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“Now that you know the full truth, does that change things? Are you happy to see him finally receive the punishment he so richly deserves?”
Gritting my teeth, I tried not to visualize what the man had done. Tried not to hear the children’s shrieks, or see the tears in my mind’s eye. I failed. Slowly, I began to nod.
“I do,” I whispered. “I do like watching it.”
I leaned closer to the glass, to get a better look at Elise working. Eager to watch him squirm and call out in agony. The piece of shit was getting it easy compared to what he’d done to those kids. After every single tooth had been ripped out, Elise clamped the tongue in the pliers and pulled it out of his mouth. The thick muscle stretched taut. Elise grabbed what looked like a serrated steak knife from the table beside her. Holding it up to the guy’s face so he could see how old and dull it looked. The jagged teeth of the knife were blunt and well-used. They looked like something someone had picked up at a thrift store. Not what you would want someone using as a surgical tool.
The muscles in her upper arms flexed as she drew the knife in a long cut, leaving a jagged tear. The speakers were strong, and I could hear the awful zip-zip sound as the knife jagged its way through the flesh. Blood gushed, coating her hand as she sliced again.
He writhed as much as the restraints would let him, gurgling and screaming wordlessly.
Elise swore as she had to adjust her grip, the handle slick with blood.
My hands were on the glass, and I was breathing fast. I pressed my face closer, wanting to see every second of it. The breath from my mouth and nose fogged the window, obscuring the show and forced me to move my head every few moments. The squeals were garbled and high-pitched, mixed with gags as he choked on his own blood.
One last slice and the meat hung loose in the pliers. Elise dropped it on the floor and jammed a hand under his chin and shoved his head back. Her face was screwed up in concentration and rage as she angled his chin toward the ceiling. He squirmed, blood squirting out of his mouth as he shifted his head from side to side.
She didn’t have a good enough grip to keep his head still enough he couldn’t spit the blood out. The man’s body jerked and bucked in the chair, doing all he could to keep his head moving.
“Just fucking die already,” Elise snarled as she grabbed his hair with her other hand to keep his head still.
His coughs became wet gasps. Blood spurted from his nostrils as he tried to breathe through the fountain of blood that poured out of his wound and down his throat. As it played out before me, I forced myself to keep my gaze still. She shifted position in order to be behind him, using her body to help keep his head still, and then grabbed his nose, pressing it closed. The tiny breaths he was able to suck through his lips became more and more wet as blood flowed down his windpipe. It came too fast to swallow, so it pooled in his lungs. It took a long time, but finally he stopped moving. His head hung backward over the chair, his wide sightless eyes staring at me through the two-way glass. Dead. Drowned in his own blood. Holy Christ.
Slowly backing away from the glass, I tried to feel bad about watching, but I couldn’t. Warm pleasant sensations filled me as I watched the stranger die. Happiness and satisfaction being the main things that stuck out. He was a monster, and had gotten what he deserved. He’d received his reward for a life of depravity, and I’d liked watching him die.
Him being dead meant children weren’t being raped. Why shouldn’t we give justice for all his victims?
“Did that excite you, Dahlia?” Sam asked, making me jump in surprise.
With only the barest hesitation, I nodded. “Ye—yes.”
“Good. You’ll have your own chance to dispense punishment after lunch.”
The door behind me clicked open, and I stepped out of the room on shaking legs. As I made my way back to my room, my mind spun back to the man we’d met at breakfast. Was he really Sam? The person I’d been talking to moments before sounded nothing like that man. Could there be a whole team of people here? A cult or something? It might be.
Why hadn’t we all tried to jump him? In hindsight, that should’ve been the play we made. There had been five of us, and only one of him. Drake was strong and powerful, there would’ve been no chance for him to fight us all off. Unless the others knew something I didn’t. I pictured everyone leaping from our chairs only to be mowed down by gunfire from some hidden guns throughout the dining room, dead before we ever touched him.
Each thought brought new questions. Things I hadn’t asked myself since settling in. How did they operate this place? It was huge. Our rooms were cleaned and remade each day, and someone cooked breakfast every morning. Sam seemed to be everywhere at once. Always watching. How did this strange system work?
Part of me truly hoped this was some lame movie or book where a huge story unfolded but the main character woke up to find it’d all been a dream. That was a shitty way to do fiction, but at the moment, I would’ve been grateful to wake up in my tiny dirty apartment. Even my miserable existence in the real world had been less stressful than this.
On the other hand, I would never have met Drake. He almost made this worthwhile.
As my room door locked behind me, my mind argued. The expectation of the world outside the dollhouse versus the reality within. When I looked inside myself and read my emotions, I saw something that should’ve terrified me. I was starting to like it here.
After another hour of rest time in my room, I was sent to lunch. The others were acting as though nothing strange had happened that morning. Conversations going on like usual. A pattern was revealing itself. My other housemates had been here so long that they’d fallen into this weird tradition. Some of the things they were talking about had already been discussed before. They were doing it simply to pass the time and make things feel more normal. The only one who pretended to resist this little show was Drake, but even he played along. How soon before I was telling them about being a waitress for the third time? The tenth time? The hundredth? The idea filled me with desperate hopelessness.
After lunch, I was sent back to my room like usual, but my wait for my afternoon activity was longer than typical. So long, in fact, I lay on my bed and fell asleep waiting. My eyes snapped open when the chime sounded.
“Dahlia, are you ready? I think you’ll enjoy what I have planned for you,” Sam said.
Rubbing my eyes, all I could do was nod. “Sure. Whatever.”
The door unlocked and my cuff told me to proceed to the viewing room. My stomach sank. I’d hoped I never had to see Branson again. Maybe today was the day I finally got to end his filthy life.
I trudged through the halls until I came to the correct room then stepped inside. No one was waiting in the room for me. The window looking into the playroom was black, the lights inside shut off. Frowning, I went ahead and stepped through the door into the other room. I gasped as the door swung shut and locked behind me in a flash, locking me in the pitch black room. I spun and pounded my fists on the door, but it wouldn’t budge even a little bit.
“Dahlia,” Sam said, “it’s time for you to exorcize some of your demons. I give unto you a gift. Do what you must.”
