Chapter 8

Harper scowled at the opening door before her eyes adjusted to the hallway light and recognized Morwen. The crash of feelings that swept over Harper: fear of the witch, anger at the situation, relief of boredom and loneliness, were overrolled in a blink. Harper’s eyes flashed with impatience.

“Willful,” Morwen shook her head. “Don’t let it get in my way, so long as it doesn’t interrupt my work, have your fits.”

“What the fuck is your work?”

Morwen didn’t answer. She turned, the long skirt of her conservative black dress floated around the clicks of her stilettos. She left the door open. Harper sneered.

The momentary spark of “Fuck you, witch!” lasted through Harper crossing her arms and pouting. She couldn’t commit to it. She had to get out of her cell. She pushed herself up and rushed out the door.

Her room, her cell, was at the end of the hallway. There were a few more green painted steel doors, but they were locked fast. She had no choice but to follow down the hallway after Morwen.

“You’re hungry.”

“Very,” Harper said, running her hand over her stomach.

“Good, you can survive some hunger,” Morwen said. “But I can’t survive your smell.”

“I used the bucket,” Harper grumbled out quickly. She scowled and put her shoulders up higher. “If you want me to smell better. You’d have put a shower in my room.”

“You also need a change of clothes. No shower, but I’ve prepared a bath. It’s too difficult to get consistently running water here,” Morwen said. She pushed open the left side of a tall red painted door. They left a poured concrete floor and stepped out into a laid stone castle hallway. Morwen turned left.

Harper stopped. There were other ways to go now.

A change of clothes and a bath were more attractive than getting lost in a castle.

Where had they gone? The closest thing to a castle she knew of was the old French fortress a few miles out of town. Enough elementary school field trips told Harper that this wasn’t the fortress.

She ran to catch up with Morwen.

“Ooh,” she couldn’t help but hold her side. “I need to eat too.”

“You will need to eat,” Morwen agreed, but said no more.

They entered a new hallway. Tall windows on their left looked over a vegetable garden. Skinny women, all older than Harper, the youngest by maybe ten years, the eldest was probably an octogenarian, quietly tended the vegetables.

Harper stopped.

“They’re not growing produce for you.” Morwen’s voice cut back from the end of the hallway.

Harper’s stomach gurgled. Reminded of her hunger, she winced. That wasn’t what she was thinking. She was looking at the cloudless sky overhead and at the massive greenery rolling out of the long stone planters. It was easy to recognize beanstalks and pumpkins, but the other tufts of greens could’ve been anything underground.

It was March.

Pumpkins shouldn’t be that big in March.

Maybe in a greenhouse. Not under an open sky.

“Time is expensive,” Morwen said. “You’re lucky you’re valuable right now.”

You’re lucky I didn’t take to karate like Dad had wanted. Harper turned and smiled bloody murder at Morwen. Morwen’s dark purple lips curled maliciously. She walked through the doors, reaching to her neck as she did.

Harper didn’t hurry when she followed this time. If she had on shoes, she’d have stomped worse than any pissed off tantrum she had ever thrown. She walked into a large marble tiled room. The floor in the middle of the room had been cut out and lined with copper. Steaming water sat placidly. A dress, as bland as Morwen’s and as ugly brown as the gardening women lay folded on a bench.

Morwen stood next to it and was folding her dress. She wore a silk chemise and matching panties for underwear. She stepped out of her shoes, losing three inches, and ending up shorter than Harper.

“Am I supposed to join you?” Harper scowled.

Morwen smiled, she was incredibly pretty. Harper crossed her arms hard and glared brutally.

“As I said, time is expensive,” Morwen said. “And with your purchase, you need to be instructed in how I like to be served.”

“I’m not a lesbian,” Harper shook her head. She turned to leave. She hadn’t closed the door behind her, but it was closed when she looked. Harper marched over and pulled the handle. The door was locked fast.

“When I choose for you to be a lesbian, you will be,” Morwen said, walking naked down into the bath, showing Harper there were steps to access. “Right now, I just want you to be clean.”

Harper tried to use her heat vision to carve Morwen into charred cubes. She felt impotent as she arrived at the edge of the tub. No clothes on. No fiery death beams blasting out of her eyes.

Harper shivered. She hated this more than she was willing to show. She had hated the change room at school. She hadn’t taken phys ed in high school because she was done with freaking out waiting for the girls who looked like Morwen to say something gross to her.

Morwen wasn’t winning this round though. Harper sneered and asked: “Where’s the soap and shampoo?”

Morwen crossed the pool to the opposite end. It was just deeper than her navel in the middle. She held up a green plastic bottle of body wash and put it down next to a spread of others.

