by Keri Lake
My body begins to slump against the stone walls, scraping across the gritty surface, and the wounds on my back from my last whipping flare to life. They’ll be infected, I’m certain of it, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
Nothing matters anymore.
The darkness has been tugging at me for hours, and I want to slip into its embrace, fall asleep and never wake. Perhaps I’ll see Titus in those dreams. I’ll run to him and get swept up in his strong embrace.
Yes, that’s where I want to go.
The door opens to a flickering beam of light. A tray of food is pushed into the cell, before the shadows crawl over the room as the door closes once more.
The scent of meat hangs on the air, and I scramble on hands and knees. Patting around, I knock my hand against tin and silverware, clanging the metal while I blindly search for the food. The gamey flavor of whatever animal they’ve prepared is a minor displeasure, as I tear the meat from the bone with my teeth like an animal, and lick the salty grease from my fingers. I guzzle the cup of stale water, ignoring the slight odor to it. I’ve no idea what I’ve eaten, or drank, only that it fills my belly for now.
Blinding light slices through the blackness, and two guards enter my cell.
“No! No!” I kick and swing out at them, summoning a stubborn strength that refuses to be beaten down, even now. Even when I’ve lost what mattered most.
Rough hands lift me up from the floor, jostling my body as they drag me out of the cell.
“Let me go! Get your fucking hands off me!” My voice bounces off the walls, mocking me with its echo.
Cement grates the tips of my toes, while I’m carried out of solitary and up the stairs. The familiar scenery of the abandoned prison passes across my periphery, but I don’t bother to question where they’re taking me, because I already know.
We come to a stop in front of Remus’s bedroom door, and the guard knocks before opening it. They haul me across the room, past Remus, who stands alongside the bed wearing a velvet, red robe. At the opposite side of the room, Agatha sits slouched in a chair, sipping a red fluid that looks like wine. My grandmother’s necklace still rests on her collarbone.
Wrenching my hand free, I stand upright, chin high. The second I spin toward Agatha to tear my necklace from her throat, the guards’ hands are on me again, hauling me back.
Cold shackles bind my wrists and ankles to the bed posts, with little regard for how tight. As the men step back, Remus stares down on me with an emptiness I can’t even begin to decipher now.
“How did you know?” The words practically hiss through my clenched teeth.
“Where to find you? Mother told me, of course.”
Mother. I frown at that, as my mind reluctantly pulls fragmented pieces together, a puzzle for a much bigger picture I failed to see. “Mother Chilson. She was the one who took you in. Who read you the Bible.” The children Freya traded for Lillith’s freedom.
“Ding-ding-ding!” He raises his defective hand, twisting it around in front of me.
“She did that to you?”
“No, bless her soul. Agatha and I were infected at birth. We were the progenitors of the research done at the convent. Raised by scientists and doctors, until we were old enough to make our own way.”
“Born Rager.”
“Yes again. Now do you see why it’s so very important for me to fuck something pure?” His fingers slip down the edge of my body, where he directs his attention. “Your father made us orphans. He murdered my mother and brother in a raid on our nest. I remember the day very clearly.” Eyes seemingly lost to the memory, he clenches his teeth, as if reliving the anger. “The pity in your father’s eyes, when he found Agatha and me hidden together. One would think he spared us that day, by not having his men execute us the same cruel way he did our mother. He knew, though.” He shakes his head, the venom thick in his tone. “He knew that, by abandoning us there, he might as well have pulled the trigger himself. He stole our mother and left us to die.”
“She was infected. Your brother became infected, and that’s why he raped her.”
“You are perceptive.”
“Then, this … this is all revenge? You plotted to take me for revenge?”
“I cannot tell you how long I’ve waited for this. When I found out you’d been offered up for a sacrifice? I ensured victory by having Titus fight to claim you.” The hem of my shirt lifts, as he runs his fingers over the edge of my stomach. “Poor Titus. I daresay that beast fell in love with you at first sight.”
