Broken

• Chapter 39 •

- AURORA -

"Minty..."

My heart sinks when I find an empty room. I call out to her again, but there's no response. I rush to her bathroom and flick the lights on, empty. I rush back out to the living room, head to my forehead. My heart is pulsating so hard it's going to explode.

"Brandon, she's not in her room," my voice is shaky and uneven.

Brandon looks up from his book with a frown, "What do you mean?"

"I MEAN SHE'S NOT IN HER FUCKING ROOM!" I snap, panic begins settling inside me. Where could she have gone?

I glance down to the basement and my heart sinks, my skin pales. "Would you check the basement?" I ask Brandon.

He gives me a concerned look and nods, making his way down to the basement. He calls out her name a few times, but he doesn't get a response, either. He climbs back up the stairs and shakes his head.

"She's not there," he shrugs.

"Did you check the kitchen?" I hiss.

He shakes his head no and I find my legs trudging down the stairs and into the secondary kitchen. My heart sinks as the lights blink open to an empty, dusty, eerie kitchen. My mind travels back years ago.

The first thing I notice when I wake up is my soreness. The pounding in my head is difficult to ignore, but my abdominal burns, as though I've been jerked around and beaten up. I squint as a bright fluorescent white light burns through my vision. Am I dead?

I am slouching in a chair and I hazily sit up, trying to rub my head. I'm stopped from doing so when I realize my hands are duct taped to the chair. I look up and my heart nearly fails me when I see a naked Sugar hanging upside down, a rope attached from her ankles to the rail above.

Her arms are free and her hands hang within two feet of the floor. Her eyes and mouth are wide open, but she gives me no indication that she sees me. A needle attached to a plastic pipe of a drip is taped onto her left arm. The drip bag hangs from a metal frame, allowing whatever it is that's in there to seep slowly and continuously into her system.

On the kitchen floor beneath her is stretched an expanse of clear plastic sheeting. What has he done to her? I avert my attention to my right where many butcher knives are laid out neatly on the counter. How long have I been out? It must have taken him at least an hour to do all of this.

"Looks like a work of art, doesn't it?"

I snap my head to the left where Derek emerges from the shadows, wiping his hands off with a red cloth. His face is gaunter than ever and the dark shadows beneath his eyes give him a skeletal look.

But those eyes: they shine in the semi-darkness like black jewels. As my eyes grow more accustomed to the light, I see that his irises have almost disappeared. His pupils are large and dark and feed greedily on the light surrounding us.

"What did you do to her?"

He smiles then, a bleak, empty smile that drifts across his face like snow. "Just gave her some ketamine, nothing serious," he shrugs carelessly.

"Tell me. What did you think would be the outcome of this? Hm? You tell someone, and then what? What proof does that person have to show other than words?" he begins circling me.

"You think you can get the footage from these cameras, don't you?" he stops in front of me, an amused smile on his face.

"I hate to break it to you, pumpkin. But those cameras are hooked up to one monitor and one monitor only. And you will never find it, so you can stop trying. Am I truly that bad? That you would want to turn me into the cops? Aurora, I'm hurt," he pouts his lip.