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My stomach twists painfully at the cruel sight of him.
I recoil, sinking deeper into the thin mattress. The back of my head compresses the spongy foam enough that I feel the cold concrete floor underneath. I look to each side of me, driven by pure instinct, searching the small room I’m imprisoned in for the only safety that exists - Rome.
But he’s not here. My heart sinks as I feel his absence. He disappeared once before - right after our captor shot him, the bastard decided to get him medical assistance and arranged for a backyard surgeon to remove the bullet.
This time, Rome hasn’t been shot. He was here when I drifted off. That could have been seconds ago, hours, days - time is impossible to track down here.
“You had an accident,” the masked man says.
An accident?
I blink, trying to focus, as my heavy eyelids try to drag me back down into a cold void. My senses are stuffy, remote, and it takes a few seconds to realize I’m lying in my own urine. The mattress underneath me is wet, and it smells. There should be shame, but there’s not. I don’t care that I wet myself. Only that I need to find a way out of here.
“Get up,” my captor says, in that monotone voice. His faceless mask peers down at me, his eyes hidden by shadows, and I have the unrelenting urge to tear his fucking face off, an urge that bleeds into every single cell in my body. I strike out with my fists, and I’m not sure who is more surprised when one of my terribly-aimed punches connects with a hard cheekbone.
He lets out a surprised grunt, retaliating with brute force. His fist slams into the side of my head, and little white dots dance in my vision for a second.
“Bad girl,” he growls. He fists a gloved hand into my matted hair and pulls hard enough that I feel like my scalp is going to be ripped clean off. I scream, following his lead, as he drags me alongside him, crawling desperately on hands and knees to keep up. The room is small, so it only takes a few steps to get to the bathroom.
Is he going to kill me now?
I don’t know. The bathroom is crudely fashioned, a toilet bolted to one end of the tiny space, opposite the large claw-foot bath that looks completely out of place in this dungeon of horrors. The ground in here is just dirt, and I wonder if worms will wriggle up out of it and eat my corpse once I’m dead.
I mean, I hope I won’t die here, but things aren’t looking so great right now.
The hand in my hair suddenly pulls harder, forcing me up off my knees. For the briefest of moments, I’m standing toe-to-toe with my captor, and then I’m falling through the air.
I crash down into the tub before I can even take a breath. The water is ice-cold, colder than it would ever be straight from the faucet. It’s as if this psycho has actually poured bags of ice into the tub and let them melt before dumping my ass in. My entire body freezes up, the shock of the cold rendering every muscle rigid. I open my eyes, the cold water stinging, as it rushes into my vision. I feel a hand around my throat, trapping me underwater.
My heart takes off like a freight train at full speed, like a hummingbird’s frantic wings. The sound of my own pulse roars in my head, as my chest starts to seize, my survival instinct desperately kicking in as my lungs search for breath where there is none. The bath is deep, and the back of my skull rests on the bottom, a nice vantage point for an otherwise absolutely useless position. I have hold of my captor’s wrists underwater, covered by black hoodie sleeves and the edges of his black gloves. I find the spot where the two fabrics meet and dig my fingernails in as hard as I can, watching with a brief satisfaction as tiny trails of red blood diffuse into the water in front of my eyes.
My sharp nails work a treat. He pulls away, a muted roar reaching my ears through the cold water I’m still submerged in. As soon as his fingers release my throat, I reach for the sides of the tub, pulling myself upright, choking and spluttering as I draw air into my lungs. Briefly, I think of Adeline, my sister, the way she died all those years ago. People say drowning is a peaceful way to die?I call bullshit.
Something hits the surface of the water, making me recoil. I can just imagine this fucker throwing in a hairdryer and toasting me. After a few seconds of not being electrocuted, I relax minutely, peering down into the water. He’s thrown a square of soap in the tub. I wrap my fingers around it, pulling the slippery bar toward me.
