Chapter Text
CHAPTER FIVE
Every Smile You Fake
This story and its subsequent follow-ons are a work of pure fiction. This is merely a story and should be treated as such.
(Jenna)
“Danny!” I felt the rawness of my shout like acid running down the inner lining of my throat. My every emotion concentrated into a single scream.
“He can’t hear you.” The taunts of my captor were beginning to weaken my resolve. I didn’t have much fight left in me. I was maybe hours if not minutes from breaking. And a broken thing is worthless, as I was feeling. Abandoned, broken, discarded. I had been thrown away to be forgotten.
I felt tears for the first time. Real tears. My faith had been rocked. Faith?
I closed my eyes, I hadn’t prayed since… since my mom died. I remember asking… asking him to bring her back to me, to us. I prayed every night for a month. Every night, asking, praying, pleading. But I never got my answer. It was then that my faith died. Why would I pray to someone who never answered. No. I would be my own God. I would answer my own prayers.
That was before. Before this. I hate admitting it, but I had lost faith Danny was coming.
I looked up only to find the concrete structure of my torture spanning the open sky. Confined both physically and mentally. My only escape now would be spiritually. But I hadn’t believed in so long… would it even work? I had no other option. For the first time since my mom, I prayed.
Soft and like a whisper, I whimpered my simple prayer, “Please. Help. Help.”
The doors opened again with the stinging light assaulting my eyes. It was like a spray of salt water injected into my eyeballs. The throbbing in my head reminding me I was still alive, if barely holding on.
I felt the sudden tug as he lifted the cage via the new metal cables. I held a rabid growl as it rose over the edge till he was standing before me.
“How is the little puppy today?” He mused himself.
“Come closer and I’ll tell you.” I snarled.
“Oh… you don’t know how tempting that is little one. If I wasn’t… no… no… you almost had me. Almost.” He plopped a bowl onto the floor and pressed it toward me with his boot, avoiding getting too close. I guess he wasn’t as moronic as he seemed.
“Eat up. He’ll be here soon.”
“Danny?’ I asked, suddenly alert.
“Of course… he is the guest of honour after all. Let's just hope he doesn’t keep us waiting.” The cloak and dagger routines were growing tiresome. He didn’t scare me so much as annoy me by this point. His whole mysterious vigour and this clandestine vibe… God, get me a pillow someone I’m going to sleep.
But hearing his name… hearing he was coming. My own vigour renewed. Until my mind betrayed me and I thought about our parting. Would he even want to see me?
**********
Had it been a week ago, a month? I was unsure. But my parting with Danny hadn’t been entirely peaceful. What I did, how I hurt him… how… No, why would he ever forgive me?
That day, I don’t know what was going through my head. I wanted to hurt him, to see him break how I had. But why? Unless my memories betrayed me, Danny had done nothing but protect me as the father I never had, support me as the friend I always wanted and love me as the man I always needed. He was a paragon of a man. My paragon. And I hurt him. I hurt him wholly for my own selfishness, for my own little girl games. Why would he ever want to save me?
I thought of many things over the following hours. Izzy; my Izzy. How she looked so effortlessly beautiful after all these years, walking back into my life as casually as she had left. Those dimples in her cheeks that I could slot quarters into. The way her smile reminded me that no matter what came of that day, there would always be a tomorrow. She had been the light to my darkness, the yin to my yang. When I was lost, she found me. She didn’t need to save me, and I wasn’t looking for a savior. But in our fateless search, we happened upon each other. I found beauty in the everyday, in the benign. Washing dishes, a task I usually hated, I now saw her puffy cheeks in the suds. When they popped, I felt her lips brush against mine. And when they sank, I watched as she held my hand and brushed away any feelings of fear. She was more than more could ever be and more than that too. What is more than more? I answer you; her.
I thought of my little Porkchop. Not so little now. In fact, she towered over me in the few pictures we shared. I was so proud of my little Porkchop even if she hated it when I called her that nowadays. I swore that no matter how big she got, she would always be my little Porkchop. She was all grown now, not a girl anymore but a woman. Her talent, her own, her mind sharp and her smile… her smile was moms. I had never much looked like my mom, and for that I was always down. I had in recent years begun to forget the little things about her. The smell of her perfume, the sound of her laugh as it filled our home with joy… but at least in Ali I was able to hold onto something precious when she smiled. In truth, Ali held more of my mom in her than I ever would. Ali loved people, was the life of every party and had endless patience for those I would rather avoid. I thought about her up in college a year early. How she had smarts I’d never. How she was still my bubbly sweet baby girl under all the makeup and snarky comments.
