Paige expected to wake up with an unknown man’s lips on hers. No such luck. Instead, she was awoken by a pink metal handcuff coming down on her wrist. She groaned. Had no one bought her?
It wasn’t that she wanted to be sold into basic slavery, but if she wasn’t purchased, she would belong to Sleeping Beauty Inc., which would probably be worse. They would get their money’s worth out of her. When she came to their headquarters to be put into cryostasis, she had leafed through the pamphlets that advertised Sleeping Beauty models who came back, after serving their year, with diamonds, designer handbags, and goodies galore (all presents from whoever bought them). If Sleeping Beauty Inc. owned her, she would spend the rest of her life doing disgusting grunt work no one had invented a machine to do yet. It wasn’t that Paige expected diamonds, but she did expect to be sold. Her disappointment made her lips an accordion of sadness.
“Oh, stop that!” the female guard programming her wristband snapped. “At least you’re not going to have my job.”
Paige blinked. “Does that mean…?”
“Yeah, sweetpea. You were sold. Hallelujah,” sang the guard sarcastically. She was obviously a left-over Sleeping Beauty who had not been bought.
“So, where’s the guy?”
“He left.”
“He left?” Paige exclaimed.
“Yeah. He didn’t feel like waking you with a kiss and took off. You’re to be delivered.”
Paige thought his busyness made him seem rich. Sleeping Beauty Inc. did not force their customers to kiss their product. It was optional, but he could have taken her with him when he left. His being so busy that he couldn’t even spare the time to do that made him seem like a great catch, but then she remembered to ask what day it was. If she had been in cryostasis for a month, he would have paid a lot more than if she was close to her expiry date. “What day is it?” she asked rather feebly.
“March 2, 2214.”
“Crap,” she mumbled. He was less rich immediately because he had paid almost nothing for her. It was all her fault for getting her memory wiped. That invalidated her contract with Sleeping Beauty Inc. and instead of just selling her for one or two years, they were allowed to sell her for life. She couldn’t keep her unhappiness from showing on her face.
“Why do you look so miserable?” the guard asked, throwing Paige’s wrist away and typing something on her own, much larger, wristband.
“Because I’m probably bound to some ridiculous moron for the rest of my life,” Paige moaned.
The guard put her hand on her hip haughtily. “I should be so lucky. Do you think I would be acting this grouchy if you were being taken away by a guy twenty years older than you with whiskey breath and bruises on his knuckles? Oh, no. I’m acting like this because even though the man who bought you clearly has no money, he’s young and… how should I put this? Cute face. Nice muscles. A total catch.”
Paige didn’t know what to say. Had her bad luck turned around?
“Ready for the bad news?” the guard asked, responding to a question Paige hadn't asked. “The bad news is that he’s so broke that he didn’t buy any clothes for you from our stores. He opted for you to wear the street clothes you wore here for the transfer. So that means no ball gown, no bathing suit, and no elegant heels. We’re not going to give you a speck of makeup or a drop of perfume.”
“I’ll live,” Paige said, swinging her legs out of the casket-like box.
“Personally, I think that’s why he didn’t want to leave with you when he left. He didn’t want to be seen carting out a very ordinarily dressed woman from a place that is supposed to be selling runway models. Maybe we wouldn’t let him. In any case, we’ll need the nightgown back.”
“Right now?” she asked, tugging the tie at the back of her neck.
“No. Go to the change room. It’s going to be my pleasure to deliver you to his home, in the north.”
“The north?” Paige gaped, doing a double-take.
“Yeah. I wasn’t done telling you the bad news. That isn’t a problem, is it?”
Paige rolled her eyes. She had to go wherever the man who bought her wanted her to go. She smiled sickly, “No. It’s not a problem.”
“Excellent. Get dressed, get fed, get in the truck and we should be there sometime tonight.”
Paige pursed her lips. She wasn’t sure if her purchase was good luck or bad luck, but whatever it was she had to accept it, so she got herself to a dressing room.
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The truck the guard put Paige in was not usually used for transporting models from Sleeping Beauty Inc. It looked more like an army transport leftover from the war.
The guard smiled roguishly when she showed Paige which truck they were taking. “Sorry, Mr. Fox didn’t spring for a company limousine. You know the ones. Pink all over and full of fruit and champagne, but look! The windows in this bad boy roll down. Isn’t the fun almost too much?”
“Quiet,” Paige huffed as she got in the front seat.
The guard got in next to her and they began the drive.
Paige passed the time by playing with the bracelet/handcuff around her left wrist. That was the one thing that she got to choose for herself when she signed her contract with Sleeping Beauty Inc.
