Last time, Rhine continued to beat herself up about how much she hurt Rapist-chan’s feelings.

Today opens with Rhine discussing again how she’s not hungry. Fascinating topic.

“No food today either. So what will sustain you?”
“Oxygen,” I say softly.
“You need to spice it up with something,” he says. This is his way of making conversation. I think he feels sorry for me.

Not enough.

To spice her oxygen, she asks a question, about if Evil Mad Scientist was always evil.

“He was quiet all the time. I don’t mean like he was being polite or solemn. I mean like he was planning something.”

This is why, of all of the actually terrible people, it’s Evil Mad Scientist I feel dribs of sympathy for. Everyone hates him for other reasons. His own family members resent him for being quiet because like Rhine, they just know he’s using it for evil.

Perfect Uncle Perfect explains that before Evil Mad Scientist’s kid died, he didn’t have any purpose, so, he wasn’t actually planning anything. But after that, which is to say, his late forties to fifties given the second generation kids take twenty-five years to die, he totally did start planning something, which is why it’s okay his brother hated him for most of his life because he was quiet “like he was planning something”.

He also thinks Evil Mad Scientist was the cause of Linden-chan’s childhood near death experience. I am out of fucks, book. Good on Evil Mad Scientist for proving he really does believe what he’s doing will help.

Frankly, the situation is apocalyptic. This would actually be the point where you could argue it’s ethical to experiment on children because they’re all terminally ill. Society is collapsing. And for some reason everyone is an empathy-free monster. If the virus means men round up girls and murder them, then what does it matter if you kill a few more kids in your quest for the fix for this? The girls would’ve been murdered or raped or both, the boys would’ve been the ones doing it. The world is broken.

The fight over if Evil Mad Scientist is actually to blame for what happened to Linden was nasty, so Perfect Uncle decided fuck dealing with it, he’d leave, completely abandoning the kid whose wellbeing was supposedly the point of the fight. This is because he is so perfect. He would’ve liked to take Linden, but Evil Mad Scientist would’ve tracked them down, so he didn’t bother making any effort.

All this hearing about how much Uncle Perfect hates Evil Mad Scientist reinvigorates her slightly, so she starts futilely eating the apple.

Then they go see the plane. Apparently he’s rebuilding it after it crashed.

I stare at it, and for some reason my shoulders shake and I start to laugh. It’s the first real laugh I’ve felt in days. Or weeks. Or months, maybe. Reed is either a genius or completely mad, or both. But if he’s mad, then I am too, because I love this airplane.

HE IS PERFECT DAMMIT LOVE HIM

She compares the mismatched parts to how Frankenstein created the monster out of parts, because the author doesn’t read much and can’t think of a more fitting analogy. She is there to organize the supply room in the cabin. Because. This allows her to run across handkerchiefs with the pattern from the mansion, and we find out they’re from the boarding school the mansion is made from and the flower is supposed to be a lotus. This will probably keep being repeated a lot because it’s an unimportant detail that the author probably finds really profound.

The next day she’s woken by Cecily, who explains they had to take a cab to visit because apparently there’s only one car and Evil Mad Scientist took it.

“I’d never been in one before. It smelled like frozen garbage, and it cost a ton of money.”

Now, if it’d been Rhine in the car, it’d have been polished to perfection and she’d have rambled about how only the richest could afford to use them so they were all fancy now.

Cecily continues to be concerned for Rhine’s health and how she’ll get sick from the dirt here. Uncle Perfect apologizes for the fact she hasn’t been eating, presumably to Linden because he sure didn’t seem interested in doing much to actually get her to eat.

