Phoenix: The Beauty in Between (A Beautiful Series Companion Novel) (16 page)

I should have
known this couldn’t last. Once again, I started to feel like I had
a home, and once again, it’s been taken away from me.

Tears roll from
my eyes as I continue to stare ahead. I don’t bother to wipe them.
I don’t bother to sniff, or blink them away. I just let them fall
as if it’s the last of my hope, slowly leaving my body. Never to
return.

The next day,
we spend our time together, taking every substance we have
available in the house. I guess in a way, we’re trying to blank out
what we know is about to come.

It doesn’t help
though. More than once, I hope that what I’m doing will make me
overdose so I don’t have to wake up on Monday morning. I mix every
drug we have. I can end this now. I can leave this world in a state
of bliss.

But when I open
my eyes, and see the sun streaming in through the windows, I
realise it’s Monday, and I’m not that lucky.

Like a lamb
being led to slaughter, I follow Braden up the front path of the
apartment building where Reggie lives and wait quietly while he
presses the intercom, and we get buzzed in.

As we stand in
the elevator on our way up to Reggie’s floor, I turn toward Braden.
“I hate you for this you know.”

I glare at him.
Anger radiates off me in sickening waves. I still can’t believe
that I’m in this situation. And worse still, neither of us had the
guts to try and get out of it. We’re just doing exactly as we’re
told.

“Sweetheart, I
hate me too.”

The doors ping
open, and we step out into the hall and straight up to Reggie’s
door.

Braden knocks
twice.

Dread winds its
way through my body, turning my stomach inside out as we wait. The
door is opened by a gorgeous looking woman with red hair and heavy
makeup. She looks like she’s about to go out somewhere but when she
opens the door, I see about four other women, and they’re all
dressed to the same standard.

Her pupils are
dilated as she looks me over, completely ignoring Braden as she
steps away from the door and goes to stand by Reggie.

“Right on
time,” he says from the dining area. He’s seated at a table
surrounded by small packages, boxes and a decent stash of cash as
well as some paper work.

He’s obviously
been conducting business.

He rises from
his chair and walks toward us, shakes Braden’s hand, and then hands
him a thick envelope.

“Thanks for
bringing her to me,” he says, patting him on the back in a
congratulatory fashion. “You can go now.”

I shoot Braden
a glance that I hope says ‘
Did he just pay you for me?!’
but
he won’t meet my eyes. My emotions threaten to get the better of me
as I watch Braden leave. What the hell just went down? Was this
supposed to happen all along?

My mind goes
crazy as I think about the care Braden took in dressing me for that
party on Saturday night. How important it was to him that I looked
good and got along with Reggie.

“Was this a set
up all along?” I blurt out.

The woman who
answered the door just laughs.

“Maxine, get
Paige here something to calm her down so she feels more at home,”
Reggie instructs her.

“My pleasure,”
she says.

“I don’t want
anything. I’m fine the way I am,” I protest. “Just tell me what’s
going on? What am I here for? Ah!” I cry out as a sharp stabbing
pain enters my thigh. I look down and see that Maxine has just
stabbed me with a needle. Pain radiates around the injection site,
as whatever it is she gives me seeps into my muscle tissue. “What
did you ju-“. I don’t even get to finish the sentence. Everything’s
gone black.

Reggie’s
‘girls’ are a group of drug dependent women. He provides them with
everything they could possibly want, in return for complete
complicity.

When he breaks
a new girl in, he’s careful not to let her high wear off too much
while he uses her body to suit his own purposes.

Reggie enjoys
watching his girls with each other, and sometimes with other
people. He also enjoys playing out sexual fetishes. I think he must
have some sort of playbook somewhere because he asks his girls to
do increasingly more difficult things. He seems to like testing
their loyalty because the moment one of them says
no
, he
stops giving her drugs.

The withdrawal
is excruciating, and the girl will do anything – anything to make
the pain stop.

I know this,
because I am now one of them. I’m currently experiencing the pain
that goes with withdrawal from whatever it is he’s been injecting
me with.

