The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales

by Zoe Blake

  “Did you notice the similarities in all those women? Did you really look at the photos? Who do they all look like?”

  “Stop.” Her chest was tight, her head pounding, and there was something just out of sight, like a word on the tip of her tongue, something pushing at her mind, wanting to be seen.

  “They were all blonde. Blue eyed. Fit, beautiful. And your father was a king, with a growing and thriving empire, but no heir.” He stood slowly, unfolding those long limbs, and then he moved towards her. “He wanted a legacy. Someone who would look like him. Someone to own. Someone to shape, to fill with his ideals, with his mission.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know all of this.”

  She raised her eyes to his, realizing he was now so close he was towering over her. Carved marble perfection, angelic features, offering a devil’s deal. “If you want to know the truth, Rapunzel, now’s the time.”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “If you’ll let me, I’m about to ruin your life.” He held out his hand, and for some insane reason, as her eyes flicked over the pages and pages of accusations, the voices of women she would never know—she took it.

  More gently than she thought him capable, he pulled her to her feet and led the way out into the hall, releasing her as he headed in the opposite direction she’d fled the day before. He stopped at an open door, waiting patiently for her to follow.

  No threats, no aggressive movements.

  Nothing.

  As she slowly moved towards him, he tilted his head into the interior. “Come on.”

  It felt like a dream as she approached. Part of her was screaming at her to run, to flee out the doors, but when he flipped on a buzzing fluorescent light revealing the overcrowded room, she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. A small cot was pushed against one wall, there was a desk covered in computer parts and a table that seemed to be a makeshift kitchen against another—but the rest of the room was lined with tall, black filing cabinets. “What is all this?”

  “Your father’s sins.” He turned away from her to open a drawer, digging through the files.

  Leaning against one of the cabinets, she counted them in her head—six, seven, nine, eleven. Eleven filing cabinets? Seriously? “All of these files are about my father?”

  “There are a lot of sins to cover.” Dropping a thick folder onto the little table that filled the only space left in the room, he reached back into the cabinet and removed another, setting it next to it. “You want the truth? Go ahead and look, princess. Daniel William Sinclair woke up one day and decided he wanted a child, an heir for his empire, and he had the money to try and make it happen without all the trouble of falling in love and getting married.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” She crossed her arms at the doorway, and he pointed at the folders.

  “Look.”

  Pulling over a stiff, metal chair, Rebecca sat down with a huff and flipped open the folder in front of her. Pages of patient files from a fertility clinic. The information was dense, medical terminology she didn’t quite understand, but the dollar amounts on the pages with bills were staggering. Tens of thousands of dollars, and her father’s name was listed on all of it.

  “Those files are from the year when he was trying to do it legitimately. Through surrogate organizations, actual clinics with IUI and IVF—none of it worked, and he was impatient.” He moved to another cabinet and pulled open the second drawer down, bringing out another dense packet. “Then he met Dr. Bernard Haisch.”

  He held out the next folder to her and she took it, flipping it open to find a photo of a rail-thin man, balding, with intense, dark eyes. The contract beneath it was, admittedly, a little extensive for a relationship with a doctor, but she shook her head. “Okay, so he wanted a child. That’s a good thing, he wanted to be a father.”

  “Keep listening, then tell me what you think, princess.”

  “Asshole,” she muttered under her breath and he glanced at her as he slammed a file drawer shut again.

  “Dr. Haisch promised your father an heir, and all he wanted in exchange were subjects to undergo his procedures, and a guarantee that the women would follow his strict regimen for optimal fertility and health throughout the process. It’s in the contract if you want to read all of the bullshit.” Another cabinet. Another folder. “Your mother wasn’t the only woman to fall into the trap. Sinclair enticed them, charmed them with his dreams of a child, and got them to sign a contract agreeing to Haisch’s process.”

  “None of this is a crime.” Shutting the folders in front of her, she looked up at him, sensing the seething rage under his skin as he started to pull out narrower folders from a variety of drawers.

  “You’re right, it wouldn’t have been a crime. Except your father locked them in The Tower with Dr. Haisch and refused to let them leave. Remember those police reports you read through?” He dropped a tall stack of folders onto the end of the table. “I won’t burden you with the fucked up details of what Haisch did to those women, princess, it’s all in the cabinets if you want to read his notes. But out of the twelve women they used, only the five you read about even tried to get help.”

  “They dropped the charges,” she whispered as she opened folder after folder of contracts with women’s names across the top. Mary Herbert. Diana Lincoln. Susan. Heather. Jennifer. Lauren. Jessica. “The files all said the charges were dropped.”

  “Of course they were, after Sinclair sent his lawyers after them. Reminding them of the contract that had consented to any and all doctor approved fertility treatments. Oh, and if you look at the last couple of pages, there’s an iron clad confidentiality clause.”

  She raised her eyes from yet another contract where her father’s elegant signature was scrawled. Rebecca knew his hand by heart, the strange tip on the ‘S’ when he wrote just his initials, the loop on the ‘D’ in his full signature. It was her father’s handwriting. It was everywhere. On every single document.

