by CJ Roberts
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/30640460-elizabeth-daniels
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EDanielsWrites
Blog: http://elizabethdanielswrites.blogspot.com/
Cradle of Darkness
By Aimi Deidre
2nd Runner Up and Winner of a $25 Giftcard
CJ’s Thoughts: You broke my heart. BROKE IT!! Again, I was amazed by how well you know Caleb and Livvie. This was as close to re-telling Captive in the Dark from the ‘If Caleb Were Kidnapped by Livvie’ perspective that I couldn’t get over it for hours. There ARE things that are difficult for me to write and for some reason, when it comes to Caleb, MY CALEB, in pain…I just shy away. You took it there and it was wonderful, and sad, and perfect. Brava!
Chapter One
I woke up with a really bad headache and noticed two things simultaneously: it was dark and I wasn’t alone. Were we moving? Vision hazy, my eyes rolled around, almost out of instinct, to gain a semblance of balance, some recognition of something familiar.
I was in a square room, my body strewn haphazardly across the wooden floor. There was a large, wooden beam right in the center of the room with thick ropes coiled around it. Startled, I attempted to move all at once, only to find my movements sluggish and ineffectual. My hands had been tied behind my back, but the ropes were loose.
I managed to free myself from the ropes, rubbing my aching wrists. I’d no doubt they were scarred with red welts, judging from the throbbing pain. I sat up and rested my back against the wall, my body protesting with sharp pains.
Again, I tried to focus my eyes in the dark. There were no windows, but even in the gloomy darkness I could make out distinct shapes. There were other boys, like me, with their backs plastered against the walls around the room. I counted nine boys, all about the same age as me given our similar builds. Some of the boys hugged their knees and rocked back and forth. Some whimpered, calling for their moms. I heard quiet pleas and the sound of uncontrollable sobs somewhere in the room.
My first instinct was to scream. That’s what you do when you find out your worst nightmare is playing out in front of you. But I clenched my jaw on impulse. I stuffed my fist in my mouth to stop the scream exploding from my throat. I heard the sounds of deep, mournful wailing and I was tempted to join them. The room wobbled and I lurched forward, bile suddenly rising up my throat.
“Nggghh.”
“If you’re going to get sick, I’d suggest you use that bucket in front of you.” A voice came from my right.
I grabbed the plastic bucket and emptied the contents of my stomach. My throat burned with the acid, my eyes blurring with tears. The world spun around me and I fought not to get sick again.
“Where the fuck are we?” I said as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I shoved the bucket as far away from me as possible, away from the rancid smell of vomit.
“In a ferry, dumbass. Can’t you feel it?”
I turned to the boy next to me. He had his back against the wall, his posture almost relaxed, but I could tell his eyes were alert and bright like a cat’s. In the near darkness, I could make out the dirt covering his face, and his hair tumbling over his shoulders in messy waves.
“Why are we here? What happened? I…I don’t know how I ended up here,” I said in fright.
The boy snorted. “You really don’t know anything, do you? Wake up, wanker. You’ve been stolen. Kidnapped. You’re a dead man.”
“I’m not dead,” I whispered, afraid if I said it louder, then my nightmares would ring true.
“Yet,” he replied. “But soon, you’ll wish you will be.”
I swallowed hard, tasting the acid bile in my mouth. Around the corner, another boy was wailing at the top of his lungs.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Touch your left ear,” the boy said simply.
My brows furrowed in confusion, but I complied. My eyes widened as I felt something pierced through my ear; a band of earring but with something attached to it. It felt like paper.
“What the fuck is this?” Who the fuck pierced my ear whilst I was knocked out?
“It’s your number. I’m seventy-two and you’re sixty-four. It’s written on your price tag.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, afraid for the answer.
“You’re going to be sold at an auction.”
“What?!” I nearly screeched. Panic flooded into my system, drowning me. I was suddenly struggling to breathe. I felt like I was dumped in a movie, but I was the victim, and there was no hero.
