enough for me is good enough for you.”
I’m swimming through a nightmare. Only seeing and hearing dimly, as if through water. Perhaps, when the time comes, that will be a mercy to me.
“Now,” she says, “are you going to put on that suit? Or am I going to have Zeke come in here and put it on you himself?”
Breathe, I tell myself. My stomach wants to empty itself all over this floor.
“Zeke,” she hollers. “Get in here.”
Footsteps sound, and Zeke comes lumbering in. I can smell him. I want to be sick.
“Get those clothes off her,” Rose orders him. “But don’t ruin ’em. I can sell ’em.”
Zeke waves a hammy hand toward the bed. “Sit down.”
I sit down.
“Take your shoes off,” Zeke orders me.
I’m too frozen in fright to move.
He shoves me back on the bed, knocking me over, and tears at the laces of my shoes.
Outside, the relative quiet is broken by the clatter of fast-moving hoofbeats and wheels. I envy them their freedom to drive by this godforsaken spot and just keep on going.
Zeke’s got one shoe off. He attacks the other.
My stomach roils. God, take me out of this place, I beg. If only in my mind.
“What’s the matter with you, Zeke?” demands Rosie. “Those are decent shoes.” She gets in close beside him and starts swatting at his hands.
An answer comes. It’s the last answer I could ever have imagined.
Vomit .
I sit up quickly and shove a finger down my throat. I read somewhere that if you need to make yourself throw up, if you need to expel some poison you’ve eaten, this is the way to do it.
“What’s she doing?” Zeke asks.
Mother Rosie watches me with raised eyebrows. “She’s disgusting,” she says. “You never can tell. The hoity-toity prim and proper ones turn out to be odd ducks.”
I twang my tonsils for all I’m worth. Gag waves ripple down my throat.
They stare at me in fascinated horror. Zeke returns to the task of unlacing my other boot.
My mouth fills with saliva, and I hunch over.
Zeke looks up at me just as the entire contents of my stomach, one extra-large bowl of chop suey, come spewing out of me, baptizing both him and Rosie in a spray of bile.
“Little shit !” Rosie screams, shrieking and wiping the nastiness off her.
“It’s in my eye,” bellows Zeke.
Not the entire contents. Apparently, I have more.
Another round decorates Rosie. Zeke backhands my face and sends me sprawling back upon the vomit-drizzled bed.
I’m going to pay for this.
“Get those clothes off her, Zeke,” Rosie orders, “and get her into the peach outfit. Now.”
“I ain’t touchin’ her,” Zeke says sullenly. “Probably give me typhus.”
Rosie fumes, and I feel a moment’s small satisfaction. But not for long.
“Mack,” Rosie shouts. “Get in here and see to Little Miss Priss.”
If you don’t, they’ll beat you and dress you in it themselves. You don’t want that.
Tabitha. Put the outfit on. Don’t let them do it to you.
“I’ll do it myself,” I tell them desperately. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll put it on.”
They give me two minutes.
I put it on.