25

25


EVADNE

If hell threw a party, it would look exactly like this.

The halls of Moretti’s estate had been transformed overnight. The velvet curtains were all drawn back, chandeliers blazing gold light across walls that usually smelled of damp stone and smoke. Now, the air buzzed with all kinds of perfumes, both the bad and good, the luxurious and cheap ones, liquor, and sweat.

It was supposed to be a normal night, like every other nights, where she'll stay awake for long doing anything and everything, cleaning the room, fixing the sheets, cleaning all the nooks and crannies, anything, anything to stop her from relaxing into her thoughts or having those nightmare, and if there was anything she learnt from middle school it was the fun fact that having your brain knock you out is one of the ways to not have nightmares. So she stayed awake until her brain knocks her out. But she was wrong, it wasn't like every other night.

All the dolls was everything but asleep. Taking a shower when they should be in bed, humming to themselves in the mirror whole half of them did their make-up and the other half retch from the realization of what was about to happen, and she had no idea what that was.

Half the guards had stripped off their uniforms, trading them for shirts, some shorts and cigars clamped between their teeth. Almost every worker under Moretti looked more of a clubber than a worker.
After long preparation we were lined up before the door opened. Lissa’s heels clicked along the marble as she walked past us, clipboard in hand, assessing us like we were auction pieces.

“Bracelets,” she called out. “Everyone knows what color means what.”

Kylie had already filled me in on what they usually wore before I came. The accessories, the rules, places off limits and people to Ignore.

Having a green bracelet meant you're for the general, it's a more demeaning way to call someone a whore.

Anybody could do what they want with and to you and you'd have no fight or company, both the small and the big, the old and the young everyone. You could get fucked by a freaking fifteen year old if they were allowed in.
These were all alarming but I'm sure to some of the Dolls it's a matter of hierarchy, who's more treasured, who Moretti finds important...

The thought made me sick.
But there's nothing much one could do about it than wish better for themselves.

I really don't care which class I get pushed in but death valley will freeze over before I let someone touch me.

Gold bracelets meant property of high rank, all dolls with it will only answer to men Moretti consider men. Men of power, men of high caliber, men at his side of the heriarchy. These dolls are to please them, no one else.

And black...black bracelets meant off limits. Whoever has it is only expected to serve drinks and dance and whatever else they do in there that isn't sex. It's the top on the heriarchy. A stamped and signed property of Moretti.

According to Kylie, Nicole got to wear one in the last poker night and that might've been the one thing that fueled her desire to be at the top. Since the announcement to start preparing early this morning, she's been giddy and I knew it's because she thought she'd get to wear it again, and so did Nora.

Guards stood by a table, where the thin bands of silk and metallay waiting. One by one, girls stepped forward to get theirs. Some looked proud, others terrified. I stayed at the back of the line, pretending to adjust my sleeve. I didn’t care as long as no one gets in my way. I've endured to much to be tossed and fucked around like a tramp.

When my turn came, Lissa was already being called away by one of the men in suits. She turned her head toward me once, frowned as if trying to remember where she’d seen me, and then walked off.

“Next,” one of the guards barked.

But no one moved to hand me a bracelet.

“Which color’s she?” another asked.

The guard shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe she’s new.”

“Let Lissa know. She'll find her inside,” someone else muttered, already grabbing the next girl.

And just like that, I was shoved forward without a bracelet. The odd one out, I didn't know if I should be terrified or relieved. Who knows, maybe green was what I could've gotten.

For a second, I considered calling out, saying something like, Hey, maybe you I should have wait for Lissa out here? But then I saw how the guards’ eyes stayed a little longer on the girls without bracelets. Like wolves spotting a limping deer.

So I stayed silent.

Moretti wasn't in sight when the music kicked in, it was loud enough to drown out the sound of thought. The main hall had been turned into something that didn’t belong in a house at all more like a nightclub, second time here and so far the impression was still the same. There were flashing lights, trays of expensive liquor, card tables, and more extra tables with few of the first dolls who were allowed in before me on them getting railed by both sober and drunk men.

The green dolls were like rewards to the workers, and it took everything in me not.tp retch.

The other dolls moved through the crowd like wind-up toys, smiling, bending over, pouring drinks, pretending they didn’t hear the jokes whispered into their ears or the attempt to grab their ass but couldn't because those ones were for Moretti's men and women.
The bracelets glimmered under the lights so many of greens, gold weren't that much, and I only saw black once on some girl I've never seen on my life and I felt naked without one.

I picked and balanced a tray of glasses on my hands and began to move slowly around making sure my wrists were less visible.