Content warning: this chapter contains blood, heightened physical sadism, and more references to abusive family relationships. I don't think the warning is needed for most of you who've read my stuff this far, but still.
Many thanks to everyone that patiently waited for another installment in this series. I am aware I took ages to finish this, and I would like to thank every last one of you for sticking with me so far. I am aware the ending I chose for this series is bound to be controversial, but I made my peace with it. While I didn't know how many chapters I would write when I started, this was the ending I was aiming for from the beginning. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
***
I remember waking up completely disoriented. My head felt heavy. My fingertips felt numb. The remnants of Karla's cuts stung lightly on my skin. I didn't even know where I was. The only source of light was a miserable little lightbulb swinging lightly on the ceiling. It was barely enough for me to see the color of my own trousers, let alone anything further than that.
It seemed I had been left sitting on a chair. My wrists were tightly bound to its arms by thick ropes, to the point where I could hardly move my hands. That at least explained why my fingers were so tingly. My legs had been left untied.
As my senses returned, my thoughts immediately swirled back to Karla. As much as I wish I could say I pieced together that a scout chief like herself would know how to tie me up, the fact was no other person I knew would be crazy enough to do it.
"
You
look particularly lost."
That was not the kind of voice I'd wanted to hear in that situation. It was a deeper voice, with a hint of weariness and an edge of cruelty. An older voice. Marilyn's. I immediately perked up. In the darkness, I squinted, trying to find her. Somehow, the possibility of having been tied up by Marilyn instead of her daughter was even more terrifying. I must have looked woefully afraid, because I heard her chuckling shortly after I started looking for her.
"Are you this afraid of me?" her chuckles punctuated each word. "Any more panic from you and you'd be on par with my daughter."
As I squinted in desperation, I got more and more used to the dark. The blur in my vision was fading, as was my dizziness. Finally, I could see vestiges of Marilyn. Just beyond the edge of the lightbulb's radius, someone was sitting on a chair. Unlike me, her legs had also been bound to her seat.
That
was a relief, but not a particularly great one.
"You've made a mistake in indulging Karla," Marilyn kept going, her tone betraying an ocean of disappointment. "She's less... normal now."
"Where are we?" I finally decided to speak.
"Rude way to change the subject," she stated laconically. "Maybe in the basement in George's shop? Anywhere else?" she didn't sound particularly interested in this discussion. "Knowing Karla, she might very well have a little cellar of her own somewhere."
"And where is she?"
She didn't reply for a long while. In hindsight, I was awfully optimistic towards Marilyn's knowledge of what was going on, given she was effectively in a worse position than mine.
"She'll be back soon enough," her mother said. "Once she is certain she won't have to face me alone down here."
I opted to remain silent. Marilyn had never done anything to me, and yet Karla's fear of the woman had become infectious. The older woman didn't seem to care about my discomfort.
"Are you done?"
She got no reply from me.
"As I was saying," I could detect a faint scoff in her speech. "You might not fully realize how much damage you've already caused. But I will spare you the lecture on morality - you don't seem capable of understanding it, anyway."
I gritted my teeth, unsure if my silence would be registered as defiance or compliance by this woman.
"Betty is pregnant. I don't think I will need crayons to explain who the father is."
Suddenly, I felt as if reality had crashed against me like a speeding truck. Just like that, I learned that I had actually impregnated Betty. There was no cheerful little announcement. She never approached me shyly, biting her lip and telling me we'd done it. No. I was told all of this in a dimly lit basement, by a woman that probably hated me. While I was tied to a chair. I couldn't feel pride or concern. I couldn't think of any damn thing because of how worried I was about being in a cellar with Marilyn.
"Luckily, Betty will come out of this unscathed. Things have been taken care of. Bernard will believe the baby is his. You will never speak to my daughter again."
The way she said those things suggested they were set in stone. I almost forgot Marilyn was as restrained as I was, thanks to the finality in her tone.
"I don't blame you for this. Not primarily, at least. Karla has always enjoyed making toys out of the idiots that crave her."
If that speech was meant to cheer me up, it was failing miserably. My frown spoke volumes, but Marilyn opted to ignore it.
"And truth being told, if Karla was
only
destroying her own life, as well as yours, I'd be content to just let you two go down in flames. But..." she sighed. "Since my daughter is incapable of keeping her... hobbies from being destructive, I must step in."
Just as I started to wonder whether I had just detected a hint of sadness in her words, the orders started pouring in again.
"Here's how it's going to go. Karla will come back. She will untie you in order to try to... stand up to me, or whatever it is her sick little mind has conceived to finally 'win'. It doesn't matter," she tried to shrug in spite of her restraints. "Once you're untied, you will untie me. You will leave without another word. I will put Karla in her place again. And then you will never indulge with her again."
Even though I still had no intention of following those orders, I still felt incomprehensibly sad just by imagining this scenario.
"You might think she is quite fond of you. Don't get too excited. She still sees you as a toy. But if you do abandon her, maybe she will be hurt enough to stop being a sick harlot for a few months."
I felt, in Marilyn's words, a kind of detached hatred that I never found in my life ever since. It was the kind of hatred that you'd employ despite your awareness that aloofness hurts more - a hatred borne out of an inability to just not care about someone.
"If you have... needs after you give Karla her just desserts, I am open to... taking care of you semi-regularly if that means you don't do anything stupid. Until you find yourself a woman, preferably one that doesn't enjoy hurting small animals. Or her own children."
She spat the last words out, as if she felt a need to make her disdain for Karla clearer. Her tone suggested she was fully convinced I was going to do everything exactly as she was describing it. The hypocrisy of condemning Karla for mistreating her children seemed to be lost on Marilyn. Thinking about all of this was almost enough to make me not notice Marilyn was offering to have sex with me in return for abandoning Karla. The opportunity to speak passed me by as I came to that realization.
"Silence suits you," I saw Marilyn's figure nod. "You knew what this was. Karla knew what this was. The fun you had now comes to an end."
I couldn't even tell her this wasn't going to happen. The certainty with which she spoke made me unsure if she wasn't actually right. Before I could reply, I heard a door opening nearby and a switch being flipped on.
My eyes had trouble adjusting to the sudden burst of light from other, better lamps on the ceiling. By the switch, Karla had a wary expression on her face. She took hesitant, slow steps towards me.
