And just like the, the gang's all here! Let me know what you think :)
It took months of careful, covert planning. Months of perfect behavior, of silence in the face of brutality, of swallowed retorts and lock-jawed acquiescence. The children vowed not to let so much as a whisper of protest pass their lips each time they were dragged up the stairs, into the domain of guaranteed hurt. If the Roycewoods noticed their U-turn in attitude, they didn't let on; the punishments still came as often as they always did. Nevertheless, the children kept up the charade. They had to. If Anita and Roger were to catch even a whiff of their budding revolution, there'd be hell to pay. The element of surprise was their only scrap of leverage.
They spent the better half of each school day plotting. They had no choice but to be painstakingly precise; if they didn't run through every possible scenario and iron out every potential hiccup, the price would be their lives. They chanted the list of steps to themselves before bed each evening, a hymn of brewing mutiny. Poker night. Jason provokes the men. Aaron distracts Anita. Someone swipes the multitool from the shelf behind her. Back to the basement. Wait until Roycewoods are asleep. Pick the lock and run like hell.
Emily had spotted the Swiss Army Knife laying in a dish on a side table only a few poker nights after the children's stint in the woods. Derek claimed he could easily pick the basement lock with the device—in his youth, he'd had to pry open many a bathroom door when his mother had overindulged on various substances. The pocket knife was their ticket to freedom, and so they practiced sleights of hand every day, using a toothbrush as a prototype. Whoever was nearest to the tool on the fateful night would have to be the one to nab it.
Eventually, they had their routine down to a science. This unlucky hodgepodge of adolescents had transformed themselves into a troop of illusionists, young and stubborn, readying themselves for an epic grand finale.
But then came Elle. For three weeks, they tried to sway her in their direction, working day and night to convince the headstrong girl that a rash escape plan was not the way to go, but she just could never bring herself to buy into their meticulously choreographed scheme. On the day that she and Aaron were assigned to pick up a new captive, Jason saw the bravado gleaming in her eyes, and he knew, just knew, that she was going to run.
And run she did.
They all thought she'd spend a night in the woods and then be carted back into the cellar. They were sure, so naively sure, that they would see her again.
They never did.
The new captive was unconscious in the girls' bedroom. The others were in their usual circle on the floor of the schoolroom. The basement air was rife with shame.
JJ didn't try to tell Emily that it was alright. She didn't tell her not to blame herself. She just gripped the other girl's shaking hand like it was a vice, squeezing ever so often as a silent reminder that she was there, and that she was real, and that Emily would never be alone.
"We should do it this Tuesday," Jason said. "Who knows when they'll take another kid? We've got to do it before anyone else gets snatched."
Emily paled even further. JJ squeezed. You didn't have a choice. Your hand was forced. It's not your fault.
"No way," Aaron said. "Jesus, Jason, the girl just got here. You really think she's gonna be okay enough by Tuesday to learn the whole damn plan?"
Derek nodded firmly in agreement. Jason had become far friendlier once the escape planning had begun, but Derek was on Aaron's side. He was always on Aaron's side. Aaron was his person, just as JJ was Emily's. He'd never admit it out loud, but when life in the cellar got particularly grim, Derek liked to daydream that he and Aaron were twins.
"You're not thinking clearly," Jason said. "All in favor of getting out of this shithole as soon as possible, say aye."
"Of course we all want to get out," said JJ, "but Jason, you're contradicting yourself. You always say that rushing the plan will get someone killed. Just look at what happened to—"
JJ clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes fell down to the floor. They all let the silent weight of Elle's name sit in the air like soot. Emily squeezed JJ's hand. JJ squeezed back.
"Look," Jason said, "I know what I said. But you need to listen to what I'm saying now. They replaced Elle within a week. They're accelerating. We have to act quickly."
"Act quickly so we can do a rush-job and get fucking incinerated for it?" Derek shot back. "They burned her, you know. Yesterday, when the she-devil was making me clean the windows, she said, 'Poor little Elle couldn't follow simple instructions, so we did what we had to do. You wouldn't want to be like Elle, Derek. Do you know what happened to Elle? The fire ate her. The fire gobbled her all up.'"
