Poor, Pretty Creature

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

So there were others. Jonathan had made that clear; he hadn’t wanted me to scream, because he didn’t want the others to hear.

But what did that mean? Was he telling the truth? Would alerting them only make things worse? Maybe I had been right when I figured that he hadn’t been the one to kidnap me. Maybe there was a father or an uncle, some big, brutish man who had done this before, who was even worse than Jonathan.

Or maybe I was being kept in an apartment, and screaming would result in being rescued by a sweet old lady who smelled like cat pee. It was hard to say, really, and both the risks and the rewards could be immense.

Or maybe, just maybe, I was being held by some sort of cult. Which was ridiculous, of course; cults didn’t just exist in everyday society anymore. But, then again, being kidnapped wasn’t exactly a common experience either. And, in many ways, it would make sense; it would explain Jonathan’s odd dress, the lack of electricity, the abundance of crosses in this one room.

But what would a cult want with me? Was I to be a ritual sacrifice of some sort? Did those actually happen? Outside of Jacob’s stupid horror movies, at least.

And why me? There must have been a reason why I was singled out; there had been dozens of drunk, unsuspecting, pretty, college-aged girls in that bar. There always were.

You don’t remember? Jonathan had asked.

There was something to remember then.

Think. There must have been something lingering, somewhere amongst the fog. Had we been alone? Had we gone anywhere after the bar? Before? Think. Why would Mircalla and I have gone to a bar?

There was only one reason that I could think of, really; it must have been the date. That would explain why I had gone along with it, why I didn’t mention that I found bars too noisy and claustrophobic; she must have suggested it, and I wanted so desperately to impress her. Yes. That would make sense.

I mean, it really wasn’t her fault; she didn’t know me that well. She hadn’t really gotten the chance to until recently. It wasn’t like we had known each other before school. We hadn’t even lived in the same town; Jacob and I had been born and raised in the middle of nowhere. The sort of town where people are constantly grumbling about ‘those damned immigrants’, who are supposedly either stealing all the jobs or too lazy to work, depending on who you were talking to. The sort of town where dating prospects are slim if you aren’t straight, because everyone who might be interested in you is either closeted for their own protection, or they moved away long ago, also for their own protection. That sort of town. It would have eaten Mircalla alive if she knew it existed, and Jacob and I hated it.

Ever since the eighth grade, he and I had been bonded by our shared desire to get to The City. Any city, it didn’t really matter; New York, London, Toronto, San Francisco, anywhere at all so long as it had a large population and was incredibly diverse. People of all races, genders, s****l orientations, mind sets, politics—that was my dream. I wanted to see more of the world, more of its people, than I could find at home.

High school graduation offered the perfect opportunity to escape to The City; everyone was trying to do it all of a sudden. The jobs are better there, they said, the education looked more impressive on a resume. I didn’t care about that. I hadn’t spent my high school years studying my ass off, applying for scholarships, and filling my free time with part time jobs, just so I could get an accomplished resume. Nobody worked as hard as I did for something so ever-changing and insubstantial.

And then it happened; I got accepted to every school I had applied to. I was going to The City. And what made it even better was that Jacob was coming with me. With help from our parents, we managed to find a cheap apartment close to the school, and that was it. We were there.

I don’t know how I would have handled it if it weren’t for Jacob. I mean, The City was great; it was everything I had hoped for and more, but at the same time. I suppose it hadn’t really occurred to me before that moving to The City would mean saying goodbye to my family, and to the friends I had been collecting since kindergarten. And four years spent so single-mindedly dedicated to work and school hadn’t really left me with the best people skills. I knew how to talk to Jacob, sure, but how the f**k did I approach new people? What came after ‘Hi’? There must have been some big secret to adult friendships that I wasn’t in on—or adult relationships altogether.

I’d never even been on a date before. I mean, it hadn’t been an active choice or anything, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t had crushes. A boy in my science class here—a girl in my gym class there. It just seemed like, one day I was ten years old and kissing was gross, and the next thing I knew, I was the only one without a date to prom.

And now I was in The City. My life was supposed to be one of romance and heart-stopping flings. I was a young, beautiful girl who could have anyone I wanted, and my definition of flirting was polite conversation.

And then there was Mircalla.

I met her in my first week of classes. She was my T.A., for a late-night class on Victorian sexuality, and I sincerely doubt that I was the only one who had a crush on her. I think the whole class did. She was just so... perfect, for lack of a better word. With her long, dark red hair, thick and wavy and worn loose down her back. With her ruby lips and her acrylic nails and her perfume that smelled like roses. With her skin, untouched by sun or time. She was a vision, existing only in that classroom, appearing every Wednesday night at eight o’clock and then going up in smoke.

It was Mircalla who approached me first. “Nice work on that paper,” were her first words to me.

The next time she approached me, she said, “Why don’t you speak up more in class? I, for one, would love to hear more from you.”

Both times, I just sort of blushed, coughed out some sort of embarrassing half-response, and then backed out of the room as quickly as possible.

