by J. D. Palmer
Every day I am electrocuted.
It’s worse at night.
Something breaks within me. Whatever chain existed that kept me anchored to sanity has snapped. I am adrift. My mind is at ease because the fear is gone. A part of me is aware that only someone mad would cease feeling fear while trapped in this room. Or, perhaps, someone who knows he will die soon.
I spent so much of my youth reading books and watching movies, escaping into realms in which people faced dire circumstances and found the strength to prevail. I had prayed for the courage to stand up to this man, to somehow find a way to defeat him. Now I know better. Now I know that I was playing for freedom. Not victory. I was the victim who hoped that time would allow for a rescue, or for reason to take hold. I wanted things to go back to the way they were.
There is no going back.
There is no escape. The rules have changed and I understand the game now.
If I am a dog then I behave as one. The next night I lunge at Stuart as he passes by on his way to bed the girl. It surprises him, not only the speed with which I rush him but the total abandon of it. I get close enough to grab an ankle. He falls over, a small gasp of fear and surprise taking the unctuous smile off of his face. I try to draw him closer but he twists free, his free leg kicking at my groping hands.
He scoots backwards towards the girl’s bed and there is a moment of stillness in which we stare at each other. His long, lanky hair has fallen over his face but I can see the fear in his eyes, a brief loss of the power and control that he spent so many hours working to attain.
I laugh as he sends pulse after pulse of electricity coursing through me. I go unconscious, cackling, only to wake up and begin howling. He electrocutes me again. He takes off his belt and begins to whip me around the face with the buckle. The head, the neck, the back. I take it with a smile on my face. I feel the pain but I relish it, knowing these are small victories.
He finally stops, bent over, chest heaving from the exertion. He holds a hand to his hip as he walks out of the room. Yesterday a display like this would have terrified me. I would have stayed up all night wondering how to pacify him the next day. Tonight I force my lips into what I remember as a smile.
The lights go out and I smile, still. A smile that emerges jagged from swollen lips. A smile that more closely resembles a snarl.
I pull the tattered blanket to my chest. I scrape at the brown scabs of old blood and old defecation and days of sweat and I tell myself that I have cleaned it. I tell myself that only a tamed animal would wait for its master to clean the cage.
And still I smile.
Stuart needs me. He could forage for food himself, but it would be many trips over the course of every day. Hours of his time spent away from the girl, from his home and whatever other secrets he keeps. I know I can’t continue this forever without meeting my end. But it’s time to find the boundaries.
I leap at him, or growl, or yell gibberish. He beats me, or electrocutes me, or both. But his rape is obstructed. Time and time again. He begins to take the girl from the room to bed her. He brings her back and the frustration in his demeanor is apparent. Maybe he is afraid she will run. Maybe he doesn’t like to spoil the sanctity of his home. Maybe he needs chains to enjoy it.
He begins to drug me so I quit eating. He loses his temper too easily, too often, and the power that he has draped himself in begins to fall away. He rails at me, going so far as to brandish a gun while I howl at him, screaming wildly and rattling my chains like a poor actor playing a ghost of some bygone holiday.
Go ahead.
I have been trained by the collars, driven into a mindless routine under the yoke of this man. Now it’s his turn. I sit passively in my corner if he doesn’t touch her. The moment he begins to undress her I turn into a beast that needs to be pacified. Which he does.
I grow weaker. I am barely fed. Foraging trips become fewer and fewer, even as food in the area grows scarce and Stuart needs me more and more to pull the cart. But I am a dog that no longer fears the kick of its master. He knows it. I sense the end is near for me and, to be honest, I am thankful for it.
More important is the girl. The fear that flashed in her eyes at the mention of a child was a spark of life that has slowly kindled into a small fire. I cannot stop Stuart all the time. But she looks to me, now. She looks to me when he enters the room, when he embarks on one of his rants. She looks at me as he rapes her, accepting the strength that I will towards her, and I see her slowly gathering herself.
Gathering herself as I feel myself slip away. Part of me is terrified at what I’ve become.
No, that’s wrong.
Terrified at the feral creature that slunk out of my subconscious and has taken over. Twisted me. Shed me of my trappings of humanity to become a primal being that does not play at being human. I watch from the shadows as a caged beast takes over.
Who am I?
And each day it is becoming harder and harder for me to regain control of myself in the quiet hours after Stuart has departed enraged. I stalk the space around my blankets, my breath harsh even in my own ears, the urge to rip out his throat driving me into futile action until I collapse from exhaustion.
And then the creature in me retreats into the shadows. And each time it does a part of me laments its passing even as I look at it in fear. I wonder if I’ll die a man or as a beast.
Does it matter?
Tonight Stuart is full of brimstone and fire. He is worried though, I can tell by the whisper of panic underneath his words. We are an experiment that is regressing and he doesn’t have the means to start over.
“We must be united moving forward if we are to start building a new world.” He stands and limps to the middle of the room, his arms held out wide. “I have been chosen to lead, and though you test me I will prevail. If this was easy, if this was…” He loses track of what he was saying, covering it with his laugh.
