CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
The unmistakable sound of his jeans zipper being lowered hit my ears, and I closed my eyes, clenching my jaw and bracing myself. Praying I'd pass out this time, praying he’d make it quick.
“As long as there's someone out there who's gonna be sad once they use your fuckin' teeth to identify your body … that's all I ask for.”
***
I drifted in and out of restless sleep, the pain tearing through me in unpredictable intervals before my mind protected itself by losing consciousness.
The moments when I woke, I could only cry tearless sobs, writhing on the filthy mattress.
How much more could a body take before it gave up? I wasn’t sure, but it was coming. I sensed that much, and before there was relief, I could only feel guilt.
For being here. For not fighting harder, for not fighting at all. For leaving home in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and broken.
God, I was surprised I could speak at all with how much I’d screamed.
I tried not to. Tried to bite it back. Tried not to give him the satisfaction.
Benjamin liked it when I screamed, loved when he knew how much it hurt me when he pinned my useless body to the bed, abusing it over and over against the binds that wouldn’t break.
I bit back until my teeth lacerated my tongue, until I couldn’t anymore.
I screamed as he pressed my face into the mattress, his hand curled around my neck.
I screamed until my throat tore and my voice splintered, and then all that met my ears was his laugh, a wicked chorus of glee and horror that ended in his grotesque grunts of release and my soul-shattering tears.
And then he got up to leave, as he always did, tucking himself away and zipping his jeans.
“This time tomorrow?” he’d asked with a chuckle, heading to the door.
How strange was it that him leaving was almost as terrible as the rape?
“Please,” I had whimpered, so pathetic, as Benjamin turned off the flashlight, drowning me in darkness once more.
He’d stopped and asked, “Please what?”
“Don’t …” I hadn’t wanted to say it, hadn’t wanted the admission to pass through my lips and into this nightmarish world. But then I had. “D-don’t go. Please. I don’t …”
Want to be alone, I’d wanted to say, but I couldn’t.
Judging from the way his laughter rang through the small space and beyond, it was the funniest thing Ben had ever heard.
And then he had left, closing the door behind him.
Who knew how long it’d been since he’d been in here with me? Ten minutes, ten hours … did it matter anymore?
My legs ached from being in this position for too long, and I attempted to shift to alleviate the pain, the chains rubbing against the torn skin around my ankles, only to feel the stabbing, burning, throbbing sensation from where I’d been violated.
“Oh God!” I gritted my teeth as my eyes burned with tears. I gasped, struggling to breathe through wave after wave of agony, waiting for my body to acclimate once again.
A sound came from within the darkness.
I stopped breathing altogether.
“B-Ben?” I asked cautiously, scared to open my eyes and see him sitting there, watching me sleep.
An answer didn’t come.
Ben always made his presence known. He woke me up and ensured he had my full attention right away. He never liked to waste the time we had together.
The chains above my head began to rattle, and I realized, despite being numb and limp, my arms were shaking.
I winced and swallowed. God, the dryness in my throat was torturous.
“Who’s there?” I whispered.
Again, no answer came.
The wooden chair creaked.
The breath blew out from my nose with a tremble. Was it believable to think whatever awaited me in the dark could be worse than what I’d experienced thus far with Ben?
There was no way to tell without opening my eyes and seeing for myself.
A detective would look, I reminded myself. But in this world, I wasn’t a detective. Where I was now, I was a prisoner. Starving and dehydrated, stripped and scared. Cold and dying a little more with every passing moment.
Honestly, even in the world I had come from, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a detective anymore.
If I ever got out of here, I just wanted to go home.
But I had to face whatever bogeymen awaited me now, certain somehow that he’d be more horrible, more sinister than Ben. Even worse than my father. And with a tremulous inhale, I turned my head, careful not to make a sound, and opened my one good eye.
Toward the foot of the bed, sitting within a shard of moonlight, sat a gargantuan man in a suit as black as night.
But where there should’ve been a face, there was a mask instead.
One as dark as the suit he wore, with goggle-like lenses for eyes and an elongated beak-like shape for a nose—the face of a bird.
A plague doctor’s mask, shrouded by a hood.
A scream raked against my shredded throat as I tried to scramble away, digging the heels of my bare feet against the mattress, with nowhere to go.
He sprang from his seat with lightning-quick dexterity and clapped a leather-gloved hand over my mouth, his glossy, blank eyes hovering over mine.
I continued to scream behind his palm, staring into the eternal damning abyss, until the sound disappeared to make way for ragged breaths and quaking sobs.
Slowly, his palm was lowered, and over his beak-like nose, he laid a single finger. Quiet.
“Wh-who are you?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. “W-w-what do you want?”
Silently, he turned and bent over to pick something up from the floor. I stared, straining against the darkness. I wished he’d turn on the flashlight Ben used when he was here. I wished I could make out more of his frame, his features. I wished he’d speak.
Then he turned again to face me and held something out. I winced, expecting the worst, but when I didn’t receive a blow, I opened my eyes to see a bottle of water.
My heart raced with desperation as he knelt beside the bed, carefully uncapped the bottle, and brought its open mouth to my lips.
I tried to assist, tried to lift my head, but my shoulders, my arms, my neck were useless, and I cried out in frustration.
But the hooded man cupped the back of my head and lifted, allowing me a sip of water.
It was cool against my tongue and absorbed immediately.
“More,” I panted. “God, please. I need more.”
He nodded and allowed another sip, a longer one this time. I swallowed willfully, wanting nothing more than to gulp the entire bottle down within a matter of seconds. I could, too, had he allowed it, but after that second sip, he took it away and laid my head back down.