They had every style imaginable: clunky bracelets that jangled around a girl’s wrist, pretty beads hanging on tiny chains, some made of rubber, and some made of leather. Paige's was made of pink metallic links an inch wide. It was pretty. Something about it reminded her of chains, which she also liked. She wanted to remember that she was a prisoner. That way she wouldn’t have any grandiose ideas about the rest of her life.
The last thing she remembered before she had her memory wiped was the sight of the man she loved. Remembering him, she felt how her heart used to quicken whenever she saw him. Seeing him was precious and rare. His taking notice of her was almost impossible.
On the last night that she could remember, he offered to purchase her. It was out of the blue. Before that, she’d had almost nothing to do with him.
An offer of employment under the cloak of a purchase contract had to be sexual in nature. She’d read stories about purchased women in media outlets. The articles had all the good bits cut out. He could only be buying her because he wanted her the way she wanted him. As his eyes met hers, she felt her insides turn to water—the color of his eyes.
She should have known better. She should have listened to the things her father said about him behind his back. She should not have been seduced by his voice, his hand that crept up her thigh, or the money he represented. Being bought by him would ruin her reputation and the reputation of her family.
When she expressed her concerns to him, he waved them off like problems didn’t exist. Her father would be happy. How much would her father need to retire? He kept raising the price he was willing to pay for her until she was dizzy.
The interview ended with her shyness as the victor. The amount of money he’d offered was so much, she already knew she couldn’t refuse. She promised him an answer in the morning and stumbled back to her quarters, her legs were so weak.
She got into bed and imagined what life would be like if she accepted his offer.
When she woke up, she discovered that two years had passed. There was a note propped up on the nightstand explaining that she did work for him and it didn’t work out. She had no family anymore. No friends. Nothing was left but debt and heartache. In the hope of being able to repay the debt she had incurred, she had decided to sell herself to Sleeping Beauty Inc., but she could not live with the broken heart she'd suffered, so she'd wiped her memory.
The sale to Sleeping Beauty Inc. would have been fine—only lasting a year—except the terms of the contract that protected her were void because of the memory wipe and she was sold as a lifetime investment. Basically, the new man who had bought her from Sleeping Beauty Inc. had bought all the work of her life for pennies, but if he hadn’t bought her, the situation would have been far worse.
Paige shrugged her shoulders. She had no choice but to roll with it. She had to concentrate on her duty to the man who bought her. On the tiny viewscreen on her bracelet, it said, Harrison Fox. If she didn’t do a good job, he could throw her into prison or sell her again. He could even rent her out if he wanted to. He owned her.
It didn’t matter. If she was willing to gamble everything then she had to be prepared to lose everything.
And she had.
It was a long drive north. Flowers were blooming in her city, but as they drove, Paige saw fewer and fewer flowers opening. Mountains she had never seen before were growing in front of her. The weather got colder and it seemed that time turned back, making spring winter. She was being taken to the absolute middle of nowhere, but she didn’t mind. She was too unhappy to be bothered by anything. Nothing could bother her.
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Harrison stood on the dirt road outside his house and felt his shoulders sag. The earth spread out in endless snow-caked prairie before him and in ragged mountain ranges behind him. When he was in the city, he had seen so many beautiful buildings. Most of them were made of reflective mirrors that contained solar cells that powered the city. Cities like that one were built in careful designs so the sunlight was reflected between the skyscrapers to create the greatest amount of power possible. He had thermal tubing under his front yard that had been installed seventy years before. It was slightly more advanced than the septic tank.
It wasn’t that his house was ugly. It was the contrary. His house was picturesque. It had walls made of stone, a beautifully angled roof, a delightful entryway with a little roof over it, and a dozen other features that made it worth looking at. From the road, it was practically a tourist attraction, but once someone got out of their vehicle and came up the walk, they saw the house for what it truly was—a magnificently designed rat hole. Not that anyone intentionally designed a house to be that, but after eighty-plus years, that was what it had become. The inside was in terrible disrepair.
He sighed. He had invited a purchased woman to live there with him.
He’d do what he could to make her room livable. That was the reason for the later delivery date. One of the beauty spots of the house was a second-floor turret. He planned to make the room up to be her bedroom. He had to clean everything. She would be there soon.
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Paige and her guard wouldn’t have arrived before nightfall if the guard hadn’t been so serious about delivering Paige and getting her off her hands. She drove the abandoned roads like she was possessed, hardly stopping, speeding, and pressing forward. They had a long way to go. The drive lasted over ten hours.
On their way to Harrison’s, they passed the middle of nowhere. Now they were on the edge of existence.
