I have to stay alive, bide my time, and figure out how to find Parker. I can't imagine what happened to him, but my biggest fear is that he was killed. There were only two other men in the truck when they abducted us, and I don't think Parker would have been a target if he hadn't run to try and help me. They beat him so badly I was certain they’d kill him, but when they pulled us apart to throw me in with their other captives, he was still alive.
I don’t think he survived the second beating. The one inside the truck. They pummeled him because he dared try to stop them when the man in the bandana stepped in the darkness and asked his last victim to choose his next. Tears leaked from her eyes, and when she pointed at me, I died a little inside… maybe for the last time.
It doesn’t feel like there’s anything alive still inside of me. I stopped screaming at some point when my face was on the floor, before the men switched places, before Parker’s eyes closed and didn’t reopen.
Poor Parker. He always tried to help me... and it never worked out for him.
My heart is heavy, full of grief for the brother that was more a friend to me than anyone I ever met. He was the only person who ever had my back. Even my friends were only out of convenience, surface-level. In twenty-two years, he's the only person I've ever connected with... and now he's gone.
Months have passed, and I have no idea what happened to him after we were separated. Did they throw him from the back of the truck and leave him to become roadkill? Did they bury him in a shallow grave? Did they chop him up and feed him to the pigs that our assailants used as threats to keep us in line… as if the guns they wore weren’t enough to do that all on their own?
The pain is visceral; I can feel it like a knot in my chest. It’s hard to breathe around it, hard to think past the grief, the loss. Since being awake, everything has been a haze, but I know that it’s been months. Parker is gone, and no closure will be had for me because I don’t stand a chance of finding his body. He’s probably just bones by now, depending on where they left him.
As painful as it is, it’s not new. I sat with his death on my shoulders every moment I was kept in their cages, waiting for ma’am to come stab me with that needle. Even though I haven’t been awake for it, the passage of time has tempered that despair. In my great sleep, unconscious in the basement of a rich sadist, it felt like years passed… years of abuse that felt like love instead of love that felt like abuse.
I don’t know what it says about me that I’m already more at peace with a man who paid to own me than I am with a man who was being paid to protect me. I don’t think a dime of the checks that the state paid on my behalf went to anything that was in my best interest.
I stop crying before I turn the water off, resolving not to let him see them. He doesn’t deserve my tears, and if he’s anything like the men who took me, he’d simply enjoy them. I won’t shed another fucking tear for monsters who use theirshadow to hide how cruel they really are. It’s why I push thoughts of before out of my head and focus all of my energy on healing what I can see first.
My hair isn't the tangled mess I'd expect it to be, and I can brush through it easily, letting it dry limp around my shoulders. My teeth, too, don't look like they've been neglected, and I wonder whether he brushed them for me—whether he really thought to do something so... intimate? I know he’s fucked me ten ways to Sunday and that my body has become my captor’s playground. But the thought of him brushing my teeth is what sends a chill down my spine.
He's made an entire drawer for me, so I took my pick of the clothes before I came to shower—all nightgowns or dresses, easy for him to move out of his way. I slip into one that seems the least revealing before emerging from the bathroom to find him sitting on the bed, shirtless.
Time has been meaningless to me as I’ve dipped in and out of sleep the last few days, but I’m guessing it’s night… bedtime. Now that we’re alone, I don’t know what the expectation will be, but one side of the bed is clearly meant for me. I’ve slept here for days, but now that he’s on the other side, clearly planning to share the bed with me, I expect he’ll want something from me.
I hope he doesn’t expect me to be into it. He’s gorgeous, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be a willing participant in my own torture.
He's dressed only in his boxers, one thick arm tucked behind his head as he watches the TV like he's long since grown bored of it. After a moment of me standing there awkwardly, his eyes flick to me.
I watch his stomach ripple as he sucks in a breath.
“Fuck.” He whispers, his lips moving slowly. “You look beautiful.”
I choose to ignore that, crossing my arms over my chest as I pick my way to the empty side of the bed and sit gingerly, not wanting to get too close to him.
He doesn't take his eyes off of me, and I don't acknowledge him until he speaks again. “What's your favorite movie?”
It's such an odd question given that we haven't talked about the elephant in the room, which is the fact that heboughtme, a real live human, and hasn't made his expectations clear.
Am I to be his slave? Will he wrap a collar around my throat and expect me to sink to my knees or open my legs at his command? Am I supposed to sit here like his friend and act like everything is completely normal? Are we playinghouse?
My brain is too addled to think of a movie right now, and it must show because he nods his understanding.
“Okay. What's your preferred genre? Rom-coms? Action? Comedy?”
“Horror.” I say, speaking to him for the first time. I've been icing him out, not wanting to comply with the last thing he can't take without my permission. And then I burst out laughing, hysterical at the realization that mylifehas turned into a fucking horror movie.
I guess I really should have manifested myself a fairy princess or something, because the last few months of my life have been far more gruesome than any movie I ever saw.
“I like horror too,” he says, as if he thinks I'll be surprised by that.
I'm not.
I'd be more surprised if the man who bought a woman to fuck whenever he wanted actually came from a perfectly loving, healthy family than I am to know that he's into guts and gore.
“Slashers are my preference. They don't try too hard to terrorize you with jump scares and tedious build-up. They just serve up campy horror and dark humor without trying to make some sort of statement on the fragile collective of human sanity.”
I blink, surprised by that admission.
