The Game Maker

by Kitty Thomas

  “Please... I'm sorry...” I whimper. The tears are already rolling down my cheeks. “I... I lost track of the time... please forgive me, Master.”

  A hand grips my throat, hard. Harder than normal. I gasp and choke for air, struggling against the ropes.

  A laugh. “Master? My, what fucked-up games has my frigid little bitch been playing?”

  My heart sinks. Andrew.

  “You LIED to me,” he hisses in my ear as he rips off the blindfold.

  I look frantically around. We’re in an abandoned meat-packing plant. The ropes tied around my wrists are looped up over a hook that once held dead animal carcasses.

  “You were never going to be homeless. You tricked me into caring again and coming to your rescue, and you were gone. Why didn't you answer my calls and messages? WHY? Too busy laughing with a new lover? You obviously found someone very well off with that car you're driving,” he sneers.

  He looks crazed. I have no idea what to say to him. He won't believe me if I tell him I was kidnapped. What kind of kidnapper lets their victim go and furnishes them with a Porsche? I'm still trying to process the fact that I'm not tied up for punishment from my masters but for some kind of revenge from my ex-boyfriend.

  It sickens me to think I voluntarily dated this piece of shit for as long as I did. He was a mean asshole and bad in bed, but I didn't think he was a violent criminal. I hold onto the small thread of hope that he's bluffing or can't bring himself to do whatever it is he's psyching himself up to do.

  “Andrew, this is crazy. It's not what you think. You need to untie me.” It takes everything in me not to say the word Master again. Not because I would ever think of Andrew in that way but because I've been so conditioned these past few months to respond with that word when afraid, when tied up, when at someone else's mercy.

  And then I see the knife, and the real panic begins.

  “Andrew... please.”

  “Andrew, please,” he mimics in a high voice. “This is the only way you'll learn not to be such a lying fucking bitch.” He slices my sundress in several places and rips it off me. Then he does the same with my panties. I'm not wearing a bra for him to destroy.

  He goes for my collar, fumbling for a clasp or way to get it off. “Why won't this come off? Why is it locked on?”

  The collar. It's become so much a part of me that I forget it's there half the time. I silently pray Seven and Declan are on their way. But how long will they wait before thinking I've tried to run and come for me? And how do I even know there's really a tracking device inside? How would a tracking device be inside?

  The tears slide down my cheeks as I realize it was probably just another mindfuck—just something to scare me, to train me and make me obey. What if there isn't a tracking device? And even if there is, what if they haven't gotten concerned enough about my absence to bother coming after me? I could be dead long before they even leave the house.

  Andrew takes a step back and stares at the collar, then back at me, then at the collar again, then back at me as he finally puts two and two together.

  “Oh. My. God. You fucking whore. This is delicious. I'd fuck you before I killed you, but we both know you'll be dry, you frigid fucking bitch. How on earth did you get some man to play kinky sex games with you when you can't even come? Does he just keep you around for blow jobs? I recall you're actually talented there. Maybe I'll let you blow me before I cut you up.”

  I'm crying seriously now—not just a few delicate tears sliding down my cheeks but full-on sobbing. I no longer have just basic fear of punishment for getting home late, but terror as the reality of who has me and why he's taken me has finally clicked inside my drug-addled brain.

  “Andrew, please... please, I'm sorry, please... don't hurt me.”

  I want to spit in his face. I want to swing back and kick out at him. But I want to live more. I want to see Seven and Declan again. I want to be back home with them. I rack my brain, trying to figure out how to calm him down and somehow get out of this.

  I flinch and try to pull away as he presses the tip of the knife at my throat and slowly drags it downward, not drawing blood, not yet. He wants me as afraid as I can possibly be. Maybe he's bluffing. Maybe he just wants to scare me. I hold onto this thought because I still just can't believe he's a killer. I can't believe he would cut me.

  “Y-you don't want to do this. I'm not worth prison.”

