by Stella Hart
Well, supposedly done. That was another issue with her.
So many of the things she’d said in recent weeks didn’t make sense. At first, I was elated when she finally ‘admitted’ all her lies to me, because I’d wanted that all along, but then I realized half her stories didn’t add up.
For instance, the other week she’d told me that she sold herself to Crown and Dagger because she wanted to let me have my revenge on her for pushing Ben off a cliff. Except… she didn’t even know I was related to Ben until I told her weeks after her arrival, and when she allegedly signed the contract, she had no idea who she would be given to. So it was impossible that her reason for selling herself to the society was that in particular.
So what was the real reason behind her desire to sell herself here? Something must’ve made her sign that contract, but she didn’t seem to want to tell me what it was.
I could put it all down to exhaustion and confusion, I suppose, but the issue kept plaguing my mind, arousing sneaking suspicions deep within. I couldn’t quite put my finger on any of it, but I knew there was something I was missing. Something major. There was something deeply broken and messed up inside Tatum, and I had no idea how the fuck to deal with it anymore.
The whole thing stopped me from even wanting to touch her. Fucking her now was like fucking a zombie, so what was the point?
If I wanted to get off, I could just screw another woman back here in the city, but I couldn’t even look at anyone else without thinking of her. Every woman I passed on the street, every porn star on the videos on my phone, every girl I dreamed of at night, was Tatum in my head.
Sometimes I worried it meant she was weakening me. The girl had killed my best friend and very nearly killed my father, and yet I still wanted her around. Craved only her. I told myself it was because I wanted to punish her for her heinous actions, but if that were true, then why the fuck did I care so much about whether or not she wanted me to fuck her? Or whether she enjoyed it or not?
If I truly despised her, I wouldn’t give a shit. I would feel nothing toward her but cold fury. I wouldn’t care if I squashed her like a bug, crushed all the defiance out of her. Wouldn’t care if she was nothing but a mindless, broken toy.
And yet, I did.
It didn’t mean I cared for her, though. All it really meant was that my desires had changed, and the things I cared about getting from her had evolved. I suppose that didn’t exactly make me weak. It just made me a typical human, always seeking out new ways in which to obtain that heady endorphin rush my brain craved.
I just needed to remind myself that I owned her for as long as I wanted. That meant she had to do as I said. If I told her I wanted her to try to fight me, she would damn well do it, whether she liked it or not. No more of this blank, passive bullshit. No more letting her get away with it.
My train of thought was derailed by the sound of my cell phone vibrating across the tiles. I turned the shower off, grabbed a towel, and answered the call. It was Brett, the security guard from the island. “Yeah?”
His voice was distant and warbled. It sounded like a tap was gushing with water somewhere nearby. “Sorry to call you like this, but you’re needed on the island. Your father’s request. He said he tried calling you, but you didn’t answer.”
I sighed. Dad had actually tried calling four times in the last half hour or so, but I’d been avoiding the calls out of annoyance, given his reluctance to discuss the egg donor issue with me. “Not today. I have way too much shit to do here. But I’ll be there in a couple of days.”
“It’s an emergency, Elias. We need your help.”
“Emergency?”
“Yeah. Oh, shit, I gotta go,” he said hurriedly.
“Is Tatum okay?”
He didn’t respond for a second, and I heard him shout something at someone in the background before returning his attention to me. “Sorry, really gotta go deal with this. Just get here as soon as you can,” he shouted over another loud gushing sound. “Call your father back if you want the whole story!”
“No need,” I said, my pulse racing. “I’m on my way.”
5
Tatum
The wind howled outside, and a light drizzle of rain pattered against the gym windowpane. The clouds that had gathered since dawn blocked out the winter sun, dark and unyielding, casting shadows throughout the room.
I was running on one of the treadmills next to Pri. She hadn’t said a word to me, hadn’t even looked at me. Her eyes were hollow and her skin was marked with bruises. This entire week, I hadn’t heard her speak to anyone at all during our gym and shower sessions.