"Stop," JJ practically pleaded, shrinking backwards. "Please, Der."
"Scare tactics won't work on me," Jason said, glaring.
"No scare tactics here, dumbass," Derek replied. "Just the truth."
"Guys," Emily whispered, her eyes locked on the doorway. The others were too zeroed in on the tension in the room to notice.
Jason laughed derisively. "Oh please! Man up. We've been practicing for months. Don't tell me you're gonna pussy out now."
"Don't be a prick, Jason," JJ said.
Jason ignored her, shooting his next question right at Derek. "So you'd rather wait and risk another innocent kid's life?"
"You'd rather risk our lives?" Derek asked.
"Guys," Emily said again, only slightly louder. The energy in the room was still too electric for her breathy voice to be registered.
"We all want the same thing," Aaron said, his eyes dark and intense. "The goal is to get out of here alive. We've got to make sure our odds are the best they can be."
"You know what would really throw a wrench in our odds?" Jason sneered. "If we were to chicken out of trying the plan at all."
"Just shut the hell up!" shouted Derek.
The older boy rose to his feet. "Make me."
"Guys!"
The schoolroom fell silent. Four heads whipped towards Emily, then followed the path of her miserable eyes. The silhouette standing in the doorway had her arms crossed over her stomach, and she was sniffling slightly, but her chin was raised and posture was tall.
"I'm Penelope," the figure said, "and I don't know exactly what's going on, but I do know that getting out of here alive sounds pretty damn good to me. So teach me the plan. Tell me what's happening. I can be okay enough to help. I can be okay enough for now."
The girl standing above him had a pink streak in her hair. That was just about all he could discern; his field of vision felt as though it were encased in soup. Statistics began to bubble to the surface of his mind, permeating the fog of the chloroform (an anesthetic compound with a melting point of -63.41 degrees celsius also known as trichloromethane, discovered in 1831 by Samuel Guthrie), propelling him back towards the land of the living.
"Hey, sleepyhead," the blurry girl said softly. "Welcome back."
He blinked. Brought his fists to his eyes and rubbed. Blinked again. She was still there.
"Is he awake, Pen?" called a distant voice. Another figure martelized above him. A rail-thin girl with long blonde hair and bright—but distinctly pained—blue eyes.
"I'll get the others," said the pink streak girl. Like a blushed flash, she disappeared.
The boy sat up. He was in a bed—a rickety one.
"Careful," the blonde girl said. "Whatever drug they dose us with takes a while to wear off."
He leaned back against the wall that the bed was pressed again, feeling the coolness of the concrete seep through his tee-shirt. "Chloroform," he squeaked.
The blonde girl furrowed her brow. Carefully, as though trying not to spook a wild animal, she sat down beside him.
"Chloro-what?"
He wrapped his arms around his knees and began to rock back and forth. "It's a substance prepared by chlorinating methane gas. A bygone anesthetic. It has a n-narcotic effect on the central nervous system."
The girl's eyes were wide.
"I could tell by the sweet smell," he whispered. "The rag the lady jammed in my face when she caught me—it smelled like syrup."
Her mouth fell open. "I remember now," the girl said breathily. "I remember because it smelled like my mom. She always smelled like rum and strawberries, and the rag smelled exactly like her."
"Yes," he said. "Then it would appear we were both sedated with a dish towel full of trichloromethane."
The girl tilted her head to the side and gave a wry giggle. It sounded like the jingling of a wind chime. Some strange part of him wanted to bottle up the sound and wear it on a chain around his neck.
"Yes," she said. "It would appear so."
Spencer's initiation ceremony was somber. As the blonde girl read the list of rules aloud, he surveyed each despondent face in the circle around him, noting that none of the others seemed to be able to make direct eye contact with him. The sliver of his brain that still believed in such illogical things as magic wondered if he were stuck in some demented fairytale.