I double blink to ward off the tears that I refuse to give him. I refuse to hand over my agony to a man who would feed on it with no end to his hunger.
“I would’ve treated you like Agatha. A queen. But you were so quick to run away from me. To give your body to another man. A diseased, savage, whose seed has probably tainted your womb.”
The guards step away, taking their posts at either side of the bedroom door.
Remus rounds the bed, wearing a smile that turns my stomach inside out--the same one he wore just before he chucked the Lobelia over his shoulder. “I have a gift for you.” From a box on the nightstand, he lifts a severed head by its hair, and it’s not until it’s set upon my stomach, blood trickling over the edge of my body, that I realize it belonged to the maid who tried to help me escape.
Aiyana.
Eyes rolled back. Skin a purplish-blue.
A scream rips out of my chest, and I jerk my hips, sending the severed head rolling to the floor. The chasing sound of Remus and Agatha’s collective laughter only adds to the terror prickling my nerves. Remus slides his robe from his shoulders, revealing the stark patch of hair at his groin, where his penis sticks up from his thighs. Without a word, he climbs onto the bed, straddling my leg.
My pants are yanked down, and a shock of panic drums up just enough energy for me to wriggle in protest.
“No. No!” I kick and tug at my binds, while a scream tears across my throat. A hard smack kicks my head to the side, the sting of it tingling across my skin, but it doesn’t settle the fight in me. Bucking my hips beneath him, I make a poor attempt to push him off.
Unhindered by my struggle, he takes hold of his cock in one hand and digs his clawed fingers into my hips.
Agatha pushes her full weight onto my other leg, holding me down.
“No! No!”
“I thought you should know,” the sound of Agatha’s voice in my ear only adds fuel to the rage burning inside of me. “When I took Will inside my body, he always cried for you.” She chuckles, digging her long fingernails into my thigh. The delicate necklace dances over my shoulder, as it swings from her throat.
One dry shove, and Remus is inside of me. Having breached my defenses, he revels in his plunder, circling his hips against me on a giddy chuckle that turns my stomach.
“Titus! Titus!” The sound of his name is an unkept promise, broken by the sobs that rip from my chest. He isn’t coming for me. Not now. Not ever again. “No, please! Stop!”
Clamping my eyes shut, I shake my head, willing myself somewhere else. Please, God, take me away from this. Take me away!
Their laughter grows distant.
The pressure against my body disappears to weightlessness.
Darkness swallows me, and I open my eyes to find myself in a paper boat across from Titus, who rows with a paper oar. All around us is a calm, placid, black sea, and the soft glow of the moon above. I remember the song my Nan would sing to me, about the man in the paper boat.
Across the sea, he sails
The man in the paper boat
And in the face of whipping gales
He keeps his ship afloat
He lives to tell his nautical tales
To the girl who loves to dote
The man in the paper boat
The man in the paper boat
“The man in the paper boat,” I whisper, and the sea turns white with thin gray cracks.
Remus pushes off me, his chest heaving with exertion, s
kin greasy with sweat. The pain between my thighs extends up into my womb, echoing his brutality, and I turn toward the wall again, hoping the blank, white canvas will paint a picture of Titus inside my head.
Titus.
Tears trickle down my temple at the thought of him. How gentle he would’ve been with me. How kind and attentive.
My gentle giant.
Movement about my ankles and wrists fails to break my stare, until my body is lifted up off the bed, and I’m dragged back down hallways and stairwells. The light flicks to darkness, and once again, I’m alone. Trapped in the place halfway between living and dying, where the soul withers away, like the root of a dying vine.
Breathe.
I can almost hear Titus whisper the word in my ear.
Keep breathing. No matter what.
A sharp light hits my eyes. With a harsh yank, my body is lifted up off the floor and dragged across the cement, up the staircase.
I find myself in Remus’s room again.
