The door opened for God knows after how long and Victoria scrambled to stand up on the side of the bed.
It was the woman who had previously tortured the boy next to her. She entered the room like a goddess before standing in the middle of the room and eyeing Victoria.
"Leah?" She called out.
"Uh no," Victoria quickly shook her head, "I'm Victoria. I was kidnapped with Leah but I'm not Leah—"
The woman gently raised two fingers in the air before whispering, "Shh."
Victoria clamped her lips together as hard as she could. Not even a squeak was going to leave her lips now.
"You are going to be Leah Adams for me." The woman pointed at Victoria. "I don't care who you were when you came in, but you are going to be that girl until I want you to be. Is that understood?"
"Uhh.." she wanted to shake her head and deny the command issued but her body froze in front of the woman who had been just cruel and who, Victoria knew, would not think twice to hurt her.
"I.."
"for your dark hair, I will be sending in a stylist who will colour your hair blonde." The woman lazily walked towards Victoria, like she was the Queen and owned the air that Victoria breathed. "And do not make me remind you again, you will not utter a word in front of the stylist. Understood?"
She nodded her head, once, twice, as many times as the cruel woman wanted.
*****
Victoria winced at the amount of times her hair was being pulled from the roots. With the way the woman dressed, Victoria had hoped that she would choose a stylist that would know what she was doing but alas, she got the first one she found and this one knew nothing.
There was the smell of bleach heavy in the air and she could almost feel something burning.
Maybe, it was her scalp but at this point she was not sure.
She wrapped some kind of plastic film over her head covering most of her hair before settling down on the bed and continuing with the annoying smacking of her lips as she continued to chew gum.
If Victoria was not in the situation, she was going to smack the woman.
"So?" The woman looked up from her phone. "You rebellin'?"
Victoria's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she shook her head. "No."
"Then why the hell are you going blonde?" She spat with irritation visible on her face. "Do you even know how much effort it takes?"
The words were on the tip of her tongue but she held them in.
It was obvious that anything she said to the stylist would end up in the years of that woman and she might kill her. So, Victoria had to tread carefully.
from her mirror, her eyes went to where the stylist was sitting and what was beside her feet.
Her bag.
"Um.." she gulped again, "do you have antibiotics?"
"Antibiotics?" The woman repeated, finally looking away from her phone. " why? You in pain?"
Wasn't that obvious? Victoria wanted to hold her eyes but refrained from doing so.
"Yeah. But I can't eat it now cause I haven't really eaten anything since morning." She shrugged carelessly, trying her best to make the woman buy it.
"Kids these days," the Woman murdered under her breath but reached for her bag and pulled out a leaf of it. "How many?"
"Two?"
"Here," she cut four and handed it to her. "I'm giving you four and make sure you eat it after eating somethin—" her words her cut off by her phone that beeped continuously and she got up, "time's up for the bleach."
******
Blonde.
Victoria was blonde. From having thick, black mane she had gone to rough, yellow colour hair that she hated.
"Ah, you're done." The woman appeared behind her and stared at her yellow hair before nodding.
She moved one of her hands to the front from behind her back and Victoria flinched.
Unaffected, the woman placed a plastic bag on the dirty vanity table. "Food for you. It should be enough."
Food?
The smell wafted to her nose and her stomach grumbled. She licked her lips as her eyes remained on the bag as if it was going to slip away from her sight.
"Be a good girl and do as I say that you will be supported with more food than this." She patted the shoulder of the young girl. "I am leaving now and will be back tomorrow. Your job will begin tomorrow too."
As if those were the departing words, the woman turned around and left, not even bothering to close the door behind her.
Victoria's eyes still remained on the food that she was fearful of touching, as if it was a mirage. It was when she heard the screeching she got up and moved to the very, very small window.
She gasped as she watched the multiple cars lease from the driveway of the place they were staying in.
The woman had truly left and so had many people.