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Chapter 8

Fuck God.

If there’s anything I learned in the twenty years I’ve been alive, it’s that he doesn’t care about us. Hell, he might not even exist! That would make more sense actually, as I can’t imagine why a supposedly all-loving deity would sit on his almighty ass and do nothing while the world goes to shit before his eyes.

There are two kinds of people: those who are in power, and those who aren’t. The second group only exists to serve the first, willingly or otherwise. They are the outcasts, the forsaken, the ones who can only suffer silently as they endure the unfeeling weight of a society that likes to pretend they don’t exist. I, of course, had the misfortune of being born into this latter group. Tough luck, I guess.

Things started swimmingly for me, as whoever brought me into this rotten world dropped me in a dirty cardboard box at a church’s doorstep as soon as they could. The next day, the priest handed me off to the authorities, who would in turn drop me at the local orphanage as per their protocols. All in all, it was quite an eventful day for an unloved newborn nobody wanted.

But for better or for worse, the orphanage took me in. I mean, they didn’t have a choice in the matter. They had the obligation to care for me until they could find someone willing to take me in adoption. However, to the overworked, underpaid staff, I was simply one more mouth to feed out of hundreds. In other words, I was an annoyance. Well, we all were, I suppose.

Eventually, I was given a name: Natalie. No surname, of course. Just Natalie. I never knew who gave it to me, but it doesn’t really matter. In all likelihood it was simply a bored worker somewhere picking random names off a list for the paperwork that had to be filled that day. Why, they probably didn’t even have their office in the same building we were at. But I digress.

Life in the orphanage was hell. Shocking, I know. But yes, it was kind of like a gray little hole of misery. Fitting, since it was run more like a prison than anything else. Cliques and gangs abounded, and there was no avoiding them or their bullshit conflicts. Anyone who tried invariably became a huge target for harassment from all sides. In the end, your best bet for survival was to somehow make friends with someone high on the totem pole.

Naturally, age played a big part in how the pecking order was laid out. Older kids tended to be at the top of the chain of power, and they often took great delight in bullying the younger ones into submission as a way to establish dominance. Why, “bully or get bullied” might as well have been the motto of that place. You were either the victimizer or the victim, and God help you if you were born to always be the victim. But that fucker never helped anyone, so you were on your own.

Well, I did try to stay away from all that shit, and for a while it worked. I kept my distance from the troublemakers, trying my best to go unnoticed at all times. Too bad most bullies seem to have this uncanny ability to smell fresh meat from afar. One day, I kind of locked eyes with one of them on accident. Of course I scrambled to avert my gaze as soon as I realized my mistake, but by then it was already too late. Once the “eye contact of doom” was made, it was all over for you.

Enter Agnes. She was... a pure joy to deal with. And by that I mean she was a sixteen-year-old lump of hatred with not a shred of humanity behind her perpetually narrowed cold eyes. Also, she was built like a brick tower, and had no qualms about abusing her admittedly frightening strength to get what she wanted. Yeah, she was the worst of the worst, and that’s still an understatement.

Agnes basically ruled the festering “underworld” of the orphanage with an iron hand. You definitely did not want to be on her bad side, especially if you liked not having your face rearranged. Feared by all, one could say she was the de facto boss of that hell hole. Even staff would do their best to stay clear of her, often turning a blind eye to whatever she was up to.

Well, I was eight years old when our eyes met and she decided she didn’t like the way I looked at her. A deathly silence fell over the whole mess hall as she began to make her way to where I was sitting. Anyone who stood in her path made a hasty retreat, and so did all the children I was sharing a table with.

“Well, well, well. I don’t think we’ve met before,” Agnes growled like a rhinoceros as she loudly slammed the top of the table with her open palm. “Do you know who I am, little rat?”

Knowing I was no match for her, I tried to de-escalate.

“Ah, I— I didn’t mean to—”

But I couldn’t finish, as she promptly shoved my head down onto my plate of food.

“Oh, oops, my hand slipped!” she gleefully said with a twisted grin on her face. “Now let’s try that again, shall we? Do you know who I am?”

I was so shocked by the sudden faceful of mashed potatoes that I could barely even register whatever garbage Agnes was spewing out of her disgusting trap anymore. “You can’t even answer a simple question? What are you, retarded or something?” she eventually barked.

