Chapter 4 - Marla
MARLA
I remembered my first meal at this place, cooked by a guy called ‘Cap’. I remembered throwing just about all of it back up while the man whose room I occupied cursed beneath his breath. I thought at first that the food was poisoned. That I had run right into another trap.
When really, it was because I ate much too quickly.
I sat there in the darkness after he left. I heard the bedroom door thunk closed softly, a sound I had come to know as normal and regular now in my life. There was no slamming of heavy doors. No creaking floors to sound when someone was coming to have their way with me.
I shivered in the closet as I waited for the food to come hurling back up my throat.
I was scared to eat. All of the time. But I couldn’t let it go to waste. What if they didn’t feed me again? What if I turned down food and they just decided to stop wasting their efforts on me? I couldn’t do that, either. So I ate every time food was placed in front of me.
I didn’t want them to see me as ungrateful.
I didn’t want them to give me back.
I closed my eyes and waited for the telltale gag.
The sign that I wouldn’t be able to hold this down, no matter what I did.
But instead I felt… warm. My belly stuck out so much that I couldn’t quite wrap my arms around my legs, and that feeling was more familiar than anything else.
For the longest time, I was able to wrap myself up and tuck into a corner.
I was able to ball up like a child just to make myself as small as possible.
Something I’d never been able to do since, well, I was a child.
But with my belly poking out, it reminded me of what my life was like… well, before. Before the kidnapping. Before the torture. Before the cleaning duties and the poisoned food and the lost weight. I was bony for as long as I could remember.
It felt nice not to be able to ball up.
I extended my legs and my knees popped. I rolled my shoulders and they popped as well.
I closed my eyes in the darkness, reveling in the heavy sleep that overcame me.
Well, not really sleep, I wasn’t tired or anything.
But that heavy sort of weighted blanket feeling that comes over someone when they’ve had too much good food to eat.
I leaned my head back against the wall of the closet and closed my eyes for a moment.
I rubbed my belly softly through the shirt I was afforded.
I still wasn’t sure whose clothing I was wearing, but every morning, there was a fresh pair to change into just outside of my closet.
I’d worn basketball shorts and t-shirts.
A white, thick-strapped tank-top with sweatpants.
At that moment, I had on another t-shirt with a pair of sports pants that felt like basketball shorts, but they were in long-style form.
They were comfy.
My jaw dropped with a yawn that came from out of nowhere, and I heard his voice almost instantly.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be in a bed while you sleep? I could—”
The instant he said the word ‘bed’, my mind took hold.
“Take her to the bed.”
My eyes widened. “No, no, no, no, no! No! I’m sorry! I’ll be good! I didn’t mean it!”
“Drag her by her feet if you have to. And don’t come out until she’s learned her lesson.”
I raked my fingertips against the concrete wall, like I could burrow out. “No! I’m sorry! I don’t need the bed! I know what I did wrong!”
“Good,” the voice said as my hair was snatched, “then you’ll understand why you deserve this.”
“Noooooooo!”
He’s gonna tie me down. He’s gonna rape me. He’s gonna beat me senseless and stick things in my—
“I gotcha, I gotcha, I gotcha,” his whispered voice said, piercing through my racing mind. I felt a rhythmic stroking along my ankle, of all places. “I gotcha. Just me. I gotcha. It’s all right. I gotcha.”
I blinked a few times before it got to the part of the memory where they strapped me down to one of the beds in one of the video rooms. I shivered as I wrapped my arms around my body.
I couldn’t curl up my legs because of my paunched belly, and I didn’t want to risk it because the food had stayed down.
For once, it stayed down.
“I gotcha,” the man whispered as that same stroking feeling continued against my ankle. “You’re all right. I gotcha. You’re safe.”
I gotcha.
Those two words that were never once a lie, coming from the mouth of the man who had yet to lie to me.
My ankle flinched when I realized it was his hand stroking like that.
But I didn’t pull away.
Why didn’t I pull away?
“No beds, please,” I croaked out before I sniffled.
“No beds, that’s perfectly fine,” he repeated back as if he was desperate to know that I heard him.
I always heard him.
“Just take some breaths for me, okay?” he asked softly.
His finger traced around the jutted bone of my ankle as I drew in a shaky breath through my nose.
“Try through your mouth next time,” he said softly.
I paused. “How did you know?”
“They make different sounds.”
I blinked. I wasn’t sure how to process that, but I found myself doing as he asked: breathing through my mouth and letting it out slowly.