Hur hur.
“Well you understand. We must unite as one. And you must trust me to know what’s best. You must.”
I look at the girl and only at the girl. I shake my head and croak the most derisive laugh I can muster. A guttural chuckle that does not meet my eyes.
The girl smiles. She shakes her head, eyes never leaving mine. Stuart’s gaze whips from me, to the girl, and back again. He sees it. He sees it and understands. We are united, openly, two chained animals mocking their master.
He rages. I wonder if this will be the time that he kills me and a remnant of the old fear seeps into my bones. I don’t have much time to dwell on it as he produces a coil of chain from a drawer and swings it into my face. I feel a tooth crack, bits and pieces mixing with blood to form a soup in my mouth. He swings it into my side and I fall on my back. I look up at him for what might be the last time.
I smile.
He swings again and I know no more.
Chapter 5
I walk with my friends down a dirt path overgrown with tall green grass on our way to the lake. It is overcast, storm clouds long having taken up residence over the water. The wind is heavy handed and the grass hisses and the quaking aspen creak and groan. Small droplets of water freckle our bare chests, forerunners to the downpour to come.
We are home.
We go to the lake to swim during thunderstorms. We don’t tell our parents because they would admonish us for being stupid. And we wouldn’t have a response. We know it’s stupid, but we do it anyways. We strip naked and jump into water made warm by the sheer coldness of the raindrops and scream at the sky as lightning lances the far shore. We scream for the simple joy of existing. We are young and we can only know the greatness of what it is to be alive if we test it.
I awake to rain on my face. My body pulses with pain. I roll over and what feels like a knife stabs my ribs. My joints are swollen from either the beating or the lack of food. Probably both. My knees and elbows struggle to bend.
The rain has stopped.
I open my eyes, my mouth already contorting
into a snarl, and see the girl is kneeling in front of her bed, fingers poised over her water glass. She has been sprinkling me.
“You…?”
She shakes her head and raises a hand, motioning me to be quiet. My head is an agony of pain. I cough and the knife returns to my ribs.
Water.
I roll over and feel sick. I dry heave, bile rushing into the back of my throat. I ease back on to my side, my face returning to the cold stone. I cannot move. I can only hope that time will heal me enough to spend another day in whatever bolgia this happens to be.
I sleep again, fitfully, reliving the attack as I dream of hell and wake in hell and repeat.
When I open my eyes I see the girl is lying on the floor, her face to the floor in a mirror of me. We stare at each other, cheeks pressed against stone filthy with dust and scabs and lint. She gives me a small smile.
I don’t know what to think, and I don’t want to move, so we lie there staring at each other as the room slowly begins to darken, shadows shifting and spinning around us. It’s comforting, in a way. A slight stilling of angry water.
I don’t know if this is commiseration, a sharing of pain or not, but I will take it. As long as it means I’m not alone.
There is something different about her. Something in her eyes that was not there before. Life? Anger? Simple awareness, perhaps. Hard to tell with her. In order to survive she had hidden herself. But you can only hide so long before you face the choice of letting yourself die or venturing back out into the horror of life. Some small part of her has decided to return.
She turns to the bed and opens her book, pinching something small. She kneels down and brings her face back to the ground. Taking a deep breath, she opens her fingers and blows three small scraps of paper towards me. Two reach me but the smallest is taken by a draft from the window and is blown into the corner.
She goes back to the book, scans a page, and rips out another corner. She slowly peels it down to a small shape and blows it towards me. I don’t care what she is doing, I feel close to tears just seeing her try to interact with me.
I slowly pull myself into a sitting position and examine the pieces of paper. One is part of a word, reading ber. The other is the letter l. The other the letter y.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
She moves her hands apart, then brings them together. I stare blankly. She repeats and I realize that she wants me to put them together.
“Lyber? Berly?” She shakes her head each time, then holding two fingers up and moves them so her arms change sides. I look down at the words, confused.
“B-e-r-y-l?”
She nods.
“Beryl? Is… Is that your name?”
She nods.
Here, after the end of the world and sitting at rock bottom, I suddenly understand what a gift the giving of a name can be.
Stuart doesn’t appear that day or the next.
A blessing.
Also frightening. We might die at his hands. Or he might get lost in his own insanity and leave to “make order of the world in which he was chosen.” We face death without him. It is revolting to think about how much we need that monster.
He left both collars on me. The skin beneath is hot and sore and an ache is spreading out from a burn on the right side.
I fall asleep a lot, sometimes unexpectedly, but while awake I get to know Beryl. She nods or shakes her head to some of my questions. Sometimes I see a smile. She is still reticent, prone to look away and end my train of questioning when the echo of some horror resurfaces in her scarred mind. But her personality begins to emerge as I figure out the tilt of her head, the arch of her brow. The squint in her eyes when I say something stupid.
Her eyes have lost their vacuity revealing unfathomable depth. Intelligence and will. But no joy. As if she carries in her a vast body of water that is forever gripped by winter. Ice rims every smile and every look out of the window. But there is a staunchness there, too. She does not indulge in self-pity. Nor does she allow me to dip my toes in it. We do not talk of Stuart.