“I didn’t do anything to you! L-leave me alone!” I yelled to everyone’s surprise, even my own. Big, big mistake...

“Now you listen to me, you little piece of shit,” Agnes began as she grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me up closer to her scowling, ogre-like face. “You are going to apologize for yelling at me this instant, or things are going to get very ugly here...”

Well, something got into me at that particular moment, and I just couldn’t help myself. So I spat on her face. I mean, it was right there, and it seemed like the most appropriate thing to do at the time. But I don’t think she liked that very much.

After gaping in utter disbelief for a second or two, Agnes let out a beastly bellow and jumped on me with murder written all over her bloodshot eyes. The two of us rolled on the floor as we sank our teeth and nails into whatever we could grab hold of. It was a roaring, screaming mess of biting, scratching, hair-pulling, tears and blood. Eventually, a couple staffers broke up the fight and pulled us apart from each other.

Sure, I left her a few scratches and bruises to remember me by, but that was nothing compared to my broken, bleeding nose, my black eye, and the several bite marks on my arms. Then again, she was sixteen and I was eight. Of course I didn’t stand a chance. Still, any little wound I managed to put on her felt like a small victory to my hurting, shaken self; and no one could take that away from me.

One of the staffers demanded to know what had happened. “I was just minding my own business when she jumped on me!” quickly proclaimed the lying bitch. “That’s not true!” I protested, but was shushed before I could go on. The man turned to the other children and asked them who had started the fight. To Agnes’ sickening delight, everyone pointed at me. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course no one wanted to say anything that would put them in that fiendish monster’s crosshairs.

So I was taken to the closet, also known as ‘the black belly of the beast.’

Well, they called it a detention room, but it was more like an empty janitor’s closet than anything else. Yeah, it was just this small, dark, windowless room at the end of a silent, secluded corridor no one ever used. It felt kind of like a coffin, actually, and it was about just as claustrophobic as I’d imagine one would be. Misbehaving children were locked in there for one or two hours to... think about what they had done, I guess.

“She lied! I didn’t do anything!” I cried on the way there, but neither of the two men escorting me would listen. Finally, the older one opened the closet’s door and demanded I walked in. “No! I don’t wanna!” I cried out instead, tearfully throwing myself at the other guy and grabbing hold of his legs for dear life. The first man simply let out an annoyed groan before tearing me away from that other guy and dragging me into the tiny enclosure himself.

“Let’s see if two— no, three hours in there will teach you not to cause trouble!” he yelled as he angrily closed the door and locked it, plunging me into the pitch-black darkness inside. Then they left.

“Uh, isn’t three hours a bit too much?” I heard the younger guy say as they both walked away.

“I’m doing her a favor, Michel,” the older man stated. “Maybe in three hours that brat Agnes will have cooled down enough not to murder her on sight.”

“Jesus...”

“Yep. Welcome to Roud City’s orphanage.”

And that’s all I could hear before both their voices and the sound of their footsteps faded in the distance.

So I was left alone with my thoughts in that cramped space, boxed in by four unfeeling walls of silence and darkness. Since I was only eight, the part about “doing me a favor” went completely over my head. All I was sure of is that I was trapped inside the black belly of the beast by no fault of my own. They were punishing the victim while the victimizer was let off scot-free. Yeah, even at that age, I had already begun to understand that the concept of justice was nothing but a lie.

Doing good isn’t always rewarded, and doing evil isn’t always punished. In fact, sometimes it feels like the opposite is true, especially for those of us who have never known the warmth of a mother’s embrace, or a place to call home. We are the forsaken, and we belong nowhere. Justice is a privilege the likes of us cannot even dream of. No, we were just thrust into this putrid, rancid world only to suffer.

But I was young, and a part of me still wanted to believe that God hadn’t abandoned me so. It was a foolish thought for sure, yet I held onto it like an idiot. Ah, well, at least I had something to hold onto, which I suppose is better than nothing.

So I took the bundle of keys I had swiped from the younger man (that’s why I had grabbed hold of his legs before; a move I’m quite proud of, actually!). Then, I began to go through them one by one, trying them all on the door’s keyhole. Luckily for me, every staffer had a copy of every key, and the detention room’s door had keyholes on both sides. Hmm, come to think of it, it might have made more sense if that door could only be opened from the outside, but... I don’t know; maybe that room was used for something else before they repurposed it? Ah, who cares?