That was fine. I felt the same as her. No need to talk, no need to pretend everything would be okay. Nothing would ever be okay again, but that in itself was okay, because we all deserved to be here.
She must’ve done something terrible to whomever her master was. Just like me.
The winds grew louder outside. Even through the thick glass of the window, I could hear the creaking of trees as the relentless gales battered and tore at their branches.
When one of the guards opened the window for a second, stupidly thinking it might be good to let some fresh air into the musty room, the winds sounded as loud and powerful as a jet engine. He quickly pulled the pane shut with a muttered curse. “Any news about this storm?” I heard him ask another guard a moment later.
The other one nervously scrubbed a hand across his chin as he spoke. “Apparently it’s gonna be huge. I’m worried about the underground areas, to be honest. Conditions like this, they could flood.”
“How?”
“You know the tunnels underneath the place?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“They were built a long time ago. Aren’t exactly sealed off perfectly. They could flood if there’s too much water flowing into them in a short period of time. If that happens, the water could flood through the vents or cracks in the walls of the cells. And who knows what kinda structural damage that could wind up doing to the whole mansion? The base could start to crumble from all the water damage, and the top floors could start to cave in.”
“Oh, yeah. Shit.”
“Obviously that’s a worst-case scenario, but it doesn’t look good outside right now. So I’m gonna look at the weather reports and call King in a sec.”
The first guard sniffed. “I doubt he wants to come back here anytime soon. Not since he got….” He trailed off and motioned with one of his hands. I pretended not to notice out of the corner of my eye, but he was looking at me and miming the action of stabbing someone.
“Well, if this place needs evacuation, he’ll probably want to oversee it.”
A grunt. “Yeah. Guess so.”
The second guard stepped away with his phone, presumably looking at the most recent weather updates before making the aforementioned call to Tobias.
I glanced at the window again. The whole mansion seemed to be creaking and groaning now, sticks and leaves slamming against the glass as if some tempestuous spirit wanted to destroy the whole place. The trees outside were swaying with a violence I’d never seen before. It scared me. What if a huge branch ripped right off one of them, crashed through the window, and impaled someone?
I’d never been on an island during a thunderstorm, so I had no idea if island storms were usually this bad or if this was just a particularly wild one.
I tried to push the worries out of my mind and returned my attention to the treadmill. One of the other girls gave in to her fears and approached the guard who’d tried to open the window earlier, her face etched with worry as she asked if everything would be okay.
“It’s nothing. I bet it’ll blow over in a few minutes. Get back to your exercises,” he said dismissively.
No sooner than he spoke, the sky outside erupted with forks of angry white lightning and buckets of cascading rain, hammering loudly on the roof and windows as if it were demanding entrance. On cue, the power inside went out, and the treadmills and other powered
exercise devices switched off along with the lights.
“Shit.” The guard stepped over to his friend, trying to peer over his shoulder at the phone screen. “What’s it say?”
The other guard looked troubled. “It’s practically a hurricane,” he said in a low voice, thick with concern. “Give it a few hours, the waves might be high enough to knock the fucking windows out of the third floor. Whole damn place is gonna flood.”
“Motherfucker….” The first guard let out a low whistle. “So we do need to evacuate.”
“Definitely. I’m calling King now. Lucky I still even have cell service.” He dialed a number, then waited with his lips pursed in a grim line.
I heard bits and pieces as he hurriedly explained the situation to Tobias. “Yes, sir. It’s meant to make landfall in about four hours. Maybe even sooner depending on wind conditions. I’m going to make all the staff aware, and I…” A brief pause. “I just… okay. Yes, I understand that. I know the girls aren’t ready for placement at the Lodge yet, but we must evacuate. I hate to be blunt, but either they go to the Lodge, untrained as they are, or they drown here.”
I closed my eyes. Drown. I felt like I was drowning here most of the time, slipping under wave after wave of numb exhaustion. Maybe if the storm carried me away in a few hours, it wouldn’t be so bad.