  He laughs again. “Trust me, baby, I won't get caught.” He makes a small, shallow cut across my collar bone, his eyes lighting with delighted malice at the sight of my blood.

  I yelp at the thin burning streak. Then my gaze shifts as I catch movement in the shadows. It's them.

  I catch Seven's eye. “Master, please...”

  “I'm not your Master,” Andrew says. “You're not worth that much investment, you little freak.”

  A throat clears, and Andrew nearly jumps out of his skin as he realizes we aren't alone.

  “I believe she was referring to me,” Seven says, stepping out of the shadows.

  Andrew turns wildly, this time holding the knife up like he thinks he's going to fight him with it.

  Declan joins Seven, and the two of them throw the full force of their dark, blank stares on Andrew. They are terrifying when they drop the masks and let that cold, menacing darkness swirl out of them.

  “Andrew, Andrew, Andrew,” Seven says. “This is awkward. We were grateful that you practically gift-wrapped a girl with nothing to lose and nowhere to go for us to just pick right up. But she doesn't belong to you, pal. She belongs to us, and I'm afraid touching our toys is a killing offense.”

  “Indeed,” Declan says.

  They are both so calm, and I swear it's a thousand times more frightening than the erratic insanity that just came out of Andrew.

  “Drop the knife and step away from our girl,” Declan says.

  Instead, Andrew moves behind me, pressing the tip of the blade to my throat. “I'll kill her.”

  Seven laughs. “And what will that get you? Longer torture, probably. Kill her, don't kill her. Either way, you're ours now. And we aren't nearly so gentle with men.”

  Andrew presses the blade harder against my skin. I cry as another small trickle of blood flows out.

  “Master... please.”

  Neither Seven nor Declan flinches. Nothing changes on their impassible faces. Both men charge so fast toward Andrew, that he actually takes a step back and drops the knife. I can't see what happens behind me, but I hear the scuffling, Andrew's yelping, some punching.

  They drag him around in front of me, forcing him to his knees. Declan holds the knife at his throat.

  “Beg for forgiveness,” Declan says.

  “P-please, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. D-don't let them kill me,” Andrew sputters.

  Seven hauls him off the ground. “That's fucking pathetic. We don't need to hear any more of that. And let us kill you? Please.”

  Seven holds him while Declan takes out a coil of rope from his inside jacket pocket. He ties the ropes so hard and violently I flinch. They hang him from a meat hook so that he's facing me.

  The two men take a couple of steps back. They look back and forth from Andrew to me. Aren't they going to untie me and let me down? It hurts that they acted like they didn't care if Andrew killed me. I know if they'd shown that weakness or hesitation that I'd be in more danger, but it still hurts because a part of me is scared that was the truth—that I’m only a toy to them, only a pet, and they would be barely bothered if I died.

  “Now, Andrew,” Seven says, but he's circling and looking at me. “Let's talk about this frigid bitch comment.”

  Declan moves up behind me, his mouth peppering kisses across my throat as his tongue slips out and licks the spot on my neck where Andrew pressed the blade.

  I can't stop the small whimper as my fear shifts to arousal. I'm sure most people couldn't make such a swift mental shift, but I've been making that shift for so long now that it feels like my default factory
setting. Suddenly, the adrenaline inside me has a safe place to land.

  “Who do you belong to?” Seven asks.

  “You and Declan, Master.”

  Declan's hands have snaked around to begin to rub my breasts. I arch shamelessly into his touch. I know this is sick and twisted, but my head falls back against his shoulder, and I close my eyes, letting him fondle me however he wants.

  I jump at a hard slap. But there’s no pain because I wasn't the recipient. Seven just slapped Andrew.

  “Keep your eyes open. Watch. Her. Before you die, you need to know that she was always perfect. The problem was always you. You are the failure. You are the one who doesn't know how to touch a woman and keep her happy. You destroyed her life because you are a fuck up. Watch how responsive she is. Look at what you could have had, you fucking fool.”

