by Stella Hart
“Good choice, sir,” I murmured with a smile and a nod, as if I were a fucking waitress who’d just taken his order in a fancy restaurant. “I can make Hollandaise sauce to go with it, if you pick up some more eggs and butter on the way home.”
He smiled. “That sounds great.”
He gave me a kiss, then turned and left. I waited until his car was a speck in the distance, and then I dashed back inside and down the hall to my room.
I lifted the mattress and slid the knife out. My heart raced and my skin prickled with guilt over the thought of leaving this place. Leaving Alex. I tried my best to push the feeling aside and focus on the part of me that distrusted and despised him instead.
I thought about everything that’d been torn away from me when he brought me here with all his lies and faux promises of protection. My friends, my jobs, my internship, my studies. Walks in the park, trips to bars with Samara, chats with my friendly old neighbor. My whole life, stolen from me under the guise of ‘protection’.
It would be gone forever if I didn’t take matters into my own hands, and time was running out.
My guilt finally replaced with hot, seething anger at my situation, I went and stood in front of the dresser mirror so I could see what I was doing. Then I began to carefully saw into the collar around my neck. I couldn’t go fast, or I’d risk slicing my own throat open.
It took over twenty minutes to slice all the way through the thick plastic-coated material, but finally, the collar was broken. I tossed it aside and rubbed my neck, gulping down several deep breaths. I hadn’t even realized how constricting it was until it was off me.
“Goodbye, Alex,” I said out loud, turning around and heading for the closet to grab a jacket. I felt excited, invigorated, for the first time in weeks.
“Goodbye?”
I froze at the deep, icy voice and turned, my heart beating so fast I thought it would explode right out of my ribcage. Alex was standing in the doorway to my room, his face twisted with fury. A red flush had built in his cheeks.
No….
No, no, no!
I wanted to scream and curse with terror and frustration, but the words were frozen on my lips. My stomach roiled, and the edges of my vision pulsed with every heartbeat. Please, be a hallucination, I begged silently, but when I blinked, Alex was still standing there, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked softly, eyes darkening as he regarded me. “Home? To the cops to turn me in?”
“I….” I faltered, still unable to form a coherent sentence.
How the hell did he know what I was going to do? How did he get back here so fast? He said he wouldn’t be home till dinnertime. That gave me eight hours to get the hell out, not half an hour!
He leaned down to pick up the broken collar, then shook his head. “Silly little girl. You thought I wouldn’t have it set up so that I’d be alerted if you ever tried to damage this thing or get it off? You must think I was born yesterday.”
I took a step back, my hands shaking. I guess that explained how he knew to get back here so quickly. The whole time I’d been sawing at the collar, he’d been driving like mad, desperate to get back here and stop me.
“And you must think I’m stupid, acting like it’s normal for a man to force a woman into a shock collar just to keep her around. It’s fucked up,” I said in a low voice, finally finding my tongue. It didn’t really matter what I said now. I was screwed either way.
“I see we’re right back here again. Riding the same old carousel.” Alex smiled, dropped the collar and slowly stepped toward me. “What is this… the second time you’ve tried to escape? Or is it the third? You just can’t make up your mind, can you?”
He was right. In the time I’d been here, I’d changed my mind about him many times. I’d flip-flopped between wanting to escape and wanting to stay so often that I felt dizzy, but it wasn’t my fault. It was his fault for breaking me so much, making my mind whirl constantly with unanswered questions. His fault for lying to me and convincing me that his true intentions for me were good, even though I was now sure those intentions were actually cruel, dark and sadistic.
“Get away from me,” I said, edging back toward the closet.
“No. I don’t think so.” His voice came low and dangerous through the red roaring in my head. My legs felt as if they would give out any minute.
“Are you going to kill me now?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “Kill you? No. Punish you? Yes. You know the rules, and you broke them.” He shook his head, then went on. “I don’t know what the fuck it’s going to take to make you see you need to be here, Celeste. But one way or another, it’s going to happen.”
I took another faltering step backward. “You may as well kill me, because I’d rather be dead than live like this!” I said.
I could see from the look of stark shock in his eyes that I’d hurt him by saying that, but I didn’t care. All I cared about now was getting the hell out of here.
He lunged for me then, and I tried to dart away, but he was too quick for me. Too strong. He scooped me up easily and threw me over his shoulder. I screamed and pounded on his back with my fists. “Let me go!”
“Never. You need me as much as I need you.”
“I don’t need you! You’re a fucking liar!” I shrieked.
He didn’t reply to that. He kicked the playroom door open and led me toward the desk with the shackles on the ground. Upon putting me down, he crouched and locked my feet to the ground with the shackles, then forced me to bend over the desk so he could restrain my hands there as well. I struggled as much as I could, but there was no point. He was—and always would be—stronger than me.
When I was firmly stuck in the position with my pants around my ankles, Alex stepped away. I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, because I couldn’t turn, but I knew he was selecting something from the rack of whips and paddles to punish me with.
He returned a moment later, and I felt the cool, flat surface of a wooden paddle being slowly draped over my ass cheeks. It wasn’t supposed to hurt; it was just to let me know what I was getting soon.
