Chapter Twenty-Three
When Vic was gone, I dried myself off and returned to bed. I still had no clothes, and I liked the feeling of being covered, even if it was only for a little while. The dampened sheets clung to my skin, heightening my feeling of the cold. My own heat dissipated, carrying with it whatever weak impetus had led me to pack my bags.
A knock came at the door. It would have to be Matthew.
After all, Vic didn’t knock.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten, and my stomach sank hollow beneath my ribs.
“Come in,” I said.
Matthew walked in and again sat down beside me on the bed. It seemed there was a perfunctory quickness to his movements, as though reducing his exposure to me would somehow lessen the horror of what his project had spawned.
For once, I saw a way out. Perhaps I wasn’t wholly Vic’s: rough, crushing, possessive Vic. I wasn’t the man’s property simply because I had become his prisoner. The only thing I could do was exploit Matthew’s discomfort. He had tried to save me before; maybe he would do it again.
I sat up in bed, allowing the clinging sheets to fall away from me and expose my breasts. It was nothing Matthew hadn’t seen before, but I hoped there was a way to make him see me as more than some cog in a machine that only he and Vic truly understood.
“Why am I here?” I asked.
Matthew glanced at me, his gaze lingering only for a moment on my naked breasts.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said, scratching at his beard and looking away.
“What if I guess?” I asked.
He let out a short laugh devoid of humor. “Still, no.”
“Let me try,” I said. I placed my finger against my lower lip and dragged it downward a little, my thumb resting on my chin. “I think that you’re working on something, some project.”
“Yes, Vic and I had that conversation in front of you,” Matthew interjected with a fa?ade of boredom.
“You have a protocol, something that was used on Edith and maybe Margaret. Vic did something different with me, something you didn’t approve of. You’d rather start from scratch, but Vic was able to convince you to keep me around. That means there’s something of importance happening here,” I said.
He smiled.
“Did you give me the tincture?” I asked.
Matthew glanced at me sharply. “What tincture?”
“The one you’d been giving Edith.”
He took a deep breath, before fixing me with a patient gaze. “You know that was just alcohol. The placebo effect can be a powerful thing,” he said with a smile. “I doubt you’re so suggestable. It would take more than a little alcohol to manipulate you.”
“It wasn’t,” I said. “I took a sample and tasted it before you switched it out.”
He smiled a little again, but this time there was a sadness shimmering just beneath the surface.
“I see. You did this only a short while into your stay, maybe on the night Edith attacked you. Did it taste familiar?” he asked.
“No,” I responded.
“By that day, it should have,” he said.
I had my answer.
Matthew performed a quick, wordless physical exam before leaving. In perfect silence, he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. My heart sank as I heard the turning of the key in the lock.
So, Matthew would be of no use. He had likely tried before to get me to leave so I would be less of a distraction to Vic, not because he had any desire to save my life. Besides, they had been giving me the same mysterious substance that they had given Edith, and probably Margaret.
I sank back into the bed, covering myself up with the sheets. I curled up into a ball, and felt the warmth gradually returned to my body.
I thought about what I knew:
I had ingested something powerful, likely since my first night in the house
There was something about Vic’s relationship with me that added a new dimension to whatever project Matthew and Vic were working on.
Matthew was in charge, but he was genuinely afraid of Vic. Maybe this was with reason.
After I mentioned Theresa’s memory of Vic’s drunken visit to her room, only hours had passed before she was beaten into oblivion. Maybe killed. No one had provided any update on her status as far as I was concerned.
Margaret couldn’t have done that, even with whatever they did to her that made her take her own life. I just knew instinctively that Margaret wouldn’t have harmed Theresa.
Which left Vic, but the idea that he could beat the woman who raised him nearly to death, all to keep her quiet, was abhorrent.
Still, I knew in my bones that it was Vic. I had seen the darkness cross his face when I told him what Theresa said about his visit. He had broken through her window and nearly taken her life. The police officer said that Theresa had been struck over fifty times, each blow reigning down with a brutal strength. Yet, he hadn’t killed her. He easily could have. He left her with enough life to be brought to the hospital and put on a ventilator. It hardly seemed like a mercy, rather that he was prolonging her suffering. There was no chance of her recovering, not really.
