AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Before, if I’d succeeded in killing him, I’d have to know the combination, then pop out an eye at the very least to get through the security. The fear of starving in a cell with a corpse had stopped me cold.
There were no pinhole cameras in the ceiling here. He must have thought I wasn’t a danger anymore. He must have thought lack of dancing meant he’d broken me completely, that I was so desperate for his touch I would gladly stay in my pretty crate like a good dog.
He was wrong. I waited though, formulating my plan, calculating. I didn’t want him to suspect, so I let the new routine settle in for a few days. I ate the fantastic food he brought me; I spread my legs for him, let him do what he wanted. I read and took bubble baths and painted my nails and tried on outfits.
I pretended I was okay. I was docile, submissive, pleasing. My eyes lit up when he entered the room, and I eagerly did whatever he guided me to do. Thankfully his tastes weren’t too exotic. I’d gotten through the first times, and nothing had changed. I could handle it until I could make my move.
It got to a point where my acting became almost too good. I leaned into his kisses just a touch too eagerly, sighed a little too deeply when he brought me off with his mouth or fingers. I was falling for my own seduction. So it was now or never, while my desire for freedom and escape still meant something to me.
I still understood his touch wasn’t the only touch in the world, and the pretty things he lavished me with weren’t the only things in existence. There was still a world outside that room. So the fourth day in the new cell, the first day clouds darkened the window so the sunlight couldn’t stream through, I was standing by the door, waiting.
I intended to kill him and run for my life, in case any other dragons guarded the castle. I had a pen and a sock in my pocket, and the heaviest table lamp in the room held in my hands in a death grip.
The lamp normally sat on the desk beneath the window, so his eyes wouldn’t find it missing in time to stop me. I stood, tense, waiting. I’d decided his mistake was conforming too closely to a routine. He always brought my breakfast at nine am, according to the clock on the desk. It was no trouble at all for me to be standing crouched by the door at 8:55.
I knew I had exactly one shot at this. My intention was to hit him the second the door opened. Then if he fell forward into the room I could use the sock to keep the door from sealing shut, jab the pen in his throat to finish him off, and run for it.
The keypad clicked to life on the other side of the door. When people have these moments they believe are big, they often speak of time standing still, how it dragged on forever in slow motion. But for me it didn’t drag. It was so fast I almost missed it. The door swung open and I pounced.
There was no time to be precise. The fraction of a second I took to aim, would be all it would take for him to stop me. I wasted no energy on that; I just swung out. His hand gripped my wrist so hard I knew if he twisted just slightly he could break it.
That was it. My big escape plan. And it was over before it even started. I searched frantically for something, anything to use as a weapon. It couldn’t be over this quickly.
There had to be a way to beat him. He couldn’t have shut off all my routes of escape. Criminals always made a mistake. Didn’t they? Maybe his mistakes would never make a difference to me one way or the other. My sole source of help might be some random stranger noticing something shifty about this guy and following him.
I released the lamp finally, and it crashed to the floor. My eyes met his and instead of the anger I expected, they held disappointment.
Something inside me died.
If I didn’t get out now I would lose myself entirely to the beautiful monster in front of me. I dug into my pants and pulled out the pen. He still stood partially in the doorway. If I could get past him before he stepped the rest of the way into the room, I could still escape.
The pen plan was even less successful than the lamp plan. I just wasn’t fast enough or strong enough. I had a moment of absolute shame over that, shame that I wasn’t a superhero, or one of those girls on TV that somehow manages to overpower someone three times their physical strength. Fiction had sold me pretty lies, and none of them did me any good now.
He moved the rest of the way into the room, and the door clicked shut. I knew he wasn’t going to give me another opportunity like that. I’d had it and lost it. He released my arm and instinctively I backed away from him. The disappointment he’d had in his eyes was replaced by some indefinable hardness.
It wasn’t quite anger. It wasn’t human enough or uncontrolled enough to be anger. And he was always in control.
“I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.” I moved backward until the heels of my tennis shoes hit the wall behind me.
He calmly held his hand out to me, and I took it. What choice did I have? He led me to the door and then produced the blindfold from his pocket. I didn’t try to fight him; I complied.
Whatever he had planned for me would be worse if I kept fighting. After the blindfold was in place, I heard the electronic beeps of the keypad, and then the door lock released. He took my hand gently and led me from the room. My arm still tingled where he’d gripped it to prevent me from hitting him with the lamp.
I was crying as we walked down the hallway. I knew he’d restrained himself from harming me. It was confusing to a degree I couldn’t handle. It made me feel ridiculously and inappropriately grateful to him, and I knew that was what he wanted.
We didn’t go far, so I knew we weren’t going back to the bad cell just yet. In fact, I was sure we were next door. He closed the door and removed the blindfold. It was a plain gray room, much like my cell, only there were screens everywhere. Half of them showed the cell he’d kept me in originally. The other half showed my new suite of rooms. I didn’t know where the cameras were exactly, what they were hidden in, but the point was they were there.
He’d known I was waiting for him with the lamp. I’d had no chance. Satisfied with my new understanding of reality, he put the blindfold back in place.
When the next door opened, I heard birds and felt a warm breeze on my face. He removed the fabric from my eyes and we were standing outside. The sun was starting to peek through the clouds.
I shouldn’t have been shocked by what I saw. I’d seen something similar staring out the window of my room, but I just hadn’t thought it would be like this on all sides. He linked his fingers through mine and led me around the house, as if we were lovers or friends, his grip never tightening or becoming threatening.
I could break the hold at any time and run, but to where? From the outside I could see my assumptions of his wealth weren’t idle. He had money, possibly never-ending pots of it. The house wasn’t a house, it was a fortress, a mansion. In another time, with slightly different architecture, it would have been a castle.
There were trees in the front yard and then what felt like a vast nothingness that stretched as far as my eyes could see. There were woods in the distance, but it was so far off I thought it might be a mirage. His house was situated on what felt like a grass-covered desert that seemed to roll on forever in all directions.
We could be literally anywhere. The driveway went on for what appeared to be several miles. And what then? He led me over to the large garage that housed his cars, plural. No surprise that there was a combination keypad over the door.
