Ariana“Okay, now. Her tits I want to pop,” Sadie whispered as we watched the woman walking back and forth in front of us, her eyes glued to the screen of her phone. “Either she’s taking the longest selfie sequence in history, or she’s waiting on a call.”
“She’s the one who kept coming into the bar with makeup and wigs on to change her appearance,” I replied under my breath.
I still didn’t know if it was me, my family, or Parker she was interested in because she hadn’t said a word to us since she took us. We’d been walking out to Sadie’s car to unlock the trunk—because it was that rusted it was a two person job, apparently—when she’d knocked us off our feet with her white Lexus SUV. Her and a man had gotten out and pushed us into it and driven off. They hadn’t even spoken to each other since either, it was fucking weird.
Then, the woman did the weirdest and most unexpected thing ever. She hit the screen of her phone and turned, so her back was to us, and held it up in front of her. “Selfie time!”
I wanted to say she was trying to antagonize or scare us, but the sound of a photo being taken followed it, making me and Sadie look at each other.
“Well, if you’d given us more warning, I’d have made sure my hair was straight,” Sadie snapped. “Oh, and that I didn’t have blood on my face.”
Unable to stop it coming out of my mouth, I added, “Don’t forget the dirt on your top, too.”
Spinning around, the woman sauntered toward us on six-inch white platform heels and squatted down in front of us. “Tweet, tweet, little birds. Wait ‘til you see what I’ve got for you.”
Glancing at her out of the corner of her eye, Sadie muttered, “Mate, I can see a lot of what you’ve got right now. When a lady’s wearing a skirt and squats or sits down, she’s meant to keep her knees together.”
Sneering at her, the woman hissed, “Shut up, you short bitch.”
“Well, that wasn’t nice. I was only giving you tips on how not to flash your hairy kebab, and there you are being mean and bringing my height into it. You seem kind of sad, did your parents never hug you?”
It was fair to say I’d heard all of the stories about my family when members of it had been in trouble, and every time I’d swear that I’d never say or do anything like they had. To be fair, I wasn’t the one doing it now, but still.
Letting my head drop back, I looked up at where my wrists were tied with rope to a chain hanging from the ceiling. They’d made it long enough so that we were able to sit on the ground, but not long enough my arms weren’t straining. I hated to think about what Sadie’s shorter ones were going through. The chain itself had been looped over one of the rafters in the rotting building, and that gave me hope that it’d be in the same condition as the rest of the place. Maybe when the lady moved away again, we could put our weight on the ropes and pull it down? It’d work in the movies!
A small gun appeared from the woman’s waist, which she then pressed under Sadie’s chin. “Let me tell you something about my parents, little girl. When I was fifteen, I had to run away from home to get away from them.” Her eyes flashed, making my stomach tighten. “Go to church, God will save you,” she sneered. “Speak to Pastor Archibald, he’ll cleanse your soul. Bear your sins, communion, pray, listen to hymns not music, read the bible not books, God loves you,” she finished, screaming the words into our faces. “God didn’t love me, he doesn’t exist! I was locked in my room until I could recite each passage they gave me from the Bible every night.”
Glancing at me quickly, Sadie rolled her eyes. “Sounds like a nightmare.”
“A nightmare? It was against my human rights.”
Frowning slightly, Sadie asked me, “Do human rights include television, music, and books?”
I didn’t know what the correct answer to that was, or even what the best thing to say here right now was. I was bruised all over my right side where the vehicle had hit us, and I swear my ass was as flat as a pancake. Great, I was going to be black and blue on one side, have a pancake ass, and have Inspector Gadget arms.
The random things you think at the worst moments—this was one of them.
“I ran away from them,” the woman said, not hearing Sadie’s question. “I set fire to the Bibles I could find in my bedroom and just ran.”