Chapter 41 Amber
Amber
He made breakfast. I can smell the sweet and savory blending together the minute I open my eyes.
Letting a man make me orgasm gets me dinner.
Killing with him gets me breakfast.
I vaguely wonder what a girl has to do around here for lunch but then realize it doesn't make sense.
He's fed me the whole time I've been awake, even when I didn't want his disgusting smoothies or the flavorless broth.
He's cared for me in his weird and twisted ways ever since I showed up on his doorstep in that box.
I slept dreamlessly... or mostly dreamlessly.
I think I may have had a small dream of Cal between my legs, feasting on my pussy. It's the only dream I had before I slipped into the comfort of darkness again.
But now that I'm awake, my brain has jumped right back into work, replaying the entire night like a movie trailer.
It doesn't feel real, more of a fantasy than a reality.
But it is reality.
I can feel it in my bones, in my sore muscles, and in my twisted heart.
We killed them.
I killed them.
And not just killed.
Tortured.
Eviscerated.
My stomach twists suddenly, sending nausea creeping up my throat. I fling the covers back and run to the bathroom, dropping to my knees before the toilet, bracing my hands against the seat to ready myself for the purge.
It doesn't come.
Instead, I take slow breaths through my nose. Instead of focusing on the sight of Browen with his eyes plucked out, I focus on the glory that flooded me when I slit Garrett's neck and showered myself in his blood.
Instead of focusing on Jenko's guts outside his body, I focus on his beautiful fucking screams and how I wish they could be heard around the world... a warning for monsters to stay in line.
Instead of focusing on my disgust, I focus on my anger. It's still there, burning bright behind everything else, a beacon to guide me through all the confusing mixed emotions.
I thought it would be gone, but it’s not.
I'm a killer.
I am a fucking killer.
And men should fear me, because this rage inside? When I let it loose, it transforms into a separate entity.
When I let it loose, I'm no longer in control.
After everything I've been through, you'd think I like being in control, but I don't. It does nothing to make me feel safe or secure. Control is too often an illusion, on the other side of which awaits a steep cliff.
I don't crave control, don't need it… as long as I have enough awareness to keep my rage from overpowering me.
I stand and find my reflection in the mirror. I think I killed myself a little too. I killed the uncertain girl, the sad little victim whose heart was petrified by grief. I don't see her anywhere in my reflection as I study myself.
Other than the fact that my hair is wild with sleep, I don't look any different. I also don't look quite the same.
I tie my hair back and brush my teeth before stepping into one of the less ostentatious dresses.
I enjoy them now because of how easy it is for Cal to have access to me.
But I really need to expand my wardrobe.
It feels weird to dress like a punk fifties housewife when I'm doing something as banal as reading a book.
Cal's singing in the kitchen. I stop long enough to listen, smirking when I realize he's listening to A Killer Playlist. Pride warms my veins, and I shake my head. He's got a good voice, but I'm glad he didn't pursue a career in the music industry.
When I get to the basement door, I half expect it to be locked.
It isn't, though. It swings open easily when I turn the knob, letting me view the darkness below.
It's lit by the glow of the terrarium, my destination.
I don't bother with the staircase lighting as I descend, feeling for each step with my foot.
At the bottom, I flip the lights on and let it cast my little prison into view.
I spent months down here, hooked up to machines that are tucked in the corner. Months of being on an IV drip, and it feels like it never was. It's like that hell is someone else's to experience. Or maybe it's just that it wasn't as terrible as my brain tells me it was.
Lying down here waiting for him to come to me feels too close to lying in bed waiting for my foster placement to come to me.
It's not that I wanted him to come, but I knew he would.
It wasn't every night, or even every week.
But it was often enough that I learned there was no escaping it.
It was often enough that I learned to quit trying to reason with him, quit pleading for an end to it, and quit saying no.
Instead, I just locked myself inside my mind.
I pretended to sleep. I pretended I couldn't feel when he was undressing me, climbing on top of me, and pushing my legs apart so he could sink inside.
I pretended that I was nothing in those instances, just a mirage, a ghost who was incapable of feeling the pain or discomfort, the disgust and humiliation.
But Eric whispered filthy things to me that my brain tried not to latch onto.
He told me to call him daddy, to tell him I wanted it, and that he simply couldn't control himself around me.
He told me that I was a bitch for ignoring him, a slut for not bleeding enough, and a waste of oxygen because I refused to acknowledge his presence.
What Cal did to me is not at all the same as what Eric did to me for years.
There's a strange level of intimacy to Cal's actions... keeping someone alive so you can use them.
He could have let me die. Even if he didn't want to go to the trouble of replacing me, he didn't have to feed me.
The IV drip alone could have sustained me for weeks before my body began to waste away.
Instead, this man went to the trouble of learning how to be a pseudo-nurse, placing an IV with nutrients, a fucking catheter, and making sure to monitor vital functions.