I remembered what we had done by her bedside, and now understood it to be Vic again asserting dominance over the situation, bending me to his will inside a hospital room my mouth had made necessary. In that moment, he had shown me that there was nothing he wouldn’t massacre or desecrate to get what he wanted.
So, what was it that made my relationship with Vic a point of fascination for Matthew?
I heard the key turn and the door swing open.
No knock. Must be Vic.
The man walked through the door, holding the same tray Margaret had used every morning. I tried not to look too eager, as the scent of breakfast and coffee filled the air. My hunger had become acutely painful, and I had to force myself to sit still and wait for him to come to me.
He set the tray on the bedside table and looked me over, his eyes lingering on my breasts. I had not yet covered myself up again, as I clung desperately to whatever might stir affection in his heart.
“I’ll be back soon,” Vic said. He pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Eat those eggs while they’re still hot.”
Alone again, I sat up and wrapped the sheet around my body. I discarded the residual warning in my brain and ate the eggs. I would rather be dosed with whatever they were mixing into my food and drink than starve to death. I was ravenous with hunger, and the salt on the scrambled eggs and thick butter on the toast made it the best meal I could remember eating. When I was done, I sipped coffee in bed, staring at the wall.
I wondered why Vic had left.
My foot was beginning to heal. Or, at least, the wound wasn’t bleeding so much. The fresh gauze hadn’t as yet been soaked through with blood, and I took that as a good sign.
Hours passed before Vic came back. He seemed a little paler than he had when I last saw him, and he had something draped over his arm. There was a kind of desperate fragility to the man that I could not account for. I had seen Matthew heeled, and I was entirely under his control. For a man with the invisible fortifications of a king, he seemed weak.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked.
I glanced down at my naked body.
Vic grinned. “This one time, you can wear something. After all, I wouldn’t want the neighborhood staring.”
He threw me the garment he was carrying: a men’s grey trench coat.
“Anything underneath?” I asked.
Vic’s smile widened, and shook his head. “I want you naked under a coat that doesn’t fit. I want you barefoot too.”
I glanced outside, taking in the sight of an unseasonal dusting of snow. “I’ll freeze,” I said.
“We’ll walk quickly.”
I was worried about walking outside in a trench coat and with bare feet, but the prospect of being somewhere other than this room was too tempting to pass up.
I wrapped the trench coat around me. The lines were all wrong, and the coat was far too large. My breasts showed through the neck of the coat, and I adjusted it as best I could to conceal the nakedness beneath. I walked out of the room ahead of Vic.
We stepped out into the cold. In the end, Vic let me wear a pair of old sneakers I had in my car, though the pain in my foot made walking almost unbearable, even with the added stability that a shoe provided.
We walked for some time, and I held the loose fabric of the coat around my body with tightly clenched fists. Vic didn’t seem to notice my discomfort or, if he did, he made no mention of it.
“It’s a beautiful day for a walk,” he said.
I had been feeling a little tired, and the cool spring air helped enliven me a little. I was able to shake off some of the stagnation which had come to engulf my body. I told myself it was natural to feel somehow deadened after being locked in my small room for days on end, fed only when someone happened to remember, but more often than not going hungry.
My body was weak and I released my grip on the fabric at my throat, so that I could hold onto Vic’s arm for support. I saw a small smile appear on his lips as I allowed my weight to redistribute between us. His smile morphed toward the lascivious as he took in the glimpse of my breast that my release of the coat fabric allowed.
“Have you thought anymore about my proposal?” he asked.
I asked him to repeat himself.
“The marriage proposal,” he clarified.
“I didn’t think…you said that you were trying to keep me here. You said you were just trying to be more humane,” I said.
Vic shrugged. “I love you, and that hasn’t changed. I want an answer,” he said.
The entire question was absurd, and I laughed. I was immediately saddened when the laugh came out as nothing more than a hoarse rasp.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I’m being held as your prisoner. You and a fake medical student are running some kind of experiment on me, and you said to Matthew that you would kill me the second I stopped being useful,” I said, the laundry list of recent incidents surprising even to me.
Vic nodded. “I still might, if that makes your decision easier.”
At least he was being honest.