"So what you're saying," he choked out once she was done, "is that these people are serial kidnappers who have been torturing children for years, and no one's ever harbored any suspensions whatsoever towards them?"
The children looked between each other.
"Not just kidnappers," the pale boy with the raven hair said. "There was another girl here before you and Penelope."
The ten-year-old genius frowned. "Where is she now? Is she upstairs?"
He watched the blonde girl grab the hand of the brunette girl.
"No," said the boy with brown skin and angry eyes. "She's not upstairs. She's dead. They killed her."
Spencer's breath caught in the back of his throat, and he began to rock back and forth again, more fervently this time, as if trying to jolt himself out of this hell. A hand fell onto his shoulder. It belonged to the angry-eyed boy. Spencer bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling.
"We're sorry to scare you," said the oldest boy, who thus far had remained very quiet, "but it's the truth. The truth down here is a frightening thing."
Still struggling to keep up with his own breathing, Spencer found his eyes coming to rest on the hands of the girl with the pink streak in her hair. Her knuckles were scabbed and horribly discolored, as though she'd lost a fight with a wall.
"What happened?" he asked.
Instantly, her eyes grew glossy. The tears cut watery channels across her round, kind cheeks as they fell.
"My name is Penelope Roycewood," she murmured, sounding resentful towards her own words.
"W-what?"
She swiped two fingers underneath her eyes. "It's what happens when they teach you your new name. I've only been here a few days. Apparently they do it to everyone."
The brunette girl beside him nodded and held out her hands for Spencer to see. They were streaked with strips of scar tissue.
"Don't fight them," she said with a sad smile. "It'll only make it worse."
He saw the blonde girl nod, looking bitterly towards the belt-shaped scars that littered her thin arms.
"At the end of the day," the raven-haired boy said, "scars are sort of inevitable down here. You have to prepare yourself; they'll hurt you even if you do everything right."
The brown-skinned boy gave a rueful laugh. "What Aaron's saying is that we're all doomed."
Spencer managed to quiet the trembling of his small frame as a page from a book flashed in his mind. He took solace in the depth of his memory. His mind was his most faithful ally.
"H-have any of you read the Iliad?" he asked the others.
"I don't think we have that one in the schoolroom," the oldest boy said. Spencer's heart leaped—they had books down here. Books. A sudden wave of perseverance pulsed through his veins.
"Once we get out of here, you should really read it," he said. The others couldn't help but grin at his implication; he sounded so wholeheartedly sure that they would all one day be free. "It's one of my mom's favorites, and she used to be a literature professor, so she has impeccable taste." He smiled at the thought of his mother flipping through an old, worn book. "She always loved this one quote. And she'd recite it and tell me that no one should ever say that being doomed is a negative thing. Because, yes, we're doomed, but not by this basement. We're born doomed. It's the code of our existence. We have been and will always be doomed, because everyone and everything eventually dies."
"Wow," the brunette girl said. "And I thought I was cynical."
"But that's the thing!" he continued, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "It's not cynical. People like Homer and my mom think it's precious. She used to read it to me before bed. Listen; 'Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.'"
Aaron looked up at the withered pipes forming a rusty maze across the ceiling and, for the first time in many months, found satisfaction in the rhythmic pounding of his heart. Emily traced the scars on her hand and wished she'd had the kind of mother who'd loved her enough to read her bedtime stories.
Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.
Penelope let her bright red glasses fog over. Without even meaning to, she leaned her head against Derek's shoulder. He didn't flinch away.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
JJ momentarily forgot that she was in a run-down basement. Her circumstances flew to the back of her mind, and she felt lovely and alive and whole, like a cracked vase that had forgotten it could still house flowers.
We will never be here again.
Spencer asked a God he didn't believe in to watch over his mother while he was gone. He promised he would be back soon. He wished on every proverbial star, every unreliable eyelash, that he was telling himself the truth.
We will never be here again.
For a brief, sacred moment, fused by identical togetherness and identical scars and identical aches, the Funhouse children were untouchable.