The boy looked at me in alarm and clutched my arm hard. “Shut up, will you? Don’t make any noise, and don’t draw attention to yourself. If you bitch around too much, you’re gonna end up dead.”
I’m already a dead man.
As soon as he said it, the door burst open. Light flooded into the room, and I held my arm out to cover my eyes. I huddled back against the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible. A man marched into the room and stood in front of the boy who was wailing miserably.
“Please, please! Get me out of here. I need my momma. I’m scared. I can’t breathe.” The boy’s face was streaked with tears as he crawled forward and grabbed the man’s leg.
The man looked at him in disgust before kicking him hard. The boy sprawled on the floor, his arms flailed to his sides. The man walked over and kicked his stomach hard, repeatedly, again and again until the boy’s screams turned into a painful wheeze and again until…nothing. I watched in horror as the boy uncurled himself, his body lying at an awkward angle. His eyes were wide and unblinking, and spittles of white drooled out of his mouth.
My heart dropped to my feet. I wanted to vomit again. I watched in fear as the boy lay unmoving on the floor. I never knew what fear was until I experienced it now. Fear cuts deeper than pain. Fear is the unknown but also knowing the inevitability of prolonged suffering. I knew I was going to be broken.
The man whistled and shortly after, two more men appeared into the room.
“Which little bastard is it?” The biggest one said.
The man pointed to the boy on the floor, and they grabbed the boy by his legs and arms, taking him out. I saw the light streaming from the outside and a narrow corridor before the door was slammed shut and darkness once again invaded the room.
Sometime later I regained consciousness, or some state of being similar to consciousness. I jerked. I felt pain everywhere. My head throbbed, my neck was stiff to the point of searing pain. I had no idea how long I’d been caged in this room, but I knew my parents wouldn’t alert the police for my disappearance. They probably thought I got high in some other shit hole somewhere. Anyway, they wouldn’t give a shit even if I was kidnapped to another fucked up life.
The door swung open and a different man appeared. He looked every bit a ruffian; tall with oversized muscles as if they were pumped full of iron. He had an ugly scar cut through his lip. He was so fucking ugly.
“Get the fuck out, all of you, and follow me. Disobey and I’ll cut you up and fish out your intestines for the dogs, get it? Now let’s move,” he commanded and turned toward the corridor.
I looked at the boy next to me and we both scrambled to follow the large brute. The rest followed suit.
My heart hammered wildly in my ears. I was afraid it was going to explode like a time bomb. We passed through another set of corridors with rows of doors on the right-hand side of the wall. We climbed a flight of stairs to the top. I shivered underneath my shirt as wind blasted through us. It was nighttime, and were out in the middle of the river. It was pitch black, save for a lone building filled with lights on the left. The wind carried the distant sounds of car horns and street noise. I looked around for an escape, but the place was lined with guards, dressed in black. Judging from the bulges in their pants and jackets, I knew they were not without weapons.
I looked at one of the guards warily as we walked onto the dock. His eyes were dangerous, as if they contained daggers. I wonder what would happen if I
suddenly made a run for it—would they chase me down or would they simply shoot me in the head?
I shuddered hard and pressed on, keeping in file with the rest of the boys. There were sounds of soft music and laughter as we came closer to the back of the building. My eyes gazed at the warm-lit window with hope. If I could just escape…maybe I could ask whoever was inside to help me. Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe they mistook me for someone else. I was still on a string of maybes when a man grabbed the nape of my neck and shoved me forward. I stumbled before I hastily regained my balance, my heart suddenly out of my throat.
“Move the fuck on. We don’t have all day,” came the gruff reply.
I hastened my footsteps and followed others into the back door of the building. We climbed more stairs into one large room. There were other boys, all completely nude, in different color and sizes, but we all had something in common: fear.
A tall man dressed in a fine tuxedo came to assess us. I could feel his eyes scrutinizing each and every one of us, before his lips curled into a faint smile. “Not a bad batch,” he said.