When they finally arrived, Paige’s butt ached fiercely. She scooted off the seat and her feet hit the road where Harrison Fox lived. She looked at the house in the yellow light that bathed the countryside before sunset and didn’t know what to think. The place was ancient—pretty, but ancient.
The front door abruptly swung open and a man came ambling out. For a second, Paige thought he might be drunk, but then she saw the reason his body was so unbalanced. He was carrying something heavy over his shoulder. It was a huge sack with strange things poking and stretching the plastic. One angle looked like someone’s kneecap and another one looked like their elbow. The bag made a weird squishing sound as he dropped it on the ground just outside the fence. It could be someone's guts squashing and sloshing in the bag.
Paige and the guard winced in unison. They were thinking the same thing.
“Excuse me,” the guard said in a nasal tone. She had stopped breathing through her nose. “Are you Harrison Fox?”
“That’s me,” he said, wiping his oily work gloves on his dirty jean jacket.
Paige peered up at him under lowered eyebrows and followed the guard’s example. There was something foul in the air. Was that what rotting flesh smelled like? Not only was the smell suspicious, but Harrison Fox couldn’t have looked shadier. His black hair was all over the place and his neck and face were slick with sweat like he had no idea sweat was socially unacceptable.
Paige inclined her head toward him and looked disgusted and disappointed. Inside, she was scared stiff and any other emotion she could put on her face to disguise that was welcome, even disgust and disappointment.
“I’m here to deliver Rose Red: Model 85001. If you’ll just present your keycard, we can finalize the transaction.”
Harrison took off his work gloves and fished around in the front breast pocket of his jacket before he pulled out a pink and silver card. He presented it to the guard who scanned the card with her bracelet, then Paige's. After getting a green light, she let go of Paige and returned his keycard.
“She’s all yours,” the guard said, stepping away from the two of them and heading back to the truck.
Paige waved to the guard, but the woman was intent on leaving without any further communication and did not look back.
Harrison examined the empty ground by Paige’s feet. “Excuse me,” he called to the guard. “Didn’t she come with some luggage or something?”
The guard turned reluctantly to answer his question. “Sorry, if you’ll look at the packing slip and the package details, you’ll see that no additional clothing or accessories were purchased with this model.”
Harrison frowned and waved to the guard that she could leave. He stood silently next to Paige and watched the truck pull away and skid down the gravel road in a huff of dust.
After the air had cleared, except for the bag of rotting human entrails, Paige dared to ask, “You don’t have any clothes for me?”
“Not a stitch,” Harrison admitted. “I’m afraid you won’t find this place very much like most of the homes Sleeping Beauty models get assigned to. We’re fifty-six kilometers from the nearest town and, trust me, it isn’t much of a town.”
Paige looked at the house without a single solar panel on it, then at the man without a clean square inch on him, and then at the vomit-inducing bag lying a few feet away from her. It probably would have been the most depressing sight she had ever seen in her life if she hadn’t already seen the note she wrote herself explaining that her sweetest dream had ended in misery.
“Can I see inside?” she whispered, sick to her stomach as to what he would expect once they were in the house.
“Yeah. Where are my manners?” He beckoned her toward the front door. Once inside, he gave her a tour. “This is the kitchen and in there is the living room. There’s a bathroom there. Down that hallway are my bedroom and the guest room. This door opens to a staircase that takes you upstairs to your room and another bathroom. If you go down that hallway, it leads to the garage and out to the courtyard.”
Paige did her best to hide the fact that she was pleased that he had given her a separate bedroom. She had been briefed about how most clients wanted to sleep with their purchase right away. Others never did. She realized now that when she saw Harrison, she worried he was going to bring her inside the house and expect her to act like a full-on prostitute. She eyed him suspiciously as he told her about their shabby surroundings in more detail. He didn’t look at her. He was embarrassed. He stuttered, lost his train of thought, and fidgeted.
What kind of man was he?
He was dirty. Whether that was from the day’s work or if it was his regular state of being, she couldn’t say. He had fairly decent features, though she could not have said whether she personally found him attractive or not. The only thing she was concerned with was his expectations of her.
It seemed like they were alone. That, in itself, was unusual. She expected other servants to augment her services.
Her analysis was interrupted by the sudden removal of his coat, followed quickly by his boots. “Let me take you up to your room,” he said, before bounding up the stairs like an elephant.
Paige quivered and steadied herself. She must have been ready for worse than Harrison Fox when she signed her contract at Sleeping Beauty Inc. It was a pity she couldn’t remember what prepared her.
Following him, she made her way up to the turret room. Paige had to do a double-take as she found herself in the middle of a sun-drenched space. The west view was fantastic, but aside from the view, the room was crap. The blankets on the bed were frayed and the carpet was bubbling up in places. She'd be lucky if she didn't trip on it and fall down the stairs. The dresser was at least a hundred years old with ancient Spiderman stickers clinging to it in half-torn ribbons and the mirror attached to it was broken with a long crack down the middle.
