Chapter 2
"A Silent Ally"
Plop. Plop. Plop.
The first time it happened didn't even make C.C. stir.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
The next barely registered, either. But she did shift in place and groan painfully.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
Something about that time got into her still-aching head - maybe it was her mind slowly waking anyway, but she could finally register the source of the irritation, and she reached up and wiped her eyes with one hand.
Not that they opened afterwards. She still felt too weak to even try.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
She groaned again in frustration. If she felt better, she'd open her eyes and go in search of the dripping noise somewhere in the room, but that currently wasn't an option she could pursue.
Her body felt heavy – as though weights had been tied to her extremities – her head was pounding and she was suffering from a persistent nausea.
It probably was just a bad hangover, she thought to herself, and she'd soon open her eyes to find herself in her bed with an empty bottle of scotch lying by her side.
She'd done that more than once in the past. It had to be that again...
Plop. Plop. Plop.
But her logical mind told her to wait...if she was in her room, then where was that stupid, annoyingly loud dripping coming from?
It sounded like water coming from a faucet or a pipe, and if she was in her room, that noise shouldn't be possible. Perhaps it was coming from the bathroom? Had she left a faucet a little open in the sink, or the bath?
Plop. Plop. Plop.
Her slow-waking mind began to take in her surroundings as best they could, although she still had her eyes closed (they were still too heavy yet). Her other senses, not impeded by whatever was currently holding her eyes hostage, took over and did their best to piece together what they could with what information they had...
She could feel she was lying on a mushy surface – definitely a mattress, from the feel of the material. But it didn't feel like her own mattress...her mattress had clean, crisp sheets – this old thing was bare, and from the feel and an accidental smell of it, had a questionable relationship at best with cleanliness.
The room didn't smell like her room, either. Around her, there was a slightly unpleasant musty smell, like a lot of damp in an enclosed space. Her room usually smelled of jasmine and coconut, or at least those were the fragrances her maid used to perfume her bedroom whenever she cleaned it.
It was also quite dark, she could tell so by the perceivable lack of natural light around her – was it night-time already?
Plop. Plop. Plop.
There was something else there, too...a smell that wasn't exactly coming from the room she was in, but rather from under her own nose...it was as though the smell was stuck to the inside of her nostrils, and it was making her slightly sleepy.
Could it be...some sort of chemical?
A chemical spread on a white cloth that was shoved roughly onto her face, smothering and suffocating–
She opened her eyes and jolted upright with a shriek, "No!"
Memories from the last – hours? Days? Minutes? It didn't matter when they were from – they were swarming back into her mind; the collision, the coffee, the car...
The look on his face as he knew he had her in his grasp.
The chemical. Used to knock her out cold...
And as C.C. finally understood where she probably was, a desperate wail left her trembling lips.
Now she remembered.
She had been kidnapped.
Kidnapped by Thomas Jones – that weird, sadistic creep from the theatre!
How had she not known that he was a weird, sadistic creep?! Up until the second it clicked, he'd just been some menial loser that she'd had to deal with!
Again, her judge of character had always been poor, at best.
Still too weak to move much (and head reeling due to her current situation), C.C. blinked a few times, trying to get her eyes used to the darkness that enshrouded the room. It wasn't easy, but little by little she was able to make out a few indistinct shapes around her. A few more minutes on, and she could distinguish most of her surroundings.
At the side of her mattress, there was what appeared to be a small and rusty desk lamp; C.C. could just about see the small, black switch at its base, and even though there was a part of her that was certain the lamp wouldn't work, she reached out her hand (which was a herculean task in itself, given how weak she felt) and pressed on its switch.
Click – and, almost as if by magic, light flooded the room.
Part of C.C. wished it wouldn't have.
Not when the sight she came across with made her want to weep.
The room (if it could be called that way) she found herself in was a minuscule space – it was ten feet wide and ten feet long, at the most. It seemed to have no windows or doors, and it didn't have any furniture apart from her mattress, a set of small clear plastic storage drawers with a few clothes in them, a seemingly functioning toilet, a sink (complete with a small mirror) and, opposite to her mattress, a small folding table with its matching folding chair. Upon said table lay her reading glasses, a small notepad with its matching pen, a few books, a Sony Walkman and a number of CD's.
C.C. couldn't help but let a small out a small wail of despair – this place, with its pristine white walls and hard concrete floor, was maddeningly asphyxiating and perversely disorienting by design. In there she couldn't have known whether it was night or day, and since it had no windows or doors the isolation was total – sound and natural light were as foreign to that room as poverty was to C.C.. But what upset her the most was the deafening silence that seemed to swell inside the room. It almost felt physical, as though she could touch it with her bare hands – as if it were pressing against her; choking the will to live out of her.
C.C. had the feeling that a person could forget their own name if they spent enough time in that room, and she feared that would be her case.