“Strip,” he demands, holding out his hand. Without looking at myself, I remove the heavy, wet t-shirt clinging to my body, followed by the skirt.
“And?” he keeps his hand outstretched. Reluctantly, I take my panties off, cheeks burning, as I pull them out of the water and place them, dripping wet, into his open palm.
“Clean yourself,” he grunts, leaving the room. He slams the door shut behind him, and I’m alone again. I try not to hyperventilate as I look down at myself for the first time since he woke me up and dragged me in here. My body is covered in a rainbow of bruises, some old, most new, and atop it all, a coating of blood that starts at my forehead and ends somewhere around my ankles. I think about throwing the soap back at his face when the guy comes back, staying bloody - a small act of defiance. If I don’t die - if I make it out of this place - maybe some of the blood will have his DNA. But I think of the condom he used when he raped me, and the fact that I’ve not managed to hurt this guy enough to draw blood - my fingernails at his wrist being the only exception - and I cave. I really, really want to be clean. I also worry that he won’t let me out of this ice bath until I’m properly washed, and I’m already shivering violently, the skin around my fingernails turning a faint blue. I take the soap, and I scrub myself, being mindful to leave one hand above the water, my futile attempt to preserve some of the DNA under my fingernails from where I just sank them into his flesh.
Once I’m relatively clean, I reach for a pile of gray towels stacked beside the bathtub. Somebody has laid a gray bath mat over the dirt beside the bathtub - how thoughtful. I clamber out of the tub, as well as I can, groaning when I twist my body the wrong way. Sharp pain blooms where I know my IUD is trying to kill me, partially dislodged thanks to the psycho on the other side of the door. I’m momentarily engulfed by the violent recollection of him trying to pull it out of my unrelenting body in the first days of our captivity.Fuck.
I watch in horror as a thin thread of blood makes its way down the inside of my scrubbed-clean thigh, quickly turning into a large thread, and then a river that starts to drip down over my ankle and stain the bath mat.
Pull yourself together,I tell myself.Rome was shot.You’re worrying about the tiniest amount of blood in comparison.
It’s a lie, but one I have to tell myself if I’m going to focus on the task at hand: getting out of here alive.
I look around the tiny room, searching for a weapon of some kind. There are no handles on the taps, just two brass fittings where the taps should be. It’d probably do some serious damage if I could throw this guy onto one of the metal pipe ends that stick out of the wall, but I can barely lift my own arms right now, let alone a two-hundred-pound dude with a gun and a knife.
I wrap the threadbare towel around me, shivering like crazy. There are no clothes in here, nothing else to do. I walk across the dirt floor gingerly, trying to move as little as possible in case this dislodged IUD decides to kill me any faster than it already is. With shaking hands, I open the door that separates the bathroom space from the rest of this delightful little torture chamber I now call home. I don’t know what I’m expecting as I cross the threshold - a welcome party, maybe a couple of attack dogs waiting to tear me apart. What I see is a new king-sized mattress where the stained one was laying, just a few minutes ago, this one still wrapped in plastic. Sitting on top of it, two neatly folded piles of clothes, the tags still attached. I select a plain black t-shirt and another black skirt from the pile of clothes intended for me, not missing the fact that there are no pants options for me. As I pull the clothes onto my still damp body, I look around the bare room. In this entire horrid little space, there’s not a speck of blood remaining - the whole room has been efficiently disinfected. Below the pungent stench of bleach, though, I can still smell the blood.
It’s virtually impossible to get rid of that much blood and not have some linger.
On the table where I was raped, now sparkling clean, sits a brown paper bag heaving with food. Without really thinking, I beeline for it, pulling the paper bag open as the smell of fried chicken hits me in the face.
Better than the smell of blood. I’ll take it. Especially when whoever has me trapped here went to the trouble to pick up my favorite takeout. Coincidence? Probably. I’m too hungry to think properly. There’s only one thought that pulses through my addled brain:Where is Rome?