“Before we begin your punishment, I want to know what provoked this outburst,” Alex said, stepping around to the front of the desk, paddle in hand. His eyes were dark and cloudy with anger. “We seemed to be doing so well. We trusted each other. Now this. So why, Celeste? Why did you try to run again?”
I gritted my teeth. “Because it’s not enough. This isn’t enough for me. I don’t believe a word you say anymore. I should’ve never believed you.”
He arched a thick brow. “That’s what I don’t understand. Why the sudden change? You trusted me a couple of weeks ago. You wanted to help me. At least you seemed to. Or are you simply a better actress than I thought?”
I shook my head. “I was only kidding myself. I guess I finally opened my eyes,” I said. It wasn’t a real answer, or the answer he was obviously hoping for, but it was all he was going to get out of me.
If he didn’t plan on being honest with me, then why the hell should I give him the satisfaction of being honest with him about what I found the other day? It would only get me into more trouble and possibly leave me dead and buried in the cold ground outside, because I strongly suspected by now that he would want to get rid of me if I admitted I knew about Evangeline and what he’d more than likely done to her.
For all my earlier claims that I would rather die than be here, I still wanted to stay alive as long as possible. I didn’t actually want to die tonight. Not here. Not like poor Evangeline. I needed more time.
Alex tapped a finger against his chin. “There has to be something that set off this sudden distrust. Did I say something? Do something?”
I shook my head again, determined not to tell him anything. “No. I just woke up, in a manner of speaking.”
He tried a different tack. “Okay. So what specific things don’t you believe?” he said, his voice low and icy. “Tell
me, or I’ll triple the strokes I give you. You like pain, but you won’t like that, believe me.”
My knees went weak at the thought of the brutal, agonizing pain Alex could possibly inflict upon me if he wanted. Shit. I had to tell him something.
I settled on a half-truth without having to mention the other girl’s name or the fact that I knew about her.
“I think you lied when you said I was in danger because you wanted to force me to stay out of fear. Just like that guy did to those girls in Slovenia a few years ago with all the satanic bullshit. I think if I left and went back to the real world, I would be safe. No, I know it,” I said, my voice coming out in breathy, angry hisses. “There’s no one chasing after me except you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Not true. You cannot think like that.”
“I can think however the fuck I want, you control freak bastard.”
“Ah. Welcome back, old Celeste.” He smiled coldly at his own stupid little joke before stepping behind me again. My body drew taut, bracing for the impact. “You know what to do. You will count each stroke. If you stop, then we start again. In between each stroke, I want you to think about why you belong here.”
“Screw you,” I whispered. “I don’t belong here.”
“I was going to give you fifteen. But that’s another five.” Alex sighed sadly. “When are you going to learn, angel?”
“Never. I will never belong here. I will never belong to another person.”
“Five more on top of the rest. Are you done?”
I gritted my teeth again. Why did I have to keep talking back? Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut and stop making things worse for myself?
It struck me seconds later. I wanted more strokes. I wanted more pain. I was addicted to the things Alex did to me. Addicted to the special pain he gave me. It was bad for me, but I craved it anyway, felt that I somehow deserved it. The part of me that had fallen for him and his sweet torture was obviously still kicking around strongly beneath the surface, begging to stay and take more.
Alex ran the cold surface of the paddle over my ass again. “I’ll take your silence as a yes. Are you ready?”
I nodded. “Yes. Please punish me, sir. I need it,” I murmured. I didn’t mean it. I only said it because I knew it was exactly what he wanted to hear. Maybe he’d go easier on me, not paddle me so hard. Even though that warped, perverse part of me wanted pain, I didn’t want to be terribly injured. I didn’t want to be covered in massive purple bruises like Evangeline and forced to pose for sick photos to go into Alex’s twisted collection box.
“That’s right,” he said softly yet firmly. “You do need it. You need to realize I haven’t lied.”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered. Sure.
“You need to realize I’m protecting you and keeping you safe. The rules exist to keep you safe.”
“Yes, sir.” You’re full of shit.
“Good girl.”
The first hit came down, and I shrieked as fire bolted across my skin. “One!”
It hurt worse than the whips and crops he’d used in the past, the stinging sensation spread widely over every nerve ending on my ass cheeks. He slapped me again, hard, the sound echoing loudly in the playroom. “Two….” Slap. “Oh… three!”
I hated how much I loved the pain. But god, I did love it….
I didn’t like feeling so powerless and out of control, but at the same time, I wanted it, just like I wanted every other punishment I ever got. I despised that perverse part of me now; despised it with every fiber of my being. That boy from my tenth grade class was right all along—I must be a freak.
Tears blurred my vision as Alex rained down five more slaps of the wooden paddle, then another five. I thought I could take it all, but with each stroke, the burning, stinging pain worsened, and my resolve weakened.
By the time I choked out the word ‘eighteen’ it was dwindling just above zero, and when I finally raggedly whispered ‘twenty-five’, all remnants of it were gone. I was limp, listless, my determination finally broken.
Alex was right. I did belong here, not because I wanted it, but because he wanted it. He picked me. He controlled my every movement. He owned me. As long as he wanted to keep operating under this wild, deluded fantasy that I was his girl to protect, I would remain trapped here as his captive. His possession.
