CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A VISITOR
“Wakey, wakey, Noah.”
I was ripped from a dreamless sleep to a palm slapping against my sore cheek, and I cracked my right eye open to look into the face of Benjamin Nolan.
My left eye was too swollen shut to be of any use to me now.
“There you are,” he said with a smile, his voice sickly sweet. “I wanna talk to you today.”
Today.
“What day is it?” I managed to ask.
My voice didn't sound at all like mine. Gravelly, splintered, and raw.
God only knew how long I'd been in this room, chained to this bedframe.
Not eating, not drinking. My way of tracking the passing of time was the moments I'd woken up long enough to peer out the window, to see if it was day or night.
How many times though, I couldn't remember, and the memories of doing so were discombobulated, to the point that I didn't know when they were real or dreams or hallucinations.
“Today is Wednesday, my friend,” Benjamin answered cheerfully, plopping himself down into his chair.
Wednesday. “I've been … here … since … Sunday,” I said slowly, struggling to make my brain work.
I lifted my bleary gaze toward the window to see that it was now nighttime.
Four whole days.
Four days of lying here. Being beaten until I lost consciousness.
Having my clothes torn from my body and left in tattered scraps.
Suffering through the torment and abuse of being wrenched and rolled over against the binds holding me in place, used and violated.
Soiling myself and lying in it until it dried and crusted.
Again and again.
Over and over.
God, I wished I could move my arms. I wished I had something to write with.
I wished I could mark the days onto the wall somehow.
I wished I could take that pen or pencil and stab it straight through Benjamin’s eye, deep into his brain, until he ceased to breathe, before I made my great escape, like you saw in movies or TV shows.
But this was real life. And in real life, people were just that—people. And they grew weak and weary, and there was only so much abuse they could take before they started to wonder if they were no longer a person at all.
“Yep,” Benjamin answered with a nod. “Sunday.”
“You seem proud,” I muttered in barely a whisper.
My mouth was dry and cottony, my lips cracked and bleeding. I didn't dare complain about it though. The last time I had asked for something to drink, Benjamin had offered to piss in my mouth.
I wondered how long it'd take for me to take him up on it, and given how desperate I felt now, I doubted it'd be long.
“You know what? I actually am,” he replied.
“I haven't done much in my life, you know? The first sixteen, seventeen years were … well, they kinda sucked, right? I was a punching bag, a hole to fuck … well, you know how that goes,” he said flippantly, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms tightly over his chest. “Then I kinda fumbled my way through.
Slept on some couches. Sucked guys off for drugs or food or whatever.
Nothin' I was proud of, you know, but I had to do what I had to do to get by, right?”
He was talking like he would to a friend, and I rolled my head against the dirty, bloody mattress to offer my full attention.
There wasn't anything else to do but listen, and the faintest, almost-undetectable shred of hope shone through the darkness, saying, Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe I can coax this sick fucking asshole to let me go.
Or at least to give me a drink of fucking water.
“My uncle gave me a job though. I make good money, decent. Got myself a woman. A daughter.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Can you believe that? I have a wife and a daughter back home, and here I am, spending my time with you.”
“She doesn't wonder where you are?” I whispered, thinking about Meg.
Oh God, Meg.
If I had any tears left to cry, I would've cried then.
Is she looking for me? Would she even know where to start?
They would've found my car by now, I assumed. But would they know where to go from there? I raised my eyes to the window, to the moon, and wondered if it alone could guide her to wherever the fuck I was. Had Benjamin left a trail to follow? He didn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed, and I had to hope he’d been stupid enough to drop some crumbs along the way.
Benjamin shrugged. “Nah, man. I'm out all night anyway. She knows I work. Knows better than to ask any questions too. Don't ask, don't tell, right? She knows the rules.”
The rules.
It didn't surprise me that he'd keep a tight leash on a woman, treat her like a possession and less like a partner.
But still, I grabbed ahold of that bit of offered information and asked with a furrowed brow, “What do you do?”
He twisted his lips and narrowed his eyes. “I dunno if I should tell you, bein’ a cop and all,” he said with skepticism, until he laughed, slapping his thigh. “Ah, what the hell? Who the fuck you gonna tell?”
