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AVERY
“I’m not going to hurt her,” the man in the mask says to Rome Montague, handing him a large butcher’s knife. “You are.”
“ThefuckI am,” Rome replies, his words thick with fury and venom. With the desire to keep me safe. But his hand closes around the knife handle anyway. I already know what he will try to do.
But there’s a reason you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
A blade can’t beat a bullet.
And just as Rome raises the knife to attack our gun-toting captor, a searing jolt cracks at the base of my throat, and I immediately fall to the floor. I scream as the collar around my neck delivers a measured current of electricity via two tiny metal prongs, straight into my skin. It travels through my body, hot and loud, a burn with no flame. On my back, I struggle to keep my eyes open, blinking furiously, as I watch the rest of this horror show unfold above me.
Rome stops moving, the knife’s blade midair, as the guy in the mask slowly shakes his head. The message is clear: If Rome tries to hurt our captor, he’ll deliver another punishing electric shock to me via the collar around my throat.
I want to be brave. I want to tell Rome to attack him anyway. That even if the shocks never stop coming, thateven if I die, he should fight his way out of this hellhole with every ounce of energy he has. But I’m still gripped by the current that pulses through my body, as if somebody has injected acid into my veins, the white-hot agony unrelenting. And I’m not that brave. I’m not brave at all.
Rome drops the knife to the floor, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Stop. Stop! I dropped the knife, man, fucking stop whatever you’re doing to her!”
The man in the mask delivers one more jarring jolt of electricity to me before he stops. I have a feeling he doesn’t like being told what to do.
“Pick up the knife,” the masked man says, his voice heavily distorted by what I can only guess is a voice-changing device of some kind fitted under his mask. He sounds like the murderer from the movieScream. And, right now, I might as well be the fucking Drew Barrymore character, about to be disemboweled.
Rome haltingly picks up the knife, just as our captor produces a rolled-up newspaper from somewhere inside his layers of black clothing and tosses it in my direction.
“Her blood. On the newspaper. Or I shock her until she pisses herself.”
Rome picks up the newspaper, his face contorted with confusion, with worry. “Why?”
I brace myself for another shock, but it doesn’t come. Instead, our captor backs toward the door, his gun still trained on Rome. “Proof of life,” he says, opening the door and stepping out of the room. Seconds later, I hear heavy locks being bolted outside the door, making it impossible for us to escape.
Rome drops the knife and newspaper at his feet. He throws himself at the door, pounding his fists against it. He pounds and pounds, until blood blooms fresh along his knuckles.
Too bad it’s not his blood we need.
“Rome,” I croak, my voice weak from the shock-collar’s relentless assault. He turns slowly, letting his fists drop to his sides. When he looks at me, he flinches. There’s something dark in his eyes. Longing. Loss. A mournfulness, as if we’re already dead.
Maybe it would be easier that way. Today, though, I’m still surviving on threads of hope. Maybe we’ll get out. Maybe this will all be a terrible nightmare one day, and we’ll finally be free of this room and its horrors.
Physically, anyway. Instinctively, I know that, even if our bodies make it out of this place, a part of us is always going to be down here together in the dark.
I struggle to sit up, my body complaining loudly as I manage to raise myself onto my elbows, my legs stretched out in front of me. I feel lucky that the electric shock didn’t make me pee all over myself. It seems, even down here, even after everything, I still have a tiny shred of dignity buried somewhere inside me.
I hold one arm up, shaking at the exertion. “Let’s get this over with.”
Rome’s face, normally so composed, crumbles. Perhaps my casual acceptance of the violence he must inflict upon me is terrifying. He doesn’t see the frantic dread working its way through me like poison. He kneels beside me, checking me over for injuries. I brush his hands away, on the verge of a panic attack. If he doesn’t get my blood onto the newspaper quickly enough, I know our captor will deliver on his promise, sending enough electricity through my shock collar that I’ll wet myself.Or worse. How much voltage does it take to stop a heart so that it never beats again? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
“I can’t hurt you,” Rome mumbles, “there has to be another way.”
I find my way to a sitting position, tucking my legs underneath me, as I take hold of Rome’s hand, guiding the knife toward my wrist. “We don’t have time,” I mutter, pressing the knife he’s holding into my flesh.
“Jesus!” I jump as the blade sinks into my skin, ruby red blood springing up immediately.
“Shit,” Rome mutters, as he tries to pull the knife away. “I’ll cut myself. Not you. Not you.”
I still have my hand over his, and I guide the knife back down to my wrist forcefully. “Didn’t you hear what he said? Proof of life. As in, my life. My blood. My DNA. The engagement ring must not have been enough.”
“Engagement ring?” Rome asks suddenly. It’s a good distraction, me talking about my impending nuptials. Well, now the only thing impending on my schedule is my eventual escape or death - but before we landed in this hellhole, I was very much a taken woman. Never mind the fact that the man I was to marry was nothing to me. An arrangement I inherited from my dearly departed older sister, a future husband I could never love.
“Yes, engagement ring,” I echo, moaning through clenched teeth, as I cut deep enough to get a steady flow of blood - but, hopefully, not deep enough to kill myself. There’s a fine line between self-mutilation and death, and I pray I’ve stayed on the right side of it for now.
