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He released my hand and sat on the grass, staring up at me, that look of mild amusement on his face, as if to say:what now?What now was right. I spun slowly in circles trying to grasp how far out we were, the vast nothing.
If there had been lots of trees I could have believed we were close to a main road somewhere and I just had to find it, but we weren’t. I wanted to run. I should have, but I couldn’t help but believe running would make my punishment worse.
There was nowhere for me to hide, and without a car, nowhere for me to go. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to release me. I fought with myself over what I should do. I’d been so ready to kill him and now, faced with such a long trek to even a deserted road, I was giving up?
I found myself walking down the driveway, toward the vast nothing that I hoped eventually would turn into something. I felt his cold eyes on me, sending a chill over my skin. I knew he was toying with me, and I was buying into it, but I couldn’t just stand there or go back to my cell.
He was there, ready at every turn. He’d known I would try to kill him, and he’d been prepared. He knew I would do what I was doing now, and he was mocking me. But to react any other way would have been unnatural for me. It would be to give in. He won either way. It was a game stacked against me on all sides.
I walked until I was a good bit away from the house, if one could call something that imposing a house. I didn’t look back. I was afraid to see him following behind me at some kind of perceived safe distance. Eventually I did turn back because I couldn’t stand the way my stomach clenched at the idea that he was close behind me, playing with me and waiting to pounce.
He was still sitting there, casually in the grass. I was too far away now to see his face, but I could make out his shape. And then he stood. My heart dropped into my stomach. I imagined he was smiling, a hunter intent on outrunning his prey, though I was too far away to see his mouth to find the truth of this theory. He started to move toward me.
I turned and ran. I’d always been in great physical condition, but I couldn’t run for distance worth shit. I just never built up that kind of endurance. It didn’t take long before I was winded, and he was close enough for me to hear him running up behind me.
I couldn’t outrun him; I knew it. I’d known it from the beginning, but if I didn’t make at least the token effort I’d be beating myself up over it for as long as he let me live. If there had been trees, I could have zigzagged between them and hidden. It was just too open here.
His feet pounded closer and closer to me against the ground, dry and packed hard from lack of rain. Before he caught up to me, I stopped, turned around, and held my hands out in surrender. He stopped running a few feet from me and smiled that unfriendly smile, then nodded. Then he turned and started walking back toward the house.
I stood there for a moment, gawking after him. I wanted him to physically drag me back kicking and screaming but he wasn’t doing that. He seemed so sure I’d follow. Well fuck that. He’d had me almost three weeks. I wasn’t that far gone.
I stood defiantly with my arms crossed over my chest. He turned and when he didn’t see me following right behind him, the smile left his face, and his eyes narrowed. He started to stride purposefully toward me, and I found my feet defying my desires and moving me back toward the house.
For all my tough thoughts, I didn’t want him to hurt me. At root I was a coward, and I knew it. I didn’t take enough risks, never had. I was just the kind of girl men like him dreamed of taking. The kind that was too afraid of pain to rebel in any meaningful way.
I’d stopped running because I was terrified of him knocking me physically to the ground. I was afraid if he did that, if he got a taste of violence toward me, he wouldn’t stop. We were in the middle of nowhere, and he was my only hope. Keeping him from turning on me was the only thing that mattered.
He slowed his strides to match mine as we walked together to the house. If the situation were different, it would have been companionable silence. I didn’t know how he managed the willpower to not reprimand me. But he’d managed the willpower to do every other completely calculated thing he’d done. So why not?
He was the most terrifying person I’d ever encountered, like a wild animal, and yet he reasoned. Predatory animals are so frightening because you can’t speak or understand their language. You can’t reason with them.
As we got closer to the house, I kept thinking of the ramifications of its size. Surely a house that big, there had to be servants at some point. He couldn’t possibly do everything himself. So people came to the house, and if they came to the house, I had a chance. If I screamed my head off someone would hear me.
He pulled out the blindfold, and I let him put it on me. When the cloth was removed from my eyes again, the fear I’d been secretly harboring was realized. I was back in the bad cell.
“Please, take me back to the other room. I’m sorry. I won’t try anything again. I won’t try to get away.”
He skimmed his fingers lightly over my face, cupped my chin, and brushed his lips softly against mine. I leaned into the touch because I knew it was the last one for awhile. I hated myself for trying to savor it. I should be happy he wouldn’t touch me, that I’d have a fucking break from his constant ministrations, but all I could think about was that I’d have to dance again in order to feel anything at all.
It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do in that cell. I would be there until he thought I’d properly learned my lesson. He turned and left me alone, that deafening door click sealing my fate. Would it be a week? Two weeks? Surely a murder attempt, no matter how lame, would require more than one week’s penance.
I pounded on the door until my knuckles bled, screaming and begging for him to let me out, to not abandon me again. I couldn’t be alone like this again. Being in the cell now was worse than the first time. Seeing how bearable my imprisonment with him could be, and what I was getting instead.
I pushed down the feelings of shame at having displeased him enough to warrant punishment. Some part of me still knew it wasn’t true, or thought it might not be true. I wasn’t sure anymore, but I was starting to feel like I deserved the bad cell now.
He’d given me everything, and I’d tried to kill him. I finally moved back to my corner, cradling my injured hands. I soaked in the stinging feeling because it was something, and it let me know I was still real.
Not long after that, the door opened. My usual bathing necessities were slipped into the room, along with a tray with bandages and ointment for my hands.
“Thank you.” I couldn’t stop the words. And somehow I knew any attempts at escape now were just denial and an unwillingness to accept reality.
I scooted the pail of water, soap, and bandages to the drain and first worked on my hands. I was sobbing by the time I’d finished bandaging. It was like that moment when you know you’re going to die and it’s too late to do anything about it. You just have that sickening knowledge that that’s what’s about to happen, that apprehension.
I knew what had happened, I just couldn’t stop it. I wouldn’t scream for help; I couldn’t. Not anymore. I couldn’t scream because he was taking such good care of me. He’d gotten me bandages.
The rest of the day I didn’t make a fuss. I did what I was supposed to do. I ate my chicken soup, and I slept in my corner. I scratched off a day into the concrete behind the toilet and ran my fingers over all the other days I’d spent there.
I don’t know why I still hid the marks. I knew he watched me and had probably at some point caught me doing it. But he’d ignored it. He didn’t seem to care about my crude calendar. I repeated the date over and over again in my head because it was important for me to know what day I was on.
