Viola

I was six years old when he took me. A little girl. I had blond hair, blue eyes, and I was small for my age. I could read and write and play the piano before I was even five - I was very smart. Dad called me 'gifted'. They let me skip a class in school (Penny's Private School for Girls - I loved the name), so I was the youngest in my class. My teacher, Miss Andrea, was so pretty, like a princess. She had red curls and green eyes, and she was always nice to everyone. She called me ‘Viola’, her special name for me. My real name was Violet Rhimes. Mom, dad, my little baby brother Vincent and me lived in a big house, with a big garden. I had my own room, it was pink and purple and red and I had a canopy bed. And I had lots of books and a huge doll house, with tiny little people living it and tiny little furniture where they could sit on. Dad would help me with my homewerk, sitting at my very own (pink) desk, I could do it alone but I never told him. He was handsome, like a prince. I dreamed that one day I would marry someone who would look like my dad. Every night, mom would tuck me in and read me a story and sometimes two.

The man who took me, worked at my school. He cleaned the floors, and he was very big and ugly. The older girls laughed at him but I was scared of him. He looked mean. On a sunny day in May, I was waiting alone, just outside the school, for my dad. He would pick me up today, but he was late and everyone had gone home. I saw him walking over. He was wearing green overalls and dirty shoes, and a black base-ball cap. He was dangerous. ‘A bad man’. Mom always warned me, to look out for ‘bad men’ who took little children. And if I saw a bad man, I should run away and get an adult or the police. I started running towards the door – maybe twenty steps away - but I tripped and fell. he picked me up and put something over my mouth, it smelled really bad. And then - darkness.

My dad arrived maybe three minutes later. He called the police when he didn't found me. The police found nothing, and there were no witnesses. Not one student, or teacher, had seen or heard anything. Greg Neill, the school’s care-taker –the man who took me- was a suspect first. Around the time I went missing, he claimed to have been at home, a ten minute drive from the school. He had been cleaning because his mother would visit him that evening. His mother confirmed ; she had arrived at Neill’s house around five-thirty. Thirty minutes after I went missing. They searched Neill’s small, two-bedroom house, and his car, and found nothing. Neill was thirty-seven, had been working for Penny’s Private School for Girls for the last ten years, had no criminal record. Not even a speeding ticket. The police missed one thing : Neill's other car. One, his old but reliable and well-maintained Volkswagen, the police had searched. It was clean and empty. And the other was a nearly new pick-up truck, with stolen license-plates, parked three streets away from Neill's house, and with one of my pink gym shoes right under the driver's seat. The police never found or searched that car, and one week later it was gone. So, with no evidence, there was no trial for Neill and he kept working in Penny's Private School. There were no other suspects, no other leads. After a year, I was presumed dead and the police closed another unsolved missing-child case. My teacher, Miss Andrea, never forgot about me, her special student 'Viola', a little blond-haired, blue-eyed girl - she quit teaching, got married and named her first-born daughter Violet. Miss Andrea started the 'Viola Foundation', for parents of missing children. My dad took his own life on June 2 (my birthday). Mom moved to a smaller house with three-year old Vincent, and re-married two years later, with a police-officer. And every time, when she got a call, or heard the doorbell - she hoped that it would be her lost daughter, finally back home.

And all the while, I was alive. I'm still alive, after all those years. Eight? Ten? It feels like more. It feels like forever. I have changed a lot. My hair is very long, and is almost brown now. My eyes are still the same deep-blue. I've grown too. I have breasts and curves now, and every month I lose a little blood. I almost can't remember being a little girl anymore, the scared little girl Neill locked away in here. Like a princess in a tower, but my prince still didn't come to save me. I have a warm bed, clothes, books, even a television (no cable, but I can watch videos). The floor is bare concrete and the walls rough bricks. I have a small electric heater for when it's cold at night, and most of the time I have warm water (but the bathroom's really dirty, no matter how much I clean it). All the windows are bricked up and the front door is made of heavy steel. I haven't seen the sun or the moon since I was little. Night is when I sleep, day is when I'm awake, but I have no idea of it's dark outside when I sleep or not. In every corner of the building, hangs a big camera. Neill drops off bags of food every week. Sometimes I'm asleep. But he leaves me alone when I'm awake. He doesn't say anything. He just looks. I have a small fridge, a microwave and a coffeemachine. If I need something, I write it down and sometimes Neill brings it for me. When he feels like it, or when I deserve it. He likes to watch me dance. I always get what I want after a dance. Almost anything - I wrote 'freedom' once, but that's something I will never have again.

