Chapter 2 Naomi #3
Behind the heavy silk curtain, the color of fresh blood, I've carved precise lines with my fingernail—almost four months of captivity marked in tallies. They’ve painted over some of them to make me forget—it's working.
"Please," I whisper, the word barely disturbing the air between us.
I reach for her wrist where the black jumpsuit sleeve has ridden up, revealing a strip of pale skin crossed with blue veins.
"Can you help me?" Her fingers are cool and slender compared to his meaty paws.
Something in how she arranges my silverware, how she pours water without splashing—there's care there. Humanity. "Please."
My fingers encircle her wrist like handcuffs of flesh and bone. She freezes, amber eyes widening behind the mask. A heartbeat passes. Two. Then her lips part beneath the velvet.
"I can't do it. My family..." The words emerge like wounded things, her voice honeysuckle-sweet with Georgia vowels, trembling on the edge of breaking. "I can't."
I nod mechanically while rage coils in my gut like a venomous snake. How could she stand by? How could anyone? But then I see it—the yellowish shadow of a fading bruise peeking from her collar.
"It's okay," I lie, still holding her hand. Her fingers tremble against mine like captured birds. The fear radiating from her skin mingles with my own, a toxic cocktail of helplessness.
Just then, the door crashes open, the metal frame shuddering as the red mask fills the doorway. His massive shoulders strain against the black fabric, hands curled into fists the size of small boulders. I hate every molecule of him.
He seizes her arm, thick fingers digging into flesh, and drags her backward. Her shoes—practical black sneakers with worn soles—squeak against the floor as she's pulled away, the only kindness I've known in a hundred and eighteen days, yanked from my grasp.
Later, as I scratch another line beneath the window ledge where the artificial LED sunlight never quite reaches the corner, the door groans open. The sound sends ice water cascading down my spine, freezing each disc in place.
"I told you not to do that." His voice is gravel and rust.
I straighten, shoulders back, chin up—pretending to be something that I’m not—fearless. "To be fair, you never said anything." The defiance tastes metallic on my tongue."You just painted over them."
“That should have been a clear enough indicator,” he replies calmly, opening his black case filled with needles and vials.
It’s all sterile and neatly packed, making me wonder if he used to be a nurse or something.
Thinking about things outside of this place is what keeps me sane—creating backstories for each masked person who enters my room.
“Go lie down, darlin’.” He orders, tipping his head towards the plush bed.
“I must have hit the jackpot today,” I mutter sarcastically as I crawl onto the luxurious linen. If I didn’t know any better, I would think this was a five-star hotel. “He’s coming twice in one day?”
He turns towards me, his gaze piercing through his mask. “Stop talking and roll up your sleeve.”
“I’m sorry, I just miss conversations,” I say, my voice cracking as my own mask slips.
Too exhausted to fight anymore, I do what he tells me to without putting up a fight, the only memories I have, eating me alive as they replay on an endless loop.
My nails tear into his skin, dragging down his arms, leaving behind angry red crescents that bleed.
He let me go. I scream—loud, shrill, animalistic—until my throat burns and my voice cracks.
My legs kick out, desperate and wild, connecting with anything solid: his shins, the edge of the table, the wall.
My foot smashes the LED windows and a bedside lamp as he picks me up off my feet, glass raining down like diamonds, cutting into my bare skin.
He throws me onto the bed, and I dodge away from him, tumbling on the floor. Scrambling to stand, I flip the table in the middle of the room to put distance between us.
Madness doesn’t come all at once—it seeps in. Slow. Insidious. A whisper in the back of my mind, curling around my thoughts like smoke, making everything soft around the edges. Nothing feels real anymore.
I snap.
Grabbing a chair—heavy, wooden, solid—I slam it into the wall until it shatters in my hands.
I clutch one of the broken legs, sharp and jagged like a blade, and press it against my throat.
“I’ll do it!” I scream, chest heaving, mouth foaming like a rabid animal.
“I’ll carve myself open from ear to ear! ”
But he just stands there.
