The Mirrorverse
Chapter 52

Ellie

Finally, it was light, but all Ellie could see was grey walls and a smeared pile of vomit. She decided to do something about the vomit, taking her now dry top and using it as a cloth. She was going to keep it in-case of a drop in temperature, but the smell was overwhelming her in the sensory deprived cell.

She wrapped the puke in the top, preparing to throw it as far through the window as she could. She thought perhaps the smell might attract birds to eat it. It hit the bars and splattered everywhere, providing the only air source into the cell with ample putridity to sustain it for the duration of her stay, however long it was unlikely to be. Ellie figured she was going to die sooner or later, she couldn’t work out why she wasn’t dead already.

Ellie must have fallen asleep at some point, as the last she remembered it was dark and she was still talking with Viskra. Blinking away the cobwebs of her impending insanity, she stretched long and hard, before tending to sores on her ankle from banging the fetter against the floor. Trust her jeans to have ridden up her long legs while trying to break it. Jeans are never long enough, she thought miserably, before deciding it was the least of her problems. She didn’t think there wasn’t likely to be time for sores to go septic.

Ellie realised there was a new problem, a much bigger problem than the sores, the lack of light, the smell of puke, or the impending doom. She needed the toilet.

Could have at least provided a bucket, she thought, desperately looking around to see if she had missed anything. The more she thought about it, the more the weight of her bladder pressed down on her internal organs.

She made a guttural sound at the wall, their signal to ensure they were both alone before commencing conversation. They had decided it would impair Viskra’s chance of obtaining freedom if they found out that he knew Ellie was being held as well.

“Hey,” Viskra’s voice floated back. Her whole body sank with the relief that she hadn’t just hallucinated her only grip on sanity, he was still there.

“How do you, you know, go to the loo?” she asked, wondering why on earth she was mincing her words at a time like that.

“Loo?” Viskra asked. “Oh, you mean the lavvy, I’ve got a bucket, don’t you?”

“Nope. Looks like I have to piss on the floor,” she grimaced, wondering how long before she had no choice.

“Wonder why you don’t get one, ah, you might throw it,” he realised, laughing. It wasn’t the first time she had heard him laugh, they had overcome severe adversity to create humour for some of the previous night.

“There’s no question that a piss filled bucket would make excellent ammunition,” she agreed.

“Let’s just hope he lands in it when he arrives,” Viskra laughed again. Eli joined in but it made her need the toilet even more.

“I’m going to have to piss on the floor,” she moaned. “Hope the damned floor is level.”

At that moment Brian appeared out of thin air in front of her. She coughed to indicate to Viskra that she had company, and that conversation should cease.

“How’s my favourite little inmate doing?” sneered Brian, his top lip rising revealing his perfect white teeth, looking like something out of a bad horror movie.

“Fuck you.”

“We’ve already been over that...” he started before she cut in.

“Don’t know why you needed to fuck me when you’ve got Steve’s dick stuck up your arse so far it’ll need surgical removal!” her voice was mocking, but slightly unstable.

“Oh aren’t we feisty today?” he jeered, keeping well out of reach. “Won’t be quite so bolshy when you find out about your pathetic little friends.”

“Well, in that case you ain’t the psychic you think you are,” she jeered back. Already knowing her friends were dead and hearing it were two different things but she wasn’t going to display any emotion over his words, she could die inside but would continue mocking him until the end.

“I don’t need to be a psychic, I was a psychiatrist you know. I know more about you than you know about yourself, and I know what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours,” he sneered, moving his head towards her only fractionally, for fear it was going to get clobbered. “You can maintain the façade all you like, but remember, I know how scared you are, and we both know how much I’m enjoying that.”

Ellie didn’t want to ask about them, her friends, she didn’t want to know. She knew that sociopaths were pathological liars, leaving her with no way of gleaning fact from fiction. She held back the part of her, which was in all honesty the majority of her, that wanted to ask anyway. It’s what that monster wanted, and he wasn’t getting it.

Sociopaths are control freaks, and this freak already had almost ultimate control of her in that cell, but he wasn’t getting control of her mind and she wasn’t going to play into his blood stained hands.

“How do you know I wasn’t already suicidal, how do you know that death isn’t what I was looking for?” she taunted, skipping around half truths to play her own game.

“Are you ready to die?” it was a menacing comment rather than a question.

“Are you?” she replied simply, knowing one day someone, somewhere would get the better of him. That was her only comfort, and picturing an axe embedded in his skull caused her to giggle out loud. It came out like a sort of strained gargle crossed with a hyena’s cackle, making her laugh more, further extending and amplifying the sound.