I have no idea
how much time has passed since Braden brought me here, but while I
writhe in pain, locked in a room on my own, time is moving slower
than a snail’s pace.

Eventually it’s
too much.

“Fine!” I
scream out. “I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want!”

“Party, Party,
Party!” Maxine sings, skipping along beside me as we follow Reggie
out to a waiting limo. “See, I told you if you were good, he’d
start to take you out,” she says quietly in my ear.

Out of all the
girls in the house, Maxine has become the closest one to me. It’s
not that we talk much, because we’re high most of the time. But we
have this quiet bond where we look out for each other. It’s what
you need in a situation like ours.

She took pity
on me early on in my stay, and coached me on how to behave so
Reggie favoured me. Basically, I have to act like I can’t think for
myself and say ‘yes’ to everything he asks.

It’s not my
favourite thing to do, but it makes my life easier, and has its
perks.

Such as
tonight. We’re dressed in designer outfits, with matching shoes and
handbags. To look at us, you would never guess that we were drug
whores. We look impeccable. The only difference between us and any
other woman who dresses the same, is that we can’t hold an
intelligent conversation. We’re simply too fucked up.

The three of us
huddle in the limo, with Maxine and I, seated either side of him as
he touches us, however he pleases.

“Hey Maxine,”
he says after a while. “Hand out the champagne. We need to
celebrate.”

She does as
she’s told and starts passing glasses out for us to hold.

“What are we
celebrating Reggie?” I ask, holding my glass out as Maxine fills
it.

“We’re going to
go and see a potential new girl.”

“Another one?”
Maxine whines. She’s only a little older than me at nineteen, and
has a tendency to pout like a child. But Reggie seems to like it,
she’s been his ‘best girl’ for the whole time I’ve been there.

Reggie squeezes
her knee, and kisses her neck fondly. “No one could replace you
Maxi, or you Paige,” he says turning to me. “You two are my
absolute best. I just want to make sure you don’t get bored. We
need someone new, to spice things up. You like new playmates too,
don’t you?”

“Of course we
do,” I smile, sipping at my champagne. There are already six of us,
living in a single room. It’s starting to get cramped. But what
Reggie wants, Reggie gets. And god help anyone who goes against
him.

We arrive at a
nightclub that I’ve never been to before. The way people are
looking at us as we exit the limo, you’d think we were celebrities.
Reggie wraps his arms around the both of us and walks us inside,
straight up to the VIP area.

He orders more
champagne and instructs Maxine and I to go and dance while he talks
‘business’ with some guy with dark slicked-back hair, who looks a
bit like a mobster in his pinstripe suit.

We move to a
vacant piece of floor, knowing that he wants to be able to see us,
and start to move together. I briefly wonder where the new girl is
while I move sensually against Maxine. If I was sober, I think I’d
feel foolish right now. A bit like a trained monkey, performing for
treats. But I’m not sober. I haven’t been sober since the day I
entered Reggie’s apartment.

It helps,
because when Maxine starts to kiss me, I just go with it. We’re
here to entertain him while he works. After a while, we’re joined
by a third girl. We allow her to dance and touch with us without
question. This is what Reggie does – he adds ‘more’ to whatever
we’re doing. He always wants more.

It isn’t long
before he has us all leaving again, with the new girl in tow. He
leads us to the waiting limo, grinning broadly after his fresh
purchase.

Once inside,
the privacy screens are up, and our designer clothes are shed as he
instructs us in his own version of a live show.

We do as we’re
told, including the new girl, despite the fact, we don’t even know
her name. I’d like to say that this was somehow fun, or perhaps
erotic in some way. But I can’t. I don’t feel anything anymore. I
simply do whatever he says.

It’s takes a
while, but I open my eyes and sit up on the bed. I’m one part of a
mass of bodies. Flashes from the night before flit through my mind.
There was a time when I woke from a night like that and felt cheap
and dirty, but that’s long gone. I don’t care enough to be upset
anymore. I’m numb.