  There is malice in Andrew's gaze as it meets mine. And the part of me that my masters have twisted beyond repair loves it because there isn't a goddamn thing he can do to me now. It hurt every time he called me frigid, every time he acted as though there was something wrong and broken with me that I couldn't come with him. And I don't just mean on the inside, I mean at all. I couldn't come at all with him. And now he's getting a front row seat to the truth and what he could never have.

  Maybe it should bother me more that he's watching this, but he's seen me naked hundreds of times. He's never seen this, though.

  “You will not say a single word while this is happening,” Seven tells Andrew. “Otherwise, we'll keep you alive longer, and trust me when I say you don't want that.”

  Declan strokes between my legs, pushing two large fingers inside me. He rubs my inner walls, knowing exactly how and where to touch me. And then Seven joins him, and he kisses me, his hand gripped possessively around my neck while Declan continues his relentless finger fucking. It doesn't take long for me to come. They've trained me too well. Seven pulls back to allow my screams of pleasure to fill the abandoned factory.

  Declan doesn't stop until I beg him, pleading that I can't take anymore.

  “What do you say to me?” he asks, still gently fondling me, not ready to stop yet.

  “Thank you, Master,” I say on a sated sigh. I give him this without shame or fear. He pulls his hand away, pressing his wet fingers into my mouth. I suck on them without prompting.

  “Such a good girl,” he soothes, stroking my hair.

  I can only whimper in reply.

  When I come down off this high, I open my eyes and look over at Andrew. I expect to see shock or disgust on his face. But instead, I see raw lust and anger, as though I had been somehow selfishly withholding this from him all this time.

  My gaze shifts to Seven. He's standing next to Andrew again, but he's watching me.

  “Take her to the car,” Seven says.

  Declan lifts the ropes binding my arms off the hook. I'd lost track of how much that hurt, hanging there, but now I'm newly aware. He unties the ropes and rubs my wrists, then he brings each one to his lips, kissing the chafed skin. He lifts me up and carries me out of the factory. The sun has disappeared behind the trees, and I shiver against the chill in the air.

  He settles me in the car and takes off his suit jacket and puts it on me. He takes a first aid kit out of the glove box and rubs an aloe gel into my wrists where the ropes rubbed me raw in my struggle.

  Classical music flows into the car as he turns the key in the ignition. He turns the heat on.

  “Stay,” he orders.

  I nod. Why would I run now?

  Chapter Fourteen

  I watch the clock on the dash as it marches on. Two hours pass before Declan returns to the car. In the glare of the headlights I can see his shirt is covered in blood. I'm surprisingly horrified by this. I knew they were monsters. But I've never seen it in this visceral, violent way before. He and Seven just spent all this time torturing a man to death while I sat out in the car in the dark. This is what they have inside them.

  As bad as Andrew was, it still twists something in my gut to know the amount of suffering he just endured. It's so stupid because he had every intention to carve me up like a turkey. Declan takes off the bloody shirt, pops the trunk, and stuffs it inside before getting into the driver's side.

  He starts to pull out of the huge parking lot.

  “Wait... what about Seven?”

  “He's doing clean up and disposal. He'll meet us back at the house later.”

  I almost ask how the hell he'll do that if we take the car but then I realize he's going to take Andrew's car... and get rid of it.

  We drive silently away from the meat-packing plant and onto a lonely abandoned road. I'm lost deep in thought. I was with Andrew for two years. I thought he was an asshole, a piece of shit. Was he also a sociopath? It's so tempting to try to shift him into that category. He was going to torture me to death. I have no doubt of that.

  We want to believe every violent terrible person is crazy. We want to believe every sociopath is a crazed violent lunatic. But I'm not sure if that's true. We want to believe that there’s a special category of not-really-human who does bad things and that we can never be in that category because we’re sane. We’re real people, and they are not.