“There we go, lots more oxygen that way,” he said.
And still, that finger of his continued to trace faceless designs along my ankle. He hit a particularly sensitive part with the pad of his finger, and my foot twitched.
It made him quickly withdraw. “Sorry.”
I shook my head before I realized he couldn’t see me. “Just tickled.”
He paused. “That tickled.”
I nodded softly. “Yeah.”
I watched him slowly inch his hand back into the closet, holding up all five fingers as if in some sort of sign of surrender. I furrowed my brow as I watched it slowly gravitate back to my foot.
I watched him settle it back around my ankle.
That finger of his, still tracing.
“I hate being tickled,” he said, “sorry for that.”
It took me a second to figure out how I wanted to respond. “It’s not all that bad, I guess.”
“Like nails on a chalkboard for me.”
I snickered softly at what he said, but I didn’t really know how to respond. We didn’t talk much, though here lately, I talked a bit more. My throat didn’t hurt as much when I talked now, so there was that.
We sat like that for a while, no words, just movements. His finger, rhythmically stroking and circling and drawing. My breathing, rhythmic and steady through my mouth. He was right, I took in more oxygen this way, rather than through my nose.
Probably because it was broken.
I reached up and touched the little brace I still had over my nose. The one they called Doc said I no longer had to wear it, but I didn’t want to take it off. I know that sounds weird, but… it was given to me, you know? It was mine, for better or for worse.
I was so tired of my things being taken from me…
I stayed in my head for so long that when I came to, his hand wasn’t there any longer.
My ankle was bare of his warm touch, and tears crested my eyes.
My lower lip wobbled. Did he leave because I was boring?
Did he say something and I missed it? What if he’s mad at me now?
What if I messed things up with the only person who was kind to me?
Oh God, is he mad?
What does he do when he’s—?
“Got you some blankets and another pillow,” he said.
I gasped softly at the sound of his voice, and he paused just outside the closet.
“You okay?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “You… you what?”
I watched as the closet door cracked open before two plush blankets and another pillow got shoved through the opening.
“I figured, if you don’t like beds, you can make your own bed in there,” he said as he got done shoving the soft items through the slit in the closet door. “Want another blanket? I know you’ve already got one in there, so this makes three. I can get you a f—”
“No,” I said quickly as I reached for them.
I moved so quickly that it made me groan.
“Are you all right? What happened?” he asked quickly.
I winced at the fire in my ribs as I reached for everything. “Just my ribs.”
“Do I need to get Doc? He could—”
“I’m okay, really,” I said breathlessly as I grabbed the items and tugged them toward me.
One of the blankets was that fake velvet stuff, and it brought tears to my eyes with how soft it was.
I sniffled. “Thank you.”
He paused. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’re crying.”
My lower lip quivered as I moved around gingerly, smoothing out the blankets onto the floor. “The velvet blanket is so nice. Thank you.”
“I could get you another one, if you’d like.”
I must have hesitated for too long, because he was gone in a flash.
I wiped my eyes as I smoothed the plush blankets out onto the floor and stacked the pillows the way I used to.
For the longest time, I didn’t even have a pillow.
And now, I had two. Memories of my life before all of this came crashing back.
Like how I used to stack both of my pillows on top of one another so I didn’t always have to sleep on my back.
I snored a lot when I was on my back.
Wait, was I snoring here?
Was it annoying him?
Maybe I should ask—
“Here,” he said before I heard something shoving its way through the opening of the closet door.
I turned around and saw another one of those lovely velveteen blankets.
“Oh,” I said breathlessly as I reached for it.
“There,” he said as he released it so I could take it, “and there’s plenty more where that came from. You just let me know.”
I took the blanket as I laid down and rubbed my cheek against it softly. Ssshhhk-ssshhhk. Ssshhhk-ssshhhk. Ssshhhk-ssshhhk. Back and forth against my skin, with that lovely little sound that echoed through the caverns of my brain.
Ssshhhk-ssshhhk.
Ssshhhk-ssshhhk.
Ssshhhk-ssshhhk.
“Thank you,” I said softly before another yawn dropped my jaw.
I heard him chuckle before he responded. “No thanks needed. Get some rest. Doc’s proud of the amount of food you ate and were able to keep down. You’ve earned it.”
You’ve earned it.
Rest.
I let those words echo throughout my mind as I pulled that velveteen blanket up my body. I settled the back of my head against the pillows. I let my eyes fall closed.
I wondered if he was proud of me, too.