Calm. Unbothered. As if I’m nothing more than a child throwing a tantrum. Then he lifts his hand—barely a flick of his wrist—and the door bursts open.
They rush in—two different masks—one red, one blue.
Cold hands. Rough grips.
They slam me onto the bed, pinning me down like a wild animal. I thrash, scream, curse, but they don’t care. One of them jabs a needle into my arm, and I brace for the nothingness. The quiet. The darkness.
But it doesn’t come. This time, I don’t drift. I don’t sleep.
I stay.
Awake, trapped inside my body, my limbs heavy, useless. I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t scream. But my mind—my mind is on fire. Yelling for help. Begging for someone to wake me up from this nightmare
But no one comes.
His porcelain mask, devoid of emotion, gleams in the harsh light as he looms over me. His belt buckle clinks as he slithers between my thighs. He slams into my body with a ferocity that borders on psychosis.
He is all I can see as he shreds my insides. Each agonizing moment is a cruel punishment; my screams echo in my mind, but unable to escape my lips.
He pumps into me without mercy, spewing declarations of love with every brutal thrust. Blood blooms beneath us, onto the pristine sheets, its warmth spreading underneath me as tears leak from my eyes. But he doesn’t stop, groaning as he claims every inch of me with violent possession.
“You’re mine,” he growls, flipping me onto my stomach. My heart pounds in my chest, fear gripping it like a vice. Fisting a handful of my curls, he yanks my ear to his lips. “Not even in death could you escape me.” He whispers almost affectionately, his breath hot on my skin as he spreads me open.
With an unrelenting force, he plunges himself into my tightest hole, and an unimaginable pain explodes through my body.
As stars burst behind my eyes, every part of me wants to scream, wants to run, but more than anything…
I want to go back home. Even if I don’t remember it; I yearn for it because any fate is better than this.
He thrust deeper and deeper with a sickening wet pop as he buried himself inside me. “This perfect little cunt.” He sneers breathlessly, pushing two gloved fingers into me, rough and deep.“This ass.” He growls as he continues to slam into me. “Everything, all of it, is mine.”
The edges of my sanity crack, slowly tearing away at my resolve. So I do the only thing I can: I hide away in my mind, escape into oblivion.
I blink away the memory. That was back when fire still burned in me—I obey him willingly now.
That is the price of survival in this hellscape, something I never wanted to feel again. Every time, I give in without question, willing to do anything, never to have to face that again.
Not a chair out of place, not a curl unkempt.
His perfect little puppet.
“No need to be so growly, you started it,” I say to Big Red—the name I’d given him after I’d resolved myself to his continued presence—jovially rolling back my sleeve.
He doesn’t say anything, but just before warmth spreads through my body, wrapping me in a lullaby, he whispers, “When you wake up, go through the wardrobe.”
“Wha–” I want to ask him what he means, but my eyelids get heavy so quickly.
There is no wardrobe.
The sound of rain pelting against the glass startles me awake. I’ve never been able to hear the rain here before. Lifting my heavy head, I look around through foggy eyes. Nothing around me is familiar.
My senses are immediately on alert, dread taking over as I wait for the inevitable intrusion of bodies and hands on me as they prepare me for him. My mind races with fear and confusion, wondering what sort of fresh hell he has in store for me now.
My throat constricts, thick and dry like sandpaper, as I try to swallow.
The relentless storm outside seems to reflect the turmoil within me, its howling winds sending shivers down my spine.
I tug at the flimsy white shirt that hangs loosely off my body, a stark contrast to the designer clothes he usually dresses me in.
With trembling legs, I force myself to stand and survey the desolate room—just a bed, a dresser, and a nightstand.
The bedroom door creaks as I open it, cautiously stepping out into a dark hallway.
Each flash of lightning reveals an empty corridor, stretching out before me like a never-ending nightmare.
I approach the staircase at the end, heart pounding with every squeaky step.
When I reach the bottom, I pause and listen for any signs of movement or presence.
But there is only silence.