“Look at
Paige!” a girl called Chelsea giggles, as she points at my naked
body. “She’s so skinny that she looks like one of those kids on
TV!”

I walk over to
her and grab at her face. “Shut the fuck up!”

“You’re just
jealous because Reggie likes me better than you. He’s not calling
you up as much anymore.”

Chelsea is
fairly new. She put up a huge fight when she got here, but now
she’s just like the rest of us. Completely dependent, and willing
to do anything he asks.

I grab a
fistful of her hair and pull back hard. “You’d better start eating
Paige or he’ll get bored with you and toss you out,” she laughs
defiantly.

I curl my lip
back and spit in her pretty face. The other girls in the room just
look on uncaring, or else they don’t even hear or see.

“You’re a bitch
Paige,” she says as she wipes off her face and gets up to leave the
room.

I roll my eyes
and reach for a silk robe and slip it on my frail body as I scan
the room. In the middle of the bed I can see a tuft of red hair
where Maxine is still lying, fast asleep.

“Hey Maxie,” I
call out to her, tying the sash at my waist as I walk back over to
the bed, intent on shaking her awake. But she doesn’t stir.
“Maxie,” I say again, louder this time.

“Oh shit,”
Jenny, the girl on the bed next to her says. When our eyes meet I
know it’s not good, the bottom of my stomach feels like it just
dropped out. “She’s cold.”

“No!” I shriek,
rushing to sit next to her. Everyone in the room scatters as I try
to lift and shake her. “Wake up damn it. Wake up!” I cry.

Her head rolls
from side to side as I shake her about, even though I know there’s
no point. Her skin is bone cold. Her lips are blue. There isn’t a
single piece of life left in her.

“Reggie!” I
screech.

He appears in
the doorway, followed by the other girls. He swears and calls me
over to him. Still clutching Maxine in my arms, I shake my head in
refusal.

“I said ‘come
here’!” he growls, as he walks over and grabs my hair before
dragging me out, and dumping me on the couch.

“Stay there,”
he commands, a finger pointed in my face like I’m a dog, before he
walks out of the room.

He speaks in
soft tones to some of the other men in the apartment. They’re his
security and our handlers. They do whatever he asks just like us
girls do, but they do it because he pays them.

One of them
walks over to me and grabs me around the waist, dragging me,
kicking and screaming to the ‘cool down’ room. I want to know what
they’re going to do with her. I want them to call an ambulance. I
want them to do something to help.

“Why am I in
here?!” I scream. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You’re
becoming a problem. Calm the hell down,” he tells me, as he shuts,
then locks the door.

I scream my
head off in there, but it makes no difference. The room is
completely sound proof.

I don’t know
how long I spend in the cool down room, but eventually my body is
kind enough to let me pass out. When I come to however, I’m not at
Reggie’s anymore. I’m somewhere else.

The stench of
the room is a mix of rotting garbage and human filth. I look
around, and I’m lying on a stained mattress laid on the floor of a
large room littered with other filthy mattresses, broken bits of
furniture and listless bodies.

There are a
group of people huddled in a corner, passing around a pipe, and I
wonder if I’m in a crack den. When I sit up, a sharp pain stabs
through my middle.

“Ow!” I cry
out, as the pain radiates around to my back and fiercely clenches
at my abdomen. I look around me, desperately looking for someone to
help me.

A person, or
maybe two, give me a cursory glance, but that’s about it. No one
really cares.

I force myself
to stand, and weave my way toward the door. I have no idea where I
am once I make it outside. The area I’m in looks industrial.
There’s nothing that looks familiar.

Clutching at my
stomach, I start to walk until I come to a petrol station. The
smell of the gasoline is strong in my nostrils as I stumble past
people standing by their cars, filling up their tanks.

I must look a
fright, as a woman gasps when she sees me and hisses at her kids to
look away.

When the
automatic glass doors open, I step through and freeze, as I feel a
burst of warmth seep between my legs. When I look down, there is a
dark stain spreading on my pants. Touching it, I look at my hand.
There’s bright red on my fingertips.