It would just be… over.
The guard went on a moment later. “I see. Can you arrange for him to fly out here and oversee the evacuation? I know it’s a rough situation, but the island is owned by your family, so I thought you might want—” He stopped and paused, listening to Tobias again. “All right. Thank you, sir. Yes, I understand. We’ll start packing everything we can and rounding up all the girls and staff while we wait for the helicopters. There’s also several society members here at the moment. We’ll get the first rescue helicopters to evacuate them as soon as they land.”
Of course. The lives of Crown and Dagger members were far more important than any of us lowly slaves.
When the guard was finished with his call, he pulled a flashlight off his belt and switched it on, waving it in the air to attract everyone’s attention. “Listen up, girls! Today’s storm is a bad one, so the island needs to be evacuated. Mr. King is having several choppers sent over from the mainland, and he’s getting his son to fly in to help coordinate the effort. There’s sixty-two people here on the island altogether, so it’s going to take a while, but we need to try and stay as calm as possible. Got it?”
Completely counter to his words, several of the girls in the gym started screaming and crying.
“Jesus Christ,” another guard muttered.
The one with the flashlight raised his hands. “Girls, calm down and wait here! You’re perfectly safe. In about an hour, you’ll start heading down to the front entryway in an orderly manner. You’ll wait there until your helicopters start landing.” He waved a hand at the other guards. “Cullen, you go and alert all the kitchen and cleaning staff. Oh, and Nurse Fernandez too. I’ll get Hilson and Adams to keep an eye on the situation below-ground, and I’ll ask Smith to alert the members currently staying here. They’ll be the first to leave. I’ll work on rounding up all our guys on the other floors.”
“Right. Let’s head out.”
One guard remained in the gym in front of the door to make sure we didn’t try to go anywhere before the helicopters were ready for us. Some of the girls were quiet like me as they waited, while others sobbed their hearts out in fear.
About thirty minutes later, I heard a faint whirring sound above the wind. I glanced outside to see three slate gray helicopters circling above, preparing to land. They weren’t for us. They were for the society members. We had to wait for another convoy to arrive.
Finally, another forty or so minutes later, a radio bleeped in the guard’s pocket, and he waved his hand at us. “Okay. Let’s go!”
The girls began to move toward the door in one heaving mass, blubbering and whimpering. “God, what if we get hit by a tsunami before we make it off?” I heard one blonde girl sob.
I wouldn’t mind, if I was being honest. There’d be a moment of terror, which was no different to most moments here on the island, and then there’d be nothing but coldness and pressure as the great wall of water slammed into us, sweeping us all away to oblivion. Nonexistence….
I shouldn’t exist.
I’m nothing. Nothing but a contemptible, unworthy girl. My life is pitiful, unjustifiable, valueless.
The dark thoughts swam through my head as I trudged down the main hall of the first floor with the other girls. I didn’t want to escape the island with them. I didn’t even want to exist anymore. I was too drained, too weary. Why should I bother existing when all I did was hurt people? Why should I bother going through all the daily motions when my owner didn’t even see a point to visiting me?
I didn’t blame him for not wanting me anymore. Not at all. Why would he want a lowly piece of trash like me?
I was the only one to blame.
I waited in silence in the expansive entryway. The girl next to me impatiently tapped her feet on the black and white tiles. I barely even registered the sound, or the guard’s voice near my ear a moment later when he announced that our rescue helicopters were landing. I was too busy concentrating on the sound of the wind outside, the smell of the salty air, the thought of the jagged cliffs surrounding the island….
A few weeks ago, those cliffs were terrifying to behold, but now, they were like a magnet, drawing my mind and my will. I wanted nothing more than to find my way to them; give myself what I truly deserved in the end.
“We can fit five girls in the helicopter that just landed, and five more in the one that’s about to land,” I heard a male voice saying. It sounded distant, warbled, like he was speaking through the walls of an aquarium. “Please, stay calm! There are more coming.”