This time, I have a small bit of energy to kick and wriggle against my captors, but they’re still stronger. They wrangle me facedown onto the bed, securing my hands and ankles. I let out a scream, and one of the guards shoves a gag into my mouth, the scent of stale water hitting the back of my throat. My pants are yanked down as before, and seconds later, Remus is whispering vulgarities in my ear, as he ruts against me.
Across from us, Agatha sits in her chair, watching while sipping her drink. Her leg bounces casually, and she sighs with impatience.
I slip away to the dark, placid sea and the paper boat. To Titus.
And then it’s over.
Remus pushes away, leaving behind the sting of his assault between my thighs, and I’m returned to my cell, where the gag is finally removed.
Once inside, the guards secure my ankles to a thick chain, and pressure rises up into my sinuses when they hoist me upside down. Wriggling and kicking sends a searing pain across my skin, where the shackles rub against the bones. I want to scream, but my head feels as if it might explode.
“It allows the sperm to travel to your womb,” Agatha says from the doorway, and the chasing sound of her chuckle brings tears to my eyes.
It isn’t long before Titus finds me again, his warm, golden eyes like sunlight in this dark place. And soon, I drift away with him.
I can’t say how long they leave me to hang, only that my head is throbbing with an excruciating ache by the time the guards lower me back to the floor.
Only hours seem to pass before the door opens again, and my body turns weak with dread.
It’s the same routine over and over, twice a day judging by the shifts between sunlight and darkness, when I pass by the windows each time I’m dragged from my cell, always gagged to keep me silent on my way to Remus. Afterward, I’m trussed upside down, and each time, I find it easier than the last to slip into that space between consciousness and death, where I smile across from Titus, as he rows the boat toward some unknown direction. Just him, me, and the open sea.
I’m calm here, where the world can’t touch me.
Every second in this place chips away at my desire to live. Drains my will like a slow-drip sieve. The darkness. The silence. The isolation. I can feel it clawing over my skull, dragging me into the recesses. A vast emptiness, where nothing exists but the endless stretch of night.
“She won’t eat. She’s refusing.” Voices rouse me from the black void, and a weak sob breaks inside my chest.
My mother used to tell me that God only gave me what I could handle. Perhaps He’s forgotten about me. Abandoned me in this place, because with each rise and fall of the sun, I find my will to fight them waning.
Lying on my side, I scratch at the jagged concrete, my fingers raw and burning at this point, bleeding as they glide over the wet trail left behind.
“Make her eat.” The sound of Remus’s voice shoots a swell of panic through me, and I curl into myself, like an animal trying to make myself smaller so he can’t see me.
At the click of the door, I scramble toward the corner of the room. One of the guards catches me by my foot, and I kick out at him, the cracking sound on impact telling me I hit well.
“Ah, fuck!” He releases me, and I claw for escape.
I still have some fight left in me, after all.
A streak of white hot pain skates up my belly, when someone yanks me backward. I’m flipped onto my back with two guards at either side of me. Pain ripples across my wrists, the moment they pin me beneath their knees. Fingers dig into my jaw, and I let out a scream, while they pry my mouth open. Cold broth splashes across my face and fills my mouth, before they slam my lips together. I cough through my nose, the burn of fluids shooting up into my sinuses, and I swallow back what’s pooled at the back of my throat.
Gasping and choking, I turn my head to the side, and rough hands hold my chin steady again. Mouth wrenched open a second time, I suck in a breath, before more fluids are dumped into my mouth. They do this over and over, until there’s nothing left in the bowl, and when they’re finished, they release my arms.
Face wet with broth, I turn over onto my side, coughing and gasping.
When the door finally clicks shut again, I break.
An icy chill moves through me as I stand, naked, in my cell, arms failing to cover all my private parts. I stare off at the flickering lightbulb above me, where a moth flutters around it. Part of me wonders if the insect will escape this place. Another part of me knows it won’t, and that’s the tragedy of it all. That flicker of light is it’s last. The false hope.
Even that’s been stripped from me. As if I’m seeing through the windows of an empty shell.
My soul has been eaten away, leaving only the greasy smudges of their gorging across my flesh.
