4. Dani
4
DANI
TEN YEARS AGO…THIS WILL BE THE DAY THAT I DIE
I hate the color white.
I especially hate it when it’s stained with my blood. This is yet another thing that Oscar disagrees with me on. The white silk wrap jacket and matching pants are one of his gifts. It’s my prison uniform. For the death of me, I fail to understand men’s preoccupation with symbols of purity and innocence when they use their pathetic cocks to corrupt both.
“You are listening, Daniella?” The blow explodes against my cheek. My head careens in the opposite direction, trying to outrun familiar fists, even though his fist grips my hair, keeping me in my place. I cut it off? once. I woke up in an Alaskan hospital three days later. It had been worth it to rob him of one hold he had over me.
“Yes, Oscar. I can hear.” I spit the blood pooling in my mouth on the white carpet. Fuck this sterile torture chamber he calls a bedroom. Everything that’s happened to me at the hands of this man who claimed to love me is tainted and used. I know why women choose to be alone Compared to this impotent example of manhood with his filthy-ass hand clawing my arm, I’d rather stand in pig shit and starve than sleep with another beside this monster.
“You claim to hear but still act like a simple-minded bitch who can’t do what’s she’s told. Did I give you permission to touch my fucking food, Daniella? You’re a bitch who needs to be taught the same lesson over and over.”
“You weren’t here. I thought it was for me.” A lie. The man I married deprives me of any possible weapons, even my physical strength. My food, if and when it’s delivered, arrives on paper, with plastic utensils. I hoped, prayed, and cursed Oscar’s soul that he would tire of toying with me after the first six months. I begged him to kill me. But no, the bastard I married is loyal…and I’m the dog, abused and bound, at his feet. His whore wife…waiting to be fucked over, literally.
My food—controlled.
My water-controlled.
My body-controlled.
My thoughts-unhinged. Vengeful. Murderous. Confounded.
Javier Hernandez-Dominguez had trained his sons, Oscar and Omar, to destroy, conquer, and humiliate. Especially, on those entrusted to their care. The first time Oscar slapped me happened on my sweet sixteenth birthday. He took my virginity with pride, my tears with disdain. He told me how grateful I should feel, he’d made me his wife. I balked, railed, cursed. Told him my family would rain down retribution for his cruelty.
He laughed.
No one came for me. Not my father. None of his soldiers. Not Mom. Oscar’s men look away when I’m allowed outside of his frozen stronghold. Fuck Alaska’s beauty and wildlife. Save yourself, a voice echoes above the hurt and betrayal. The snow and ice taunt me, with an impossible escape. Till death do us part is yet another vow under his control.
“What did I tell you about thinking, bitch?” He yells in my ear. I say nothing in response to his question. Five years of marriage teaches many lessons. The first being married doesn’t make me a wife. Oscar’s ring on my finger doesn’t make him my husband. “Daniella, you hear me talking to you?”
I turn to look him in the eye. “Yes. I hear you.”
“Then why the fuck you make me repeat myself?”
The next words rise like raw sewage crawling with maggots in my throat. “It won’t happen again, Oscar.”
He nods, his handsome face made cruel by the beatings I’ve endured as his prisoner. “You’re a fucking liar, good little wife.”
An involuntary shiver momentarily seizes my limbs at the level of his depravity. Oscar narrows his eyes. “What the fuck? You shaking and shit cause I call you my wife?”
“No, Oscar.” I say in a rush, praying to a God who never ghosted into these four walls to save my soul.
“Did you say no, to me, you stupid bitch? You saying I’m wrong?”
Shit, this no good bastard doesn’t need an excuse to beat my ass crimson and purple, ‘cause we way past black and blue in this dungeon he calls our master bedroom.
“Oscar, I don’t want to fight.” Once upon a time, a foolish schoolgirl, I’d told this man I’d ride and die for him, that I wanted to belong to him. How come those fucked up fairy tales that are read to girls never teach them to ask for some shit for themselves?
The next blow, intended to punish, exceeds its goal. My stomach caves in until it touches my spine. Disoriented with pain, my eyes water.
“I don’t give a fuck what you want, Daniella.”
