Page 16 of On Your Life

“No, I just—”

His hand clamps down around my forearm before I can finish the sentence. My body slams into the tile wall. Pain shoots through my shoulder as a metal cuff cinches around my wrist, biting down to the bone. I gasp and try to pull my arm free. His fingers tighten to the point of pain.

“You want a fucking shower?” he growls, dragging me toward the open stall. “Be my guest, killer.”

I barely have time to process what he’s doing before he throws me to the ground. My knees smack the tile. I don’t even begin to contemplate how disgusting the slimy floor is before he attaches the other end of my handcuff to the shower drain. The blood drains from my face.

“What are you—”

He walks away for a moment before the shower stalls suddenly roar to life, all three of them. One of them directly above my head.

Water pounds against my back and shoulders. I lean backward, trying to pull away from the stream, but I can’t get out of it without the cuff biting deeper into my wrist.

Metal clinks against metal on the drain. The more I move, the tighter the cuff squeezes. I feel like an animal caught in a trap.

I yank against it again. Panic begins to claw its way up my throat.

His boots are the only thing I can see through the downpour before he disappears into the adjacent stall.

You’d think I would give a shit about what he’s doing, but I feel like I’m drowning.

“Turn it off!” I scream.

My voice comes out broken. Before I can get another word out, the shower head in the next stall turns toward my face. I gasp and swallow a mouthful of the putrid water.

I cough violently, choking as my body jerks against the cuff. I try to turn my head but there’s nowhere to go.

Water streams over my face, fills my nose, runs into my mouth. Every breath becomes a fight. My lungs are burning. My hands claw uselessly against the tile.

The third shower head is turned toward me and my vision begins to blur. I can’t breathe.

I can’t fucking breathe.

I scramble naked on the slick ground trying to get away, but there’s nowhere for me to go. Six inches in either direction is air if I could just reach it. My body is getting slower. My arms feel heavy. My eyelids begin to droop.

The sound of rushing water becomes distant, muffled beneath the pounding in my ears. It dawns on me with horrifying clarity that this is how I’m going to die. I have barely even had the chance to live.

My biggest fear has always been drowning. It seems like the worst way to go. I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel much of anything. One second I’m sitting, the next my eyes fly open and I’m laying on the floor.

The water cuts off all at once. I suck in a desperate breath, choking as a steady stream of water burns its way out of my lungs. My body convulses and I cough again. My last heave brings up water and bile, every inch of my insides burn. My face smacks the ground hard enough that I should feel it but I don’t notice.

I can breathe.

I stay there gasping against the cold tile, my entire body trembling. Heavy footsteps stop in front of the stall. My ragged breaths fill the room alongside the steady drip of water running down the drain beside me.

“Want to die yet, little killer?” he says with a smirk.

I almost say yes. I haven’t even been here for two days and I have never endured this level of hell. How am I supposed to deal with a lifetime of this torture?

My lungs ache with every breath. My wrist throbs beneath the cuff. I force myself to swallow the panic and hide the defeat from my face. He won’t see the weakness from me that he craves so badly.

“Nothing to say?” he asks, gesturing to the air. He waits for my response. “That’s fine, we have plenty of time.”

His boots squeak against the slick floor as he walks away. I listen to his footsteps disappear. The steady dripping of water continues in the background.

There is no way he would leave me alone in here. Would he?

I get my answer in the form of a loud slam. The lock clicks and darkness swallows the room.