I held his gaze in defiance. I didn’t care anymore, and the only thing that would save me in the end would be to fight back. I knew I had it in me, I would just have to pray for the strength to endure whatever Daniel was planning to throw at me and try my best to take him into the eternal darkness with me.
Chapter Twenty-One
After our little disagreement, Daniel ended up leaving the room. He didn’t say a word to me as to why or where he was going and I didn’t bother asking. He’d probably come back wheeling a fucking cannon into the room because he didn’t seem to have a grip on modern day things.
Whatever, I thought, rolling onto my side. The bigger the device or instrument, the better chance I would have. It would dull my senses and make whatever he intended on doing much less painful than he hoped it would be.
I didn’t fall asleep this time waiting for him to return. I wanted nothing more than to force him to kill me and I knew that if I antagonized him enough, he’d snap and do it. Much like his grandmother, I was determined to save my fight until the end—when I knew it wasn’t possible to fight any longer. I had plans for Daniel, like he had plans for me, and the one with the most determination would win.
When he finally entered the room again, I got to my feet without a word and met him at the door. I glanced at the clock and smiled. It was exactly midnight which meant day seven of deliverance.
In exactly twenty-four hours, it would all be over, and I would know then who would be the one to be saved: me or Daniel.
I walked purposefully behind him in silence as he led the way down the master staircase, and again down to the underbelly of his home. We were going back to where it started. It made me smile because it would be a poetic death. I didn’t assume to make it out of whatever room he had chosen for the day before salvation. I would taunt him, I would anger him, I would do everything possible within myself to not have to go to that fucking house on his property that was deemed to be the place where it was all meant to end.
We would finish it all where we started it and that would have to be enough for him. It would definitely be enough for me. However, as he led me to a large room I hadn’t been in before, I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I had hoped it would be.
We walked into a dark room only illuminated by the light coming from the hallway. I saw a huge wooden table sitting in the middle but I couldn’t make out what it was at first.
I didn’t question him or the purpose of the table instead, I walked over to it and hopped on I laid flat on my back and waited for Daniel to enter the room. From the shadow being cast on the wall, I knew he was still in the doorway most likely baffled by my supposed eagerness to begin.
I was using his silent confusion to size the table underneath me. It was too long for me to slide off of it, and it was too wide for me to try to roll off as well.
Come on fucker. Give me your best shot.
I cleared my throat and waited for the shadow to move. I sighed as Daniel continued to linger in the doorway. I couldn’t quite understand why he was just watching me still when we could have gotten this shit show on the road by now.
“What suddenly has you so eager? Is it being in the unknown or am I finally seeing my equal in you as I knew I eventually would?” he asked curiously.
I rolled my eyes before I replied, “Considering we’re down to the wire, you should probably just get started.”
“Ah. I understand now,” he said, his shadow finally moving on the wall. It became larger as he approached me until it turned into nothing more than a massive blob on the wall. “You’re attempting to break the rules, so I guess I have no choice but to reinforce them.”
Daniel moved quickly and pulled my arms up above my head. He latched the wrists into place with heavy metal shackles before moving down the table and doing the same to my ankles. He came back to the head of the table and flipped some kind of switch, which began to bring it to a standing position.
He cleared his throat as he walked toward the door and pulled it closed. We were in the dark again and I hated the feeling of slight fear starting to go through me. I had lived in it for so long and now, in my final hours, it was starting to scare me all over again.
It didn’t last long though. Daniel flipped a switch that had been sitting just inside the room, and I realized that it was pure white. There was padding all over the walls as if to keep insanity locked safely inside, but I wasn’t crazy, so I had no reason to be in here.
“Back to where you belong, Faith,” he said, quietly, as he pulled the same dirty cloth he had initially used to cover my eyes out of his side pocket.
“No!” I shrieked struggling against the shackles. It was too cruel of an ending, to have to die in the dark.
“Oh shut up! I am sick and tired of your constant fucking whining! You signed up for this, didn’t you?” he shouted in disgust. “Accept it for what it is and I’ll be easier, but for the love of God, shut your fucking mouth already!”
I started to sob at the truth that was just blasted at me. That night before Trace and I left with Daniel, I had a moment alone with him. Trace had gone outside to have a smoke and Daniel asked me about the tracks on my arms. He asked me if I was truly happy injecting myself with poison and fucking my boyfriend in dirty bar bathrooms.
I told him the truth for some unknown reason. I told him about how Trace had changed and had become abusive toward me and how I didn’t see a way to get out of the relationship. That was when he offered to help me; it was when we made the deal. He told me about the tablets he had put in our beers in the hopes that I would agree to his form of help. He agreed that he would take care of Trace for me, but I would have to play a game with him. A game of submission and will that would last as long as the number on the card I would draw when I came to.
But was it always meant to go this far? Being blinded, beaten, raped? Was this part of his helping me reform my life or had I consigned myself to this in a foolish attempt to get away from the only man that I had ever known. I still loved Trace and knowing that he was dead because of me would always be something that would make me feel like I had done the deed myself.
I had to get better. I had no other choice—it would be my only chance of survival. Ten years I had spent underneath his home knowing that the hardest days were behind me—when I no longer craved the heroin or the violent sexual touch that Trace would provide—but it still didn’t seem to be enough for Daniel. He had sent me on this path of deliverance, hell-bent on salvation, and he wasn’t going to stop until he felt that I had truly been redeemed.
