Chapter 5 #2
Just shoots straight from the door like a crazed psycho.
I want to scream, but it chokes off in my throat the second his hands lock around my upper arms. He hauls me up off the bed and sets me on my feet.
He doesn’t let go of my wrists as he turns me around.
I could kick him. Break free. Struggle. Fight.
I can’t do any of that. I can’t make my body work.
My limbs are dead weights. I might as well be in water, sinking all the way down to the bottom, hands tied, concrete blocks or rocks tugging me down, down, down.
Maverick holds my wrists with one hand while he pulls something out of one of the pockets of his cargo pants.
Ties. Fucking zip ties.
My brain goes haywire. I don’t even need to leave this apartment to have a panic attack.
I try to jack forward, but he’s holding my wrists too tightly.
I can only bend from the neck. My stomach twists and rams straight up into my throat.
The back of my tongue burns with bile. I cough and choke, spluttering, gasping, trying to breathe past the blockage.
He might as well have gagged me. All I can do is hiss for breath, but it won’t come.
He might as well have shoved a wad of cotton into my throat.
It’s choking me. Silencing me. Killing me.
I can’t swallow it down. No matter how many times I try.
The saliva in my mouth goes nowhere. The acid gets worse.
I’m going to throw up. I’m going to throw up all over myself and all over him.
He’ll deserve it. Every bit. If only I could breathe.
I can’t throw up unless I can breathe. Black spots start to crowd in, faintly at first, little pinpricks, but they grow to fist sized clumps.
My legs start to shake. My whole body trembles.
The tremors are brutal. They’ll tear me apart.
It’s worse than any cramping, though my stomach does that.
It spasms and clenches, tighter than the hold Maverick has on me.
Tighter than he’s securing those bonds while all I can do is gulp and gulp and try to suck in oxygen.
I’m not dead.
If I truly couldn’t breathe, I’d be dead by now. He’s taking his time with me.
I need to scream. I need to cry out for help. I can’t make a sound. He doesn’t even have to gag me. I can’t say anything. I can’t do anything. My legs are going to buckle.
I need to fight. I can’t just stand here, paralyzed, and let him drag me outside. If he gets me out there, out where it’s endlessly open, there will be nothing to protect me. Nothing to save me.
No. No, no, no.
I’m slick with sweat, burning up in my own skin.
Frigid. Sweltering. Soaking wet. My clothes cling damply to my body, outlining the shape of me.
The darkness closes in, the terror so real that it’s all I can see, all I can think, all that I know.
It’s all I feel. Terror, crawling through my limbs like a toxic slime.
Like venom. My muscles will turn black. My limbs.
They’ll fall off. I’ll drown inside myself.
My lungs will liquify. I’ll become nothing but a ball of fire.
It’s in my throat now. It’s not cotton. It’s flames.
“You need to feel the panic. You can’t truly do that if you keep running back here for shelter. You can’t get better if you keep choosing the sickness.”
He sounds like my parents. I want to tell him to go to hell.
I want to hurt him like he’s hurting me.
I want to kill him before he can kill me.
He’s cold. Unfeeling. Devoid of mercy. Just another person who doesn’t understand.
Who won’t even try to understand. I’d do anything to be free of this, but this isn’t the way.
I was never meant to live through it.
Never meant to survive the attack.
I should have died then.
I’m going to die now.
This man who I trusted, who I thought about endlessly for years, who I wanted to know, the one man I ever thought about opening myself up to, and did, pouring out words straight from my battered soul—he’s doing this to me. He’s betraying me in the worst way.
I try doubly hard to breathe, but it only makes my head swim. I’m trying too hard. I know that. I know my exercises, but they’re useless. I need air. I need to breathe. I need to think. I need to get free.
My stomach rises up again, slamming all the way up onto my tongue. It’s all acid. I can’t bend, so I cough and gag, strings of spittle dripping from my lips. I can’t even throw up properly. I’m not a real person. There’s more animal in me than there is humanity.
I’m liquid. A black haze. Floating. My body is too light.
There’s steel at my midsection. Chains. A metal band holding me together.
It’s the only thing that’s keeping me from flying away, up to the sky.
No, no, not the sky. Not the sky. I love the sky from the window.
I wish I could be up there, going away on a plane, seeing some foreign place that would be so much better than the photos.
But being outside underneath it will kill me.
Don’t we all wish for the very thing that will harm us?
Don’t we all have a sick fascination and a morbid curiosity?
The steel bands aren’t steel. It’s an arm. The solid form at my back isn’t a wall. I’m not pressed up against anything. It’s him. He’s come for me and he’s going to take me out of here.
“You can’t… you… I’ll… pass out.”
“If you do, it’ll save me the trouble of having to drug you.”
What the fuck?
“Nothing scary. Just a few sleeping pills,” he adds, like that’s going to help.
“You can’t I… can’t.”
“I’ll blindfold you. The fear won’t get you.
It won’t eat you up.” His voice is so deep.
So calm. So sure. So soothing. He’s just been standing here this whole time, quiet, holding me, so fucking goddamn confident.
“I won’t let it. I’ll protect you. I’ll be your shield until we’re in the truck and then we’ll be gone.
By the time you wake up, you’ll be somewhere new.
A new life, a new experience. You’ll have done it.
Nothing will happen to you other than the panic.
You just have to feel it, let it rise, and let it pass.
I know what it’s like to have your oxygen completely cut off.
You think you won’t get through it. I never thought I’d live through ten years on the inside, but now that’s over.
I’m out. I’m a different man than I was when I went in, but I survived everything I thought I couldn’t. You will too.”
“I’m going to pass out,” I pant again as the black rushes up. It’s everywhere. No longer just contained to the corners of my eyes. It’s a shield, a wall, the night moved in. It’s in here with me, closing over me.
“Don’t be afraid.” His voice, gentle, but strong. So, so sure. “Let it happen. When you wake up, all of this will be different. It will all be better. You’ll find out that you’re stronger than you ever knew.”
I’ll wake up wherever he’s taking me.
I don’t want to surrender. I don’t want to leave here.
I don’t want to wake up, endlessly broken.
A new location. The same damage. The same shattered heart and mind and life.
I have no say in it. None of it. Not the past, not right now, not how hard I’ve fought or how many times I’ve tried to get beyond the door.
Not the sky or the night or the day, or the terrible things that people are capable of.
Not Maverick. He wouldn’t do that. Sometimes, his letters were the only thing that kept me going.
He has a good soul. A kind heart. He cares too much. He wouldn’t do this, not to me.
But he is.
He’s here. He’s doing it.
I want to fight him. I want to beg and plead, and have him see me the way he always seemed to, from behind the thick walls that kept him captive.
He’s no longer a prisoner. I’m the captive now. There’s no fighting him. There’s only the dark, only black, only horror waiting for me.