Eventually, I found the right key and quietly opened the door just enough to peek outside. There was nobody around that I could see, as expected from a wing where difficult children are given a taste of complete isolation and sensory deprivation as punishment. I suppose it was a good thing that that was their idea of a more humane alternative to plain old corporal beatings, since I didn’t have to worry too much about anyone seeing or hearing me as I made my escape.

After closing the door, I tip-toed my way down the eerily silent corridor, trying my best not to make a sound. At the end I found another door, which I unlocked with a different key. This other door opened up to what seemed to be an unkempt, overgrown backyard. Clearly, no one had been there in years. Maybe it was some sort of decommissioned exit or something? Well, it didn’t matter. It was my way out of that hell, and that’s all I cared about.

There was no hesitation on my part. I just went and pushed a couple crates that were collecting dust nearby, then climbed on them to reach the top of the fence. One hop later, I was standing on the other side of that fence. It took me a few moments of breathless panting to understand that I was no longer within the orphanage’s grounds. No, in front of me now lay the big, great unknown.

I was scared, but I also knew I absolutely did not want to ever go back to living under the same roof as someone like Agnes. So I just ran away, never looking back even once. I ran for several minutes, dodging the occasional passerby while trying to put as much ground between the orphanage and me as I could. Well, I might have bumped into a gentleman or two along the way, but I didn’t care. I simply ignored their angry demands for an apology and just kept running.

When my legs couldn’t keep going anymore, I went into the first alleyway I saw to catch my breath. It was a filthy place full of overflowing garbage cans and whatnot, but it made for a nice shelter anyway, given the circumstances. I mean, a runaway like me was in no position to complain, regardless of how bad it smelled in there. Ah, well, I suppose it could have been worse. At least I wasn’t completely alone, as there were a couple stray cats that didn’t seem to mind my company.

Still, I was an eight-year-old child with no home to return to, and nowhere to go, lost in a dirty alleyway somewhere in Roud. A chilling knot of utter dread began to form in the pit of my stomach as it slowly dawned on me just how precarious my situation was. Soon, a primal fear was running through my veins, seizing me in its cold grasp and making me curl up on the ground, shaking. And then the tears started flowing.

I cried and cried, sobbing inconsolably as I sank in my own despair. It almost felt like endlessly falling in a black, bottomless pit of hopelessness, or like being trapped in a nightmare from which there was no waking up. Such was the blood-curdling realization that I was helpless and alone in an uncaring world.

Yeah... I’m pretty sure that was the first time I felt the true depths of absolute helplessness. ‘Horrible’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Then again, I don’t know how else I could describe that kind of despair. It was simply agonizing, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s certainly something no child should ever experience, but we orphans don’t really have much of a choice, I guess. Especially when there isn’t even a roof over our heads...

Maybe I shouldn’t have run away from the orphanage, I thought. I mean, sure, it was a terrible place, but at least I wasn’t alone there. And I had two meals a day as well. And a bed to sleep on. But I went and sacrificed all that in a moment of desperation to get as far away from Agnes as possible. In the end, I realized I might have simply traded one kind of suffering for another. As in, I escaped her murderous fists only to die a slow death by exposure to the elements and starvation.

Then, just when I had lost all hope, something extraordinary happened. An old and frail, yet incredibly sweet voice pierced through the darkness:

“Why you cry, niñita? Is you— Uh, are you lost?”

Yes, the wording was... confusing, to put it lightly. But what it tried to convey reached me all the same. Through its warmth alone, that voice singlehandedly pulled me out of that black pit of despair. And so I opened my eyes. Before me stood a very old lady with a very wrinkled face. She was looking concernedly at me through age-worn eyes. I immediately noticed something within them — something I had never seen before in another human being: the glimmer of a compassionate soul.

“You not hurt, yes?” she kindly asked as she kneeled next to me. I simply shook my head, and she smiled in return. “No hurt is good! Is very good, yes, yes. Oh, uh, me— me name is Olga. And you, niñita?”

“N...Natalie,” I answered while wiping my tears.

