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The closet door opened and coats were shoved back. He dragged her out as she held on to the door frame, her fingernails digging into the wall.
“Don’t be a tease.” He grabbed her hand and pressed it against the front of his pants. “Don’t you feel what you do to me? This is what you do to all of us. We’re all hard and ready for you. We need you. You know you want to be our good little whore.”
“No, no no no. Please stop. Please,” she sobbed, knowing Jason wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop talking or dragging her down the stairs to the other waiting men. He liked the tears. And the begging. It turned him on.
“Shhhh shhhhh. It’s just a dream.”
The arms that had felt restraining were more gentle now. Brian. He’d woken her from the dream, rescued her from Jason. But what good would that rescue be if he simply dragged her farther into a different nightmare?
Jason had taken her from herself, but now she was with a bigger monster. There was no question Brian was the bigger monster. But he was holding her and rocking her and kissing her hair, whispering “shhhhh”… soothing her. As if she could be soothed anymore. As if there were any pieces of her that could ever fit back together again.
It was a lie. It had to be a lie. It had to be the game they all played to make her trust before they pulled it all away. But she couldn’t help melting further into his arms, sagging against him, releasing the heavy weight she carried even for just a minute until reality sharpened in front of her—the reality that Brian didn’t have the capacity to save anyone. She’d seen it in his hard flat stare. He was stone in there. Why did she keep looking for someone to save her? To protect her? To dominate her in some fantasy gentle way that if it existed could never exist for her?
Brian steadied her as her breath moved back to a normal cadence and her tears began to dry. Slowly his hold on her loosened, and he untangled himself from the sheets. She tried not to look at him, tried not to want him. He’d wreck her worse than Jason. He put on sweatpants and tennis shoes. Then he dropped a t-shirt, gym shorts, and shoes on the bed for her.
“Get dressed.”
“W-what? Why?”
“Why, Master.”
She flinched as if he might punish her for the slip, for talking to him as if they were roommates instead of property and owner. But no retribution came.
“Why, Master?”
“I can’t hit you, but you need pain.”
She scrambled back, shaking her head violently. “No.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “you promised”. What did his promise mean? She’d known it was empty from the beginning. She’d just hoped his mercy might stretch longer than this.
His voice turned soft. “That’s not what I meant. I would never… You need catharsis. You need something physical to unwind this thing inside you that’s eating you alive. I know this.” He took her hands in his. And she believed he knew exactly where she’d been. He’d been in the same dark place somehow.
“You need torun,” he said.
The word sounded much as it had in the corridor that first night. And it carried the same urgency now that it had then. It made everything inside her unfreeze. It made movement possible. It made breathing possible.
Run.
Was that why he ran so much on the treadmill? Trying to outrun his demons? Did it ever work?
When she’d dressed, Brian led her up the stairs to the main level. The house slumbered so deep it was as if a spell had been cast over it. It seemed nothing would wake the inhabitants. All that existed were Brian and Mina—him tugging her hand, pulling her insistently through the darkened house. The lights near the floor cast an eerie, ghostly glow upon everything they touched.
When they reached the gym, he only turned one set of lights on, the rest of the space stayed dark.
He set the program on the treadmill and took the machine beside her, setting the same program. “Run. Don’t stop until you can’t go anymore.”
Mina ran. She ran to him, away from him, away from everyone and everything, away from the dreams, away from Jason, away from her brokenness and the pieces she couldn’t reach to pick up.
She didn’t look at him. He didn’t look at her. No music played. It was just the sound of shoes hitting the moving platform over and over.
Half an hour later, she couldn’t go anymore. She stopped the program and collapsed on the floor trying to catch her breath. Brian was still going strong. How much did he run? It seemed as if his life was a string of coping mechanisms for the violence that shaped him still.
Brian got off the treadmill and pulled her to her feet. “Shower next, then food.”
It was a carefully orchestrated ritual. How many nights had he done this? How many nights had it been him waking from a nightmare instead of her? He was letting her into something private, and for the first time it didn’t feel like a game or an act. It felt like intimacy. Understanding. If only it was real.
Showering was another silent ritual, both of them squeezed inside, his hands running carefully over her with the soap. But that was all he did.
He shut the water off, toweled off, and dressed. Mina echoed him and started to put her own clothes back on.
