The heavy, wooden doors were held together with large, iron brackets that creaked forebodingly as they were pushed open.
Eight guards stood to attention at the wide, double windows of the large room. Long, luxurious curtains fell on either side. I looked past the guards and out to the view of her compound. A garden spread beneath. Flowers curled around birdbaths. Roses were pinned to training fences. In the half-light, it looked like a magical, mossy escape. But every now and then, a spotlight swept across it, and I was reminded that we were in the ‘reception hall’ of the seeping mind of a madwoman.
We were told to sit on an ornate lounge; its carved legs and arms gilded. We sat, hands clasped in front of us, like we were awaiting a sentence.
*****
It was so quiet. All we could hear was the breathing of the guards, and the occasional shake of the iron window frames pulsing from the wind. We’d been waiting an hour, and some of the guards were shifting in their upright positions, bending down to scratch their legs while surreptitiously casting their eyes over us. We didn’t move, too nervous, too scared to even breathe.
The latch of the door clicked, and I heard it slide back and forth five times. Then a sharp knock, one, two, three, four, five times. My skin prickled in anticipation as the door started to open. The small, pointed toe of a red, leather shoe poked through the entrance like the tongue of a snake.
Este shuffled into the room in small, mouse-like steps. My gaze started at her feet and tracked up her very long, slender legs. She wore black stockings, and a tapered skirt with a tailored jacket pulled taut over her pointy shoulders. She was so tall and thin that I expected her to sway in the breeze. She walked carefully over the large floor, her heels clicking noisily as she awkwardly moved to avoid the grout between each tile. I chanced a glance at Joseph, who was watching her with curiosity. She held a clipboard to her chest tightly, and she kept staring down at it and back at us. Her face was pinched with a long, thin nose, a strip of lip with the barest graze of dark lipstick across it. Her eyes were icy blue under high-tweezed eyebrows, one strand of hair thick. She was like the drawing of a person rather than a real woman, everything about her sharp and angular. She reached into her pocket and grabbed her glasses. When she put them on, I nearly laughed. They were bright purple and went up at the sides like a pair of wings. Small, sparkly diamonds were glued to the edges.
Glancing down at her clipboard, she spoke, her large bun weighing down her tiny, pointed head. “R-Rosa Bianca and Joseph S-Sulle. Right.” Her voice was like a bird squawking, and I tried not to wince at the sound of it wrapped around my name.
Deshi walked in right then and made his way towards Este. Her head snapped toward him, and a shrill whining came from her mouth as she shook her head violently and stamped her pointed heel into the porcelain floor, hard.
“Oh. Sorry,” he muttered. He stepped back out of the room and closed the door, sliding the latch back and forth five times, and then knocking five times.
She exhaled in relief, like she’d held her breath the whole time, at the final knock, and Deshi re-entered the room. She really was insane. He stood next to her, his chest rising and falling fast, like he’d run here.
Joseph stood, and I rose with him. “We’re here to offer you a trade.” She arched her eyebrow but let him continue. “We know the babies in the breeding project are developing illnesses.” Her eyes became piercing, almost vibrating in her skull, as she glared at him. “We have the solution to the problem. All we ask is that you utilize it and give us our friend in return for the information.”
“H-H-How dare you!” she shrieked, taking a small step forward, her skin pinched in where she clasped the clipboard so tight. The guards copied her movements, closing in around us like a bloom folding in at nighttime, as they looked back and forth at each other uncertainly. Her hand was shaking as she pointed a finger accusingly at us both. “Are you implying that there is s-something incorrect in my m-methodology?”
Joseph was rendered silent by this unearthly woman, who wobbled towards him like a baby giraffe, screeching and pointing.
I took a step forward, my feet breaching the gap between two tiles. She stared at my toes, burning a hole with her furious gaze. “You know there is.”
I waited for her to combust, to shed her skin and reveal that she was really a coat hanger covered in a thin coating of flesh. Instead, she seemed to ripple and calm herself. She straightened her skirt and glanced down at her clipboard again.
“Even if there was a slight miscalculation, what makes you think I would trust your corrections?”
Joseph found his voice. “They are Apella’s corrections.”
This seemed to get her attention, and she paused, thinking. “Then why is she not h-here to face her m-mentor and tell her all the mistakes she’s made?” Her tone was so bitter.
Joseph looked down at the ground. “Apella passed away. Two weeks ago.”
Deshi took a sharp breath and uttered, “No.”
Este’s face twisted into a frown. “That is a sh-shame. I had hoped to work with her again one day.” We stared at her incredulously. She reacted by digging her fingers so hard into that clipboard, I was sure it would snap in two.
“Well, give me your theories, and I will take them under advisement,” she said, turning away from us.
Things turned slowly, a ticket in front of my face that I was reaching to grab.
“No!” I said, taking another step towards her. The guards moved in, forming an ever-tightening circle around Joseph and me. My veins constricted. I wanted to grab his hand, but I was scared to make any sudden movements. “You let us all go, Deshi, Joseph, and me, and then we will tell you our solution. Not our theories, our answer. It works.” I wiped my forehead slowly, a throbbing headache starting to appear. “Don’t tell me you’re going to let all those children die out of pride.”
My words hung in the air, bobbing up and down, taunting me because I couldn’t grab them back. Este watched them too, her temper rising, her body seeming longer, stretched in anger and embarrassment.
This wasn’t going to work.
Joseph pleaded. “Be reasonable, Superior Este…”
“Reasonable?” she screamed. “Have I not invited you into my h-home and listened to your requests? You know the others would not be s-so reasonable.” Her voice smarted like the whip of a cane. The end was coming in a ripping wound. I could feel it already scraping at the edge of me, toying with our safety.
The guards stepped over each tile, like they were playing hopscotch, until they had their arms around us both, holding our arms down and telling us it was over.
It was unstoppable. It was always going to happen but, God, I wish…
Time slowed to a gentle drip. We shook lazily, like spring flowers in the breeze, our movements rubbery, false. This was where we were supposed to negotiate, hold our information above her head, and have her jump at it like a child trying to get at their hat. But her shrewd face belied a terror, a disconnected monster.
She looked at both of us in turn, her eyes honing in and sizing us up. Our arms strained against the guard’s holds. “I will n-not release Mister Dehali. And now that I know the Survivors have the answer, I can’t see what p-possible use you are to me. You think we don’t have our own S-Spiders?” She smiled sickeningly as she turned a shriveled finger around in circles and said as quiet as dust, “T-take them away and dispose of them. I don’t want b-blood on the rug.”
Joseph was letting them hold him, but as soon as she said that, he burst forward, lunging at the guard closest. A shaking teenager with his knife pointed tightly towards us. I blinked. Tears blurred my vision as movements became a blur, and noise and pain dominated.