Batch?
“The finest. Each of them will fetch a good price,” the man who took us there replied.
The tuxedo bastard looked at us again, this time he smiled wider. “Greetings, gentlemen. I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here. Believe me when I say, this is not personal. It’s simply business.”
“Fuck you, bastard! You kidnapped us! What you’re doing to us is illegal!” one of the boys said in anger as he pushed forward. But before he could take another step, a guard punched him in the jaw, making his head snapped back.
The tuxedo bastard simply looked amused. “Ah, disobedience will do you no good. Not in this world. You will learn to cower. You will learn to beg. You will learn to submit.”
After that, we stripped as we were told and scrubbed ourselves inside a makeshift shower at the end of the room. We were dried and naked, my hands trying to conceal my private parts. One by one, a boy left the room, until there was a few of us left. I didn’t ask where they went. Somehow, I knew I would find out when it was my turn to leave. I hated this place. I hated this new turn of events, but I feared what was outside that door. I knew when I left, I would never come back. I was in Purgatory, waiting to go to Hell, and the devils were just outside that door.
When my turn came, they strapped my neck with a metal collar, and attached a long chain to it. One of the men dragged me by the chains and I followed out of the door like a dog on leash. Maybe that was what I was reduced to. I was simply an animal to them.
He took me into a small room with high ceilings. He pushed me in the middle of the room before stepping backwards a few feet away, the chains still in his hand. I looked around, bewildered, my eyes gazing upon the dark tinted windows around the walls of the room.
I jumped slightly when a soft cultured voice spoke through the speaker.
“Item number sixty-four. Six-foot-two European male. Speaks English, Arabic, and some French. The bidding will begin at $100,000.”
My body shook uncontrollably, goosebumps raising on my flesh. Oh, God…
The collar was choking me, but it was the least of my worries. I was in an auction. No more movie references. No more fictional characters to relate to. This was real. It was destiny. I was…a thing, a commodity.
“I have 100. 150. 200. 250. 3. 350. 4. 450. 500—sold for $500,000. Thank you for coming. You can collect your purchases directly.”
The words echoed dully in my head. I heard them, but my mind failed to register. I wasn’t crying, my eyes were watering. Crying is for pussies, but men are pussies. I became wretched and I didn’t care if I was being a pussy right now. I felt a sudden wave of vertigo and I nearly collapsed as the spoken words weighed on me like a stack of bricks.
I’d been sold for half a million dollars.
Chapter Two
I woke up to the smell of vomit. My whole body felt sluggish, my bones creaked in protest as I tried to move, and worse, when I tried to open my eyes, I discovered I couldn’t. There was a blindfold over them.
It came to me in flashes. Dark room. Black windows. Footsteps. A syringe in my arm. Dark. Vomit. Slave.
Summoning every ounce of strength and resolve, I attempted to lift myself up. Why couldn’t I move? My limbs wouldn’t budge. My mind was telling my body to move, but my body wasn’t responding. A new wave of panic rushed through me.
Fearing the worst, I attempted to remove the blindfold by moving my head. Pain shot down my neck, but my head barely moved. What did they do to me? I stopped trying to move. Just think, I told myself, feel.
My head rest on a pillow, and my entire body lay on something soft, so I was probably on a bed. A shiver ran through me.
Which sick fucker bought a boy to his place? Was I going to be sex slave and raped by pedophiles?
Fabric around my wrists, fabric around my ankles—it wasn’t difficult to figure out I was tied on the bed.
That’s when I heard her voice.
“Good. You’re finally awake. I was beginning to think you’d never wake up.”
My body froze at the sound of the sound of a female voice. I had to instruct myself to breathe. The voice was eerily gentle, like a mother putting a child to sleep. But her voice was too young; there was still a child-like tone to it, yet it was cold and detached.