“Natalie? Is a nice name! I like very much!”

And that’s how Abuela Olga entered my life.

She was a homeless granny with a heart of gold, who had lived in that alleyway for years. Once she understood I had no family, she pretty much adopted me right there and then. Over time, I was able to piece together that she had hailed from the Castile region of the Iberian peninsula to the west of Galia. She had fled from a dictatorship or something, and ended up here.

Her Galian was quite broken, and she spoke with a strong Castilian accent; rolling her R’s, stressing her T’s, and whatnot. And whenever she got mad (usually at anyone who would so much as look at her cats funny), she’d promptly tear them a new one with a very colorful string of swear words in her inscrutable native language, which was never not funny.

Ah, yeah, those two cats I had seen before were her babies. If I remember well, their names were Cenicienta and Blancanieves, which I believe was Castilian for “Cinderella” and “Snow White.” I guess Abuela Olga really liked her classic fairy tales. Now, I’m pretty sure at least one of those two cats was male, if not both of them, but she wouldn’t accept it no matter what. “No, m’hijita. They are girls,” she sweetly insisted with a smile every time I brought it up.

Regardless, the ten years I spent with her were, by far, the happiest in my life. It was nice to feel that I truly, actually mattered to someone for a change. Yeah, we didn’t have a home, and our earthly possessions didn’t extend much further than the ragged clothes we had on us, but we had one another. So... yeah. Somehow, someway, she became my family; and I, hers. And the cats’ too, I guess.

Surprisingly, procuring food wasn’t too difficult. A couple shopkeepers in the local market fair knew Abuela Olga, and had no problem handing her fruits and vegetables deemed unsellable for one reason or another. Usually it was because they were damaged in some form, so no customer wanted them. Still, those items were perfectly edible most of the time. I mean, after washing them thoroughly and cutting out the bad parts, of course.

But those shopkeepers could only give us their discarded stuff once a week, and the bounty itself was only good for like three or four days before it really went bad. So that alone wasn’t enough to keep us fed every day of the week. However, I had an ace up my sleeve. As it turns out, I was exceptionally good at picking pockets! Then again, I was a street urchin, wasn’t I? What street urchin worth their salt doesn’t have a talent for that sort of thing?

Yeah. As a child of the streets, fending off starvation by any means necessary was always my top priority. Abuela Olga didn’t particularly like it, but she understood that sometimes it just couldn’t be helped. “Steal is bad, but... But, yes, hungry is more bad,” she once said to me in a defeated tone, which I suppose was her way of saying something to the effect of ‘whether I like it or not, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.’ Still, she made me promise that I would never take more than we needed.

And so, time went on. Days turned to weeks, which turned to months and then years. Throughout all that time, I never once heard any news from the orphanage. Of course, I always made sure to give that place a wiiiide berth, but from time to time I still wondered how they must have reacted to my sudden disappearance. Maybe someone lost their job over it. Or maybe they just swept it all under the rug, as it were. Then again, who would actually give a damn about a barefoot orphaned child with no family and not a single penny to her name? As far as all the other people are concerned, those like me are always someone else’s problem. Hell, we might as well be invisible.

The more time passed, the less I wondered about that old hellhole. All the faceless children I had once grown with slowly faded from memory. Only faint echoes remain. Well, except for Agnes. I mean, I wish I could forget that orc-faced fiend, but I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon. Even to this day, she lives rent-free in my head if the nightmares I’ve had every now and then are any indication.

I had heard that nightmares are caused by evil goblins that latch onto us in our sleep to sap our life force away. But Abuela Olga disagreed with that notion. “No, no goblins, m’hijita. Bad dreams is one scar of old pain. Old worry that sleeps when you awake, but sometimes awakes when you are sleep,” she once affirmed in her broken Galian, very sure of herself. “The wise hombre said it, and he always speaked with truth.”

That last part piqued my curiosity, so I asked her to elaborate. As usual, her answers were difficult to understand, but I think I got the gist of it. About thirty years before I met her, she had encountered a beggar she described as “a very wise old man.” She never saw his face, though, as it was always half-concealed under a hood. But the sound of his voice was apparently captivating enough that she didn’t question it. According to her, it was a voice one can just blindly trust — whatever that means.

