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I do my best, but over the next week, I find myself moving in a daze. I wake up and eat. My body heals a little more every day. I put some weight back on. I watch TV and read books and I spend some time on Sarah’s treadmill every day, trying to build my strength back up.
Sarah insists on buying me a cell phone. I use it to call Astrid a few times. She’s got her whole family back together, and they’re staying at a hotel. They can’t stand to be in their house anymore.
Her daughters want to talk to me too, to make sure I’m okay. They’re such good people. I despise Micah for what he put them through.
Like me, Astrid sounds muted when she talks. Stunned. We’re slowly feeling our way through a world that’s forever changed for us.
Sarah is at work during the day, managing her various charities. Time drags on, and I spend days and days just idly surfing the internet and watching TV, trying to figure out what to do with myself.
My body is healing. My mind is shattered, and I am trying to remember how to live in a world without bars.
And without Joshua.
Every day, I expect him to call me on my cell phone. Or Sarah’s home phone. I’m angry he doesn’t, even though that’s irrational. I told him to leave me alone, and he is.
I accept that I’m going to miss him for a long, long time. He was my entire life for five long months. My time with him was frequently terrible, but it was also intense and sometimes it was ecstatic and amazing. It’s even harder since I’m not working or in school. I’ve got nothing to think about but him.
No. I’m lying to myself. I’d think about him all day even if I were in school.
It doesn’t matter. I could call him any time, but every day, I dredge up my willpower and choose not to contact my torturer.
Sarah insists on taking me shopping. She buys me new clothes and takes me to a hair salon and a nail salon. I wear clothing that covers me from the neck down so I can conceal the scars on my chest. I can’t stand to leave the house without carrying a Taser and pepper spray.
I join a yoga studio and go with Sarah, and we do meditation, which helps a little when I’m attacked by flashbacks of Micah’s abuse.
My nipple and clit piercings closed up very quickly. They were removed in the hospital. One less reminder of my ordeal.
At Sarah’s suggestion, I put bandages over the scars where Micah cut and branded his initials into me and go to a massage therapist a few times a week – a woman – to force myself to get past my instinctive tendency to flinch when anybody touches me.Anybody but Joshua.Why did his touch in the hospital room arouse me so much? He’s the one I should be running from, and yet he’s the only person I can imagine touching me intimately ever again.
In my room, I practice my self-defense moves. I have Sarah order me a punching bag, and I beat the hell out of it. I do sit-ups and push-ups and planks and squats until my muscles scream.
I won’t be a victim again.
When I climb in the shower every morning, I feel cold and lonely. I close my eyes and turn up the water until it’s so hot that it’s almost scalding, and I try to summon up the feeling of Joshua’s hands on my warm, wet flesh. I remember the slow, sensual torture of his tongue lapping between my legs, dragging me to the edge of ecstasy and making me scream and beg for release. I dream of the explosive orgasms that racked my body again and again when he finally let me come.
I touch myself, but it’s not the same.
After a few days, I get a message from Mark, the homeless alcoholic I used to give sandwiches to. After Joshua kidnapped me, Mark kept bugging the police department about my disappearance.
He managed to track me down here in Nebraska, and he wants me to know that things are better for him now. He’s finished with rehab. An anonymous sponsor is paying for an apartment for him in New York City, and he has been offered a job at a large non-profit doing computer security.
I also talk to Jessica Brown, the director of the battered women’s shelter where I volunteered. She wants to know I’m all right. She tells me that they miss me there, and she’s so grateful I was found safe.
And while she’s catching me up on the latest news at the shelter, she mentions they received an anonymous two-million-dollar donation a few weeks ago.
This is all Joshua.
I’m happy people are benefitting from his generosity, but I’m also skeptical about his motives.
Does he think that charitable donations will erase what he did to me? Does he believe it will make up for chaining me in a dark, lonely cellar for weeks until I went mad with sorrow? Does he think it will make up for breaking my heart and mind by telling me nobody was looking for me, when he knew how my mother’s abandonment had haunted me? Does he believe it’s going to buy his way back into my favor after he heaped abuse and scorn on the broken Toy that he made me into, for months, until I was a lost, hurting creature with no will to live?
Nothing will make up for it.
But nothing will let me banish him from my mind, either. He’s branded himself onto my soul. His cruelty made those rare moments of tenderness so much sweeter. When he wasn’t destroying me, he was fighting for me—side by side with me, battling the demons of my past.
I keep dreaming about him at night. In my dreams, I surrender to my desire. I crawl to him, I beg him to fuck me, and he makes me cry before he’ll touch me.
He’s woken up something dark and needy in me.