“Can I take some time to think about it?” I asked.
Vic nodded. “Sure. You have until midnight tonight.”
“Or what?” I asked.
Vic smiled. “Don’t worry, you won’t suffer for saying no.”
“I wish I believed you,” I said.
We returned to the house, and Vic told me to put the sneakers back in the car. In the backseat, I could see the keyring, so I grabbed it and put it into my pocket. I doubted I would be allowed to wear the coat back to my bedroom, but getting the keys from the car to the house would be some progress at least.
We went into the kitchen and I sat down at the table, while Vic went to the cabinet and pulled a bottle of red down from the shelf before pouring two glasses. He lingered behind me, at the counter. I didn’t look, sure that I knew what was about to happen, but too tired to do anything about it one way or another.
He placed the two glasses on the table, and sat down. He leaned back, stretching out his shoulders.
“Take off the coat,” he said lazily. “I’d like to see you.”
I slipped the trench coat off of my shoulders, and over the back of the chair. The kitchen was cold, and I could feel my nipples become as hard as rocks under his gaze. I rested one of my hands on the opposite shoulder, trying to cover my breasts a little with my elbow.
Vic noticed this immediately, and reached out to pull my arm back down to my side.
“That’s better,” he said.
I took a swallow of the wine, noticing only the slightest trace of a now familiar flavor. I knew what it was, and I drank deeply. Vic watched me over the edge of his glass as he drank too. I had no doubt that his wine was pure, and that he knew that I was aware of exactly what was going into my body.
“I’ve already admitted to trying to kill you,” I said. “Why would you want to marry me? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Vic smiled. “I have my reasons.”
The beauty of his face had returned, the striking handsomeness that had made me succumb to his charms almost immediately upon meeting him. There was a confidence to his manner, and an exquisite beauty to his face and body. Even with everything he had put me through, an undercurrent of lust, affection, and desire filled me when I looked at him.
A knock came at the front door, and Vic looked up, apparently surprised by the intrusion. He stood up, and began walking to the door. He glanced back at me only once before exiting the kitchen.
“Don’t put any clothes on,” he growled. “When I come back, I want you naked and sitting on that table.”
I nodded.
He closed the door to the kitchen, and I got up immediately. I grabbed a butcher knife from the knife block, and slipped it into the pocket of the trench coat. Luckily, the fabric of the coat was heavy and loose enough that the large knife was easily concealed within the spacious pocket.
I still doubted that I would be allowed to bring the trench coat into my bedroom. Vic would find the knife the second he picked up the coat. The only comfort I had was that my previous attempt to kill him were met more by amusement than any real anger.
I sat down on the table, feeling the uneven wood of the table against my bare ass. I waited for Vic to return with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. As afraid as I was, there was a longing for him deep in the pit of my stomach that no amount of reasoning could suppress.
He returned to me, stripping off his shirt as he walked through the door. Vic knelt down in front of me, grabbing my hips and dragging me roughly to the very edge of the table. He pushed my legs apart with his hands, and began to work his tongue over my most sensitive parts. His left hand reached up, and began to knead my breast, while two of the fingers on his right hand slid into me. I was already wet from anticipation.
My fingers snaked through his thick hair, pulling gently. I couldn’t stifle the moan which escaped my lips, nor the way the muscles of my stomach fluttered at his slightest touch. I came right there on the table, and only when my body had stilled, did he pull back.
Without a word, he wrapped me back up in the trench coat and carried me upstairs, cradled in his arms. I could feel the weight of the butcher knife against my leg, and every few steps, my ear could pick up the jangle of the keys against one another. Each time, I felt like my heart might stop.
Upstairs, he let me walk into the bedroom alone, but I heard him lock the door behind me. On the off-chance that he returned, I slipped the keys and the knife out of my pocket, and searched the room for a hiding place. I found that corner of the rug under the dresser was hidden from plain view. I moved the dresser out of the way, and stowed the knife and keys under the rug.
I moved the dresser back, careful to make sure that the legs lined up perfectly with the indents the weight had left in the material over the years.
There was nothing else to do but wait. I folded the trench coat, and set it on the armchair, before crawling into bed and covering my naked body. In time, I fell asleep.