Miss Polly had a Dolly (Emma Frost #2) (18 page)

She had escaped
her prison
just to enter a new one. After blinding the
sweaty mafia boss at the brothel six months ago, Nina had thought she was going
to be killed by Nadja's many security guys that kept beating the girls up and
raping them as they pleased. But luck had been on her side on that terrifying
day.

When Nina had still been in the room and watched
with pleasure how the mafia boss squirmed on the floor in utter pain, she had
noticed a big knife attached to his ankle. She had pulled it out while the man
was still screaming. For a second she had considered killing him on the spot,
releasing him from his pain, but quickly she decided that would be letting him
off the hook too easily. She liked the idea of him having to go through life
without being able to see again, crippled and having to depend on the mercy of
others.

Nina smiled and steeled herself for what was
going to happen next. She placed herself right at the door opening so as soon
as it opened and Nadja stormed in to see what the screaming was all about, Nina
plunged the knife deep into her stomach. It took Nadja by such a surprise, she
hardly realized what had happened until it was too late. She fell to the
ground, blood spurting out of her mouth and stomach, coloring the floor red,
and landed next to the squirming mafia boss with a thud.

It was almost too easy
,
Nina thought as she pulled the knife out and stabbed Nadja again. Nina was a
little disappointed that she died so fast. She would have liked to see her
suffer, and she wanted to make sure she knew who had done this to her, who was
the cause of her suffering. But now it was too late. She was already dead. Nina
pulled the knife out of her chest and stabbed Nadja again and again. Nina was
panting and sweating now as she kept poking more holes in the already dead
woman. It was almost as if she couldn't stop. She wanted to keep stabbing her,
punishing her for all she had done. For all the years lost, for all the months
and days she had kept her in this place, for all the time she had held her
prisoner. For the many long merciless nights with one man after another.

Nina soon stopped herself. She had to get moving
if she was going to survive this. Quickly she cut Nadja's skirt open and found
the small gun she knew she had attached to her leg. She pulled it out, then
left the room holding it up in front of her. She ran down the hallway to
Nadja's room where she found clothes she could wear for her escape. Nina soon
heard voices and footsteps in the hallway and figured the guards had realized
what had happened. There was knocking on doors all the way down the hallway and
girls were screaming.

Usually Nina would be scared to death of these
sounds, but not anymore. Nina had nothing to lose now. She grabbed the gun and
went into the hallway. As soon as the first guard spotted her she lifted up the
gun and shot him between the eyes. His eyes rolled back and he fell backwards
on the wooden planks with a loud bump. Nina breathed heavily and closed her
eyes for just a second. She wanted to savor this moment of utter power, unlike
anything she had ever experienced in her young life. For once, she was the one
taking lives, she was the one deciding who was to live and who wasn't.

Another guard yelled and ran towards her.
That poor sucker
. He'd barely lifted his
gun before Nina had shot him in the face, killing him instantly. Then she
turned and as another guard lifted his gun with the intention of shooting her
in the back, she shot him as well. Then she bent down and grabbed one of the
guard's guns and started walking downstairs holding guns in both of her hands
feeling more powerful and alive than ever in her life.

If anything moved, she shot. There was no mercy,
she didn't stop and ask. Dressed in Nadja's expensive clothes she walked
through the hall downstairs that she had been in so many times dancing for the
dirty old men, glancing at the door in the distance with the exit sign above
it, dreaming for what was on the other side. Longing to be able to once again
walk outside and breathe in the fresh air. To be able to go wherever she wanted
to.

Nina took in a deep breath and didn't look back
before she grabbed the handle and turned the lock. She heard so much screaming
behind her as the door closed and she was finally,
finally
on the other side, the big mysterious outside,
standing in the street among ordinary people walking by the house of terror
that had kept her prisoner for years, like it was any other ordinary house that
they never cared about and never would.

A woman gasped and crossed the street when she
saw Nina with her guns and Nina realized that from now on it was all about
laying low. She put the guns in the pockets of the jacket, then started walking
along the street, not knowing what day or even what year it was. And worst of
all, without knowing where to go.

