Chapter 45
The first sensation is not sound, but a violent lurch. My eyes fly open but for a disorienting second, there is only blackness and the painful thud of my own heart against my ribs. Rough hands are on me, dragging me by my ankles, and I realise the cage is not locked. The cage is open.
The world is a jumble of inverted shadows, the ornate legs of furniture, the distant, cold glitter of the chandelier overhead.
A high, keening broken sound fills the room, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s coming from me.
“Shut her up,” a voice hisses. It’s a voice I’ve come to dread more than Antonio’s rage; Felice.
My heels scrape and skid on the floor as I’m pulled into the centre of the room, the heart of their gilded prison.
The hands release my ankles, and I scramble backward. My body is already trembling, a full-body palsy of primal fear. Felice steps forward, her beauty sharp and cruel in the dim light. She’s dressed in a slip of black silk, like a panther ready to toy with her prey.
“Look at her,” she sneers, her voice dripping with venomous delight. “Like a frightened little rabbit. Or more like a fat, stupid piglet.”
Julie moves behind me before I can even process the insult. She’s taller, stronger than me, and her arms are like steel bands as they lock around me from behind, pinning my own arms to my sides. I thrash, but it’s useless. She is immovable.
“Let me go,” I gasp, the plea pathetic and thin.
Felice laughs, a sound like shattering glass. “Why would we do that? Master is away. We have all night to remind you of your place…”
She crouches in front of me, her face level with mine. Her eyes are pits of darkness, reflecting not light, but a deep, abiding hatred.
“He thinks you’re so special, doesn’t he? His new, soft little toy. Thinks your fear is more exquisite than our obedience.”
She reaches out and traces a cold finger down my cheek. I flinch away, but Julie holds me fast.
“…but we know what you are. You’re not special. You’re just a useless, greedy slut. You eat the food he gives you like you deserve it. You take his attention like you’ve earned it.”
Her words are a different kind of assault, each one a small, precise cut designed to bleed me of any last shred of dignity.
“Fat, useless slut,” she repeats, savouring the words.
“You think he loves the softness of you? He’s just fattening you up for the slaughter.
You’re nothing but a temporary diversion. ”
A shadow moves, and I realise with relief that it’s Anya. Her face is pale, her eyes wide with a fear that mirrors my own, but there’s a resolve there too.
“Felice, stop this,” she says, her voice trembling but clear. “This isn’t what he wants. He’ll be furious.”
Felice’s head turns slowly, her focus shifting from me to Anya. The air in the room chills by several degrees. “What he wants?” she echoes, rising to her full height. “And you think you know what he wants? You, the one he hasn’t touched in weeks? The forgotten one?”
Anya stands her ground, though her hands are clenched into tight fists at her sides. “I know he doesn’t want his property damaged. I know he punishes disobedience. This is disobedience.”
For a moment, there is silence. Felice takes a step toward Anya, and the movement is so fluid, so predatory that I stop struggling against Julie’s grip. The attention is off me but a new, colder dread is freezing the blood in my veins.
“Disobedience?” Felice whispers. Then, faster than a snake strike, her hand flies out and cracks across Anya’s face.
The sound is sickeningly loud in the tense quiet. Anya stumbles back, a bright red handprint flowering on her pale cheek. She brings a hand to her face, her eyes wide with shock and pain.
“You think you can defy orders?” Felice’s voice is no longer a whisper; it’s a low, guttural roar. “You think your pathetic conscience matters here?”
She hits Anya again, a closed-fist blow to the stomach this time. Anya doubles over with a choked gasp, the air driven from her lungs.
“No.” I scream, renewing my struggle. Julie’s grip tightens, her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of my arms, and I can only watch as Felice unleashes her fury.
It is a brutal, efficient punishment. Felice doesn’t scream or rant, she is cold and precise.
A blow to the ribs. Another slap that snaps Anya’s head to the side.
Anya tries to curl into a protective ball but even as she does, Felice continues delivering blow after blow.
The only sounds are the dull thuds of impact, Anya’s ragged whimpers, and the frantic beating of my own heart.
