A few silent beats pass before he whispers the question he has asked her many times over:
“Are you my sweet little girl, Vanilla?”
She removes the lollipop from her mouth and answers as she always does:
“Yes, Daddy!”
“Good.”
She sleeps.
As her daddy slowly rises to leave her, the pipes creak and groan behind the thick layers of concrete, though their sounds are not loud enough to be heard by innocent ears. They carry with them, through the rusty slides that traverse the building, the thick concoction of blood and chemicals that have been poured down their drains by the Devil calling himself Daddy. The pipes drink it in—they will drink anything in—and flush the liquid through the pull of gravity until their contents are deposited into the sewage system, relieving the pipes of their aching and swelling.
It has been some time since they have visited the girl’s room and stopped to say hello. It has been some time since they’ve paused to watch her, leaving her a present, a seed of their brown water concoction that would expand into the stains she so loves. It has been some time and they have found interest in other rooms, leaving their kiss of blood-filled stains in parts unreachable to her.
CHAPTER II
She had fallen asleep without being conscious of it. She dreamt of playing with her stuffed blue dog, sitting in the middle of her room with the dim lightbulb dangling just above her head, that sterile white flicker spreading a sore itch across her skin even in her dreams. She had just picked up the syringe after hearing no thumping when there came a scratching against the metal door. She looked up and called for her daddy, thinking he was the one causing the noise from behind the door. Thinking he was standing there, teasing the signal to his entrance. Just come in already, Daddy! But his comforting voice was not what answered. Instead, the scratch grew louder and louder until it became a blood-curdling screech, as if something were viciously digging, engraving tortured marks as it peeled away silver ribbons of metal. Then it became pounding. Desperate pounding and distorted screams like something needed urgently to get inside. To get inside and get to her. She screamed for her daddy, but the pounding only grew worse and worse until she thought the door might burst open.
Don’t come in, don’t come in, DON’T COME IN! STAY OUTSIDE!
She jerks awake, her eyes wide in horror, aimed directly at the entrance. But there is no pounding. Not anymore.
Just a dream? she wonders. She stares vacantly around the room, caught in a trance between two worlds, her mind struggling to make sense of just one.
As her senses reassemble into reality, clicking back together like puzzle pieces until there is a solid picture of gray, they pick up the delicate sound of scratching struggling to be heard from the wall behind her. This time the scratching is real, but her skin does not pucker.