She spent the next morning in the throes of morning sickness. The doctor held her hair as she emptied her stomach into the toilet over and over again; he rubbed soothing circles over her back and whispered words of comfort in her ear. He told her she was strong, she was special. He was proud of her.
Marilyn couldn't be sure if it was the pregnancy alone causing the churning feeling in her guts. Part of her felt it was the choice they had made the night before. Lana's days were numbered, this was a fact, and though she had played the part of willing participant that first evening in the basement, Marilyn was now faced with the utter horror of taking another person's life.
There would be no going back after that. It would be the final nail in the coffin Oliver had built for her.
She gagged and heaved again but nothing came up. Marilyn felt two hot tears slide down her cheeks as the doctor pressed a gentle kiss against her bare shoulder.
"It will pass," he murmured, and she had that familiar fleeting feeling that he could read her mind. "This reaction, while unpleasant, is a sign that our baby is healthy and growing." Oliver took her free hand that wasn't gripping the toilet in his and squeezed it affectionately.
She gave him a weak smile and turned her head to spit.
His dark eyes regarded her for a moment, full of concern. After a brief pause they lit up.
"Ginger root," he said suddenly.
Marilyn heaved again, then looked back to him confusedly when it appeared to be another false alarm.
"What?" she mumbled. Her mouth tasted like bitter acrid sick and she just wanted to go back to bed without feeling like her stomach was in the back of her throat.
"Ginger root is a natural cure for nausea and vomiting," Oliver explained as he got to his feet. "I could go get some. It wouldn't take any time at all, and you'd feel so much better." He moved towards the door, then frowned and turned back. "Will you be all right alone? Half an hour, or less?"
She could see as plain as the glasses on his face that he was trying to remain calm, to treat her with the same composed manner he gave his patients, but the sight of her on her knees over the toilet gagging on her own sick seemed to have shaken him.
It made her heart twist painfully in her chest to realize that, in his own psychotic way, he truly did care about her. And now, staring at the worried little crease between his thick brows, she knew she cared about him too.
In her own psychotic way.
"I'll be fine, baby," she said gently. The word made him brighten a little and he gave her a brisk nod, edging out of the bathroom.
"It won't take any time at all," he reassured her again, and slipped away into the world outside.
Marilyn waited until she heard the low hum of his car's engine purring to life before pulling herself to her feet by the corner of the bathroom sink.
She rinsed her mouth out with running water from the tap. She fetched Oliver's plush brown bathrobe, wrapping it around herself to shut out the late autumn chill.
Her heartbeat was loud and thick in her ears as she moved through the house like a dazed sleepwalker and descended the stairs into the basement.
Lana was already awake. When the lights flickered on Marilyn saw her sitting cross-legged on the bed, waiting.
"You've been ill," Lana noted drily.
"Don't try to distract me," Marilyn said, settling gingerly on the bottom step. She knew better than to sit with Lana on the bed; the defiant strength had returned to the reporter's face after the drug's hangover wore off.
"Just an observation. It's what I do." She squinted and tilted her head. "Where is he? Why are you here alone?"
"He left to get me medicine." Marilyn rubbed her palm over the bulge of her belly. It was growing by the day; perhaps it was good the doctor had discovered her secret when he had. Hiding it would have become impossible.
"Oh," Lana said, and it came out as a barking little laugh. "So all's well in paradise again, I suppose? That certainly didn't take long."
Marilyn felt a small smile tug at the corners of her mouth.
"I think he actually loves me," she murmured.
Lana shook her head, chuckling.
"I knew it the moment I saw you," she said, her tone incredulous. "You came walking up to me in that trampy little red dress and I thought to myself, 'She's just a child playing grown-up.'"
"You don't know anything about me," Marilyn whispered.
"And when you said his name? I knew then, too. My instincts are never wrong." Lana tapped her forehead with a slender finger. "It's what makes me a damn good reporter."
"Yeah, sure," Marilyn shot back, now laughing her own derisive laugh. "Could you send me clippings of your recent top stories? Oh, that's right, you don't have any because you were strapped to a chair in an asylum getting your brain zapped by 10,000 volts of electricity."
This gave Lana pause; her lips curled back from her teeth in a sneer.
"My first thought was maybe you were just dating him. Maybe you had no idea, or had just found out and didn't know what to do. That you were coming to me for advice. I'm sure the bastard told you all about me."
Marilyn narrowed her eyes and said nothing.
"But then you said you knew, you fucking smiled at me. And do you know what I thought?"
The two women stared each other down. When Marilyn remained silent Lana went on.
"I thought, 'Jesus Christ, he's found someone just stupid enough to be in on this with him.' And I was right."
"You can insult me all you want, Lana." Marilyn adjusted the oversized bathrobe around her neck, pulling the collar tight under her chin. "I'm here to figure out how we're going to get rid of you in a quick, easy way. Because as stupid as you think I am, that's all you are to me right now. You're a mess I'm trying to determine how to clean up."
The reporter seemed unfazed. She stared at Marilyn with a furrowed brow as though she were dissecting her mentally.
"You're really going to do it," she wondered aloud.
"I have," Marilyn murmured, palm moving slowly over her rounded stomach, "to protect my family."
Lana smiled as though this was what she'd expected.
"I'll give it to you," she said, sounding almost impressed. "You two definitely deserve each other."
Marilyn scowled. She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to regain control of the conversation.
