Chapter 12
Birdie
The silence after the timer stops is agony. At least, the ticking is a countdown, a promise that something will happen when it reaches zero. This silence is just void. Indifference. An empty space where his footsteps should be.
Why is he not here yet?
The heat bleeds away immediately. It evacuates like it has somewhere better to be than trapped under my spine.
I wait. I count. One minute. Two. Five.
“Hello?” My voice cracks. “The timer is done. You said two hours.”
Nothing.
The cold reclaims the ground it has lost faster than I think. It starts at my toes, fingers and then works inward. My skin prickles with goosebumps. The table beneath me feels like ice.
Ten minutes. Fifteen.
My teeth chatter. I clench my jaw to stop them, but it doesn’t work. The shivering moves deeper, into my muscles, my bones. The primitive part of my brain screams that this is how people die.
He’s not going to let me die. This is psychological torture. Strategy. He’s breaking me down, making me desperate, pliable. When he finally comes back, I’ll be so grateful for his presence, so eager for warmth, that I’ll tell him anything he wants to hear.
I’ve written this scene a dozen times. The captor withholds comfort until the captive cracks, until their will fractures and they start bargaining, pleading, offering pieces of themselves in exchange for basic human needs.
“Fuck you,” I mumble to the cameras I can’t see. “You sick fuck. You said two hours.”
But he didn’t actually promise to come back after the time ends. He just set the timer and told me to think carefully. The rest I inferred, assumed.
Twenty minutes.
My shoulders shake. The pins shift with each tremor, sending fresh spikes of pain through the puncture wounds.
I try to breathe through it, but my breath comes in short, sharp gasps that don’t quite fill my lungs.
My lips are cracked. My throat feels lined with sandpaper.
When did I last drink water? Before he took me.
Hours ago. Maybe six or seven hours. The shivering makes it worse.
Dehydration accelerates with each tremor that racks my body.
Why is it so fucking cold in here? Colder than before?
My vision blurs. I blink hard, trying to clear it, but the edges stay fuzzy.
What time is it? He took me around seven.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out. Is it the middle of the night on this dreary island already?
It must be why the temperature is dropping.
Thirty minutes.
God, I’m cold, and I’m thirsty and, at the same time, have to pee. “I have to go to the bathroom. It’s urgent.”
Silence swallows my words.
“Seriously? What is your plan for this anyway? I mean, I can last without food or water for a few days, but going to the bathroom…” I don’t have a catheter.
Is he planning on shoving one inside me with his filthy fingers or putting me in a diaper like an ageplay fetishist?
Or is he a sadist psycho who will unpin me, unstrap me, escort me to a bathroom every time I need to relieve myself, and then nail me back to his stupid display?
“Fuck. You know what? I’ll just pee myself and soil your masterpiece. How about that, Butterfly Man?”
Thirty-seven minutes.
“You don’t believe me? I’ll do it. I swear to God…”
No, you won’t. My mind calls my bluff, ironically, in Butterfly Man’s metallic distortion.
You’ll only soil yourself, make yourself colder and humiliate yourself for his pleasure.
Then he’ll come in with a valid excuse to touch you, to disguise violation as care.
Or worse. He can let you writhe in your own piss long enough until you beg him to clean you up, until you plead for his hands all over you.
The threat dies in my throat.
Thirty-nine minutes.
I close my eyes and go inside my head where it’s warmer, where I can build walls between my mind and my body’s screaming needs.
It doesn’t work. The cold is relentless. The pins anchor me to the present, to the pain, to the reality that I’m trapped and alone and he’s not coming.
What if he’s not coming at all? What if this is it?
The endgame. Leave me here until hypothermia takes me, until my body shuts down one system at a time.
A slow death. A cold one. Not the violent, passionate end I’d write for a dark romance, but the pathetic, whimpering finale of evil with no context.
No. Stop. He wants you alive. He needs you alive for whatever twisted fantasy he’s playing out.
Forty-three minutes.
“Please,” I whisper. Then louder. “Please. I’m freezing. Just come back.”
Forty-five minutes.
The scrape of a lock turning thuds in my chest. Keys jangle. Footsteps on stairs.
Relief floods through me so fast it makes me dizzy. I hate myself for it. I hate that his presence feels like salvation when it should feel like hell itself.
The door opens. His silhouette fills the frame. The butterfly mask catches the weak light as he descends, unhurried, each step deliberate.