A hard-bristled brush rakes over my skin, and the scent of lye fills my nose. Agatha whacks the blunt end of the handle against my knuckles, and I cry out as the sharp pain vibrates across my bones. She jabs the brush between my thighs, scrubbing at the sensitive flesh there. “Jesus Christ, you smell like horse piss,” she says, swiping a fallen hair from her face. “Should’ve had the guards wash you.”
Behind her, two guards stand by, one of whom smiles as he watches on. “I’m happy to take over, if you’d like, ma’am.”
“You’re a man. You wouldn’t know how to properly wash a woman’s cunt if it came with an instruction manual.” Dipping the brush into a bucket on the floor, she sloshes more cold water onto my body and continues with her scrubbing.
As his smile fades to a snarl, I stare at the gun in his hand, trained on me. What if I attacked her right now? Would he shoot me? I’d do it, if I thought he would. Unfortunately, I think he knows Remus would kill him, if he offered me such a merciful end to this. No, I’m certain that gun is to wound me. Slow me down. Draw out this misery for as long as they can.
Even so, I can’t take my eyes off it, my thoughts sinking to depths I’ve never ventured before. The uncharted murkiness that lures me away from the light. What bliss it would be to close my eyes and never have to wake to Remus again.
Once she’s finished, Agatha tosses a set of clean clothes at me, which fall to the wet floor. As the three of them leave the room, I’m left to dress in the blackness.
Warmth embraces me. A hand glides down inside my pants, and with soft, gentle circles, I crawl out of sleep. “Shhhh. It’s Titus,” he whispers, his chest pressed against my back.
A haze of confusion hangs over me, and I don’t want to open my eyes, for fear of leaving him, my gentle giant. “You’re here.” I can’t help the weepy smile in my voice. The relief that cocoons beneath my skin, being this close to him again.
“You missed me?”
A tear leaks from the corner of my eye, trickling down my temple, and I nod. “Very much.”
Lips slant over mine, while his fingers glide up and down my seam, stirring a slick wetness that belongs only to him.
“Take me away from here, Titus. Please.”
> “Come for me, and I will. I’ll take you far away. I promise you,” he whispers.
Keeping my eyes closed on the dream, I nod, sliding my hand down along his arm into my pants. Feeling the absence of fingers, I startle awake on a gasp. Lids flipped open to Remus’s room, and I shove the hand away.
Cruel laughter bounces inside my skull, and I shake my head, as the reality of what I’ve done settles over me.
“Guards, tie her up.” Remus pushes off the mattress behind me, and I glance over my shoulder to see him disrobe.
I dart toward the edge of the bed, but collapse onto my stomach when hands take hold of my ankles. They drag my body backward. I kick out at nothing. My hands are captured, my body wrested hard against the headboard. The wooden frame knocks against my head, as I kick and fight to break free.
“She kissed me. Did you see?” Remus stands beside one of the guards, who secures my wrists and elbows him. “Got a little tongue action out of her.”
The guard chuckles and steps back from the bed. “Think she liked it.”
“She definitely did.” Tipping his head, Remus drags the same finger he used to fondle me over my cheek, the sensation twisting my stomach inside out. “More than she cares to admit.”
Rage and humiliation burn inside of me, my eyes wet with tears. “You will never be the man Titus was. You’re weak. So fucking weak!”
A flash of movement in my periphery is the only warning, before a bone-rattling punch strikes the corner of my eye. The room darkens on the fringes and dissolves into a pinprick.
Remus pushes off of me for the dozenth, or so, time--I’ve lost count. My hips are bruised and aching, as usual, but I stare off at the white wall, praying that it’ll turn black.
Agatha is absent this time. Perhaps she’s grown bored with the violations. Maybe my apathy toward it all has stripped the excitement. They didn’t feel the need to gag me this time, after all.
“You will bear my child. Produce a perfect version of myself. And after the birth, I will hand you over to my men to do with you what they will. That will be my revenge. The ultimate revenge against your bastard father.”