I mustered a gruff chuckle. “I was gonna say, you're just gonna kill me anyway. Might as well tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets. Make this shithole your confessional.”
He hummed contemplatively before allowing a grin to spread across his face. “Actually”—Benjamin laughed again—“I think you'd be it, my friend. My deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret.”
I'm not your friend. The thought screamed through my mind, but I bit my tongue until I was certain I'd make myself bleed, waiting for him to start talking again.
“Ah, but you know, dealing mostly,” he went on, tipping his head back and nodding toward the ceiling. “Stealing sometimes. Kidnapping if I have to. On occasion, I get lucky and get to fuck someone too.”
I tried to ignore the burning, searing pain radiating from the places he’d used for his own depraved pleasure just the night before and the night before that, knowing he’d undoubtedly take advantage again and there would be nothing I could do about it but beg and plead and cry until I either passed out or he had to scurry back to whatever rathole he’d come from.
Swallowing my dread and fear, I decided to be bold and asked, “You ever kill someone?”
“You mean, the way your daddy killed mine?”
I nodded.
Benjamin seemed to give it some thought, then shook his head. “Not like that, no. Can't say I have.”
“But you've killed before,” I stated.
“Well, man, you know, that's the business.” He offered a nonchalant shrug, like to take a life was akin to taking a piece of candy without permission.
“But don't go thinkin' that's what your daddy did when he blew my father's head off.
That wasn't part of it. And neither was you nosin' through our shit.”
There was a residual pain glinting in his eyes. Two decades’ worth of hurt and sadness, and I dared to feel an iota of sympathy for this monster of a man. Something in me wanted to reach out to the sad kid trapped inside him, and against my better judgment, I allowed it.
“Benjamin … Ben … h-have you ever considered that we were both just kids, doing what our messed-up dads wanted us to do?”
He glared at me like I was an absolute moron and lifted one shoulder. “Of course that's what it was. I'm not a fuckin' idiot.”
I exhaled with a deflating sigh and began to ask, “Then why—”
“God, dude, we've been through this!” He leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees as a look of unabashed victory blanketed his face. “It's revenge. It's poetic. Your father took something from me, and I'm takin' somethin' from him. Simple as that.”
I shook my head. “But … Ben … my father is dead.”
That seemed to be news to him as the triumphant look he wore fell. “What?”
My arms and legs rattled with life against my restraints as I tried to lift my head, hope buzzing beneath my battered skin.
If he realized this was all for nothing, if he realized there was no revenge to be had, he might let me go, I considered, but the more logical side of my brain reminded me that nobody was ever let go in situations like this. There was only escape or death.
“He hated me, Ben,” I went on. “He tried to kill me. He never cared if I lived. He—”
“But he saved your life!” Ben fired back at me, the heat of his immediate anger evident in his furious glare.
“Yeah, probably because he didn’t wanna have something to explain to my mom!” I fired back, shocked by the strength behind my voice. “God, you can't make a thousand assumptions from one fucking incident, man. You have no fucking—”
“Shut up!”
He rose to his feet and slapped me across the face, and my lip stung with the fresh opening of a cut that'd only just begun to scab over.
I licked at the blood and stared at the other side of the room, away from him, as I continued, “He would rape her, over and over and over again.
That's how I came to be. I was the product of that rape.
Nobody wanted me dead more than that bastard.
Well, except maybe you, for some stupid fucking reason.
All I did was what he told me to do, and I did it so he wouldn't beat the piss out of me or my mom.”
Ben stood over me. I turned my head an inch, just enough to peer at him through my one good eye.
His chest heaved with anger and fury, his fists clenched at his sides.
There was no telling what he might do right now after I divulged more than he'd allowed me to in all the days I'd been chained to this bed.
Would he give up? Would he kill me now? Would he kick the shit out of me until my bones were broken down and jagged beneath my flesh?
Will he let me go?
Stop. He’s not letting me go.
“Who killed him?” he asked then in a calm, even tone, a stark contrast to his stance.
“M-my mom,” I answered.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
He leaned over until his nose touched mine. “You think she's looking for you?”
My throat shifted with a hard, grated swallow. “Yes.”
“Then why the fuck do you think it matters to me who mourns you?”