Curiosity took over me and I walked quickly toward the doors. There was something that had to be bothering him if he was so seemingly angry and unkempt. True, I hadn’t laid eyes on him in almost ten years, but the sound of his voice alone when I was held captive in the dark solidified that he wasn’t the kind of man that walked around in sweatpants.
Placing my hands on the window panes, I slowly moved the curtain aside doing my damnedest to adjust to the blaring sunlight, while trying to find him out back at the same time. It was no use though. The sunlight was too much for someone who had lived ten years in a place devoid of light, and I had to give up.
The huge, comfortable leather chair was starting to feel like a punishment now instead of a random act of kindness. It felt like I had been placed in timeout and the chair was where I was to wait until I was told it was okay to move again. Chances were that I was overthinking it, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about him today.
To keep myself company, I started to hum that tune that I had heard coming from him a couple of days ago. I probably had it all wrong, but I kept humming the parts I remembered hoping to string something together out of it.
I kept my eyes on the doors and caught a flash of Daniel as he went quickly by. He almost seemed frantic in his movements, and I wanted to know why, but unless he came back into the semi-lit room I wouldn’t be able to ask him.
Come back inside and let’s get today over with already, I willed him silently.
When he burst through the doors, I felt like my silent commands worked. However, when he began to frantically gesture for me to go to him, I could feel that the plan had backfired.
“Come on, Faith, I don’t have all fucking day,” he barked, running a hand irritably through his hair.
“I can’t go out there,” I said nervously getting to my feet. “The sun will blind me.”
Daniel gave me an angry look and quickly walked toward me. My hands went up to protect myself if he intended to hit me, but instead he grabbed me by the back of the neck and began shoving me toward the open doors.
“Like I give a fuck. This isn’t something meant to make you feel comfortable. I’ve been far too kind to you and you’ve forgotten your place here. We’ll rectify that shortly,” he promised in an ominous tone.
He shoved me roughly out into the daylight and I landed on my knees. I quickly raised a hand to my face to shield the only eye I had left from the blaring sun, but Daniel was prepared. He put a knee into my spine and pulled my arms behind my back, binding them with a zip tie so I would have no way of protecting whatever vision I had left.
“Get to your fucking feet,” he commanded, after he stood up. “I won’t carry you this time, I’m done coddling you. You’re going to learn your place in my fucking house.”
I scrambled as quickly as I could but only managed to make it to my knees before he grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me to my feet. This wasn’t the Daniel I was used to; this was way worse. This was the Daniel that would kill me without a second thought, or a last kiss. This was the Daniel that I should have feared from the beginning; the one that had been lurking in the shell of a human being that masqueraded his feelings for me to gain my trust.
He half dragged, half walked me toward a tree on the line of the property and shoved me against it. I felt blood fill my mouth when my face crashed against the bark, but before I could say anything else or get a chance to spit it out, he began the day’s torture.
The first cut was the worst. The others followed quickly, but they were tighter the more he wound the barbed wire around the tree. He told me that this was how he would know that I couldn’t escape and that if I tried, I would die in the attempt. He told me that this was where I would stay until he deemed me worthy of setting foot in his home again.
Daniel told me a lot of things as he continued to wrap the sharp wire around my body. Once, twice, three times, until almost every cut was dripping blood.
“I’ve never seen a sight more beautiful than this. This is where you’ll remain until the morning. I have to prepare and I don’t need you trying to tempt me anymore than you already have. Try not to bleed out before I come back for you,” he whispered into my ear, after he dropped the remaining wire onto the grass beside me.
I did my best not to move even though the cuts demanded my attention. I tried to put my mind elsewhere and not worry about the undeniable pain that I was feeling. But no matter how far away I tried to send my thoughts I knew it would be no use.
I was wound too tightly and cut too deeply to ever feel anything other than what he wanted in this moment.
Pure submission to his will.
Chapter Sixteen
I fought to stay awake and when the sun rose higher in the sky falling over my open wounds, I winced. The heat from the rays were curiously feeling the inside of my wounds and as I began to sweat, I prayed that there would be a sudden storm of some sort, hiding the sun from things it should never have been able to see.
I turned my face and laid the left side of my head against the tree bark. I needed to be able to try and sustain my vision somehow and this was my only form of protection now. A cool breeze lazily went by, shaking a couple of the leaves from the tree loose. They fell onto my body. Some of them stayed stuck to the sticky blood that was starting to coagulate on my arms, while the others simply brushed past me on the way down to the grass.
I envied how free the leaves were. They were so easily able to leave the branches of the trees when the opportunity was afforded to them, yet I was bound here by the will of another. Somehow, I didn’t think the point of this little exercise was death. He had said that he needed to prepare, and he showed me what I assumed to be his true self.
Which only meant one thing.