The cells had looked like a bunker from World War Two. The hallways had been an old castle. The bath was like some rich palace from when people wore white powdered wigs and fought with muskets. The bottles and soaps could’ve come out of the supermarket twenty minutes from Harper’s house.

“When are we?” Harper asked.

Morwen laughed and smiled. She had to be pretty when she was naked too? Even with the makeup washed from her eyes and lips? And there was nothing to use as a weapon.

“Time only goes in one direction, Harper,” Morwen said, as Harper flinched, putting her toe in the hot water. “It’s the same time for you as it is for everyone you love.”

“For me? But not for you?”

“Hurry up and show some backbone,” Morwen said. “The water’s not that hot. We have a long day ahead of us.”

Zita couldn’t mimic the beautiful bright smile and invincible confidence Lilith was showing. Zita felt all of that on the inside. On the outside, she was angry. Lilith was just seeing Richie as a conquest.

He was a beautiful loving man. Not some gross guy to fuck once and wipe her hands clean with.

“I need to look at the good guys who’ve settled for not so great girls,” Lilith said. “Don’t tell Harper. Jesus, she’d kill me. But man, when a guy’s with someone like Harp, he learns to really handle a girl!”

Zita scowled. “Then why’d he kick us out?”

“You heard his mom screaming?” Lilith said. “I think he wanted to avoid the ‘Me and Harper are having an open relationship’ talk.”

“But--”

“And I sure as shit didn’t want to have the ‘Oh my god! There’s a fucking rat in my kitchen!’” Lilith giggled after her poor impression of Mrs Jackson. “Rats. Ew.”

“They’re supposed to make good pets.” Zita didn’t know why she was defending the situation. “They’re smart and friendly. Like to play.”

“Yeah, those are ones bred for pets. Not gross sewer rats,” Lilith said, shuddering. She stopped and grabbed Zita’s face. Lilith turned Zita left and right. “Let’s go to your place.”

“Why?”

“We gotta get rid of Perla,” Lilith said. “You need to pick out better clothes for next time you go over. Plus your mom’s cooking is better than mine.”

“Then why is your sister the fat one?” Zita snarled and then rushed to catch up with Lilith who had already headed out for Zita’s.

Flo locked the dining room, her shift nearly over once the overnights got their breaks over with. Her fingers shook, she hadn’t been this horny since she had lost her virginity. That spring semester of grade 10 had basically been a fog of orgasms. Her heart was pounding now.

She saw Richie if she closed her eyes.

She practically didn’t blink.

She was worried. If he had been working tonight, would she have dragged him to the storeroom? There was a blindspot of the cameras between the sleeves of drink tops and the boxes of concentrated pop syrup.

From the cameras, but not the traffic in the restaurant. She took a heavy breath. She remembered that night she had left her son alone at her house. Three cars. So many pretty girls. Oksana.

The little lesbian was enthralled by Richie. What had happened? Was there some sort of nympho plague spreading from him? But he hadn’t followed Oksana had he? No, he and that little redhead had driven away down route 4.

She blinked. She had been standing still at the dining room doors, zoned out, for almost a full minute. She clacked her teeth, hoping to shake the cobwebs free in her mind. She turned and headed by the bathrooms, clicked the code into the door, and headed around the back.

“Hey, how’re you holding up?” she asked, smiling at the new hire... “Pablo?” She was happy she got it without looking at his nametag.

“It’s not so bad,” he answered, throwing the wrapped Whopper down the slide under the heat lamps. “People don’t suck.”

“It’ll be even better tomorrow,” she said, absently letting her mind wander again to Richie.

“Because Oksana’s off tomorrow?” Jimmy laughed.

“Can’t be,” Pablo said.

“I feel you, buddy. Cool your jets though. She’s into girls,” Jimmy warned.

“What a great starting point, we have that in common,” Pablo said, grinning.

“Keep that talk off the floor,” Flo said, shaking her head. “Anyway, Pablo, I hope you don’t mind that I scheduled you last for your break,” Flo said, washing her hands after having tied on an apron. She didn’t often work the back end, but Pablo hadn’t yet been trained at the fry station. She walked up to say: “Hey, you can clock out now, Jimmy.”

“Cool beans,” he said. “See you in thirty!”

He waved and headed out front to a register to clock out. The chatter immediately started in everyone’s headset. Flo dropped a basket of onion rings. It was a Thursday night. She was hoping for a rush. Work would keep her mind working.

It did pick up, until Jimmy returned. Flo smiled and headed to the front window where Oksana was running out orders to the cars.

“Soon as you get a moment to breathe,” Flo said.

“Yeah,” Oksana said, with her work smile. “Breathing’s good.”

They traded places, with five cars still backed up behind the order box. Oksana headed to the back. No more cars filled up the line. Flo was soon alone with her thoughts. She had the headset on, she’d know if she was needed.

She rushed to the back.