Nina walked for hours with the sole purpose of
getting as far away from the brothel as possible. But she wasn't wearing enough
clothes and soon she was freezing. She considered using the guns to rob a
convenience store or maybe just some poor sucker in the street, but the last
thing she wanted was to be found by the Polish police. She knew what happened
to women like her. They would rape her and sell her to a new pimp. That was
what the other girls at the brothel told her and she stuck to what she knew.

By the time it was getting dark, Nina found
herself outside of an old bakery looking in at all the food, feeling hunger
eating her up from the inside.

That was when a big black car drove up next to
her and the windows were rolled down. A man stuck his head out.

"How much?" he asked.

Nina swallowed hard to try and drown the little
pride she had left. She approached the window and looked in.

"Five hundred," she said with a small
voice.
Just enough to get me out of here
,
she thought and jumped inside the car as the door was opened. It was dangerous
to get into a car like this. She had heard many stories of women being abused
and tortured mercilessly by rich guys like this one, but Nina wasn't afraid of
him. She reached down and felt the guns in her pockets. No one could touch her
anymore.

The man brought her to his home, a beautiful
mansion outside of town where he kept her for days, paying her for every day he
wanted her to stay. Much to Nina's surprise, he didn't hurt her on the first
night and not on the second one, either. He wanted to do all the same stuff as
most of the other men, but he didn't beat her afterwards or threaten her. All
he wanted was for her to stay at his house, he said. She was to stay in one
part of the mansion and never leave until he told her she could. Someone
brought her three meals a day. She had to eat them in her room, but they were
good meals of fresh meat and vegetables and even cake and cookies for dessert.
He was gone most of the day, but at night he entered her chambers and had sex
with her. Then he left, putting more money on the counter for her. After a
week, Nina had saved a lot of money, enough to get by for a long time. But the
man wasn't done with her yet, he said.

"I want you to stay one more night,"
he kept telling her. And so she did. One more night became a week, a week
became a month and now she had been there for almost six months at his house.

Nina dressed herself in clothes the man bought
for her, a new dress almost every day and jewelry that he told her she could
keep. Nina couldn't believe her own ears or eyes for that matter. In just six
months she had blossomed into a woman. She had gained a lot of weight from all
the food his servants brought her during the day. And she was now dressed like
one of the rich ladies that the other girls at the brothel had told her about.
She didn't mind him dressing her up like a doll, even if it did remind her of
her mother.

Some nights he would just look at her and
sometimes he even just wanted to brush her hair all night. Nina let him even if
she herself loathed every second of it.

"Why can't I leave the house?" she
asked one night when he came to her chambers carrying a very expensive designer
dress in his hands.

"Because I don't want you to," he
answered firmly.

"But I want to take a stroll in the garden.
I want to be able to breathe fresh air," Nina said.

"Then open the windows."

"I want to be able to walk, to dance in the
yard, to look up at the blue sky. I want to be able to go into town. Can't I go
into town, please?"

"You'll get dirty in the yard," he
said with a smile. "And the city is no place for a beautiful girl like
you." Then he leaned over and whispered in her ear the words he would come
to regret.
"Baby doll
.
"

Nina saw red. How she loathed these two words
more than anything in the world. Memories of her mother calling her those exact
two words when she dressed her in those awful dresses and brushed her hair
appeared in her head and poisoned her mind with unsustainable furor.

Nina pulled away, found the mafia boss's old
knife that she had hidden under her pillow in case she needed it one day. She
pulled it out and stabbed him in the chest. The man stared at her in
astonishment and held a hand to the knife. Blood was gushing out of his mouth
as he fell backwards to the bed. Nina stared at him and much to her surprise
she felt no pity, no mercy. Not even to the one man who had ever treated her
nicely. No, in fact she realized she enjoyed watching him die slowly and
painfully looking up at her like he wanted her to somehow rescue him or at
least explain herself.

As soon as he was dead, she gathered all her
jewelry and some of her expensive dresses and dragged out two big suitcases she
found in a closet. Then she threw in anything valuable that she could fit in
the suitcases and emptied the man's pockets of his wallet and cash. She even
stripped him of his expensive looking watch and diamante rings. Also his golden
necklace that she had stared at so many times with him on top of her,
speculating how much it was worth. She filled the suitcases till they could
barely close, then ran downstairs to the servants that had been bringing her
food.