Salvation was near, and I would be face-to-face with the deliverer he spoke so highly of when he would walk past the rooms underneath his home with one of the other evils. I wanted an explanation more than anything else. I only wanted to understand why he did these things and what I had done to be taken by him. I wanted to understand why it was necessary to burn Trace alive and why he wasn’t considered worthy of being delivered as well.
We could have died together, or at least I could have died before him, but I would have had him to comfort me when I needed it. Even if it would have been through the dirty brick walls in the underbelly of Daniel’s home, I would have known he was still with me. Now he was nothing more than a pile of ash and bone reduced to such in an infernal device meant to lay others to rest willingly.
I felt tears starting to form, but I stopped them from falling. No amount of tears that I could cry for Trace would bring him back to me and if Daniel knew that my tears were for another, he would most likely take out my other eye.
When did I become so weak? I wondered dismally. How was it possible that I had been reduced to the crying girl wrapped in barbed wire against a tree? Had this been ten years ago, I would have fought back without hesitation. I would have overpowered him and I would have used him until I was done with him, injected him with my favorite mind altering drug of choice, and left him to his hallucinations. He would have been the one that would have felt like a useless piece of shit instead of me, but I had to face reality.
This wasn’t ten years ago, this was now and this was the predicament I was in—apparently by some doing of my own that had yet to be revealed to me.
The name of the game today was endurance. I would find it in myself to do this even though the barbs were cutting into my flesh. I had survived worse at Daniel’s hands and I would survive this. I pulled my face away from the tree and listened curiously as the sounds of music started to emanate from the house toward me. It was loud, haunting, and beautiful; an opera of sorts.
I was never one for classical music or plays, so I didn’t know which one it was, but I could feel the longing in the voice of the female singing. I could relate to it even though I didn’t know what her longing had been for because I cou
ldn’t understand her. But my longing was for many things freedom, Trace’s touch, free will, and the feeling of Daniel’s soft lips on me again.
I hated the last thought, but I couldn’t deny it. Of all the torments he had laid upon me so far, being away from his touch, even for just a moment, was the worst one.
What was I becoming that a monster’s touch was something that I craved so deeply? It made me worry that if he didn’t kill me soon I would find out, and that could possibly be even more terrifying than yearning the sweet surrender found in evil’s kiss.
The sun started to set on the horizon some hours later, but the volume of the music never lowered. It led me to believe that Daniel lived so far away from anyone else that no one would ever think to call the police and make a complaint about it. It also made me believe that I was on my own; even more so than I had already felt.
I lay my head against the bark again, resigned to the fact that I was most likely going to be left outside until the morning, when I heard something peculiar and almost unbelievable.
The sole attempt I made to turn my body to look in the direction of the sound only served to dig the barbs deeper into my flesh.
“Fuck.”
Taking a series of quick breaths to steady myself, I decided not to try it again. If the sound was what I assumed it was, I would obviously know soon enough.
The soprano singing her woeful tune elevated her voice and I cringed. In any other way, this could have been a romantic day. Unfortunately, being tied to a tree with barbed wire and left out in the sun to bake the open wounds put a damper on that.
I turned my face to the left and rested the bandaged hole against the tree. I waited for some sign of life from the house, but it was still that woeful scream that kept meeting my ears.
I wasn’t exactly sure when I had fallen asleep, or perhaps lost consciousness, but I woke up to twilight in the sky and Daniel undoing the barbed wire tether from my body.
“Stay as quiet as you can. I know this hurts, but I need you inside now,” he rambled quietly as he pulled the sharp metal out of my skin. I whimpered slightly from the pain, but as he started to walk around the tree and undo the restraint, I actually found myself being thankful for his presence.
“Can you walk?” he asked, frantically.
“I don’t think so,” I replied softly. It was true; I wasn’t sure if it was the loss of blood or just being strapped in a standing position that had rendered me exhausted.
“I’ll carry you then,” he said, sliding a knife in between the zip tie and my wrists careful not to cut me, before he started to slice through it. “Arms around my shoulders. Quickly.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, resting my head against his neck.
“The guests are starting to arrive.”
Chapter Seventeen
So, it was a car door I heard earlier. It had taken me some time to understand his meaning, but I remembered after a while. He was referring to the guests he had invited for his birthday celebration. But that was still four days away, wasn’t it?
The sun had set on day four, but not risen on day five, so it made me curious as to why guests were starting to arrive so soon.
“Daniel?” I asked softly.
“Yes, Faith?”
“Who’s here?”
“No one important. Just someone I knew would come to me when I beckoned to them.”
I shifted uncomfortably in his arms as he opened the back double doors that led into his den. I wasn’t going to be in the mood to greet anyone tonight; I would have to wash up first, tend to the wounds, and pray that he gave me something to wear.
In the ten years I had been held captive in his home, I had never heard of another person entering his home. Of course, I had spent all of that time beneath in the darkness, so he could have had a parade of others in and out and none of us would have been the wiser.
“Oh God,” I groaned, loudly.