I shuddered thinking how she had been sitting in the room this whole time. She had been watching me panic.
“Who are you?”
No response.
“Where am I?” My words and voice seemed to be on some sort of delay, almost sluggish, like I was drunk.
“I am your mistress.” A small, cold hand pressed against my sweat-slick forehead. “You are where I want you to be.”
“You bought me?” I said incredulously. “What are you, some sick bitch?”
No response.
“Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I just want to go home,” I pleaded.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Just like that, a sea of despair dragged me under its crushing waves.
Her voice was devoid of many things: compassion, inflection, emotion, but there was one thing that wasn’t missing and that was certainty. She smoothed my hair back from my forehead, an intimate gesture that filled me with foreboding. Was she attempting to soothe me? Why?
“I don’t want to be here,” I whimpered. “This is all a big mistake.”
“Your entire life is going to change. You should try to accept that, because there is no possible way to avoid it. Like it or not, fight it or don’t, your old life is over. It was over long before you woke up here.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” I asked quietly, almost hoping she hadn’t heard. I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer.
There was no answer, and then, “Whatever I wish.”
There was coldness in her statement, as if a monster was speaking from underneath that beautiful voice. My blood turned to ice as cold dread seeped into my brain. For a moment there was silence, apart from my harsh breathing as I tried to inhale air into my lungs.
Her breathing, my breathing, together, in empty space.
“Tell you what I will do…I’ll untie you and take off your blindfold,” she said calmly, as if she had done this many times before.
As much as I tried to clamp my lips shut as she untied me, I couldn’t help but whimper. My arms and legs were stiff and numb. They felt too large, too heavy, too far away to be a part of me. Was my entire body asleep? Again I tried to move. I tried hit her, to hurt her. I’d never hurt a girl before, but I would gladly make an exception this time. But again my efforts reflected in twitching, jerky movements. Frustrated, I lay inert. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to run away. I wanted to hurt her. And I couldn’t.
She made me sit up on the bed, with my legs dangling on to the cold floor. I could feel her arms. Feel her clothes against my skin.
“What’s wrong with me?” I asked in frustration. My body felt
like it had aged fifty years. My movements were slow and heavy as I tried to flex my arms. At least my mouth was working fine.
“They gave you a little something. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off.”
I felt her arms around me, her soft breasts on my face as she worked the knots of the blindfold. Strangely, my captor didn’t smell evil. She smelled of honeysuckle. I couldn’t help but to inhale her lovely scent. How could someone so evil smell so lovely?
I felt a tug and the fabric loosened. Light burst into my eyes and I squinted, trying to adjust to the light. Once my eyes were focused, I blinked to see my captor for the first time. My mouth opened slightly as my eyes feasted on her. She looked like she was the same age as me. She was smaller than me, with a petite frame. Long waves of jet black hair framed her face, the ends curling over the mounds of her breasts. She was wearing a baby blue dress, the hem just above her knees. She was stunningly beautiful, almost ethereal, like a girl painted on a canvas.
How could that beautiful face do such a heinous crime?
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“What’s yours?” I said warily.
There was silence and I almost didn’t expect her to respond, but then she said, “Olivia Ruiz.”
Beautiful name for a beautiful woman, but too beautiful for the monster inside her.
“I’m Caleb.”
“Hmm, like Keleb. Fitting name for a dog.” There was amusement on the surface of her voice.
I couldn’t help but scowl. She was right. My father named me Caleb, for I was nothing but a dog to him. He reminded me that every day, how I was useless. I wasn’t even a human.
“Let me go,” I said quietly.
“I told you. Your life is over. The quicker you learn to adapt to this new one, the better for you to survive,” she said casually.
I staggered off the bed and rushed toward her. My movements were sluggish but I managed to grab her throat before she could move. Her hands clawed my arms as her body shook like a fish out of the water.
“You have no power over me, bitch. I’m going to leave and you cannot stop me. I’m not afraid of you,” I growled at her.