He brought me here to kill me, and yet he's never once done anything that makes me believe he would.
I don't know how to contend with the strange swirl of things inside of me.
I turn to the terrarium, watching two of the snakes tangle over one another.
They don't seem to be fighting for dominance, just coexisting.
.. doing their own thing, together. Another hangs coiled around the tree, her head tucked against her powerful body, with a fourth coiled just below her.
Atop the rock, closest to the heat lamp, the last two lay unspooled, the head of one nestled on top of the other, their beady eyes on me.
I reach for the one that's not resting, her body contracting over one of her co-captives.
Part of me thinks I should feel bad, keeping them inside a glass cage. Maybe we should release them into the wild, give them an opportunity to live the rest of their days in freedom.
They've likely never known freedom, though. They don't know what was taken from them because they were raised in a pit, used as a tool to buy compliance from the larger captives, the ones who do know what they lost.
Some of the people who were taken alongside me had glorious lives that were stolen from them. Some had tough lives, ones that were far from perfect, but that they missed all the same.
I had neither of those things because I simply existed, the same way I had my entire life. I'm not a victim who had her life stolen from her to be put into a cage. I was captive all along... born, bred... just like the snakes.
She wraps around my wrist as I draw her to me, not seeking an escape, but exploration.
I allow her to twine around me, remaining mostly still as she slithers higher to my shoulder.
I'm grateful I tied my hair back when I thought I was going to be sick, because she doesn't tangle in it, moving around my back instead.
This is the first I've seen them out of their cage, and I'm struck by how long she is... her tail is still wrapped around my wrist, like she's anchoring herself just in case. I'm faintly aware of her tongue flicking out as she waits there, trying to decide her next move.
Her body is strong and cold, but not slimy. It's a thing of beauty as she unravels her tail from my wrist and inches more of her up my shoulder to rest just on the opposite one.
It's silent as I wait to see if she makes a move.
I don't expect she'll bite, given her relatively docile nature.
I know you don't typically put multiple snakes together inside one terrarium because they can get stressed and attack one another.
But these snakes were farmed, raised to know only one another.
The six of them here now are far fewer than what there were in the pit.
My stomach twists as I think of the pit, of the girls still locked away there, of Madam and Joker and everyone else who we didn't bring down with Jenko and Browen, Bear and Kev, and Garrett.
I'm a killer.
Does that mean I have to kill in perpetuity?
The reality is that I transformed into vengeance.
I got justice for myself, for Katrina, for the guys and girls, and for everyone else who was hurt by them before me. But with them gone, it doesn't mean that the game ends.
A new rank will rise to take their places, and new victims who haven't yet had justice served in their honor will be hurt.
“Little doll?” Cal's voice drifts down the steps toward me, but I don't answer him.
I don't think I can right now. I'm busy thinking about how I lost my voice in the back of that truck when Jenko took me.
I'm busy thinking about all the people who will still be taken, about how there's nothing I can do except pick up that knife again and not set it back down.
“Love?” He asks when his feet land on the last step, and he spots me standing there with the snake resting lazily against my collarbone.
I heard him, but it takes a minute before I'm aware enough of his presence to look up and find him already walking toward me.
He frames my face, unbothered by the reptile resting her head just inches away from his touch. She's similarly unbothered by him.
What a strange complicity we all have with one another... victims, bonded by life's cruelty.
“What's wrong?”
I start to shake my head because I don't know how to explain the tide of sorrow and anger, relief and grief, hope and despair that I’m feeling.
I don't know how to quantify the fact that I did something morally heinous, and I don't regret it, but I don't think I should feel proud of it.
I don't know how to explain to him that I'm aching for everyone who ended up in places worse than this, and I also feel angry at myself for not hating him when he did this to me.
If men like him didn't exist, then my life never would have become this. But what would it have been?
“I'm lost.” I tell him quietly, because it's all I can manage without opening the floodgates. I can already feel tears burning the backs of my eyes.
“You're not lost.” He tells me calmly. “Why would you think that?”
I bury my head against his chest because it hurts to try and speak without sobbing, and touching him grounds me, makes me feel like I'm tethered in the storm inside my mind.
I need time. I need to do what I’ve always done and ignore the hurt, but it’s too much to shove away and act like it doesn’t exist.
I need my mind to stop thinking, but I don’t want to stop living. I don’t want to die. Not yet. I just need a break with the promise of better days to come.
“Little doll,” he presses a kiss to the top of my head and pulls back just enough to force me to look at him. “You're exactly where you belong. With me.”
There's no holding back anymore. The first sob escapes me as I bury my head on his chest, the pain in my own like a knife between the ribs, like someone prying me apart.
Because I think he's right.
I think I am right where I belong, and I don't know how to quantify that with everything else.