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I crack open an eye and raise a questioning eyebrow. Make him angry how?
“Exactly. You wouldn’t even know how. That should about do it.” He pulls out, loosens the bindings on my wrists and the gag around my mouth, and covers me with a blanket. Leaning over me, he whispers in my ear, “If I’d known it was so easy to come in here and fuck you while you sleep, I would have done it months ago.”
An illicit shudder goes through me as I wonder if he’s going to do the same thing tonight. The next night. And the next night.
“It should take you a few minutes to untie yourself. Lie there and think about me and our baby, angel. I’ll be deep inside you all day.”
I hear a noise behind me at the window, and then he’s gone.
6
Vivienne
On Saturday morning, I wake with a gasp of shock that has nothing to do with Tyrant for a change. The university dress-up ball is in one week, and I—a costume design student—have no costume to wear.
I throw the blankets aside and hurry over to my sketchbook, relieved that I have something pressing to distract myself with all weekend. Choose a design, find or create a pattern, buy the fabric, and sew and tailor the dress.
The ball is to celebrate one hundred and fifty years of Henson University. The Performing Arts Department is running the committee, so of course the ball is a masquerade, and the ballroom will be decorated lavishly for the occasion. Part of the college is an old nineteenth-century mansion, and it has a real ballroom where I imagine debutantes took their first hopeful spins around the dance floor.
I’ve known about the ball for months, but I’ve agonized over what to wear. I know a lot of the girls are renting frothy, hooped ball gowns or purchasing skintight catsuits, tails, and ears online. Many of the boys will be wearing tuxedos, Zorro capes, or their Halloween costumes.
I turn the pages of my sketchbook, silently begging for inspiration to strike. This is the one thing I should be able to handle easily, and yet my anxiety is doubling by the second.
I glance in fear and longing at the place where my little box of pain and freedom is hidden.
I shake my head and look determinedly at the sketchbook pages. I don’t need to do that. I haven’t done that in a long time. I don’t ever need to do that again, and yet I haven’t thrown the box away. For some reason, I can’t make myself take the box down to the dumpsters out back and throw it in. Some compulsion always stops me and whispers,Are you sure you want to do that?
You should keep it.
Just in case.
My gaze falls on the weeping stone angel that I was drawing last Sunday before I was attacked in the cemetery. I nearly finished the drawing, and the angel stands out in delicate gray pencil on the white page. I even included the name that’s carved onto the stone casket. Cecelia Henson, the daughter of Henson University’s founder. She died tragically at age twenty, and it’s said her family never got over the loss. They commissioned the stone angel to perpetually grieve for their lost daughter.
I trace my fingers over the picture, envious of Cecelia for experiencing love that has endured for over a hundred years.
“Angel,” I whisper.
The strange endearment that Tyrant has bestowed on me. God knows why. I neither look nor act in an angelic way. I’m an anxious, frazzled mess most of the time, filled with insecurities. Every time Tyrant vanishes from my life, I become more and more certain that it’s the last time I’ll ever see him. Someday soon he’ll tire of me, and then he’ll forget about me like everyone else.
I can’t tear my eyes away from my drawing. Maybe I could attend the masquerade as an angel. A weeping stone angel with crystal tears on my mask. If I can find the right fabric for the dress…
I reach for my phone and text Julia and Carly.
Me:Anyone free to come shopping with me? I think I’ve decided on my costume.
Carly:Finally!! I wish I could but I have to study. *sobbing*
Julia:I’m with family but I’m so excited to see your costume. It’s going to be epic.
Carly:Can we see now?
I text them a photo of my drawing, and they both reply with enthusiasm and heart and angel emojis.
Energized by their excitement, I leap to my feet and grab my washbag, and head for the communal shower room. It’s okay that they can’t come. I enjoy shopping by myself because that means I get to daydream.
Twenty minutes later, I’m dressed in a short A-line skirt and vintage blazer, a white blouse, and brown brogues, with a lilac beret over my long dark hair for a pop of color. My satchel thumps against my thigh as I hurry down the street. There’s a bus that will take me where I’m going, but I wince at the thought of spending nearly five dollars on the round trip when I can barely afford to eat. The sky is overcast, and wet, orange leaves are stuck to the sidewalk, and more fall around me as I cross the road.
My favorite fabric store sometimes has sales on the ends of rolls, and I cross my fingers in my sleeves as I enter the building and begin the hunt for something ethereal and angelic. It’s not long before I find a stunning silver-white georgette that flows through my fingers like water.