This mysterious hooded beggar only stayed in the area for a few days before just disappearing without a trace, but in that time he crossed paths with Abuela Olga at least once a day. And each time it resulted in them holding long conversations about life, history, the state of society, and other stuff like that. No matter the subject, his apparent worldly wisdom always shone through, and the abuela couldn’t help but be charmed by it. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if their paths only crossed that often because she purposefully sought him out every time.

As I understand it, this person never really, truly returned whatever feelings Abuela might have developed for him. Sure, he was very friendly and polite to her whenever they met... but as much as she would deny it, it definitely sounded like he kept a certain emotional distance at all times, treating her more like a friend than anything further. So I guess hers was a one-sided love story of sorts, or at least that’s the impression I got from how she told it to me.

In fact, that man made it very clear multiple times that he couldn’t stay in the city for long, and that — in the end — his path could only be one of solitude. Now this is the part where things get a bit unclear. Then again, there’s a chance I might have gotten something wrong. Otherwise it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean; going just by what Abuela had said, it sounded like he said he was on some sort of mission. He couldn’t speak about it in detail, but it had something to do with some magical shard or something.

To me, that was a whole load of bullshit, of course, but Abuela believed it. My rational side thought about challenging that nonsense right away, though in the end I simply bit my lip and said nothing. I just let it be because that all happened way before I was born, and she was clearly very happy with whatever fond memories she had of that man. If she truly wanted to believe a beggar could be on some grand mission — one involving secrecy and magical artifacts, then who was I to pop that balloon? I suppose we are all entitled to our own delusions to make it through life every now and then. Also, again, the language barrier might have been a factor too; so there’s that.

Whatever the case, the man did exactly as he had said. By which I mean that, one day, he was just gone. He vanished overnight, just like he had told her he would a few days prior. Abuela Olga never saw him again. The old, hooded beggar with the charming voice had seemingly left the city just as mysteriously as he had arrived. Even his name remained an enigma, as he had never given it.

So that was that. For a while afterwards, the abuela felt as though her world had become a little emptier without him around. Still, she held onto the lingering sense of mystery he had left behind. Eventually, she concluded that all that mystery only added to the romanticism of the whole experience, and was an essential part of what made their brief time together truly, factually unforgettable. Somehow, that was good enough to give her closure and inspire her to move on with a smile on her lips. Yeah, I don’t really get it to be honest, but if it worked for her, it worked for her. I mean, we can’t really help how our hearts feel, can we?

Oh.

I, uh... I guess I got a bit sidetracked there.

Yeah, well, the point is that I quite enjoyed the ten years I spent at Abuela Olga’s side as her adoptive granddaughter. I dare say I was... happy. Not even the harsh Galian winters we endured together could take away from that, which is saying something. I suppose it goes to show that you don’t need much to be happy when you’re with someone who cares about you — someone you can call family. Although I wouldn’t have complained if we had a roof over our heads, or an actual bed to sleep on, especially during those awful, awful winters... but I guess you can’t have it all.

Still, nothing lasts forever.

Well, I have to count myself lucky I got to have at least a little taste of happiness — or something that was close enough to it anyway. But this world won’t stand by someone like me getting to enjoy even that. No, the likes of me can’t be too happy. We, the lowest of the lowest, are meant to suffer through an agonizing existence of endless misery and pain! Anything less would be unthinkable, right? Blasphemous, even! It’s just the natural order of things — all part of God’s plan. That fucking asshole.

So, ten years after I had escaped from the orphanage, the world decided that it was time for me to finally know the true face of Hell on Earth. Any semblance of joy I had known would be torn away from me, one piece at a time, until there was nothing left. It would be my punishment for daring to be reasonably happy despite living well below the poverty line; because fuck me, I guess.

The beginning of the end started when Abuela Olga fell ill. She had begun to complain about shortness of breath and some sort of dull pain in her chest. At first she told me not to worry, but there was no way I could just pretend it couldn’t be serious, especially after she had to sit down because of how winded she was. ‘This is bad! Abuela needs a doctor right now!’ was all I could think, especially considering she was almost ninety years old by then. But I couldn’t just leave her alone to go get one, could I?

“W-when you’re feeling better I’m taking you to a doctor, okay?” I eventually told her.