No one in a mask, rushing at me. No needles. Just the sound of thunder cracking as water drizzles, distantly.
Despite the insistent warning bells clanging in my mind, I press onward into the kitchen, where the faint scent of spices hangs in the air, and the soft hum of the refrigerator fills the silence.
From there, I find a narrow corridor, the dimly lit walls closing in slightly, leading me towards a small foyer.
Lightning shows in bursts through the glass on the door.
The floor beneath my feet creaks softly as I take a cautious step, and the faint glow from a solitary light fixture casts elongated shadows that dance across the space.
A voice echoes in my mind—deep, and not mine. “Keep going through the corridor.” My heart pounds in my chest, but I listen.
With each passing second, my fear grows stronger. When another clap of thunder echoes through the house, I seize the opportunity to open the door and slip outside onto the front porch.
The rain instantly soaks me, but I don’t care.
All that matters is getting away from this place.
As I take off in a sprint across the immaculately manicured lawn and through the pristine suburban landscape, I can’t shake off the feeling that something is watching me from within those walls.
I refuse to look back. I don’t care; I just want to get far away from here.
The rain pelts down like it wants to drown me, stinging my skin and almost as erratic as my heartbeat.
I don’t know how long I’ve been running—just that the ground keeps shifting beneath my bare feet, slick with water, every step harder than the last. The flimsy t-shirt is soaked, clinging to my body, and every bone in my body hurts.
My lungs burn. My mind is static, blank in all the places where memories should live, but nothing is there.
I stagger onto the sidewalk from the middle of the street. Not a car goes by, and all of the homes in this cookie-cutter residential neighborhood are locked up tight. I know it's late. It has to be.
Breathe.
Breathe.
I place my hand on my knees, my stomach roiling with bile, and a steadfast thought rushes through my mind: Why can’t I remember who I am?
Through a curtain of drenched curls, my eyes catch a warm glow in the distance—yellow light through fogged-up windows. A house. Smaller than the sprawling ones I left behind, in a less posh neighborhood, only a few blocks behind me. The porch light flickers, calling me in.
I stagger up the steps and knock. No—I pound. But I don’t even know what to ask for. Help? Shelter? A reason to keep breathing?
The door creaks open, and I’m met with the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen. An older woman, gray curls frizzing wildly from the rain’s humidity, peers out at me. She doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t recoil. She just takes one long look at me and calls out behind her, “Tom, bring a towel!”
She pulls me inside like I’m one of her own.
They don’t ask for details or push me to talk.
They sit me down, feed me warm soup with trembling hands, and wrap me in quilts that smell like lavender and wood smoke.
The man—Tom—brings me a pair of flannel pajamas and sets them on the chair like it’s the most normal thing in the world to have a soaking, trembling stranger show up on their porch.
Later on, they show me to a guest room with floral wallpaper and a cross hanging over the bed.
Days pass. They never call the news. Never take a picture. And I catch them whispering sometimes—about me, I think—but they never press.
And one sunny morning, something snaps into place—a sudden clarity. “Naomi,” I breathe carefully, as she spoons sugar into my tea. “I think that’s my name.”
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was a constant whisper for days, a slight itch in the back of my mind. They both look at each other as I stir my tea, flashes and fragments starting to bloom in my mind.
A song on the radio. The way the sunlight catches a stained-glass window, I can't quite see clearly—the feeling of silk sheets on my skin. A man’s laugh—one I can’t place, but my chest tightens every time I hear echoes of it in my head, solemn and deep.
“Can you remember where you live?” Martha—the woman who has shown me such kindness and gentleness when I need it the most— looks across the table at me.
I don’t cry. I just nod, a clear recollection of my home finally blooming fresh in my mind. A picturesque home in a prestigious neighborhood. That’s what scared me the most.
Why isn’t anyone looking for me?
“Can you take me?” I ask quietly, staring out the window at the rain trailing down the glass like veins.
She grabs my hand, squeezing it gently like a mother would, tears sprouting in the corners of beautiful brown eyes as her deep skin wrinkles. “Of course.”