Chapter 42 The Present
THE PRESENT
AMELIA
The stench of urine invaded my senses, further corroding my already fragile sanity. The man who demanded we call him “master” had provided each of us a bucket to relieve ourselves in.
At first, I had refused. It felt inhumane, a blatant effort to degrade us. But the pressing need to empty my bladder became overwhelmingly consuming, and I reluctantly accepted my fate.
Whenever one of us needed to go, we exchanged a silent understanding and told the other to close their eyes.
Caiden had already witnessed my assault, yet I had been too drugged to fully grasp the humiliation of it.
The thought of him seeing me exposed, urinating in a bucket, was unbearable. I couldn't bear to witness him in such a vulnerable state either.
We agreed to preserve whatever shreds of dignity we had left.
The man came and went, sauntering down into our makeshift prison to toy with our minds, or with me alone. He provided one meager meal each day, a small plate of stale and unsavory scraps, barely enough to sustain us.
My body felt drained, and I could see Caiden’s energy waning with each passing hour. I suspected he was drugging Caiden too.
We didn’t utter any words for a while, until the door creaked open slowly, the rusty sound echoing in the stillness. The man flung the cage door wide, the hollow sound reverberating in the dim room as he tossed the plate of food inside, scattering scraps across the filthy floor.
He was humming a tune I almost recognized. A children’s lullaby, grotesquely out of place.
“Slop is here for my pets,” he sneered, his voice dripping with mockery.
He turned his attention to Caiden, who was normally hunched in the corner but now stood defiantly, silently challenging the man with his brooding demeanor.
“Get back to the wall,” the man commanded, his gravelly voice vibrating with menace.
“No. How about you lift that wall and face me like a man? Coward,” Caiden snapped, a sudden strength overtaking his previous hollowed and grim demeanor. His eyes locked onto the man, a vein pulsing in his clenched fists.
“Get back! Don’t make me say it again.” The man’s voice darkened, a threatening growl that filled the room.
“No.” Caiden’s voice was firm, possessing an unwavering stubbornness.
What happened next was entirely unexpected. A fiery intensity ignited in the man’s eyes as he turned, his hand a blur as it lashed out, connecting painfully with my face.
A scream, high-pitched and filled with terror, erupted from my lips.
“Every moment that you defy me, she gets hurt.”
His voice was cold, devoid of emotion, a chilling instrument that betrayed no remorse.
Caiden stared at me, helpless and broken on the ground. His gaze swept over me, his chest heaving, anguish etched across his features.
“This isn’t over,” he muttered as he retreated, his shoulders loosening under the weight of forced obedience.
The man remained still, a predator savoring his control.
“Because of that little act of disobedience, I realize I’ve been too generous. Each day, you both will decide who gets food and who starves. Today, the girl gets food. Tomorrow, you decide.”
With that, he slammed the door shut, leaving us in a suffocating silence, dread creeping into our hearts once more.
The pain in my face intensified, becoming a throbbing, unbearable pressure. I winced at the sensation.
“I wish he would just kill us already,” I whispered into the dark, not expecting an answer.
Caiden groaned in response, a sound of irritation. He remained silent for a moment before what he said shocked me.
“You know, this feels like my own personal hell. I keep thinking that maybe I am in hell, and this is my punishment for my actions. Maybe I deserve to rot in here.”
Each syllable was a lament, and it tore at my heart.
“Why do you say that?” My question hung in the air, filled with uncertainty.
“Watching you get hurt and humiliated, unable to do anything to help, it’s fucking with my mind. I know you think I’m heartless, but I’m not. I can’t stand witnessing that.”
He took a deep breath, his gaze distant yet piercing.
“I’ve carried resentment like a burden for so long, letting it shape my perception of you.
But watching you suffer like this, it’s shattering me and my hatred is losing power over me.
” A raw honesty colored his voice, revealing a vulnerability he had long hidden.
“I’m grappling with fucked up things, trying to untangle this mess in my mind. Everything is so fucking blurred.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
A whisper, faint and trembling, was all I could manage. His confession, soft and gentle like a lullaby, calmed the turbulent storm raging in my heart.
“It was pretty fucking hard. But I’m not exactly thinking clearly in here being sleep-deprived and malnourished.”
I blinked, processing his words. “So, did you mean what you just said?”
A beat of silence lingered between us.
“Yeah, I did. I know that.”
That was all I needed, and it made me want to cry.
Tears welled up, one by one, then streamed down my face. They poured forth, burning like acid against my skin. Everything that had been building inside of me flooded over.
The pain, the misery, the exhaustion burst forth, uncontrolled, a raw and visceral cry.
Every sob was humiliating. I tried to swallow them, to let the tears trickle back down my throat and drown the thing inside me that still cared, but I couldn’t.
I pressed my forehead to the cold glass, feeling my teeth chatter as the violence of my crying shook me. It was a child’s cry, animal and shuddering, the kind you hope will never be heard by another living soul.
I hated myself for it, and I hated Caiden for being there to witness it. I hated the world for making us its playthings.
I pressed my fists to my eyes, hard enough to color the world with starbursts, and tried to carve out a space in my head where I could be numb again.
But the numbness was gone, it had been replaced by this raw, weeping nerve that stretched from skin to bone.
I cried until my lungs ached, until the noise of it drowned out the low, grating hum of the man’s generator somewhere overhead.
Until nothing existed but the sound of my own undoing.
It left me emptied, wrung out like a sponge, and when I finally looked up, Caiden was staring at me through the glass, his face slack with defeat.
For the longest time, we just watched each other. There weren’t any words left, nothing to say that hadn’t already been scraped out of us.
We were past blame, past apology, past anger.
All that remained was the shared humiliation of being turned into shivering, broken things, and the knowledge that it had taken this much suffering to finally strip us down to that.
It made it worse, somehow, to have no enemy to punch, only the echo of your own hate.