Then, Felice delivers a final, vicious blow to the side of Anya’s head, just above her temple. Anya’s body goes limp instantly. Her eyes roll back, showing the whites, and a thin trickle of blood seeps from her nostril.
The world seems to stop.
The only movement is the slow, dark pool of blood spreading from under Anya’s head on the polished wood. Is she breathing? I can’t tell.
A silent scream is trapped in my throat, a pressure so immense I think my skull will split open.
They’ve killed her. They’ve killed Anya for trying to help me.
Felice turns back to me. There is no remorse in her eyes. Only a bright, feverish anticipation. The interruption is over. The main event can now resume.
“Now,” she says, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. “Where were we?”
Julie shoves me forward, and I collapse onto my hands and knees on the cold floor. The grain of the wood is sharp against my palms. I am staring at Anya’s unconscious form, my mind screaming.
Felice’s shadow falls over me. “This fat, useless slut who stole our Master’s eye.”
The first kick catches me in the side. It’s not a hesitative tap; it’s a full-force impact that lifts me off the floor for a second.
A white-hot bolt of pain explodes in my ribs, and a gasp is punched from my lungs.
Before I can even draw breath another kick lands, this time on my thigh.
A sharp, specific agony that feels like a tendon tearing.
Hands are on me again, but not to hold me still.
These hands are instruments of pain. They pinch and twist the soft flesh of my arms, my stomach, the underside of my breasts.
Fingernails, sharpened to points, rake down my back.
I feel the skin part, a series of fiery lines etched into me.
I try to curl up, to protect my head and my stomach, but they are everywhere.
They flip me onto my back, and the overhead light is blinding.
Their faces swim above me, distorted into gargoyle masks of hatred and glee. They are no longer individual girls; they are a single, double-headed monster of vengeance. Their insults are a cacophonous chorus, but Felice’s voice cuts through, clear and sharp.
“You are nothing.” A slap across my face as my vision flashes white. “You are a temporary amusement.” A punch to my jaw. I taste blood, metallic and warm. “You will be discarded.” A knee drives into my stomach.
I retch, bile burning my throat.
The pain begins to lose its individual edges.
It becomes a tide; a vast, suffocating ocean I am drowning in.
Each new blow is just another wave crashing over me, driving me deeper.
The physical agony is unbearable, but it’s the humiliation that truly breaks me.
They are exploring my body not with desire but with contempt, mapping my vulnerabilities with cruel, knowing hands.
They are proving, in the most visceral way possible, that I am just flesh. Breakable, worthless flesh.
I am sobbing, but the sobs have no sound anymore. They are dry, racking shudders that tear through my broken body.
Julie uses her entire weight to pin me down while Felice grabs my leg, wrenching it to the side.
“Fucking bitch.” Felice hisses. “Dirty fat ugly bitch.”
I scream as she forces something into me, something hard, something unforgiving, something not designed for such a use.
She smirks, pulling it out enough, holding it up so I can see and the horror I feel is indescribable. It’s a broken candlestick holder. A wooden, intricately carved ornament that’s been snapped in two, severed in half, and at the sharp, splintered end, I can already see blood.
“Whore.” Felice spits before ramming it into me again. “Fucking whore. You think Master wants you? You think he’ll even look at you once he sees this? When he realises your cunt is ruined?”
“Fuck her harder.” Julie cries. “Make her bleed more.”
I scream, I thrash, I turn into an absolute wreck as the thing is forced in and in and I can feel each little bit slicing up my insides, cutting into me, brutalising the parts of me that are so deep that I think this might be is, this might be how I die.
“Fucking bitch.”
“Fat fucking slut.”
My consciousness begins to fray at the edges. The lights overhead blur into starbursts. The sounds of their taunting become distant, muffled, as if I am sinking deep underwater. The pain, once all-consuming begins to recede, not because it has stopped, but because my body can no longer process it.
The last thing I see is Felice’s face, leaning close. Her beautiful, monstrous face is smeared with my blood. And she smiles, a ghastly parody of pleasure.
“Disgusting fat piggy,” she whispers.
And then, the tide finally pulls me under. There is no more sound, no more sight, no more feeling.
There is only a profound, welcoming blackness that I embrace because it is the only escape left.