“Please Daniel, not in the dark. I can’t stand it there anymore,” I begged.
“You shouldn’t be afraid of the dark anymore, Faith. You shouldn’t be afraid of anything at this point. Now I’m going to stretch you for the remainder of the day, then we’ll go to the guest house. I’m going to make this extremely painful, but I will carry you as I have before. Are you ready to feel the essence of true pain as a final act of redemption?” he asked quietly.
I turned my face away, but he didn’t respond. He refused to let it bother him right now because the devil inside Daniel Delaney had work to do. With the flip of another switch, the mechanism started to whir quietly. My arms began to be pulled further above my head than they should go, and my legs were being pulled down at the same time. Just when I felt like my body would be torn in two, I let out a horrendous scream of pain and the world truly went dark around me in a torturous whirlwind of hatred and despair.
Epilogue
(Day 8)
We were in the guest house. After all of the fighting and trying to get me to lose my temper, I still managed to get her here. I sat at the far end of the table smiling at Ione as she brought the glass of rosé wine to her lips. She was still a bit angry with me, but I loved her for allowing me to do this. It was just what I had needed to make my thirtieth birthday the best one I would ever have.
“It was fun, wasn’t it?” I asked hopefully.
&n
bsp; “I wouldn’t exactly call it that,” she snapped back from the other end of the table.
“You aren’t mad are you?” I inquired, raising an eyebrow.
“Daniel, I lost an eye. You killed Trace. You almost killed me; multiple times. Not exactly my idea of a good time.”
With a sigh, I got to my feet and walked down to her end of the table, taking a chair and pulling it next to her. Ione had been saved many years ago the night I saw her with Trace. The track marks in her arm told me that she needed me and I intervened. Because of me, she was no longer a user, and she no longer craved sex or drugs. I had reformed her, and in turn, she had promised to allow me an opportunity to try something I had been longing for.
“I never would have intentionally hurt you. Those moments we shared together are too exquisite for words. I’d like to think that this brought us closer together,” I said softly, taking her hands in mine.
She slowly turned her face toward me, a look of disbelief shrouding it.
“I lost an eye,” she seethed.
“We can replace it. You won’t have to wear that patch forever,” I said, dismissively. “If it’s any consolation, I still think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Daniel. Ten years of my life and an eye.”
“You drew those cards, love. You agreed to go along with whatever number you pulled,” I reminded her. “But try to look at the bright side, Ione. You’re clean now and you’ve lost the urge to lose. You’re no longer at the whims of a man that used you for his carnal desires and kept you in line by injecting you with that garbage.”
I couldn’t help but find amusement and pride in the fact that she hadn’t mentioned eating pieces of Grace. Maybe she had enjoyed it, but didn’t want me to know. I wouldn’t ask her; I knew she would bring it up when the moment was right.
She turned her face away and sighed, playing at my weakness for her. I didn’t turn her face back toward me, though. I figured she could use the moment to think about everything we had just been through together and decide if she still wanted to stay with me.
“Did you fuck the others too?” she asked softly.
“No.”
My answer was as honest as much as I loved Ione, and I never did love anyone the way I loved her. She had done something for me that I knew no one else would and even though we had struck our deal when she was going through withdrawals, I knew in those tender moments when we kissed during her ordeal, that she never wavered in her want or need of me.
“Do you still want me?” I asked her, softly.
“I’ll always want you, Daniel. You helped me get rid of all of the poison that was slowly killing me. You stole me away from a man that spent the last few months our relationship relentlessly beating me. I can’t hate you. For any of it,” she replied quietly.
“Do you remember my promise to you? For letting me do this?” I asked.
Ione nodded and smiled. It was only fair when she agreed to be my experimental slave that I afford her the same right. I had told her that if she had made it to the end, and I knew she would, then I would do the same for her.
“First we’ll cut the cake and indulge a little. Then I’ll draw cards,” I suggested brightly.
“And Lucas?” she prompted.
“I’ve already sent a letter to Lucas to let him know that you’d like to see him. He knows not to come until he’s heard from you though. I made it perfectly clear in the letter that it could be a few months or a few years. He wrote back, Ione. He said that he understood that being cured of addiction takes time and that he was willing to wait. It’ll give us time to do what is necessary to save each other. Though you’ve already been saved,” I said with a chuckle. “In the end, I’ll give you everything that I promised. But first I need to make a wish and blow these candles out. Then we’ll grab the cards, I’ll draw a number, and the game can begin all over again.”
“I just hope this will all be worth it in the end,” she said, softly.
“It will. It’s helped us both a great deal. You’ve gotten rid of your demons, and I’ve learned to control mine,” I assured her leaning over and kissing her cheek.
Ione Winslow would never leave me. Because she had survived and she knew so much—it all made her an accomplice to torture and murder. It had also damaged her mind greatly and she would need me to survive. She would stay with me either because she truly loved me, out of necessity, or out of fear.
It made no difference to me. I was eager for the game to start and to take my place in the underbelly of my home for however long fate had decided.
After all, the person that needed the most salvation out of all those that had passed through the doors of my home was me. One glance at Ione as she finished lighting the candles told me that my princess of darkness seemed eager to begin.
”Within months he had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion.”- Myra Hindley
8 Days For Salvation Page 9