I let out a broken sob as the realization finally hit me. I was never getting out of here. Ever. I’d tried and failed to escape multiple times, and if I kept going, he would finally grow tired of my efforts. Even if I was well-behaved and stopped trying to escape, all I was doing was staving off the near certainty that one day, he would probably grow tired of me anyway, his little toy. One day, I would probably be too broken to play with, just like the girl who came before me.
One day, he would probably kill me….
13
Celeste
I leaned back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, counting all the carved decorations along the white crown molding. I lost count somewhere around fifty, too tired to bother counting anymore, and I lay back and closed my eyes, trying to imagine nothing but blackness in the hopes it would put me back to sleep. I felt strangely disengaged from my situation, as if the events of my life were playing out on a screen in front of me and I was floating above watching it happen, right up there on the ceiling. I wondered with detached interest if I was finally losing my mind.
I’d been locked in my room for a week now, resigned to my fate. I still wanted out, but I no longer had any fight in me. It was pointless. I’d already tried and failed more than once.
Alex hadn’t put another electronic collar on me, but that didn’t matter, because there was no way out of this room even if I tried, which I wouldn’t. The windows were barred, and even if I somehow broke the glass and squeezed through the bars, I’d be caught like a rat in a trap as soon as Alex heard the alarms going off. He told me he’d had them installed at the same time as the exterior security cameras, which he claimed were there for my benefit, when really I knew they were there to ensure I remained a prisoner.
Alex had also installed a few cameras in my room now that I was locked in here. It was probably to make sure I didn’t try to hang myself with my bedsheets or something else along those lines. On top of that, he’d taken the last week off work so that he could be right here on the property to catch me if I tried anything, because if I did attempt to hurt myself in my room, it wouldn’t do any good to simply see me doing it on the camera feed but not arrive in time to stop me. No, he needed to be right here in the house, always observing me yet almost never associating with me.
He only spoke to me twice a day now—when he brought me breakfast, and again when he brought me dinner. It was the same every day, barely a word spoken. He’d tell me to wake up as he put the tray down on my bedside table, and then he’d ask me if I had any strange dreams while I slept, or if I’d remembered anything useful about the Circle.
I never had anything to report anymore. The memories had stopped coming back, clicked off in my mind as sharply as someone switching off a light. This was no relief to me, because I knew Alex wanted me to remember more so he could have more Circle members to go after. If I stopped being useful and never remembered anything else, my life expectancy would become substantially shorter.
Whenever I said no, I didn’t remember anything else, he would simply nod and step out of the room, leaving me alone again. Trapped and bored. The only time he’d let me out of the room in the last seven days was to go down to the shelter with him to watch him dispose of Justice Baldwin two days ago.
I watched calmly as he tortured and slowly killed him, and honestly, I didn’t react or care. It made my nerve pain feel slightly better for a while, just like it did when I saw Dan die, but besides that, I had no response to his gruesome death other than ‘okay, that happened’ and ‘wow, that’s a lot of blood’.
Aside from that, I spent my days alone in my room with nothing to do but read books and watch m
ovies. I guess it could be worse, and it was certainly better than being down in the cell again. Besides, people could get used to anything, even solitary confinement. I’d proved that beyond a shadow of doubt during my time here. After a while, even unspeakable horrors can burrow into a little niche in your mind, and they become nothing more than something that happened.
That was what I thought of my captivity now—something that just happened to me.
I was starting to worry about the way Alex was treating me, though. He had completely withdrawn from me since my escape attempt, even though I’d been punished and made it clear that I’d resigned myself to being here until the day I died. He no longer touched me or had sex with me—literally the only contact we had was when he brought me food and asked if I’d remembered anything. That was it.
It might not sound bad to an outside observer, but to me, it was a sign of my impending doom, like a threatening whisper in my ear, a feeling that encapsulated me inside a cocoon of hopelessness. I was sure Alex was growing tired of me, growing tired of my lack of help and my constant swings from wanting to be here to wanting to escape, and he might get rid of me even sooner than I previously thought.
I’d tried to be good in the last week so that I didn’t speed up the process—I was always quietly deferential and polite when he brought me my food—but obviously it wasn’t enough. He was still cold and withdrawn, and so I knew my turn would arrive soon, as sure as the sun rose and set each day.
I guess I’d already established that I probably wasn’t going to make it out of here alive, but I thought I’d have a bit longer than just a few weeks. For all I knew, Alex had already staked out a replacement girl, and soon he might begin stalking her so that he could eventually dispose of me and have her take my place. I vaguely wondered what lies he’d tell her in order to scare her into submission. Would he somehow convince her the Circle was after her too?
I curled my hands into fists by my side. As much as I should feel sorry for whoever his next victim was, the most striking thing I felt was an irrational sense of burning jealousy. Whenever he came in here to drop off my food, it would go through me like an electric current, how badly I wanted him to lean down, kiss my forehead, and tell me he forgave me and would only ever keep me. Tell me he wouldn’t kill me. Or tell me anything at all, just so I could hear him speak to me again.