  But just being with Seven and Declan, I've felt pieces of my humanity shut off. I find myself influenced by the way they see the world around them. And what just happened back there... me happily letting them get me off while Andrew watched... something is definitely broken and changed in me. But I'm not a monster.

  I know now that Andrew is a monster. But is Andrew empty in the way Seven and Declan are? The idea that I could be safe with the men I'm with but in danger from someone who has no actual mental illness is unsettling.

  While I'm thinking all this, I'm very aware that Seven is happily chopping up a body to dispose of. And I'm sure he’s happy about it. Possibly gleeful.

  In college I took sociology because I thought it would help me in the advertising world. Psychology is the normal choice, and there's a lot of overlap, but if you want to sell a lot of a product, you need to know how people act in herds, not just as individuals.

  I remember an experiment we learned about called the Milgram experiment. It showed that normal, good, moral people in shockingly large numbers will obey an authority figure to act against their own conscience to harm a random innocent person. So I'm not sure I'm any more unsafe with these men than I would be with some “good” person.

  At least every decision Seven and Declan make comes absolutely from their own will with no other influence. There’s a strange safety in that. I stare out the window, clutching Declan's coat around me as I watch the trees move by in a blur outside the window. Night has settled in more deeply, growing comfortable in its cloak of darkness. The full moon rises over the treetops, and there’s a strange peace in this moment.

  “Are you all right?” he finally asks.

  At least I don't have to make up an excuse for being home late. I can't believe that's the thought I'm thinking right now. What have these men done to my mind?

  “Yes, Master. Thank you for coming to get me.” I almost say thank you for putting the tracking device in my collar, but that's too crazy even for me. Absently, I trail my fingertips over the metal band around my throat that just saved my life.

  When we get home, Declan takes me to the master bathroom attached to Seven's room. He runs a hot bath and lights some candles for me.

  “Take a bath and then come downstairs. I'll make you something to eat.”

  “Thank you, Master.”

  He just nods and leaves. I take off the suit coat and lay it across the bed in Seven's room, then I turn off the bathroom lights so there’s only the soft glow of the candles and get into the tub.

  I think I was in shock back at the plant because I finally cry. I let all these feelings inside me come out... the latent fear over what could have so easily happened, and the relief that it didn't, the relief that I'm back home.

  I soak for a very long ti
me, but finally I get out of the bath and dry off, blowing out the candles on the way out of the room. I go to my room and find something to wear, selecting a white sundress with small yellow flowers on it. Declan and Seven both like this dress. I'm only allowed underwear when I have my time out of my cage each day so I don't put any on.

  When I get downstairs, I find the kitchen table set for three. Declan has made homemade beef pot pie. It's a soothing, comforting meal and exactly what I need right now. He always knows exactly what I need.

  The front door opens and slams shut, and a few minutes later, Seven stands in the kitchen doorway. He's covered in blood, much like Declan was, only worse because he had to actually cut up the body. I shudder at that thought.

  His gaze finds mine. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “How did it go?” Declan asks.

  “No one will ever find him,” Seven replies.

  “And the car?”

  “Same. I'm going to grab a quick shower.” Seven disappears from the room as Declan pours some tea into my glass and puts a generous serving of pot pie on my plate.

  “Eat,” he orders.

  I thought we'd wait on Seven, but he doesn't have to tell me twice. I'm so hungry. Every few bites I look up to find his gray gaze on me. He's eating, too, but he doesn't take his eyes from mine. He doesn't say anything.

  Is he trying to figure out if I'm really okay? If any lasting psychological damage was done? Part of me thinks they would have enjoyed torturing the life from Andrew even if he'd done nothing wrong just for the sheer sport of it. It's convenient that there was a justifiable excuse.

  Fifteen minutes later, Seven is back downstairs, wearing only jeans, water dripping down his back from his still wet hair. He sits across from me and digs in, eating like this is the first meal he's had in a week. He doesn't look up at me until he's cleaned his plate.