The Prisoner Project

THIRTY SEVEN

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

— Vladimir Nabokov

THIRTY SEVEN

IT WAS GRIEF that had sewn my mouth shut tight. Diana had looked at me, straight into my within, and told me she wished I had died. There was no greater sorrow than hearing those words leave the lips of the only person you loved in the entire world. I physically had to hold on to the chair to stop myself from falling apart in front of all three of my abusers.

Everything in the room began to move in slow motion.

"That's enough." Mirabel said sharply, frustrated that her moment was being taken away from her. "Frank is the least of my concerns at this moment, and your sister feud carries even lesser weight."

Slowly, because it was beginning to take effort to even breathe, I questioned. "What do you want from me?"

A little maniacally, she grinned.

Then she looked at Hank, and he smiled back in a way that told me that they had formed an unspoken narrative regarding what was going to happen to me. Hank moved from the door, certain that none of us were going to attempt an escape and stood beside Mirabel.

They looked oddly similar.

"You'll find out." Hank said.

"But first," Mirabel taunted. "I want you to know how it all began."

MIRABEL

MIRABEL FELT LIKE she were trapped between a rock and a hard place. She knew she had endured more than she could possibly handle, and she could tell that the weight of her actions were severely damaging her.

She had lost a significant amount of weight. She no longer laughed, and she seldom smiled. Yet, her heart was set on one thing alone. Her mind might have been unstoppable, but her heart was an immovable. Nothing could stop her. Not even the sheer amount of grief that her actions were causing the people she loved.

Her love, quite literally and pathetically, conquered all.

"You said you loved me, Damien." Mirabel repeated, her voice trembling from desperation. She hated feeling like this, but her love was sickening. "Where are you going?"

Damien was scowling. His fingers were frozen on the door knob of her house. She could tell from the paleness of his fingers that he was using it as a restraint. "Work. I'm going to work."

What he was holding himself back from, she would never know. "When are you going to tell Amelia?" She muttered, aware that the question would ignite a flame within him that she had tried and failed to sunder.

She hated when her words burnt him, but it was a Friday. Mirabel had come to hate Fridays so much that it made her distressed enough to physically ache.

As she had anticipated, Damiens face twisted. He spun around to face her in a kind of rage. "Tell her?" He hissed, poisonous like ivy. "Tell her what."

She almost scoffed. His aggression did nothing to intimidate her. She was insane enough to challenge him. "About my son, Damien."

Every time Mirabel remembered the heinous act that Damien had committed against her, she was overwhelmed with emotions that she could never comprehend. She had remembered feeling like a part of her had died. She remembered the grief. She remembered wanting to hate him, and crying at the thought that she couldn't.