  How was this possible? Could he have really done this?

  “They had years of failures, and then they found Clarissa Warren.” The name stopped her heart cold, and she found her eyes glued to the drawer his hand rested against. “I guess you’re not completely blind, are you, princess? You may not remember your mother, but you know her name.”

  “Let me see.” Pushing back from the chair, she moved to the filing cabinet, and he stepped away, giving her room as she ripped the top drawer open and took out a file at random. There were more of Dr. Haisch’s scribbled notes on procedures. Positions Clarissa Warren, her mother, was bound in after attempted insemination. Clinically detached descriptions of her distress, her complaints of pain. When she couldn’t take anymore, she slammed the folder down on top of the cabinet and faced him. “I’m not reading through all of this. What happened?”

  “Are you sure you want to know? This is the kind of thing—”

  “That will ruin my life. I heard you. Don’t try and pretend now that you care, just say it.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched as he stared down at her. “She got pregnant with you. They kept her prisoner in The Tower, and you were even born there.” He tapped the third drawer down with his foot. “Dr. Haisch caught you himself. He was quite proud of that fact in the notes he wrote up.”

  “And then she died?”

  He shook his head, a wry smile lifting one side of his mouth. “Oh no. See, they’d had so much trouble making you, they wanted to repeat the process. If you ask me, I think daddy dearest just wanted a son.”

  “I wasn’t asking you,” she sneered, slamming the drawer back into the cabinet before resting her head against it.

  “Well, princess, do you want to ask why Daddy calls you Rapunzel?”

  “Why?” Turning to look at him, she waited, but he just raised an eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”

  “I’m waiting for you to ask me.”

  “You’re such an asshole,” she growled.

  Reaching forward, he grabbed he
r by the hair, flipping her around to slam her back against the next set of cabinets, his body crushing her against it. The handles dug into her ribs, air hissing between her teeth as the sting raced across her scalp. “It is taking every ounce of my self-control not to fuck you over the end of this table right now, and if you want to continue being a disrespectful little brat I can treat you like one. So, do you want to hear the rest of Mommy and Daddy’s story, or do you want me to chain you up again?”

  “I want to know the rest.”

  “Then ask me nicely.”

  “Why does he call me Rapunzel?” Rebecca forced the words out as he brushed her hip, and she tried not to think about him bending her over the table, ignoring the pulse of need between her thighs.

  “Say please,” he purred, angling her head back until she had to meet his eyes.

  “Please.” The word came out between her teeth, but he smiled and released her, moving back to one of the filing cabinets.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Running his hand over the front of the place she’d found the first file about her mother, he shrugged. “Haisch had some wild theories, mixing a belief in science and magic, and one of Haisch’s changes in diet for your mother was to add campanula rapunculus. It was in salads, omelettes, side dishes for meals.” He smiled a bit as he tapped a drawer. “It’s more commonly known as rampion, the same plant the pregnant woman craves—”

  “In Rapunzel.” Rebecca flinched.

  “Haisch was convinced it had old world fertility properties, that it was the reason it was selected by the Brothers Grimm. And,” he shrugged, “maybe he was right. But they tried the same techniques with her, again and again, and whatever magic created you was never replicated. She never got pregnant again.”

  Her skin was on fire with the aftershock of his touch, her mind twisting in knots as she tried to find a hole in the information.

  The contracts are real.

  Those horrible notes are real.

  The police and medical reports are real.

  And Clarissa Warren was absolutely her mother.

  Rebecca swallowed, her eyes tracing the drawers of her mother’s cabinet, full of a history she wasn’t sure she wanted to know—but there was one thing she couldn’t ignore. “You said you knew about her death.”

  A low laugh rumbled out of him as he paced across the other wall, in front of the filing cabinets full of nightmares. “Yes, princess…” He crossed his arms over his broad, firm chest and leveled his gaze at her. “Do you finally believe me?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Can you tell me your last memory of her yet?”

  “No.”

  “Try,” he urged, his voice taking on a strange quality like he was waiting for something.

  “I don’t remember her!” she shouted, dropping heavily into the chair before she cradled her head in her hands.

  So many twisted flashes, broken images.

  Real or not real?

  “What do you remember then?”

  A frustrated growl escaped her chest. “You want to know what I remember? I remember a woman crying behind a door that I couldn’t open. I remember my father reading me Rapunzel, while a woman shouted in the apartment. I get quick flashes of things that I can’t really remember. I thought they were just nightmares, but I don’t actually remember anything, and I don’t remember her. I don’t, so just stop asking me!”

  “Fine.” In a few steps he was back in front of her mother’s filing cabinet. He flipped through a few folders and then plucked out a simple Polaroid, the instant kind, and slid it across the table to her. “What about now?”

  Rebecca’s eyes went wide as she lifted it delicately. It showed a blonde woman with her face tucked next to the rounded cheeks of a blonde toddler.

  Holy shit.

  It was the woman from her mind. They were both smiling, but the dark circles under the woman’s eyes spoke volumes. As Rebecca stared at the face, it was as if the world shuddered around her. A rush of images appeared and disappeared in her mind, and the harder she tried to hold onto them, the faster they faded. Like capturing water in a sieve.