Until then, the producer had never appreciated the simple things in life: the sun, the blue sky, the pleasant summer breeze …
Now, the simple memory of them had become almost precious. She didn't know when (or if) she'd see the light of day again, let alone ifshe would survive the week! Memories were, as of that moment, the only consolation she possessed.
Tentatively, C.C. stood up and looked around the room, trying to find a way out of it. At first glance, the prison looked just like a hollow concrete cube but, upon closer inspection, C.C. discovered there was a little trap door in the ceiling. She couldn't reach it, of course; it was obvious that she'd need a small ladder to get to it. She briefly considered standing on the folding table, but part of her knew it wouldn't stand her weight, and the chair was simply not enough leverage to try and reach the door.
But, perhaps, if she piled the books on top of the chair she might be able to just about reach the trap door!
However, the moment she moved forward to get both the chair and the books, a rattling sound and the feeling of something heavy attached to her right ankle stopped dead in her tracks and look down – there was a big metal shackle around her ankle, she soon discovered, and said shackle was connected to a long chain, which in turn was attached to another metal shackle that had been screwed into the floor, making any attempt to escape an impossibility.
It was also in this moment that she became aware that she was no longer wearing the clothes she'd been kidnapped in – instead of her smart light-blue Chanel Jacket, white ruffled shirt, black pants and high heels, she was now wearing an oversized old Disney T-shirt that reached her kneecaps, grey sweatpants and was barefoot. The red nail polish she had been using had been removed from both her fingernails and toenails, too, and she suspected so had been her make up…
Of all the horrible things she'd learnt in the past minutes, this was probably the worst.
There was a sense of utter helplessness – a feeling of having been violated and vulnerated, that she simply couldn't shake off. The mere thought of her attacker having undressed her was its own kind of sickening, and it made C.C. fall to her knees and dissolve into sobs.
This was Hell.
The producer felt like a scared child, and had a desperate urge to call for her father; she remembered that, when she was little and had a nightmare, Stewart would always sit on the edge of her bed and would stroke her hair until she'd fallen asleep again...
How she wished he could do that now!
"Don't cry, Babcock, you'll melt!" the familiar British voice suddenly said, surprising C.C. by how clearly it sounded in her head. "You have to be strong."
Huh...?
Hearing it made her sniff, and blink away some of the tears. She wiped away a few more with her wrist, as she straightened herself up, a little confused by the sudden...company, if it could be called that.
"Don't pretend like you didn't hear. I know that deafness is common at your age, but you can't apply it to me, or to something like this. And I make better company than most, for your information."
Niles. The voice was very clearly, and without a shadow of a doubt, the butler's own.
Wha...
How the hell could she be hearing the butler so very clearly in her own head?!
Was she going nuts already?! She had to be, didn't she? The whole thing had obviously pushed her over the edge!
"Well, I always knew that you were a few sandwiches short of a picnic, Babs. But here, for once, that has nothing to do with me."
C.C. blinked slowly. The...the voice wasn't there because she was losing her mind?
"You're as sane as anybody," the voice said. "It's not every day that I say that and mean it, but for my own sake, I'd prefer that you stayed that way."
The voice sounded like it was telling the truth, for once.
So if she wasn't going insane (which she still doubted because honestly, who wouldn't in her current situation?), then where the hell had that stupid, pathetic, good-for-nothing butler tones decided to come from?!
"You tell me, Babcock - I'm just along for the ride, as far as I know."
C.C. groaned to herself, and tried to ignore whatever completely wrong implication went along with what the voice had just said. She didn't have time for this - she didn't have the willpower or the strength to be dealing with Niles in her head at the same time as...as...
As being trapped in this hellhole, with no means of escape and the knowledge that an utter creep had put her there...
It wasn't fair. None of it was fair! Things weren't supposed to be this way - she was meant to be waking up in her own apartment, in her own bed, getting a coffee or something to eat if she felt like it!
And now she didn't know if she'd get to do any of that again...
"Ah, ah! Babcock, it's no time to have a pity party – you have enough problems as it is, and you need to focus," nagged the voice.
Easy for…him?... it?... to say! This imaginary Niles was not the one locked up and at the mercy of a complete madman!
"Now, that was uncalled for. I may not be here physically, but I am here all the same!"
Yeah, and wasn't that just a blessing!
"I'd say there was no need to be sarcastic, but I'm more than a little relieved to hear it," the voice said - there wasn't any strong feeling there, apart from an overwhelming sense of telling the truth. "It shows me that you're still you in there."
C.C. kind of wanted to ask what that meant, but in her heart, she already knew.
And, as if proving the voice right (that she was still herself), she got back to her feet.
"That's more like it, Babs!" the voice encouraged. "See what you can do, if you try hard enough?"
God, she really could almost see his face in front of hers - probably grinning away smugly at his own little patronising joke, even though he had no right to even think of looking down on anybody else!
She should really want to wipe the self-satisfied look off his features. And she did want to - how could she want anything else, when it was the butler's fault that she'd ended up down here in the first place?!