My mind then went to my dad. My dad. I hadn’t thought of him so much in the past few years. About how he had sacrificed everything for us after mom passed. How he worked the long hours earning piss poor money, working his ass off and in the dangerous job as a cop all so that Ali and I could have a nice home, a good education and paying for all my acting classes and so on. I guess it is only something you learn as an adult to appreciate. How you finally see your parents, truly. The many late nights and early mornings he would spend in the airport to pick me up or drop me off for auditions. The cross country trips we’d take, the photoshoots, the endless lines we’d wait in… all to support mine and my sisters dreams. I had been so focused on the bad that I had never opened myself up to the things he did for us.
A spark of light had me thinking about Rachel next. Rachel… oh Gods. I had meant to hurt Danny… but I had used her to do so. She… she had done nothing to me, nothing but be a sister in my worst times. And I used her. Would she be like Danny and ever find forgiveness in me? Of course she would. For everything she possessed, her huge heart shone the brightest. Knowing her as I did now, I saw things most would never get to. Her vulnerability, her love, her compassion, her kindness. She was my sister.
As much as I avoided it, ran from it even, I could no less escape him than my current confines. Danny. He was more than any of you will ever know, more than than that still. I would never find the words to describe just what he meant to me; what he means to me. He showed me single handedly what love really was. How it looked, felt, tasted. From the first… and possibly my last, I would remember him. The man who no matter what always had a room for me, in his house and in his heart. I had not known myself without him. And I would not know myself without him either. Danny was a father to me, a friend and yes, as much as I denied to his face, a lover. He had seen my ugly, the very foulest parts of me and still he had heart for me when I knew deep down I didn’t deserve it. He showed me with the very smallest of actions his care. They way he sat with me in silence, not to offer a fix for my problems but just to be there. When I would fall asleep on his couch and he would tuck a blanket over me or put socks on my feet when it was cold out. How he would hum a tune low and sweet to calm me when the world seemed to close in around me. He showed me his very essence, his being. He showed me that care can look and feel in different forms. Teaching me that love can be messy, and ugly and a f*cking tragedy, but to find beauty wherever it lie. Danny. I knew I loved him before. Before any of this. But I was beginning to realize that I was falling in love with him. I just hoped I would have the chance to say it to him in person.
**********
“Wakey wakey puppy. It’s almost time.” A call came from over by the monitors where the idiot in the hood yelled across to me. His insane dress was starting to irk. There was a sickly sweet glee in his call.
“I’m not a puppy, you f*cking mutt.”
“Now now. Good girls don’t talk like that.”
“Guess I’m not a ‘good girl’ then.” I scowled seething with every fiber I could conjure.
“Oh believe me… I know. And by the way, how do you think Isabela is doing?”
He had crossed a line mentioning her. “What the f*ck did you say?”
The weirdo in the trench approached and booted the cage making it rattle violently around me. The ache in my head again throbbed at the cacophony of noise. It was as a million bugs chirping and rattling together. “I said… shut your f*cking mouth or I’ll sew it shut.”
“Can you sew my ears shut first so I don’t have to hear your f*cking stupid voice anymore?”
“You f*ck… No. NO. NO.”
I couldn't be sure what the f*ck was going on but he was spinning around shouting, then back to whispering. His voice changed each time he did. One was a strong gruff man with gravel in his throat, the next a sheepish child with a high pitch. The two voices argued between themselves.
“WE can’t hurt her.”
“Why not? She deserves it.”
“Because WE have to make him pay.”
“He will pay. When he sees her hurt. He will pay.”
“NO. NO. NO.”
The dual personas stopped bickering with a third and one I hadn’t yet met turning on heel to see me.
“YOU.” A voice of authority, of thunder echoed across the chamber.
“What?” I spat when he was close enough. The wad of saliva struck his eye where he took a handkerchief and wiped it away before folding the cloth back into his pocket.
“You are not the one WE wanted. But you will do all the same. When WE break you, WE break him. And when WE break him… well…”
There was a strange coldness that seeped from his pores. Eerie and calm. It was then I longed for the petulant idiot who had brought me here. Anyone but this thing. I wasn’t sure if it was a man or a monster, all I knew was… this one… he was different, and far more frightening.
TO BE CONTINUED…