  No, no, it’s real? She’s real?

  “Daddy dearest gave up on another kid when you were about two. That’s when Haisch’s notes stop, but I think that’s when this picture was taken. I guess he wanted a keepsake.”

  “How long?”

  “What?” He was digging in another filing cabinet now, but he stopped to look back at her.

  “How long were we together? How long until she died?”

  “You mean before she tried to run with you and your father killed her?” A sharp slam of the latest drawer made her jump, a chill settling on her bare skin.

  “How do you know this, how do you know any of this?” she shouted at him, the threat of tears in her voice as she stared at the only real image of her mother she’d ever seen. The fake photos her father had provided tearing at pieces of her heart.

  When she raised her eyes to him, she saw the deathgrip he had on the handle, his knuckles white, and the aura of rage around him again like a dark halo. “I know all of this shit because my fool of a father was going to help her escape. With you.”

  Her already unstable world completely flipped, her body rocking back in the chair like she’d taken a blow to the chest. “What?”

  “My father tried to help your mother, and when daddy dearest found out, he made your mother disappear and then spent a year ruining our lives.” The man growled and dropped the folders in his hands to the floor, going for another cabinet.

  “I don’t understand,” she breathed, suddenly lightheaded.

  “You don’t understand? I don’t fucking understand it. Why he ever thought it was a good idea to get between Daniel Sinclair and his fucking miracle child…” He growled under his breath. “—that, that insane choice, I will never understand.”

  “Wait, how did he even know him? Who the fuck are you?”

  “My father had his own software company. It was small, but he was doing well, doing some unique things, and Sinclair invited him in for a joint venture on a product. From what he used to tell me, they would spend hours together working on ideas, and somehow he met your mother. Somehow she managed to tell my father she needed help, and like the fucking fool that he was, he agreed.”

  “What happened?” Rebecca asked, rubbing at her sternum as she stared down at her mother’s smiling face. The longer she looked, the more uncomfortable the smile seemed, the more forced, while her own blissfully ignorant one was bright.

  He’s right, you’ve been so blind for so long. So stupid.

  “Well, he didn’t believe your mother at first. He spent an entire year gathering evidence against Daniel Sinclair, trying to understand what was happening. Trying to verify that the woman your father called ‘the nanny’ was actually your mother.”

  “And?” she prodded. Her chest hurt, and she couldn’t tell if it was the hangover causing the nausea or the new knowledge that was settling like an acidic weight inside her.

  “And you know the end of this story, princess. I didn’t lie to you. My father figured out a way to get her past all of the tricky little passcodes that locked the doors, picked a day and everything, and then just before it was all supposed to happen—poof. She disappeared.”

  Brushing at the tears on her cheeks, she looked up at him and shouted, “When?”

  “You were four.”

  “Goddammit!” She shoved the folders in front of her off the table, standing up fast enough to knock the chair over. Papers fluttered out, but she didn’t care as she stared down at the tiny photo, willing herself to summon one real memory of the woman who had cared for her enough to die trying to free them. “Why don’t I remember her? I had four fucking years with her!” A sob broke past her lips. It felt like her chest was caving in, the pain of a loss she didn’t even have words for, didn’t even have memories for—just an emptiness, an absence.

  “You were a kid
, Rebecca.” His voice was quiet, and when she looked up at him to find his brows pulled together in some version of concern, she flinched and tore her eyes away. “I’ve been hoping you could tell me the one thing my father never understood. How Sinclair figured out what was happening, and how he found out my father was the one helping her.”

  “Why does that matter? She’s dead.”

  “It matters because your fucking father spent a year destroying my family.” Ripping a thick folder from one of the cabinets, he stormed around to the other side of the table and dropped it, flipping it open to point at a logo. “This was my father’s company. Gothel Technologies. When Daniel Sinclair learned about my father trying to help you and your mother, he retaliated by destroying it. Bought the building it was in and evicted us, threatened every customer we had until they disappeared. We were bankrupt in a matter of months, but he didn’t stop there. No, he blacklisted my father’s name to everyone. There wasn’t a job anywhere near a computer that he could get. The larger companies wouldn’t even hire him to be a janitor, because it would mean making an enemy of Daniel fucking Sinclair.”

  “Do you want me to say I’m sorry?” Rebecca picked up her chair so she could collapse into it, burying her fingers in her hair until it formed a cocoon around her. She felt a twist of guilt that had both nothing, and everything, to do with her. It was all her father, it had always been her father, but his blood ran in her veins. “I’m sorry, okay? He’s a bastard, is that what you want me to say? Just tell me what you want.”

  “Do you believe he’s a monster now?”

  She avoided his gaze, but she nodded. It was a painful admission to connect the man who had seemed to love her, the man she had good memories of—with this monster who the files described.

  “That’s what I wanted, princess.” He moved away from her, and she peeked at him through her hair. There was nothing to do but watch him as he dug in a bag and pulled out something black, and then opened a small fridge and moved back towards the table with an armful of stuff, and two cups.