The girls didn’t listen. Even though only ten of us could go, everyone clamoring in the entryway surged toward the door as two guards held it open. “He said ten! Jesus!” one of them shouted, grabbing at girls’ sleeves and collars to try and stop the rush.
I used the flurry of desperation and confusion to slip outside in front of a much taller girl. The guards could only see her, and they grabbed at her and told her to stay back inside. I quickly ducked around to the right side of the mansion instead of running toward the helipad which stood only a few hundred feet from the front of the place.
Not far ahead of me, the ocean heaved and swelled in the gusting winds and pouring rain. I stood with my head raised to the clouds for a moment, watching the droplets cascade from the sky until they reached the sea, quickly becoming part of the briny depths and moving with the surging waves. It was almost mesmerizing in all its chaos.
Gulls squawked overhead, tossed around in the air like paper planes, flashes of white against stormy gray. Beneath them, the waves began to rise like great mountains, turbulent and unforgiving as they smashed against the rocks below the cliffs.
The cliffs….
I stepped forward, heaving my legs against the gale. It felt like I was walking through molasses, and the pressure from the wind hit my face so hard I had to squint my eyes, but I didn’t slow down. Each step drew me closer to my fate, closer to peace.
The air grew thick with briny mist as I moved toward the cliff’s edge, and the wind pummeled me harder. There was no mercy in this storm, only wrath and tempest.
No mercy. I didn’t deserve it, did I?
I closed my eyes, preparing to step right off the cliff so I could be sucked into a vortex of cold black emptiness. The thought was peaceful, calming. So calming…
All of a sudden, something cut through the fog in my mind. A voice. Don’t do it. Then something else, stark and bright against the backdrop of misery. Images of home. Images of my old college. My friends.
The voice in the back of my head grew louder, calling to me, begging me to see reason. You aren’t worthless. These men just made you feel that way. Don’t you
remember? You’re strong. You’re worth something.
“No,” I murmured to myself, delirious and confused. “I’m a bad person. A murderer….”
Don’t jump, Tatum. Don’t do it. Just stop. The voice almost seemed to be coming from somewhere behind me now, not just in my head.
“I have to do it,” I mumbled.
No. You didn’t do those things. This isn’t you.
The voice in my head grew louder, chanting until it was all I could hear. Finally, my eyes flew open, and for the first time in weeks, I truly saw myself and where I was.
I gasped, staggering back from the edge, unable to believe how close I actually came to jumping.
Holy shit. What the hell was happening to me? How far had I slipped into the abyss of despair that I genuinely believed I deserved to die for even a few seconds?
I shook my head and fell to my knees in the pouring rain, rubbing my eyes as all my mental faculties regained their proper function. I couldn’t let this happen again. Couldn’t let myself descend back into this state for even a second. I had to force myself to see the truth.
These last few weeks held nothing but hazy lies and rambling delusions, slipping in one after another like wraiths in a fog, sinister and insidious. In the end, only one thing mattered: none of it was true. I didn’t deserve any of this.
I didn’t sign any contracts or invent any false memories to cope with some sort of crushing guilt. I didn’t push Ben Wellington off a cliff, and when I stabbed Tobias King, that slimy old prick well and truly deserved it. He was a bad person. Not me.
I gulped down several breaths of icy air, grateful for that one tiny bit of hope in my mind that refused to be snuffed out. I thought it was gone, thought it was dead like the rest of me, but in my grimmest time of need, that little voice came roaring back to life, yanking me back from the call of the void.
I wasn’t going to die. Not today.
I wiped my face and turned around. I was going to go back to the front of the mansion and get on one of those helicopters, and then I would go to the Lodge and bide my time, even if it was hell on earth. I would play along with their twisted demands, but I wouldn’t stop fighting back in devious little ways, wouldn’t stop trying to escape in any way I could. Fuck Crown and Dagger, and fuck all the twisted pricks who ran it. They could all rot.