If he hadn't been such an idiotic, irritating, sorry excuse for a man, she wouldn't have left the hospital!
She wouldn't have been angry when she did, either, and her survival instincts would've kicked in better!
"This is your fault, leave me alone," she muttered to herself, praying that that voice would shut up.
"Never, Babs, I am part of you. Always was, always will be." the voice replied.
"Go to Hell..." she wheezed, the memory of his bright blue eyes and cheeky smile piercing her heart like bullets.
"I am already there... with you. I'll endure it with you."
"Leave me alone!" she yelled, slamming her foot against the ground. Why did it have to be his voice the one that she heard? Why had her twisted mind decided that his was the voice that she needed to hear? She hated him! Yet – in an almost masochistic sense – Niles' voice brought a faint sense of relief that she desperately needed.
How ironic.
"Why is this happening to me?" the blonde whimpered, pressing her palms against her puffy eyes.
"Because I chose you," a third voice responded.
C.C. could feel her body stiffen when the slimy voice of her kidnapper echoed inside the tiny room. She hadn't realised when the man had opened the trap door over her, and she certainly didn't know for how long he had been observing her.
Regardless, she still had the presence of mind to realise she couldn't show fear or weakness before her captor – not if she wanted a chance at living.
"Why?" she demanded to know. "Why me?"
Thomas lowered a ladder through the hole, which slammed fast against the concrete floor, climbed through, pulled the door securely shut behind (above?) him, and then made the rest of his way down.
And he came closer. Not very close, but enough to make C.C. want to step back.
"Why not you?" he grinned, shrugging like it was obvious. "I told you before, you are an extremely beautiful woman - I saw that right from the moment I first saw you. It...it struck me, and I began to watch. The more I saw, the more I liked - not just your face or your body, but the very way you breathed, moved and spoke, like you knew that there was no one more important! You were the queen in that place. You commanded the entire room, unafraid and utterly powerful! And you did it all with that...incredible mind of yours - your thoughts must be fascinating...so very fascinating."
C.C. felt her skin crawling, but decided that it was best to let him continue speaking.
For the time being, anyway.
"I watched and I took note, every day, of what you were doing and how you were doing it. After that, it didn't take me long to start...having dreams, of what life with you could be like," he said, clearly relishing it all. Though it didn't take long for an angry edge to come through. "But I knew that you'd never see me, no matter how much I saw you. How could a big and powerful producer, high and mighty as a Greek goddess, ever stoop to look at a humble theatre assistant?"
From the way he was talking, C.C. thought the man anything but humble at this point.
But his speech wasn't over, and he started to wander the room. He gestured to the walls and the furniture with pride.
"So, I built all of this! For you," he declared, turning back to her. "For us! So we can be together! Of course, there are things that still have to be worked on - but a pillar of the finest marble can easily be shaped into the perfect statue, by the right craftsman..."
Thomas then came a step closer, hand stuck out and moving closer towards her waist, "And I am the right one for you, Bab–"
He never got to finish his sentence, or touch her waist, for that matter.
C.C.'s instincts had finally kicked in like she'd wanted them to. She reached out with her own hand, and slapped him in the face, the noise reverberating around the little cell and making her captor stagger.
It was only once she'd done that, that she realised there was nowhere to go from there. No way out. The trapdoor was too far away, and she was chained to the wall...
And Thomas, taking his hand away from his smarting, bright red cheek, turned rage-filled eyes on her.
She hadn't wounded him in any way, really. She hadn't knocked him unconscious or inflicted damage that might have given her the upper hand.
All she'd done was given him an incentive.
"I used to like the fight in you," he told her, voice quickly becoming frightening. He wasn't blinking again, and he was walking in her direction with purpose. "But here, we're going to have to squash it out!"
He then slapped her hard enough across the face to send her to the floor, crashing to her knees. C.C. cried out in pain, but it fell on deaf ears as Thomas' palm smacked into her other cheek as well, leaving her head reeling and her face stinging.
The tears were starting up again...she couldn't let him see...
He then aimed a painful kick at her legs, listening to her cries, "That's what you get for defying me! Apologise and you might be spared another!"
C.C. let her anger at his words show in her eyes when she looked up at her. It was easier not to cry when she found something to be angry about.
And she was angry at his insinuation that she had to obey him. Like she was inferior somehow.
She was not inferior. And she was not sorry.
"I'd rather starve than apologise to you!" she shouted back.
Thomas looked like he was about to hit her again, but he stopped himself. He lowered his hand, and straightened up, all the while looking like he'd just...made a decision...
"Fine," he told her, nodding. "Then you will. There will be no food in this room for a week – let's see how obedient you are after that."
He turned on his heel and stormed back up the ladder. Once at the top, he threw open the trap door, climbed out, and pulled the ladder back up as well.
The door rattled in its frame with how hard he threw it back down, and afterwards C.C. was left in complete silence again.