To talk of the devil would be to summon him.
I whisper to her about Montana. The first string of words I have uttered in days. Inside, I feel the animal fading away, slipping back into the shadowy depths of my being. Part of me despairs, wanting that which kept me not just alive, but also gave me a semblance of strength, to stay.
But the newfound support offered to me by Beryl has chased it away. Has chased it away and brought me back to take in the hurt and rage. To take in the fear, the all encompassing terror and shame and humiliation, once more.
It’s okay. I’m not alone.
I’m not alone.
She has tossed me a lifeline, a rope to bring me back to myself. If I die, I shall die as Harlan. Not as a broken creature, cornered and driven mad.
I talk to her about my family and how strong they are. If anyone could survive…
“I wonder if the illness spread everywhere. You know? Maybe it has been contained, maybe there are parts of the country where people weren’t affected.” She shakes her head, she knows as well as I do that if that were the case we would have seen some sign. Even without words being said, I appreciate it that she doesn’t lie to me.
She arches a brow at me, gesturing widely.
“What am I doing here?”
She nods.
“I was celebrating my twenty-second birthday. My buddy lives down… Lived here. I came to visit and party and…”
My turn to end the conversation.
Stuart returns the next day. He repeats the knocks, and the questions, his bare feet and his false laugh. He brings a gift. A child’s onesie. Beryl retreats within herself again, barely responding to his words or touch.
I am too injured to make life difficult for Stuart. I thought I would die before I became ineffectual. I watch him start to return to his old ways, paying me no heed, and I learn to know despair again. The feral creature inside of me lurks in the shadows, the decay of my body sending it into hiding.
I miss it. I miss feeling unafraid. And strong, even if it wasn’t true.
There has to be a different way.
He takes her out of the room a lot more, at least twice a day, and I do not know where they go. I try to heal as much as I can. I try to stay sane as I spend hours alone too tired and dehydrated to keep swatting the flies that crawl all over me. That I’m alive means Stuart still intends to use me. Hope, the great deceiver, returns.
There is always a way. I marshal my resources, try with all my might to use the brain that made my parents so proud in my youth.
There has to be a way.
Even if I have to sacrifice myself there must be some way to end the life of our tormentor.
Slowly an idea takes shape.
I groan a lot. I hurt, but I want Stuart to think I am more hurt than I am. Which isn’t a stretch. I pretend to be unable to eat even as it torments my shrunken body to leave even a morsel in my food dish. We have to get out of here, soon, and convincing him of my infirmity is my only plan. I’ll only have one shot at this.
Tonight he sits on Beryl’s bed, his feet in her lap, chattering about the world their children will inherit.
“We were chosen for a reason, you and I. Adam and Eve. How grand are His designs? That I knew to seek you out? To find you and protect you as he swept the world clean. And now our children will inherit a world made with love. Guided by our knowledge it will go farther and farther, so much further than before. And we will be worshiped. We were chosen.” He trails off, a bemused smile on his face.
The silence stretches and he yawns. “Goodnight my love. Until tomorrow.” He gets up and walks towards the door.
It is time to make myself known again.
I lean forward on my chains, blinking, and raise a feeble hand. He stops, his hand holding the remote for my collars. I slowly shuffle forward, knobby knees inching their way across the stone. Shaky fingers reach out and clutch at his pant leg. He needs
to believe that he has broken me beyond any repair. Broken me to his will. I attempt incoherence, risking his wrath by asking him a question.
“Who are you?”
He stares at me, taking his time as I blink my eyes and rub my head. Fuck fuck fuck. I try to picture what he sees. My long hair hanging across a swollen face. The protruding bones of my spine and shoulder blades through a threadbare shirt. The chains and the sores and the terror in my eyes.
A hand reaches out and clasps the back of my neck. His nails sink into infected flesh and I gasp in pain. He holds it there for a long second.
“Oh Burden, I am your provider.”
The barest pause as he smiles.
“I am your master.”
Chapter 6
He goes to rape Beryl the next night immediately after their return from dinner. He makes a show of it, daring me to try to interfere.
“No barking tonight, Burden?”
Impotent rage courses through me. Fucking smug bastard. He is drunk on power. I am still too weak to do anything. And this end is inevitable. What can I do? The tactics have to change. I only hope Beryl can forgive me. I hope she knows I haven’t abandoned her.
He had her wear a fancy white dress to dinner tonight. He sits on the bed and clumsily arranges her hair in the semblance of pigtails, casting looks at me as plays with his doll. I remain impassive, a creature cowed and crushed by a greater force.
As I was before.
“Stand up.” He puts hands around her hips and places her in front of him, large hands slowly stripping the dress over her head before making her take his own clothes off. He presses himself against her, his hardening penis rubbing on her shoulder as she unzips him. He jerks her chain as he steps out of his pants forcing her out of her kneeling position so that she stands with her back to him, one white-haired arm wrapped around her chest. He raises the arm with the chain and twists it slowly causing her to pirouette in a circle with her hands held up in the air, a ballerina chained in some circle of hell.
