Chapter 5 Vast Blue Nothingness
Chapter Five
Vast Blue Nothingness
Three hundred sixty-eight pounds.
That was what remained of the thousand after Daisy cashed her paycheck, paid her rent, luxuriated in a proper coffee from the café on the corner, bought functional shoes that didn’t leak when it rained, and finally saw to the tooth that had been screaming at her for weeks.
The dental work alone cost over four hundred pounds.
X-rays, extraction of what couldn’t be saved, and a filling.
When she cried, the hygienist assumed it was pain.
It wasn’t. It was relief. The overwhelming sensation of having the means for self-care tasted like theft, like borrowing someone else’s life.
But she hadn’t stolen anything. This was, at the moment, her surreal life.
Maryanne noticed a change in her right away.
“You’re glowing, mija.” She’d cornered Daisy by the industrial pressers, dark eyes narrowed with suspicious delight. “You met a man, didn’t you?”
“No man.” Daisy laughed, the sound rare and unforced.
“What then? There’s something giving you that glow.”
The NDA worked like a gag, silencing every urge to share what had happened. Her lips sealed around a smile as she shrugged, wishing she could share her news with her friend. “I started taking a multi vitamin.” It wasn’t entirely a lie.
Every morning, Daisy willingly swallowed down that little promise of vitality with a sense of hope that hadn’t existed a week ago. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt almost human.
She couldn’t mess this up. If her life noticeably improved from one thousand pounds, she couldn’t imagine what it would look like after a million. Her mind was fully made up and mentally committed to The Feast. Her plan was simple—run, hide, evade, get paid.
When the second envelope arrived the same way as the first, a flash of emerald among the grey detritus of the mailbox alcove, her heart stuttered. Fingers trembling, she tore through the seal right there in the stairwell.
Your presence is confirmed.
A car will collect you on Friday at noon.
Be ready.
You may bring one small bag of personal belongings.
Leave all items of value at home.
Clothing will be provided.
Do not be late.
Do not contact anyone regarding your departure.
The Feast of the Fallen commences
Saturday evening at dusk.
Further instructions will be provided upon arrival.
May fortune forever favor you,
—J.T.
She was approved. This was really going to happen. She raced up the stairs, barely able to contain her squeak of joy.
Friday. That was five days away. So soon, yet it would take an eternity to get there. Her body was a jumble of nervous excitement and unanswered questions.
Who was J.T.? Were they a man or a woman—or an organization? Were they the founder of The Feast? Whoever they were, she was grateful to have found her way onto their mailing list.
The days that followed were the longest of her life.
She walked to work, fed sheets through the press, smiled at Maryanne, deflected questions about her improving mood, and walked home.
But Daisy’s perception of the world had changed.
Everything seemed sharper, more vivid, as if she’d been awakened to possibilities she hadn’t known existed.
Lying in her narrow bed, too awake to sleep, she stared at the water-stained ceiling, repeating the safeword like a prayer.
“Timber. Timber. Timber…”
What if she forgot? What if, in a moment of fear, her mind went blank?
She thought of every possible scenario her imagination could conjure.
Mostly, she pictured herself pinned beneath a stranger’s weight, breath stolen by fear, hands trespassing like grabby thieves.
She suffered the recurring thought so frequently, it inevitably became a dream.
In her nightmare, her mind went blank, and the safeword dissolved like sugar in rain.
She’d read about that happening, people forgetting their own names under stress. Forgetting how to speak entirely. So she practiced the sign language version—thumb tucked between index and middle finger, fist closed, forming the signal for letter T.
She made the shape in the darkness, over and over, until her hand cramped and her eyes burned from exhaustion.
When her worries screamed loudest, she got out of bed and did push-ups.
The first night, she managed twelve before her arms gave out, her body collapsing onto the cold floor, chest heaving.
She rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling.
Twelve push-ups, and her body had already surrendered. How was she supposed to survive a hunt?
She rolled over. Pressed her palms to the floor and surged back into position on shaky arms. Every push carried more gravity as if the universe truly wanted to hold her down, but she refused to go into the unknown, weak and unprepared.
Little victories came when she pushed herself beyond her natural limits.