Carol was a new teacher at Penny's Private School for Girls, just twenty-two years old. Red hair, pretty face, long legs, small and high breasts. He had followed her home one day, and watched through a window as she undressed. It would be two months until someone at school would miss her. She didn't have a boyfriend. She always rejected him, even laughed at him. Wasn't he good enough for her? When he tied her up, she started crying. She could give him a chance, she would try. Please let me go, she begged. He didn't believe her. Neill told her, it was her own fault, that she was in this mess now. If he let her go, if he would believe her, she would run straight to the police. And then they would find his other secret too. He wasn't stupid, no. The only woman that ever loved him, was his mother and even she left him - cancer, two years ago. And Violet hated him. She didn't care. Not anymore. There was pure hate in her blue eyes. She let him watch, when she undressed, showered, danced, ate. He sometimes felt like her prisoner, instead of the other way round. She used to be scared. Used to cry every night. She never cried anymore. She was twenty now, not longer an innocent little girl. Fourteen years she had been locked up in there. Like the princess in the tower. Carol was pretty, but Violet was beautiful. Carol could keep her company. He would die alone, but they would die together. He would never let them out. Never.

When I wake up, Carol's there. She's unconscious. Her dress is torn in places, she's bare-footed and her feet are dirty. She has bruises on her arms and legs. Her face is covered in blood. I think she's had a nose-bleed. I put a blanket over her, and I go make breakfast and coffee. She wakes up some time later, when I'm drinking coffee and looking at her. "Where am I?" she asks, sitting up. "I don't know. Neill took me here when I was little. There are no windows. Didn't you see anything when he brought you here?" "No, I was... I think he drugged me or something. I'm Carol," she says. "Violet. Want some coffee?" So we sit together and drink coffee. "Violet? Are you Violet Rhimes?" she asks. "I work at Penny's Private School and there's a picture of a little girl, Violet, who's gone missing fourteen years ago." Fourteen years?! I can't believe that I've been here just fourteen years. Feels like longer. "I'm that Violet," I say. "Poor girl," Carol whispers and starts crying. Maybe she realizes she won't be out here in two days. Maybe she realizes, that she will die here. I put my arms around her and start crying too. And we don't know it, but Neill's watching. And he's happy, his Violet started caring again.

I'm happy Carol's here. Maybe that's bad, and I don't want her to be here, but still, I'm happy. We sleep together, eat together, shower together. We keep touching each other. We almost never stop talking. When Neill comes in, we hide under the bed and hold each other. Carol's holding on to me, as if I'm a life buoy. If she lets go, she will drown. One night (when we're in bed it's night for us) she kisses me. She tastes like... Outside. Freedom. Sun. Everything I've missed for so long. And I kiss her back and she kisses me and kisses me, and then... For the first time ever, I climax. And I fall asleep in her arms.

And in our last remaining days, we undress, and kiss and make love. When she comes, she bites her lip and throws her head back. Her eyes are so brown, they're almost black. When she cries I lick her tears away. I bite her nipples to taste her blood. She puts her tongue deep inside me, and I come and come and come until I scream. Neill's watching but we don't care, we don't care. We whisper, in each other's ears : we will get out of here. And we will buy a white house, on a green hill, and make love in the grass with the sun high above us. When he comes in again, we will kill him. And we do. It's Carol who kills him. Or maybe he's still alive. She hit him hard with a chair and then we ran, ran far away. Outside again, with the sun and fresh air.

And now, later, much later - we're on that green hill, our white house behind us. And Carol's in the grass, naked, beautiful, her red hair all around her and she's smiling. Holds out her arms to me and I lie on top of her. When she climaxes, she whispers... 'Viola' into my ear.