“Here’s the bathroom,” Harrison said, opening a door for her. Then he paused and waited for her reaction.
She did nothing.
“Well, what do you think of it? Do you think you could live here?” he persisted with a nervous smile.
Paige tried to make her expression benign. Her expression did not reflect her feelings, but she didn’t think offending him was a brilliant tactic. “It’ll be fine,” she lied. “I should thank you… for buying me.”
Harrison smiled and edged toward the door. “I’ll let you clean up, and I’ll bring you a shirt to wear to bed.”
Paige let him close the door before going to the window once more to look at the view. The view was the one thing that would make the place livable if Harrison Fox kept his hands to himself. The view would have been less alarming if she hadn’t been able to see that garbage bag. He didn’t buy her just to murder her, did he?
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Harrison came upstairs with a plaid shirt and asked her if she wanted something to eat. She declined, saying she was exhausted after the trip. He told her she was welcome to anything in the fridge, before leaving her to rest.
Paige sat down on the bed and coaxed her body to lie down. The bed was not as lumpy as she feared, but smelled unfamiliar, which had always been the most difficult aspect of being in a new place. Closing her eyes, she tried to sleep. It ended up being a waste of time. She couldn’t stop thinking about the garbage bag on the other side of the fence and how it smelled like something was rotting.
By midnight, she couldn’t take it anymore. How was she supposed to live in this house comfortably with that wretched idea boring a hole in her head? It was probably just her imagination getting away from her and if it wasn’t, then she needed to know that too.
She was wearing the plaid shirt Harrison had given her when she slipped on her pants and shoes before quietly making her way downstairs. The house was completely silent, so she guessed Harrison was already asleep. She paused at the front door and wondered if an alarm system was attached to it. Would a buzzer go off if she tried to leave the house without Harrison’s permission? The place looked positively archaic so she bolstered herself, undid the deadbolt, and turned the handle. No alarm sounded.
It was freezing outside as she stepped out onto the front porch. That close to the mountains, the air was dead frigid late at night. She hugged herself and reminded herself that her errand would only take a minute.
She ran down the path to the fence where Harrison had dropped the bag. It was still there. She took one sharp breath and tugged it open. As she undid the flaps, it was too dark to see clearly. The smell was overpowering, but she couldn’t leave until she knew what was in there.
Suddenly, there was a light shining on her hands. She whipped her head around to see Harrison standing in his pajamas a few feet away from her holding a flashlight. “What the hell?” his voice echoed through the cold air. At first, he sounded confused, but then he laughed heartily. “And here I thought you were running away and instead you snuck out of the house to…” Here his laughing could not be repressed. He finally got it together and was able to finish his sentence, “to go through my garbage.” He hooted loudly.
“Well,” Paige demanded. “What is this?”
“You know—garbage!” He came over to her and shone his flashlight into the open bag. He showed her inside and she saw rotten potatoes, corn, mushy celery, and molded over oatmeal.
She plugged her nose and stepped back. “Good grief! Don’t you have a garbage disposal system?”
Harrison pulled the bag closed and tied it off. “No. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Honestly, baby, we’re lucky to have hot and cold running water.”
“If an alarm didn't go off in the house,” she said, thinking out loud, “how did you know I was out here?”
“That bracelet of yours is pretty fancy. I've got a matching one. It alerted me,” he said, as he stood up straight and showed her the links on his wrist. “Come on. What were you expecting to find out here?”
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her hair and brushing herself off. She had forgotten all about the bracelet.
“Nothing?” he repeated. “Uh-huh. I’m going to believe that. Well, we’ll just stay out here until you feel like spilling the beans.”
Paige didn’t move. She knew from her contract that if she tried to disobey him and go into the house without his permission there were at least fifteen different punishments he could inflict on her that were totally legal. It was freezing. Her prickling skin would force her to answer him, even if her pride didn't want her to.
“I’m an idiot,” she muttered, hoping he would accept that as an answer.
Harrison didn’t say anything, but leaned on the fence and waited for the rest of her story.
“I didn’t think it could be rotten food. I thought that maybe it was a dead body,” she admitted quietly. Then she moved to run back into the house, but Harrison grabbed her arm.
“You thought I was a murderer?” he asked, all the humor had run out of his voice. She got a better look at his eyes. They were nice, and she had admitted such an awful thing to someone who looked nice.
She nodded regretfully with her lips pursed.
His eyebrows were high as he sighed. “We’re off to a terrific start.”