Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 518

I didn't want to die. Not like this. Not used up and alone on a narrow bed, hours from the last man and a whole world from the next. Not in a room that had no window I could reach and no door that would ever open on my behalf. I wanted there to be a witness to my life, even if it was just one person, and there wasn't.

I cried, I struggled against the warmth burning me open, I slid off the bed and crawled to the door and hammered on it with my fists.

"Someone! Help me, please, I'm dying! Open this door! Let me out!"

The corridor returned only the echoes of my own pounding. I slumped, my forehead against the cold wood, my body on fire, empty smoke, and I got up again and hammered again and again, my palms throbbing, until my hands went numb and my arms gave out, and I slid down the door to the floor, crying, burning, my mother's face, and Dominic's face, and regret all tangled and burning, and then the burning ate everything and the dark, and I passed out.

When I woke, it was morning. I was lying on the floor of the room, my legs curled under me, my mouth dry as paper, and I was still alive. The burning was gone, and it had left me empty. I got up. Slow, heavy, every joint, every ache.

A small piece of bread was slid through bottom of the door. I snatched it, ate it, and it was the most beautiful thing I thought I had ever tasted. There was no water. I wasn't given nutrients because I hadn't pleased anyone the day before. So I went into the bathroom and drank from the cold water that dripped into the shower cubicle.

That day, I didn't dare displease anyone.

I took the pill and swallowed it dry, and the pain and the cold and the warmth came back, that little bloom of innocent happiness that I had forgotten the world could still hold. All the pain of the day, all the bruising, all the ache between my legs, all of it seemed to softly leave my body like it had been loved away by it. I ate the dinner until the tray was clean, and when I threw myself down to sleep, I broke down. I cried into my elbow, sobbing that someone, anyone, somewhere, would save me. That they would take me away from this island of misery before it finished me.

After that night, I obeyed every single instruction I was given. I served every stranger, I let every client make me his possession, and I played happiness the way I was told, smiling and cooing and arching my back, even while I was dying inside and counting the slit between each door.

A week passed. In my eyes, it was a hundred years. I dreaded every second, and I only felt peace in the evening after I had swallowed my pill and folded myself up to sleep, the one clean nothing where nobody used me.