“Thirteen,” she ground out the number between clenched teeth, arms screaming as every muscle trembled in protest. “Four…teen.” She shut her eyes, ordering her body not to give out. “Fif…teen.”
She thought about the hunters. Men who had paid fortunes for the privilege of chasing her through the dark. Men who likely had personal trainers, private chefs, and bodies built for pursuit.
“Six…teen.” A sort of indignant rage caught fire inside of her, blazing at her back like a force pushing her forward. “Seventeen,” she growled, lifting her nose off the floor in a triumphant sob.
“Eighteen—”
Her arms buckled. She hit the floor hard enough to taste blood where she’d bitten her tongue. But she was smiling.
Eighteen was more than twelve, and tomorrow she’d do more than eighteen.
By Thursday, she managed twenty-four, but a heavy and unexpected weight dragged her down. Anticipation had curdled into something darker. Trepidation. Dread. The creeping terror of walking into an unknown experience that no amount of training could prepare her for.
She tossed and turned in bed. If she did doze off, she awoke abruptly with a gasp.
The sheets twisted around her legs like restraints, and every time she closed her eyes, she saw shadows moving in the darkness.
Hunters. Strangers. Hands reaching for her from places she couldn’t see.
Tearing at her clothes and wrenching her body apart.
Jackknifing out of bed, she threw off the covers and stood on the cold linoleum. It wasn’t an irrational fear. These men, these hunters, they had one goal.
Less than twelve hours left, and she was utterly unprepared.
“Fuck me.” Staggering through her flat as if the answers were hidden in the cold shadows, she knotted her fingers in her hair.
How could anyone possibly prepare for something so… Unexpected? Wild? Impossible?
It was all of the above, and yet it wasn’t. They told her what to expect. She read every word of that terrifying contract and signed it anyway.
She was freaking out. A totally normal response to such an extraordinary situation, but rationalizing her fear did nothing to calm her nerves.
Drenched in a cool sweat, her eyes squinted at the kitchen clock, trying to make out the hands through the shadows. Only nine hours left.
Yanking open drawers, she frantically rummaged for some sort of solution, desperately searching for answers that weren’t there.
Rifling through the sparse contents of mismatched items—rubber bands, boxes of matches, dead batteries she kept meaning to throw away—she growled in frustration and slammed the drawers shut.
Nothing useful. Nothing that could prepare her for tomorrow.
The refrigerator hummed in the corner, and her spastic breathing stilled. She pulled the door open, casting an unnatural glow across the ransacked kitchen. Day-old soup, mustard, half a wilted head of lettuce, and a courgette.
Her gaze locked on the long, green vegetable, thick and firm, a little over seven inches long.
Enough to get the job done. Her hand closed around the cold, slender shape and lifted it to eye level, cheeks heating as she considered the girth.
Lowering it to her belly, holding it vertically from her navel to her pelvis.
Was this the smartest idea she’d had all week or the craziest?
In the tattered romance novels she read about virgin brides, there were always mentions of blood. The thought made her queasy. If there was going to be bleeding or pain, she wanted it on her own terms. In private.
Daisy knew nothing about actual intimacy, and that scared her more than anything else.
She washed the courgette in the sink and returned to bed.
Twenty-two years old with zero experience and even less knowledge. Was it hard and fast or gentle and patient? These hunters were not the same as fictional heroes.
She shut her eyes as tension built in her skull. “Shit.”
She wished her mother were here, or that she could ask Maryanne without the NDA silencing her.
Countless hours imagining the hunt, she never fully pictured what would happen if she were caught. Until now.
All those conditions in the contract. She’d have no choice but to submit. That, or safeword out. That meant less money. Much less.
How much did she need to change her life?
Not much. But she would never have a chance like this again. If she was doing this, which she was, she wanted to do it right. She was walking away with as much money as she could manage.
“It’s going to be bad.” The whispered warning needed time to fully sink in, so she forced herself to envision the absolute worst.
Blurry memories of her father surfaced from the shadows. Her mother always looked rough when he visited. Moved differently. Carefully. Like her body hurt. Sometimes Daisy heard them fighting, her mother’s protests growing louder and louder until they finally silenced in defeat.
Her mum didn’t have the luxury of a safeword.
She did.