“More to the point, are you ready to have to watch where you land? I have needs you know,” she jutted out her chin sideways to appear at least a little psychotic. Playing broken little girl just wasn’t going to work for her. Ellie bent her face forwards, looking through her eyebrows at him, mimicking psychopaths that she had worked with at St. Lukes.

He looked at her for a moment before the penny dropped.

“Oh, William’s got one on the way. Be a nice little lady or it will be taken away, and you will forfeit any food also.”

Ellie would have liked to tell him to stuff it but her stomach decided to do a double somersault at that precise moment. Nice one body.

“Be speaking to you later, and wow, I just can’t wait for your moment to come.” And then he was gone.

Ellie indicated to Viskra that she was alone, and he responded.

“That. Was. Amazing!” He cackled. “It’s as much as I could do to stop laughing out loud at the things you say to him, I would never dare!”

“Yeah, guess that’s why you get to piss in a receptacle,” she groaned, bending double.

In a flash she was coughing and an entire portable chemical toilet had appeared out of nowhere, the kind you find in camper vans and boats.

“I totally understand if you want to throw it at Brecht, but you will then starve and live in your own shit. Your choice,” she was informed by the disembodied head of Steve or William or whatever he was calling himself at that moment.

“Oh, here’s some toilet roll and I’ll bring you food in a bit, enjoy!” then his head was gone, leaving her alone with this white plastic contraption that couldn’t have looked more out of place in the stone cell than a lion in the Arctic.

Without hesitation, Ellie grabbed the loo roll and jumped on the loo, sighing with sheer satisfaction. Unfortunately, it suddenly occurred to her that Viskra could hear everything that was going on. Then she decided that she really couldn’t give a monkey’s arse anyway.

She pushed the toilet away, deciding that no matter how much she wanted to throw it at Brian, she was not going to. She liked it too much.

On a strange high, she decided to go out with a bang and get her body fit first. She got herself into press-up position and managed a whole six before collapsing on the ground.

“Well that’s not much use is it,” she complained.

“Dare I ask?” Viskra’s voice floated through the apparently dense wall, sounding slightly tentative.

“Press-ups.” she replied perkily. “Decided to get fit before I die.”

“Oh, I was worried, thought you’d fell down the, what did you call it? Loo?”

Their laughter was cut short as they both coughed at the same time.

Ellie held her hands up, attempting a defiant look which was somewhat marred by the prevailing merriment that had carried through into Brian’s disgusting presence.

Just that look on confusion on his face, that was worth a million pounds. Mister knew everything, thought he’d sussed her out was lost, but had no idea who she was after all. Whatever he had expected upon entering the cell, a slightly deranged looking woman with hair everywhere and a half grin that wasn’t subsiding wasn’t it.

He put her food on the ground, stuck his fingers in it and tasted some to show his domination over her, before placing a plastic water cup next to it.

The second he left she tucked in, it felt like forever since she had eaten. She didn’t know how long the rotation of the planet she was on lasted, so the night could have been ten hours or twenty. It felt more like the latter.

As she was gulping down the water Viskra coughed. It was a specific cough, not to be mistaken for inhaling food.

“Thank goodness neither of them spoke, I don’t know if they’ve ever had people in both cells, so might not know about the leaky wall,” surmised Viskra.

“You know what? I don’t think we’re the first. That dickhead that just brought you your breakfast? I assume it was William or Steve or whatever the hell he’s called. Let’s stick with Turd-burger,” enthused Ellie, animated again.

“Yes, it was William,” Viskra replied.

“You realise he’s over two hundred years old. Or so he says. I wonder how many people they’ve left in here over the years?” she looked around again, like she was going to see something new, but it was the same as it had been a moment before, although with significantly less food on the plate.

“Well, at least they clean up the bones, rotting flesh would be most off putting.”

“Hey, maybe they alternate dogs with humans. Would be a royal feast for a canine,” Ellie envisaged a hell hound tearing flesh off her bones. What nice thoughts she was having in her final what? Hours? Days? She hoped not years. She thought of Joe and his umpteen years in the ogre’s hut. She didn’t know how he could come out sane, and she had a whole load of renewed respect for the old man. That was before she remembered the mass genocides he committed first.

“Wonder where they’ll shit it out, there could be bits of us in some nice park somewhere.”

It was the first time Viskra had admitted his own mortality in their wreck of a situation. He had been holding steadfastly to the notion that he was going to get out of there alive.

“Come on, you’ll be off living it up with your dad while I’m being shat out in Hyde Park. Cast a sideways at any dogs you see though, they could have had an Ellie dinner!”

Ellie wasn’t not quite sure how their conversations had arrived at that level of ironic deformation of their situation, but it sure did pass the time. Laughing when anyone else in their situation would be broken was the biggest rebellion they could muster against their captors. They could take their bodies, but they couldn’t take their minds.

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