“Sí, m’hijita. You no worry, yes? Is just the years. Me is— No, I is going to be better tomorrow,” she assured me with a tired, age-worn smile.

So I stayed by her side for a while longer, telling myself that it would all be fine, but her condition didn’t improve. On the contrary, it only seemed to get worse and worse with each passing hour. It was late in the afternoon when I finally made the decision to go look for help anyway. Abuela was lying face up on the ground by that point, breathing raggedly and hardly responding to me anymore. Seeing her like that, I knew I couldn’t simply wait for things to get better ‘tomorrow.’ No, I had to act right away.

There was a clinic about three blocks away, on the main street. I ran there as fast as I could and knocked urgently on the big mahogany door. A woman answered it, and I could see her face scrunch up in disgust almost immediately upon seeing me.

“If it’s food you want, you won’t find any here. Go beg somewhere else,” she drily said.

“N-no, it’s— It’s my grandma! She’s ill, and—”

“A consult with the doctor is three hundred Gold. If you can’t pay, stop wasting our time and scram.”

Yeah, I had forgotten homeless people aren’t really people. Silly me, right?

“B-but... Ab— Grandma’s not feeling well! I— I think it’s her heart!” I tried again, desperate.

“Listen, sweetheart: healthcare is not free. In other words, it’s not a right, but a privilege for those who can afford it. So, unless you have the money to cover the doctor’s bill, you have no business being here. Now go away or I’ll get the police involved.”

“No! She needs a doctor right now! Please, you have to—”

“I have to what?” the woman angrily shouted. “This is not a charity! What part of that don’t you understand? No money, no doctor!”

Suddenly, a masculine voice made itself heard, taking the both of us by surprise.

“What seems to be the problem?”

I quickly turned to see a man in fancy clothing standing right behind me. He seemed to be well-to-do, and about twice my age, with overly refined manners and perfectly styled hair completing the picture. I was still startled by his sudden appearance, so I didn’t know how to react. Regardless, he just stood there, smiling an oddly uncanny aristocratic smile.

“Oh, uh...” stammered the woman from the clinic. “I-it’s nothing. This vagrant beggar here just felt entitled to asking for a doctor, even though she can’t afford it. The nerve of some people, right?”

“My grandma is dying!” I shouted, finding my voice again.

“Oh, that’s no good,” said the rich man, clicking his tongue. “Say, how much money are we talking about here?”

“It— It’s three hundred Gold for a consultation,” answered the woman, looking a bit bewildered. “B-but you, good sir, need not to be concerned about this. She was just leaving anyway, so—”

“Nonsense. A good Samaritan cannot simply ignore the pleas of those in need,” he said, producing a bag full of golden coins. “Here. This should cover the doctor’s fees, plus any further fees that may be incurred in the future.”

The woman simply accepted the bag, too stunned for words. Not that I was any less stunned myself. I mean, those coins were worth a hundred Gold each. Just one of those would have kept Abuela and me well fed for a whole month!

“Alright then!” the man exclaimed, clasping his hands together before turning to me. “Now that that’s been taken care of, shall we go fetch your grandmother?”

Moments later, I found myself inside a coach, sitting next to that man. I was beyond confused, as I had never even dreamed of being in one of those before. Like, had anyone ever told me I would one day be riding a coach, I would have laughed in their face. But there I was anyway, feeling completely out of my element, as well as trying and failing to understand why that fancy guy was going so out of his way to help me — a nobody no one cared about.

Of course, I thanked him profusely. Or at least I tried to. It was hard to speak words when I was choking on so many tears. Still, he just kept smiling as he told me not to worry about it. “For now, let’s just focus on getting your grandmother to the clinic as soon as possible,” he added as he handed me a handkerchief. Then, a few moments after I had wiped my tears, he asked my name, and gave me his in turn: Raoul.

Before long, we were back at the clinic, where Abuela Olga — still unresponsive — was promptly admitted to their intensive care unit. I tried to stay by her side, but the doctors and nurses told me that I couldn’t because it was a restricted area, for patients and personnel only.

“That’s how clinics and hospitals work, Natalie,” said Mr. Raoul. “Don’t worry about your grandmother. I guarantee you she’s in good hands. So let’s just leave the doctors to their work, shall we?”