That fucking song—the screeching opera singer—had been originating from the den the entire time, and now that we were inside, I felt like my eardrums would probably explode and bleed out in an attempt to save me from the volume. Either that or they were going to commit suicide to save themselves.
I didn’t care which one it would be because if he didn’t at least lower the volume, I’d find a sharp object and stab them out myself.
“You can stay in my room for the rest of the night. I’ll lock the door and come to you once my guest has been accommodated. I’ll clean you up and see what I can do about those cuts too,” he said quietly as he glanced out of the den door into the hallway. “I need you to be silent now so I can take you upstairs.”
I nodded in agreement.
I didn’t have a choice in the matter. What was to say that his “guest” wasn’t as fucking crazy as he was and would probably laugh at my plight instead of help me?
I also didn’t want to incur his rage by trying to call out for help, especially since I didn’t know what I had done to earn today’s punishment. It wasn’t part of the deliverance process. I could tell that something had snapped inside of him earlier, and he did say that he needed to keep me outside for as long as he needed to.
Did he bring me in because he found me worthy of being in his home again? Probably not. I think that his mysterious guest arriving days ahead of schedule had sent him into a panic and he didn’t want me to be seen.
“Not a word,” he warned giving me a stern look.
I nodded again, buried my face into his chest, and held onto him tightly as he sprinted through the hallway and up the stairs.
“Daniel?” a slightly older female voice rang out as soon as we reached the top of the staircase.
“I’ll be down soon. I have to put something away,” he called back.
That’s what I had been reduced to in his eyes; a thing. Not a real person who felt pain and love, but a thing of no consequence to be used at his discretion to quell the evil needs inside of him.
On the path of deliverance paved in Hell.
He was silent until he opened the door to his room. He lay me gently on his bed and put a hand on either side of my head, leaning down over me.
“I have to take care of this. She shouldn’t have come so soon. I’ll be back to help you shortly, Faith. Will you miss me?” he asked gently.
I looked up into his big, light-brown eyes and saw the longing glistening in them. Was it me that he was longing for or was it just the words he wanted me to speak?
“Yes. I’ll miss you, Daniel,” I replied quietly.
A small smile spread across his lips, genuine in emotion and earnest to meet mine.
“Good,” he replied, softly.
He leaned closer down toward me, hovering a mere few inches from my face. His eyes traveled down to my lips and I felt a soft flutter inside of me when he licked his slowly.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promised again before he pulled back.
I felt cheated. Like whomever was downstairs had stolen this moment from us and I would never get the chance to have it again. There would be others yes, but not like this one. They were never the same, and I wanted each one, no matter how painful or costly they would be for me in the end.
As he left the room and locked the door behind him, I wondered about the reckoning that I knew was coming. I hoped for a dreamless sleep as I turned on my side, only to be met by pain and tears.
I pushed it all deep inside of me as I wiped the tears away. I was stronger than this and I wouldn’t let something as small as what felt like a thousand cuts all over my body keep me from the things I wanted the most.
Death and Daniel.
Chapter Eighteen
I felt the bed shifting as I opened my eyes. A smile danced across my face as I felt the heat of the sun on my skin, the warmth of a strong arm around my waist, and the steady rising and falling of a chest pressed firmly against me.
A happy sigh escaped from deep within as my hand found its way to the forearm that was holding me so prot
ectively. It was odd how the pain would always subside from just being in his arms.
Opening my eye slowly I looked down at my arm that I had managed to wrap around his. It was wrapped in gauze and I could see the puddles of ointment that had made their mark on them. It seemed that Daniel had tended to me as I slept taking great care not to wake me up.
Another kindness, I thought gently rubbing his forearm. He had seemed to have recovered from his manic break yesterday and returned to the Daniel that I felt something for. It absolutely terrified me that I could feel something for him other than hate or disdain, but there was just something about him.
Probably because you can see him now, I told myself. It helped that laying eyes, or eye rather, upon me him jogged the memory of who he was. Even though the days were growing harder and going more swiftly, I knew now why he had chosen me for this. It would have been apparent to me earlier, but he always only spoke to me in gentle whispers for those ten years I spent below so I wouldn’t have figured out until he allowed me to see him.
Daniel had saved me once before, and now he was saving me again. I just wasn’t sure how or if there was anything left to save. There must have been or he wouldn’t have bothered. He would have killed me when he killed Trace and let whatever was out there sort us out when we were dead.
No. There was something special in me that he saw, and that’s why he kept me around for as long as he did. He could have killed me first, but he didn’t; instead, saving me for last.
I let my fingers caress his forearm until he groaned behind me and moved away. Daniel was never much of a morning person in the times I had spent with him, but I didn’t mind.
“Good morning,” I said softly.
A chuckle escaped him as he wrapped his arm back around my waist and pulled me closer against him. I felt his lips graze the back of my head as he ran a hand gently over my stomach.
“It will be soon,” he replied.
With that simple response, he pushed me to the side as he moved way again and threw his legs over the side of the bed.
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