“Of course she hasn’t been eating,” Cecily says. She stands behind me and gently works the tangles from my hair. “She doesn’t want to die.”
Reed lights his cigar and bumps Linden’s shoulder with his fist. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be blessed by the presence of your wives.”
Cecily drops my hair. She reaches across the table and snatches the cigar right out of Reed’s teeth and squishes the ignited tip into the table.
“What the hell!” Reed snaps. The house rattles. Bowen stops reaching.
“I’m pregnant, you moron,” Cecily says. “Don’t you know anything about gestation? And in case you’re blind, there is also a five-month-old baby sitting right next to you.”
Reed stares at her, aghast. And then he narrows his eyes as he stands and leans forward across the table, until his nose is an inch from hers. And I really think he’s about to strangle her—Linden tenses, ready to stop him—but Reed only growls and says, “I don’t like you, kid.”
She presses her hand to her chest. “Break my heart,” she says, spins around, and makes her exit.
Reed rescues the smoldering cigar and tries to relight it, grunting with each failed spark. “Will never know what you see in that one,” he says to Linden.
“I’m sorry,” I say, standing and scooping the ashes into my hand, and then dumping them into the sink. “She’s just sort of an acquired taste.”
Reed bellows with laughter. “Acquired taste,” he says, clapping his arm around Linden. “See now, this one, I like. You’re letting the wrong one get away.”

Everyone who isn’t Cecily should just be dead already.

Cecily was not just flouncing. She comes back to give Rhine a container of berry cobbler and gets Rhine to actually eat.

Uncle Perfect stalks off in a huff of his own.

As soon as he’s gone outside, Linden says, “Cecily, that was incredibly rude.”

Fuck you.

Cecily is disturbed that Rhine has only managed about a forkful of the food despite claiming she’s fine, and Rhine can’t take having the two of them there so she says to leave her alone. Rapist-chan also tells Cecily to leave for a moment so he can talk, and apologizes to Rhine for how smothering Cecily was, with her noticing the part where Rhine can’t swallow food and all.

She’s the youngest of all Linden’s wives, yet she has always loved to play mother hen.

The part where no one ever takes care of her can’t have anything to do with it.

Every time they bring this up I picture a little girl pretending to mother her doll because no one will do that for her. Rhine mocks Cecily constantly for pretending to be grown up, but when no one will treat her as a child, what else is she supposed to do but pretend it’s okay and she doesn’t need that? Everything she does for other people is what no one does for her.

Even the berry cobbler – Rhine would get her things from the party to try to make her stop whining about never being allowed to ever leave. Cecily gets it because she wants to make Rhine happy and is worried she’s hungry.

He should be reminding her that I’ll be gone for good. And sure, she’d argue with him. She’d slam a few doors and refuse to speak to him for a while. But how long could that really go on? Locked up on that wives’ floor by herself, the loneliness would make her forgive him soon enough.

And so we return to form. With the uncle, it’s like we’re just ignoring all this, but with Linden and Cecily, Rhine returns to admitting everything horrible and thinking it’s fine.

She says they need to accept that they should part.

And I don’t add that every day he keeps me here is another day my brother thinks I’m dead and is capable of destruction.

He could say you’re alive. He could put out an announcement very easily. But then, actually contacting anyone has never been something you were good at.

And still I can’t bring myself to escape in the night, behind his back. Not again, especially after all he’s done to help me.

But surely that’s not manipulative. Surely the fact he keeps twisting between giving you things you don’t ask for while grinding your face in your “betrayal” and saying that oh, staying is a favor, won’t you just do that for him…? isn’t him using you.

He tells her now that he won’t believe anything she said about his dad because I can’t side against him.” Not that he still loves the guy despite what’s been done, but that because he loves him, he will refuse to believe the truth.

And Rhine makes excuses for him about how Vaughn is Linden’s only constant. Even now that she knows all her ramblings back then about poor Rapist-chan aren’t true, that he has an uncle he visits on a weekly basis and can leave the mansion to go anywhere any time he wants, still, he doesn’t know anybody but his dad who raised him in total and utter isolation so how can she expect anything else from him?

Rapist-chan finally says he’s giving her some money for a bus ticket.

“You’re really staying the weekend, then?” I say.
“It’ll be good for Cecily,” he says. “She’s been stir-crazy lately.”

That surely has nothing to do with the fact you’re her jailer.