"I need a car to take me to town," she
said with as much authority as her fifteen year old voice could muster.
"Now."

They moved the
rest of
the auditions to an old movie theater on the
other end of town and even if there were a lot fewer kids showing up, it all
went well. Patrick found the day to be extremely boring. He wasn't allowed to
do any huge media stunts or make a spectacular entrance as he used to, since
the producers behind the show found it
inappropriate
given the tragedy
.

All that kept Patrick going throughout the day
was the prospect of what he had planned for the coming night. The day seemed
endless to him when finally around three o'clock he was told the last
contestant was up. Patrick wrapped up the last interview with the boy who was
going to sing, had him talk about his family and how they struggled financially
and how he wanted to help them out by becoming the next Shooting Star.

When he was done, Patrick could finally return
to his hotel and get ready. He had found his next victim online. He was
actually searching for something else, when he stumbled over her webpage and
saw her picture. There was no doubt in his mind. Those eyes he would recognize
anywhere.

Patrick checked the web-page once again and
looked at her face. Oh how he was looking forward to this. He giggled and
shrieked with joy. Patrick found the butterfly knife in his drawer and then the
sewing kit with his strong needle and heavy duty thread, a kit that was
intended to be used to sew in leather. Patrick hadn't had the time to wash it
since he sewed the bowtie into the girl's skin so he went into the bathroom and
cleaned it now. It had been close with the young girl. A little dangerous and
very risky. Patrick didn't mind a little danger, it made it so much more fun
and exciting, but this time he had been very close to getting caught. While
talking to the woman outside the audition room afterwards, Patrick had realized
that he had somehow gotten blood on his fingers even if he had worn gloves
killing the girl. He had wiped it off in the red cloak hoping the woman didn't
notice, which she didn't. At least he didn't think she did. Maybe she was just
too damn stupid.

They're all so stupid.
Freaking morons is what they are. Dumb as rocks.

Patrick laughed and winked at his own
reflection. No. No one would ever suspect the host of the most popular TV show
in Danish TV history. It was absurd. They all felt like they knew him so well,
didn't they? After all, he did come directly into their living room week after
week. He was almost like family to most of them. The crazy uncle, yes, but
still family. And you always believe the best about your family, don't you?

Patrick took off his pants and underwear to take
a quick shower. He looked at himself in the mirror naked. He turned his torso
in the light. The scars were still there but only he knew where they were. Plus
the hair growing on his chest was covering them nicely. He lifted his forearm
and looked at the scars there as well. They were harder to cover, but it wasn't
so important. It made him look tough, he thought.

Patrick dropped his head and looked at his
penis. To think that it had once been a part of his forearm was still hard to
comprehend.
Forearm phalloplasty
was what they had called it at that that hospital in Poland where he'd had it
made eight years ago. Patrick still didn't have much sensation in it, they told
him he had fifty-one percent chance of being able to have intercourse and
erection after the operation. Well, Patrick didn't care much about that anyway.
Sex was never on his mind. And certainly not now.

Patrick looked at his hair. He would have to cut
it again soon. It was getting long and he hated when it got long. He opened the
cabinet and took out some pills and swallowed them. Extra hormones. He'd had to
take so many of them the last few years to make the change properly. He needed
the male hormone in order to grow chest hair and facial hair like any other
man. The eyes he couldn't change. They still resembled those of a girl, those
of Nina who had once been such a big part of his life.

But now she was gone. He had gotten rid of her
right after leaving the rich man's mansion with all the jewelry and all his
credit cards that Nina had maxed out to get as much cash out of as possible
before she threw them away so she didn't get caught.

At the sex change clinic they had asked her many
questions but never where her money came from. Three years later Nina, who was
now Patrick, had booked a flight—first class naturally—and returned
to the country he had once been stolen from. An article in the newspaper a
couple of months later sent him to audition to become the host of a new TV show.

Patrick got dressed thinking about how much he
loathed that little girl that he had once been. So feeble, so weak, so easy to
possess and put in a prison.

"Never again," he mumbled as he found
his hooded sweater and put it on. Before he closed the lid of the computer
where his next victim was staring back at him, he read the name of where he was
going out loud to himself, making his voice shrill like that of a young girl's.

"
Dolls
and trinkets. Dolls and trinkets.
"