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How did one apologize for attempted murder? Or was it self-defense? I couldn’t be sure anymore. I only knew that I’d tried to kill him and instead of doing to me what I’d attempted to do to him, he’d spared my life.
The only physical violence I’d experienced at his hands, I’d allowed him to do. A bargain, an exchange to keep me out of the cell and win his good favor. I was starting to feel safe with him. He’d gone from being just my tormentor to being my tormentor and protector, though I needed protection from nothing but him.
He simply nodded in response to my apology.
“Are you still angry with me?”
He looked confused, and it occurred to me he hadn’t been angry. He’d probably expected I would lash out at some point. It was natural in my position to do so, a part of the dance of victim and victimizer, and I’d played my part predictably.
He’d probably looked forward to the moment he could show me the futility of my efforts to escape. To break me just a little more. No, there had been no reason for him to be angry. It was just one more success. The cell had been punishment for disobedience, plain and simple. Anything else I’d read into it was wrong.
He picked up a hairbrush off the vanity and I flinched, thinking for a moment he might beat me with it, not out of anger but out of some sadistic need he had that he was slowly beginning to let me see. But he sat behind me instead, his legs coming around on either side of mine, and he brushed my hair. Slow, gentle strokes. I closed my eyes and relaxed.
When he’d finished, he kissed me softly and left. He returned moments later, handed me a notebook, and was gone.
SEVEN
Ididn’t pick it up at first. If the last book he’d left for me was any indication, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know its contents. Instead, I left it on the table and went into the ballet studio to stand in front of the mirror.
I lifted the T-shirt over my head and gingerly peeled back the medical tape. I couldn’t stand not knowing how bad the whip marks were. I didn’t know why it mattered. Even if it wasn’t deep, he could just be getting started. And I didn’t know whether he’d let me heal before he did it again. I waited until I’d gotten the bandages off before I dared to look at the damage. I pulled my hair up and peered over my shoulder at my reflection. It wasn’t that bad. The bandages on the ground didn’t have much blood on them, another good sign.
It looked like he’d stopped as soon as he’d broken the skin. He’d also been careful to only hit my upper back and shoulders, nowhere it would cause permanent damage.
I glanced up at where I knew the cameras were and wondered if I’d get in trouble for removing the bandages he’d spent so much time on. But if he was going to do it again, I thought it needed air, so the cuts would close more quickly. I tossed the bandages into a garbage can in the corner.
I looked back into the mirror, this time at my stomach, at the light red burns left by the candle wax. I traced my fingers over the letters of the word mine, the temporary brand that I never wanted to fade away. Then I slipped the top back over my head, wincing as it settled over my skin.
I’d accepted he was never letting me go. He’d invested too much time and money in all this. I couldn’t begin to guess how many months he’d stalked me to discover so much about my likes and dislikes. If he hadn’t taken me in the way he had, I would almost think he was a regular guy trying to impress me with gifts. But I knew that was ridiculous.
He was a predator and I was his prey. No matter how much I came to depend on him and crave him, I wouldn’t forget that. What he’d done and was continuing to do to me was wrong, but the constant struggle to fight it based on moral fortitude was too emotionally exhausting for me. Acceptance was easier.
If I wanted to keep any part of my mind intact, I had to obey. There were only so many trips to the bad cell I could handle before I lost it completely, before I became a shell instead of a person. The good cell told me everything I needed to know. He was offering a gift I was fortunate to be given. He was offering to let me keep enough sense of self to not fall into madness.
He didn’t have to give me the nice room and the studio and bathroom and all the luxuries these rooms held. He didn’t have to give me a window or the best southern food one could put in their mouth. He didn’t have to ever give me any kind of pleasure. I tried to hold onto the reality that it didn’t make any of it okay, but I was having a harder time seeing that because my reality had been narrowed to him and the things he could make me feel.
I hadn’t looked through all the CDs or books yet. In the short time I’d been in the rooms before attempting to kill him, I’d spent most of my time in the studio or taking bubble baths and trying on clothes. I thumbed through the CDs finding a wide range of things I liked: classical, rock, jazz, some international music.
I wasn’t a fan of international music and wondered if he was including his tastes as well. But I was curious, so I slipped a Middle Eastern CD into the player. The music was rich and earthy and alive in ways no other music I’d ever heard was. It pulsed through me, steady drumbeats, layers upon layers of rhythm and music.
The room contained no TV or DVD player, no computer. There were no movies, no news, no commercials, no Internet. Nothing to link me too closely to the outside world. No faces to see but his, not even on a screen. No voices but my own calling out in the silence.
I looked more closely at the books. I was familiar with the shelves at eye level. They held a lot of my favorites, but now I was looking more closely. On the lower left-hand row, closest to the dresser, almost as if it were hiding, was a complete section of erotica. Something like fifty titles. All of them were the same theme. Kinky. Most of them Master/slave fiction. A few of them familiar.
Story of O, for example, was a classic that I would just as soon not read again, given my current circumstances. I didn’t know how many things from these books we’d be acting out. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
It was one thing on paper, in a fictional world; it was quite another when it was real. Still, the books were there, calling to me, tempting me to read and be reawakened to their erotic secrets.
I was no longer the teenager giggling under the covers with a flashlight reading something naughty and bad. I was a grown woman living it, and some darker part of me was clawing to get out because what choice did I have left but to give in to the dark?
My eyes drifted back to the table and the plain black spiral notebook, like a college student might use. I knew it wasn’t empty. It wasn’t a blank book for me to write in. That I already had, and I’d been writing in it.
No, the notebook contained information. It was his first explicit communication to me, and I was terrified to find out what it contained. After weeks of existing in a state where I had to read nonverbal signals, I was afraid to get actual words from him.
I was scared to see how much of him I knew, and how much of him I didn’t. But I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Whatever was inside, I needed to read it, to prepare myself for what was coming next.
I picked up the notebook and took a bottle of water from the mini fridge before lying down on my stomach across the bed.
The book held no mention of why he’d taken me or for how long he intended to keep me. Though I knew the second answer: forever, or until he grew bored with me. I was afraid of what would happen once he did grow bored with me. Though I determined reasonably that could be a long way off, judging from his obsessive and meticulous behaviors so far. A man who plans for months before taking a slave doesn’t grow bored with her in the same length of time.