"As much as I'd like to see it happen, I won't let Oliver skin you. We can't risk another body popping up with Kit Walker taking the blame for Bloody Face—"
"You're unbelievable!" Lana uncrossed her legs, the iron chain clanking loudly as she moved. "You don't even care that an innocent man is suffering because that monster you let fuck you framed him?"
"—and I don't particularly like the threat a gunshot would bring, regardless of whether these walls are soundproof." Marilyn leaned her head towards Lana and smiled a dry strange smile at her captive. "What do you think? Just a quiet little drug overdose? Or would you prefer to go out fighting, with my hands wrapped around your throat?"
"How many times am I going to discuss the options for my impending death in this godforsaken basement?" Lana snapped irritably.
"As many as it takes until you're no longer my problem." Marilyn suddenly felt as though she may get sick again; she wondered if she could sneak in a smoke before Oliver returned home. She'd been abstaining because of the pregnancy but the relief it offered seemed worth the risk at the moment.
She got to her feet and began climbing the stairs.
"You consider those options, Lana," Marilyn called over her shoulder. "The time will come very soon when you won't have a choice."
Ultimately she was glad she hadn't decided to pick up the elegant silver case full of joints; the doctor arrived only ten minutes after Marilyn left the basement.
He went straight to the kitchen and made her a cup of tea from a strange-smelling powdery substance he claimed was made from ginger root. He promised it would soothe her upset stomach and, after a few slow tentative sips, she found that it did.
Encouraged by this development, Oliver made grilled cheese for lunch.
With her belly full and the food staying down for a change, he carried her into the bedroom for an afternoon nap.
"I'm not tired," Marilyn said as he laid her gently onto the cool clean sheets.
"You will be." He adjusted her pillow and settled on his knees beside the bed.
"But I feel better," she insisted.
"You'll feel better," Oliver pressed, "after you take your nap." Without missing a beat he slipped one long-fingered hand beneath the hem of her black satin nightie and began stroking the soft folds between her legs.
She sucked in her breath sharply, taken off guard.
"How am I supposed to sleep when you're being naughty?" Marilyn asked him, her lips twitching into a little smile.
Oliver returned the smile and continued his tender assault. His touch was feathery-light; it brought the blood into her cheeks almost at once, the pleasure turning her limbs to jelly.
But was it the pleasure making her feel like she was drifting away?
She tried to ground herself, to focus on the fingertips caressing her in their sweetly sinful way, but it was like trying to grip grains of sand. Marilyn's smile gave way to a worried frown as the room began to grow dark.
The last thing she saw was the doctor lowering his mouth to suckle at her breast through the black satin of her negligee and then she was gone, lost to sleep like an unmoored ship on a black sea.
She dreamt.
Faces and voices bled together. First her mother was calling her name, then it was Lana, then it was a baby crying.
A chain rattling. Little hands reaching for her, begging be picked up, crying "Mommy, mommy, mommy…"
The little hands became big ones. They grasped her by the hips, caressed her breasts. The word kept echoing through her brain.
Mommy.
Lana laughed at her somewhere in the dark. She spun and ran but there was nowhere to go, she was back in the basement with the iron chain around her leg and far away her baby was squalling, weeping for its mother but she couldn't get out of the basement, she was trapped, trapped, and god how her breasts ached…
Marilyn's eyes drifted slowly open. The bedroom was dark.
How long had she been asleep? It was only 11am when the doctor had put her to bed—
The doctor. Where was the doctor?
She tried to sit up and found that her head felt full of slow sloshing liquid. Marilyn blinked heavily once, twice, hoping the fog would clear but it held fast.
Pulling herself to a standing position by way of the headboard, she stood on watery legs for a moment to catch her footing. This strange dazed feeling, it wasn't the pregnancy, she was certain. A terrible thought hit her, sending shockwaves through the goop in her brain.
Had he drugged her? Had there been more in that tea than ginger root?
The basement.
She braced herself against the wall and stumbled along it like a drunk after last call, palms pressed flat, feeling her way out of the bedroom. It was a slow process but the only way she could prevent her half-numb feet from giving out beneath her.
There was light coming from beneath the door at the foot of the stairs.
Marilyn sat on the top step and bumped slowly down each one, bouncing on her rump like a child until she reached the bottom. It seemed an impossible prospect to get to her feet again but she did it, slowly, leaning against the heavy soundproof door for support. She took the doorknob and turned it, taking extra care to be so very quiet; he was in there, she knew he was.
She pushed the door open, her breath caught in her throat.
Oliver knelt over Lana on the bed, his knees planted firmly on either side of her waist. He wore his standard black pants and just a sleeveless white shirt – his go-to outfit when he was in one of his more violent moods. It left him free to move easily, strike faster.
In one hand gleamed a scalpel.
And there was something on his head.
"Oliver?" Marilyn whispered.
He turned like a guilty child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But he wasn't a child, he wasn't even a man, he was a monster with a strange leathery face, the mouth torn at the corners, jagged teeth sticking out at odd angles, black-red holes with ragged edges from which his dark eyes peered out, the eyes that softened when she called him baby and drifted closed when they made love.
Lana was screaming. Or was it Marilyn screaming? All she could hear was screaming.
Then the blackness came to claim her again and that was good because the screaming stopped and the monster went away and in the dark drifting world of the unconscious she was safe from him, if only for a moment.