Dirty

Trem's apartment was dirty by her standards. There were clothes on the floor and in little piles of stuff all around. A few dishes in the sink. Everything needed a good scrub. But, the blue of the sky coming through the slats of the blinds looked like a minimalist painting.

She had been here too long. Longer than she intended. She missed her mom and dad and her nieces and nephews that she barely knew. On the up side, her teeth didn't hurt, she was far from hungry, and everywhere she looked there were plants thriving.

She looked different from when she arrived here. More like she used to.

Ridgeway had been back with a few suggestions about how she might spend her time.

"...tied up."

"How does someone as sinister as you sound so warm and friendly?" She asked lightly. But more seriously, "When does this end?"

Ridgeway had been wrapped around her. He grabbed her hand and made her feel how hard he was. It would have been so easy to let him do what he wanted, what her body wanted. But she didn't.

"Can you tell me more precisely why I'm here?" Trem wouldn't yield even though his words caused her pleasure. Some universal code for 'no' thumped in the background and her mind rebelled against the suggestion. Whatever she decided now would seem not her own. Catch 22.

"I want to whip you." Ridgeway had said while holding her throat until it made a line of tiny red dots.

"I want to fuck you in the ass." He'd said as if they weren't under constant surveillance.

"Ridgeway, who put me here? Am I in jail?" She asked. "And if so" she furthered "Why didn't anyone ever read me my Miranda rights? Or tell me for what I am imprisoned? "

The apartment sounds answered yes but Ridgeway just continued to pet and fondle her.

"Are you reading my notes before I give them to you?" She asks him because he is the only one she has direct contact with who doesn't feed herself back to her when she asks questions.

"It's not okay. I want you to stop." She says when he doesn't answer her.

She'd expressed what she could to him. Perhaps it was a limit of her imagination that she could not come up with the words that would set her free. She knew enough to know she was experiencing some sort of Stockholm Syndrome but her captors were so good at what they did to her that she could not prove it, thus she could not get out of here on her own not without at least a witness and her child.

Someone else had been in pretending to be Ridgeway. Or maybe Ridgeway was pretending to be this person. He had a thick scruffy beard. He had brought in some equipment he wanted her to try out. Showed her how to mount it. Made her stomach feel funny.

Then taken her to lunch where they watched a couple at another table. The woman massaged the man's hands. It looked strange from that angle and so intimate it made Trem feel squeamish which was 100 percent contrary to her knowledge. A secret fact about Trem was that she knew all kinds of ways hands hurt and all kinds of ways to fix that. It's just that she liked to do it in private. And the tableau seemed a little set up, like someone had been reading her diary or her mind.

A table of men celebrated behind them. Their waitress was overworked but didn't show it. Trem was grateful for her grace and her beautiful manners. When she walked away you remembered her smile and the expression in her eyes. A couple at another table waited quietly for something. It made Trem visibly nervous.

Here is what would happen if she ran. They would find her. They always did. And because of what they did to her she could no longer tell the good guys from the bad guys. And how was she to do this without losing her child forever?

"You have to tell me who is who and what is what! I am not ALICE! And I am not the Red Queen or the White Queen, or the Rabbit or the Dumb Twins or any of the cards in that deck and neither are you. What are we playing at here?" She had written earlier in her notebook next to a tiny drawing of a deer.

There were too many people involved in her life but not enough. Like she'd go into an empty market and all of a sudden a crowd would show up and she'd notice a few of the same people later in the day in a different guise an hour across town. Sure that happened in life, but not with the frequency that it happened to her. It was like having a non-benevolent entourage. Like someone was picking and choosing who she interacted with. What kind of entity is big enough to do that with that much authority? Echelon? Does Echelon follow people around and parrot them?

When she'd gone to the jewelry store to return the necklace that Ridgeway had given her that she realized belonged to someone else, the girl with the pointy teeth had greeted her.

"You're Welcome" she'd said brightly with a hopeful face which Trem promptly wiped from it by saying the wrong thing.

"You're Welcome?" She'd questioned. "Is that what they told you to say?"

"Yes." She'd answered in a way that made Trem feel bad and back off.

"It's okay, I know it's not your fault." She'd replied awkwardly.

"If you can hear this," she added later replaying the conversation "they told you to say that because they knew it would hurt me. I hope you had a better Valentine's Day than I did."

-----

Names was really pissed off. He was watching a reenactment of something he was supposed to show Fev. He did not want to show this to Fev but he was going to show it to Fev. All of it and the before and after too.

It was the interior of a cabin. There was a woman lying on the floor, mute. Maybe comatose. He can only see her and what she is doing. There is audio but he hasn't received it yet. All of a sudden she struggles to say something or to scream.

He can't just show it to Fev without preparing her so he is trying to figure out how to put it in words, in context. Consolation is that he knows the woman lives. Horror, that nobody should ever see or experience any of this from any side. He doesn't want Fev to. It makes him sad.

"Here's what happens." He whispers. "This is part of it. I'm not sure where in the timeline.

-------

Grant let Fev into the cabin. Names wouldn't. Fev took her time at the door just looking around from there.

"I'm cold?"

How would Grant know. He shrugs.

"Did you know that someone keystroked Trem and maybe RB and Wynn too?" Fev asks Grant. He is the tall one, looks like an ad for granola. "Someone's making us all go off what they write. It's not for good. It's to hurt them. Stop them from writing. They don't want Trem to tell her own story."

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