Erin
“Agh!…Ugh!…Ehn!…Ogh!…Nuh!…Ehn!…Ahn!—” So went the keening.
“—Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…Rgh!…” And his guttural ejections.
…And on and on and on…
They painted a clear enough picture, even for my loose hold on consciousness. Maybe they were what were tying me to this world, keeping me from a peaceful blackness. They were my latest torture.
I thought—hoped—I was losing my hold on reality. The eerie, tortured pitches of that voice I knew to be so beautiful but that now sounded so awful, so ugly, so inescapable and incessant, and the rhythmic counterpart of his vicious grunts—both together were blocking my thoughts from forming coherently and blocking my mind from releasing into a void.
I was so very, very cold. My wet hair continued to drip down my neck in a painful release of internal heat that I could feel seeping out of me, moment after moment. My body was uncontrollably shivering with each breath.
After all of the day’s Taserings, I ached throughout. My muscles had no understanding of how they ought to respond to the overstimulation of nerves. My head was pounding, too; it felt like a vice had hold of my brain and was squeezing relentlessly. It was beginning to make me nauseated. I began moaning in time with the girl, to give voice to my pain, as if that would ease it. It almost did, but not really.
Not to mention how I burned. Even in the midst of freezing to death, every part of me that had been lashed was on fire in the cold air of the cell. My breasts, my belly, my arms at my sides, my thighs, my sex. He’d gotten me everywhere except for my face and neck and back.
I was entirely raw. And that lovely now-ugly voice kept up its rhythmic keen of pain and horror. And I moaned and groaned in empathetic counterpoint, letting her know my share of pain, too. Solidarity in torture. Not that that eased the pain in any way; it didn’t, for either of us, I’m sure.
I had no way of knowing if she heard me. And really, what did it matter? I had never been raped, though I could see now that that particular experience was just beyond my horizon. Perhaps minutes, surely not more than hours away. I now knew without a shadow of a doubt I had to brace for that horror, too.
Because of the ties binding my wrists and ankles together, and the other straps holding my legs apart on either side of this table from hell, my shoulders and hips were aching, as well, stuck too long in unnatural positions with no ease for movement.
My breath came in shallowly, and I struggled to control it to avoid hyperventilation. Gah, my entire being was so overly stimulated with ache, pain, cold, discomfort, contraction, shivers, nausea…I had never before been so physically and mentally overwhelmed.
I began just wishing for death. It would have been a welcome end to this horror.
As my mind drifted toward that thought, and my keening softened in a dreamlike state of wishfulness, I saw my sister in my mind’s eye: angry, fierce, and vibrant. She yelled at me silently, berated my weakness, and challenged my capitulation.
She was right. I had to fight. I had to wake up. I had to get out of here. I had to get the girl out of here. I could not give in. Owen could not win. I had to take him down, or die trying.
This—tied up like a fucking pig on a spit—was not the way I would go down. Fucking Thea. Thank the fucking gods for my fucking little sister, Thea. I had to fight, for Thea. For me, too. But primarily, I’d say my main motivation at that point was for Thea.
I gathered my spite for the sick bastard who had done this—this, to me. This, to the other girl with the beautiful voice. And worse, to my sister, who died at his hands, before she even got to experience real life.
So, no, I was not going to give in. I was not going to die. I was going to nail that fucking bastard to the wall.
I began to move my fingers and arms and wrists and feet and ankles and legs, trying to open some millimeters of space in which to maneuver or jostle the rope ties. I did this not without new pains accompanying the movement; the ropes burned and scratched my skin, sometimes pinching where it caught against tiny hairs or where it was just too tight.
Still, I didn’t give up. I kept twisting and stretching, even though nothing seemed to move, I put all I could into my muscles, willing something to shift.
After many moments, I began to feel some space. I think perhaps my wet skin had dampened the rope when he had first bound me up, which could only have helped. Praise god for wet skin and drippy hair!
I was starting to feel actual space now, between my wrists and ankles. I could turn my hands around partway, could feel my fingers run along the lowest-positioned parts of the ropes.
The one on my left side was not positioned well for my purposes; the knot was laid at the top of my wrist, and I still didn’t have enough room in there to completely turn my arm over to grasp it or work at it with my fingers.
But the one on my right was perfect. The knot lay just inside the small hollow I had opened between my inside wrist and the drop below my anklebone. It was just enough space to maneuver my first few fingers and thumb into.
I praised all that was holy for my months of working in difficult stilettos with tiny buckles and knots; my fingers were strong and they knew what to do.
After several moments of pulling and tugging and twisting and shifting and huffing and squirming and breathing and believing, I felt the knot finally slip its grip, and I was able to pull the end free from its grasp on the other part of the rope. I was moments away from right arm and right leg freedom…
And suddenly I had it. I almost cried. I wasn’t sure what would make the best next move, but quickly realized I could not very well help out my left side before releasing my torso from its belting to the table, so that had to come first.
I think the strap that bound me around the waist was an actual man’s leather belt. The buckle was located under the table, but conveniently for my purposes, it was just under the edge on my right side. When I discovered this, I almost laughed with relief. It took me several moments to get the strap out of the buckle—it was awkward, working it behind me and several inches below with the table edge in the way, but ultimately I managed it.
At this point I was able to sit up and shift myself into a better position in which I could maneuver the last major hurdle: untying my left wrist from ankle. It took the work of several moments, but finally I had free space, motion, arms, legs, body.
I was so flooded with adrenaline that it overpowered my awareness of the cold, of my shivers, aches, and pains—well, for the most part. I still ached and I needed to stretch; I felt pinpricks all over. But I could move again. I was no longer tied down and presented like a turkey on Thanksgiving.
I was still locked up behind a heavy hydraulic cage door in a cell in the basement from hell, but I had a fighting chance now.
And no way was I going to waste it.