“No, no, no,” I pleaded. “No, please. I need more. I’m dying. Please.”
He held up a hand. Stop.
“Stop?” I asked, and he nodded slowly. “No! I need to drink. Please!”
He shook his head and held up a finger. Wait.
“Wait? For what? Goddammit, do you speak?!”
He laid a finger over his mouth again, his actions urgent.
Quiet, it said. Shut up.
I rolled my head against the mattress, whining through my despair. He left the bedside to retrieve something else, and again, I tried to watch while being unable to see a fucking thing. Until he returned with a case of some sort. An old doctor’s satchel.
What the fuck is this?
He laid it on the bed and opened it to pull out a bottle.
“Wha-what is that?” I asked as he poured the contents onto what appeared to be a rag. “What is that? Wha-wha-what are you gonna do with that?”
He crouched beside the bed and grasped my chin in his hand.
“No,” I protested, trying to wrench my head away, but the fight was futile. “No, no. Stop. God, please. Stop—”
But then, with a delicate touch, he dabbed at my face with the cloth, stinging the cuts with whatever was in that bottle. My lungs stuttered with racking breaths as he cleaned the open wounds on my cheeks, forehead, and lips as I stared into the lifeless holes where his eyes should’ve been.
When he released my chin and turned to assess my bare torso, I dared to admit, “Something on my back hurts. I think … I don’t know … but I-I might be developing sores or s-s-something.”
He nodded, inspecting the places where Ben had punched my ribs and gut. He looked up to my face as he gingerly pressed and prodded with his gloved fingers, asking a silent question.
Does this hurt?
I shook my head, then faltered. “A-a-a little, but not too bad. I don’t think anything’s broken.”
He nodded, and then slowly, he rolled me onto my side.
I closed my eyes and winced as he gently cleaned the open, oozing wounds on my back and along my thighs.
He stopped and uttered a sigh, the only sound he’d emitted in the time he had spent in my dungeon, and I knew what he was looking at.
He laid a hand against my shoulder, as if to soothe me for what was to come next, and shame flooded my face as he grasped my flesh.
I swallowed, flinching and trying to move away, but just like with Ben, there was nowhere to go, no way to run.
But this man didn’t want to hurt me, or so it seemed, as he applied something that not only soothed the pain, but felt … nice.
He cleaned my backside, wiping away the bodily fluids and waste that had crusted my skin over the last several days.
“Th-thank you,” I said in a broken whisper, blinking away the tears.
He laid a hand against my shoulder again, gave me a pat, then carefully rolled me onto my back.
I winced. “Fuck, that hurts so much.”
He nodded solemnly, then held out the water again, to which I responded eagerly.
This time, he let me have more, which I drank down in grateful gulps, until the bottle was nearly empty.
He took it away to grab a paper bag from beside the chair and produced what appeared to be food.
I jolted with anticipation at the smell wafting from its contents as he opened it and pulled out a wrapped sandwich.
He held it up in question.
I nodded, as desperate as a homeless dog, only considering for a moment that it could be poisoned. I didn’t care. I was so hungry, and if this man wanted to drug me, then maybe it would at least provide some relief.
He fed the cheeseburger to me in small, ripped-away chunks. Reason told me to go slowly, to ask him to save some for later … but would there be a later? Would this be the last meal I’d ever eat? Was this it? A room-temperature, squashed burger from McDonald’s?
Seth never took me to McDonald’s, I thought suddenly, and as I chewed, I began to cry again.
Swallowing, I whispered, “I just wanted to go home.”
The man in the black suit lifted his head, studying me for a moment.
“I was going home,” I went on, the tears coming faster, harder. “I-I-I’m supposed to be there now. I’m supposed to be with my dad and my mom and m-my … my …”
Don’t mention Meg, something told me. Don’t utter her name.
And I didn’t.
Her name went unsaid, even as the man in black fed me the rest of the burger and the remaining water, and I continued to sniffle and cry between bites.
Then he laid a hand against my chest. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I sensed them. I knew he was saying something, I imagined what it might be, and I nodded in response.
Focus on this, I thought he was saying. Focus on what’s in here.
And even if I were to die, I could do so happily, knowing I’d been loved.
I sniffled back the rest of my tears as the masked man held up another bottle, this one containing pills.
“What is that?” I asked.
He brought the label closer, and though it was dark, I could make out the prescription label reading OxyContin.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. These were the pills Dad had swiped from his mother to sell for money to pay the bills.
These were also the pills that had killed his old best friend, Billy, and resulted in Dad’s prison sentence.
“Are you … are you drugging me up?” I asked.
He shook his head, then touched the sore spots on my stomach and ribs.
“For the pain,” I muttered, interpreting. “Okay. Yeah. Th-thank you.”
He placed one onto the tip of my tongue and cracked another bottle of water open. I sipped and swallowed, the warmth of gratitude flooding my chest as my head dropped against the mattress.
The man in black collected the things he’d brought. He gave me another sip of water and capped the bottle, tucking it into his trouser pocket. Then he stood, towering over me, his plague doctor face hovering over mine from above, glowing within the haze of the moon.
“Are you Death?” I found myself asking, only to immediately realize how stupid it must sound.
Yet he didn’t confirm or deny with a nod or a shake of his head.
He simply turned and left me with the hope that he might return with more food and drink. More tenderness and pain-relieving remedies. And maybe, just maybe …
He’d set me free, whatever that might mean.
I just wanted to be free.