Moments later, I was persuaded to get back in the coach. “Now that your grandmother has been admitted to the clinic, it’s time we focused on you,” the man said as he put his hand on my thigh. I wasn’t sure how to react to that, and it didn’t help that I was mentally drained after the massive levels of stress I had experienced that evening, so my voice kind of locked up in my throat. My body froze too, so I was unable to do or say anything. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re suddenly overwhelmed by a situation you’re in no way prepared for.

Also, even though I was eighteen, I was still innocent about certain things.

“First and foremost, you need a proper bed to spend the night on,” Mr. Raoul continued; his hand still on my thigh. “Good thing I can easily provide you with that in my mansion; which, of course, is where we are headed to. Then, tomorrow, once you’re well rested, we can discuss what your life is going to be like going forward,” he said with his ever-present rich-man smile.

A few minutes later, we arrived to his mansion. I was in utter disbelief as I watched the enormous, two-story estate standing imposingly before my very eyes. How the hell did I end up there? I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t process it at all. And yet there I was, being led through its doors.

In the mansion’s foyer, a young girl who appeared to be around my age — perhaps a little bit older, but not by much — welcomed Mr. Raoul with a silent reverence. As she was dressed in frilly black-and-white clothing, I imagined she was a maid or something — although I couldn’t help but notice how her clothes seemed to be a bit too risqué for my tastes, with a low-cut neckline and a very short skirt.

I also noticed a subtle dash of melancholy in that girl’s eyes, as though she was profoundly unhappy deep inside, but used to it. Of course, that saddened look of hers brought to mind old memories of my childhood at the orphanage. I briefly wondered if she had come from there as well, but I later learned that that wasn’t the case after all. No, the nature of her melancholy was rooted in something else — something I would soon find out...

“Ah, Adelaide! Good thing you’re here!” exclaimed the man. “This is the new girl. Her name’s Natalie. She’ll be staying the night with us, so please make sure there’s a... suitable room ready for her as soon as possible.”

The maid simply nodded wordlessly, never lifting her gaze off the floor. Then, for the briefest moment, her eyes subtly met mine. It was like a split-second thing, and yet it lingered in my mind for much longer than that. Was it... a look of pity she gave me? Was she feeling sorry for me or something? I really didn’t know what to make of it. And it didn’t help that I had like a million other questions buzzing around in my head like a nasty cicada storm.

Once Adelaide had left the room, Mr. Raoul turned to me. “Follow me, if you would,” he simply said, still smiling that perennial smile of his. Oh, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what I had just gotten myself into.

As he led me down a series of posh corridors, we passed by a number of other maids. All of them wore the same suggestive garments as Adelaide, and seemed to bow to Mr. Raoul in pretty much the same fashion. Also, more than a few of them gave me odd, furtive glances when he wasn’t looking. It almost felt like they were desperately trying to warn me about something. Then again, it could all be just me. Maybe I was simply seeing things that weren’t really there.

“May I offer you a glass of water?” the rich man said after showing me to a seat.

“Oh, I... I’m fine. I’m not really feeling thirsty,” I truthfully replied.

“I’m afraid I must insist,” he said in turn, extending a glass of water towards me. “It’s been a stressful evening for you, my dear, and hydration is important. Indeed, even if you might not think so, I’m positive a refreshing drink might be just what your body needs right now.”

I had no argument against that, and I didn’t want to offend the person who had just footed Abuela Olga’s costly medical bills, so I humored him and accepted his glass of water. I mean, it was just water, right? What was the worst that could happen?

Yeah, looking back at it now it’s easy to see all the signs practically yelling at me something to the effect of: ‘run, you idiot!’ And, admittedly, that was a lot of red flags I had more or less willfully turned a blind eye to. Oh, if I could travel back in time, I would absolutely slap my younger self so hard even my own cheek would feel it. But then again... what was I to do? I was a relatively naive, uneducated eighteen-year-old girl in a very vulnerable position, and I was hopelessly blinded by the whole ‘mysterious benefactor’ thing.

In other words, I was the perfect prey.

So, yes, I foolishly took that damn glass of water and drank it all, down to the last drop. And the last thing I remember before blacking out was Mr. Raoul saying “There you go. Good girl,” followed by a quiet snicker.

To be continued...