For whatever reason, Mircalla took that as an invitation to began teasing me. Never in front of the class or anything like that; she’d wait until afterwards, when I was packing up my books and preparing to leave. “How’d you like my class, little mouse?” she’d ask, a wry smile on her ruby red lips.

Every time, I’d nod my head enthusiastically and say, “I like it. You teach it really well.” I wasn’t lying either; the way that Mircalla spoke, slow and confidently, just had this ability to keep you engaged, hanging off of her every word. Truth be told, I preferred listening to her talk about Victorian sexuality than the professor, and not just because she was... well, her.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you like it. I’ve been getting in a lot of trouble with Professor Varney lately, so if you could put in a good word for me, I’d be eternally in your debt,” Mircalla said, her thin, white arms crossed over her middle.

“Why have you been getting in trouble?” I asked.

Mircalla shrugged a careless shoulder. “I haven’t been showing up to the lectures. They’re just at such an inconvenient time for me, it’s hard to get in for them.”

I nodded my head sympathetically. Of course Mircalla couldn’t show up for lectures. Couldn’t Professor Varney see that? Couldn’t she just give her a break, and accept that she would do what she could do?

“Not that this has anything to do with you, of course,” Mircalla said with a little laugh, shaking her head so that her scarlet locks bounced over her shoulders. “Sorry. Look at me, complaining away when it really isn’t my place. You’re just so easy to talk to, little mouse. Maybe it’s because you’re so quiet. Or maybe it’s just because I never feel like you’re judging me.”

“She’s totally flirting with you,” Jacob said later, when I told him about the encounter back at our apartment.

“No, she’s not,” I said. “She’s a T.A. Wouldn’t flirting with one of her students get her in big trouble? Wouldn’t it show, like favouritism or something?”

“Maybe. But I bet it happens all the time. Especially with you staring all wide-eyed at her, talking about old, dead people having s*x—”

“That’s not what we talk about.”

“Either way. I’m telling you, she’s flirting, and I’m jealous. Have you seen Mircalla? If I had someone that hot trying to get with me, I wouldn’t be single anymore!”

Nevertheless, I didn’t actively pursue anything with Mircalla—unless you count putting in a good word for her with Professor Varney. And packing my bags slowly, right in front of her after class, in the hopes that she might talk to me. And walking her to her car so that we could continue our conversation, even if my apartment was in the other direction.

Then, as the exam period began and the semester was drawing to a close, it finally happened: Mircalla asked me on a date.

“Is that allowed?” I asked. “I mean, you are my T.A.”

Mircalla laughed. “Not for much longer. And if we wait until the new semester begins to actually go on the date, then they can’t prove anything, can they?”

“We have to wait that long? I just mean... well, I’ll miss you over the holidays.”

“Miss me?” Mircalla repeated with another laugh. “I would have thought you’d want to go home to your family for the break.”

I shifted my weight uncomfortably, not particularly keen on telling Mircalla about how eager I had been to see my family, until I called home and discovered that they had already booked a holiday trip to Romania without me.

“But you’ll be alright, honey, won’t you?” my mom had said on the phone. “I mean, it’s not like you’ll be spending the holidays alone. You’ll have Jacob, right?”

“I think my family might have other plans,” I told Mircalla vaguely.

I hated the way she was looking at me then, with pity in her large, dark eyes. Poor, sad, lonely Lucy, alone for the holidays. Poor, sad, lonely Lucy, whose family rejoiced the moment she was gone. Poor, sad, lonely Lucy, who hadn’t made a single friend in four months at school, who had only Jacob for company.

“Come here,” Mircalla said, taking me by the hand and pulling me into the shadows of a towering, brick building, entombed in green vines. Her grip was cold but firm.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my face burning.

“Giving you something to make the holidays a little easier,” Mircalla purred, and then she kissed me. She dropped her school bags into the snow, and she pulled me close against her cold body, and she kissed me. I had never been kissed before. My mind sort of panicked at first, and all I did was stand there, rigid as a board, staring wide-eyed at the face held so close to mine, closer than any face had ever been before. Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to get into the rhythm of it. I still don’t necessarily know if I was good, per se, but by the end of it, my head was swimming in a warm and pleasant fog, so that had to count for something.

“Oh, my sweet little mouse,” Mircalla breathed, trailing her ruby lips up to my ear. “I promise, you won’t feel this way forever. You’ll find people like you someday, and they are going to love you so fully and so completely. Just you wait and see.”

That was the last time I saw her. Or, the last time I can remember seeing her. After all, there was still that foggy memory to contend with, that white hand with her acrylic nails wrapped around a beer.

This was all I knew for sure: I had been at a bar with Mircalla. Now, I was here with Jonathan. I didn’t know how point A led to point B, and I didn’t know what had happened to Mircalla in the process. But if Jonathan, or whoever was above him, had done anything to hurt her, then the moment I got free of these chains, I would kill him.