“You left me in the cold.” The accusation tears out of me before I can stop it. “You said two hours. It’s been almost three.”
“Has it?” The distorted voice carries false surprise. “Time moves differently when you’re waiting, doesn’t it? When you’re afraid.”
Motherfucker. He’s enjoying this way too much.
He crosses to the bench and sets something down. When he turns back, he’s holding a bottle of water. Clear plastic, the kind you buy at gas stations. No condensation on the outside. The water is warm.
My mouth floods with saliva. I don’t realize how thirsty I really am until I see the bottle.
“You must be thirsty.” He moves closer, unscrewing the cap with a soft crack of breaking plastic.
“Yes,” I force out. “And freezing, and I need to pee.”
“Human needs are so inconvenient, aren’t they? So messy. So…undignified.” He slides one hand beneath my head, lifting it gently, ever so tenderly. Like he’s my savior, not the reason I’m strapped to this table, like he’s not the monster who put the pins in my flesh.
The bottle touches my lips. Water spills into my mouth, warm and perfect. I swallow greedily, too fast, and some runs down my chin. He doesn’t pull away. He waits patiently, letting me drink until I’ve had enough.
“It makes me rethink your prose. You write about dark protectors and dangerous men, but you always make the scenes too clean. Too controlled. You sanitize the reality of possession.” When he lowers my head back down, his gloved fingers linger at my temple and cheeks and wipe away the wetness from the mess.
“Real ownership means managing every need. Every function. Every vulnerability.”
“The pressure in my bladder is too much to bear now. You must know it, giving me all that water. How are you going to manage that? Because I’ll pee all over your disgusting hands before you think of getting them anywhere near me.”
He straightens and recaps the bottle. “Oh, Reagan. My beautiful queen, always grasping for control, always building a twist.” He moves to the side of the table. Something clicks. Another switch? A hydraulic hiss penetrates my ears. Then the table begins to tilt.
“What are you—no, no, no—”
The world rotates. My stomach lurches. My back lifts from horizontal, rising, rising until I’m nearly vertical. The straps bite deeper as gravity shifts. The pins scream in my flesh, bearing weight they aren’t meant to bear. I can’t breathe through the pain.
When the table stops, I’m standing—or the table’s impression of it. Still strapped. Still pinned. But upright now, facing forward into the dim room.
Another click. The table beneath my feet shifts. The wood splits, separates, forcing my legs wider. Wider. The straps hold my ankles in place as a gap opens between my thighs.
“Stop—please—”
The mechanical whir halts. Cold air hits the inside of me. I’m spread open, displayed in the most vulnerable position imaginable. Shudders take over me violently.
And then he moves. Closer. Closer. Until he sits—kneels—right there, directly beneath the gap in the table.
Nauseating horror floods through me. “What the fuck are you—”
His hands come up to the mask, and my heart skips a beat. Is he going to take it off? Is he finally going to show me his real face?
I watch, transfixed in revulsion, as he does something to the sides. The butterfly mask splits horizontally across the middle. The bottom half pulls down, just a tiny bit, to reveal only his mouth. The top half stays in place, preserving the mystery of his identity.
“Go ahead,” he says. Without the full mask, his voice carries differently—still distorted by something, apparently, in the top half, but clearer. Intimate. “Pee.”
He tilts his head and opens his mouth wide.
I’m Jack’s cold sweat. Now that I didn’t see coming. I thought perhaps I could intimidate him and eventually trick him into untying me for bathroom breaks so that I could grab something to stab him with and end this misery… “I mean… No kinkshaming or anything, but you’re fucking insane.”
“Am I? You need to go. So go. I’m right here to catch it.” His tone is patient, like he’s explaining something simple to a child. “This is just biology, Reagan. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I can hold it. I’m not—I won’t—” But even as I protest, the water he gave me is already working through my system, and my bladder doesn’t care about dignity or leverage or power dynamics.
“You will. Eventually. Your body will override your pride. It always does. The only question is whether you do it now, with your control, or later when you can’t hold it anymore and it happens anyway.”
A hysterical laugh bursts out of me instead of tears. “I hate you.”
“I know.” He looks up at me through that masked gaze. “But weren’t you the one who wrote hate is just intimacy wearing a different face?”
FUCK YOU. My bladder spasms. I clench every muscle I have, fighting it, but I’m cold and in so much pain, and my body is not listening to me anymore.