Like me, my lungs are gripped with anger, revulsion, and fear. It churns like a storm, picking up speed and strength. I know I am locked in this maelstrom of emotion that could get me killed, but I’m unable to breathe in or out. My chest folds as a limp banana peel, the floor crashes into my knees. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
“Get up, you lazy bitch. I give you a gourmet meal and fresh water. Put platinum and ice on your finger.”
“Take it back,” I rasp, pushing past the pain cramping my insides, to hold my head high.
The very air stills. It’s the first time I’ve heard the voice that screams in my mind day and night, aloud. Now that my secret is out–that I hate the smell, the sight, the fucking taste of him in my mouth—I own that shit. Fuck his ring. Fuck this marriage. Fuck my life.
He yanks me up by my hair. Strands rip from my scalp.
“OOOW,” I scream, paralyzed in his grip.
He lowers his head. We’re nose to nose. “Say that shit to my face, bitch.”
Fuck this bastard. “Take your ring off my fucking finger,” I scream. “You ass bitch, broke dick motherfucker.”
He chuckled. “Never,” he hisses. “Till death, Daniella. I own your body, your soul. I’m your first and your last. That fucking smart ass mouth, it’s mine, bitch.”
Slowly, he starts to undo his belt. “Get on your fucking knees, Daniella. I’mma wash your mouth out with my fucking nut.”
He smiles when I wobble, then kneel. He juts his stiff cock at my closed lips.
“Open up. Suck and don’t fuck up. You bite me this time; I’ll carve a snake on your forehead.”
Careful to keep my face blank, I give my best performance of a good little wife. He watches as I part my lips. My eyes stay glued to his face, looking, looking, but then I hear his deep exhale.
Strike now.
I bury my teeth in his inner thigh. At the same time, I drive the heel of my palm into his nut sack. “Awww, you, bitch. Shit.” His knee buckles before he lurches backward. “Let go, bitch,” he bellows, the words are strangled, with a broken rhythm of high squeals and low groans.
Then one of his pained grunts ignited an insane like glee within me. Happiness erupted in my heart, spreading heat, a dormant volcano of emotion once buried, erupting with force, cracking a hole in barren earth, reclaiming what was.
There’s blood. I taste the sweet liquid, unlike his thick cum, against my tongue. It’s delicious, filling me beyond meat and potatoes. His screams are precious revenge. Even as he rains blows down on my head. One lands on my shoulder. Another lands on the back of my neck.
I’m pounding his nuts, trying like hell has no fury to make creamy nut butter for the first time.
We’re down, and I revel in the equality of it all. But not for long. I scrabble to the bedroom door, my run to freedom. The handle, I yank it. Nothing. Again, I pull.
He’s there, slamming me against the door, forcing my bruised thighs apart. He wiggles the fingers on his right hand in my face. “I bio-locked us in for the night, wife. Maybe I’ll bring a Friend.”
My pulse spikes with the mention of Oscar’s albino boa constrictor slithering over my naked body. I hate snakes. But I no longer fear them. “Sorry,” I choke out, hungry for air. “I-I’ll be—good.”
“You better be, bitch,” he spits, baring his teeth, “or I’ll light a fire.”
Nightmares, the sick scent of cooked flesh, and knee-buckling pain slam into me harder than Oscar’s prison yard bulk.
He won’t win this round, maybe I won’t either. Tonight’s meal came with a steak knife. With my free hand, I grip the handle at my back, pulling it free of my panties. My mother’s words give me courage. Your Daddy may keep you safe. I teach you will keep you alive .
Daniella must die. But, like a phoenix from the ash, that Da’bitch Dani will live, and she will exorcise her demons.
With a warrior’s cry, I find the pulse that powers the monster. I deliver the first strike to Oscar’s jugular. Plunging the blade deep before wrenching it free. Blood sprays my face, a warm, cleansing rain. “Get the fuck, off of me.”
I scream. And scream. And scream. The monsters who live inside these walls have heard my strangled sobs for many years.
They won’t come.
No one will come.
Fuck them, the voice says.
With a gleeful grin, Dani uses her blade again—shredding, stabbing, sawing. She looks over at Friend, coiled across his hanging bridge. Another slithering extension of Oscar, she’d hack to pieces before her departure. “You’re next, albino bastard.”
Again, Dani—fearless, savage, brave—smiles.
But, Daniella, the princess who dreamed of a daring hero coming to her rescue—screams.