The Dark Room

Briar

I didn’t know day from night, or how many hours or days had passed while I was unconscious. I only knew the nausea and headache when I awoke, and then the awful stench soon after.

It smelled like human waste and bile, and soon I added to it as my stomach forced up any trace of food it held. Hard sobs wracked my body as I tried to free my hands from where they were zip-tied behind me, but it didn’t give.

Oh God. Where am I? I need to get out of here.

“Help,” I croaked then gagged again. “Help.” I repeated it louder and louder until I was screaming it.

“Stop.”

I froze at the hushed word and strained to hear anything in the dark.

“Hello?” I asked hesitantly.

“Stop,” the feminine voice pled again.

“Who are—?”

“Hush.”

I heard the rustling of a body—bodies. I couldn’t tell how many, but it sounded like a lot.

“If you don’t stop, they’ll come in here.”

I wanted that. I needed to get out of wherever I was. “Someone help,” I screamed. “Help me!”

More women were hushing me, some in languages I didn’t know, but I didn’t stop.

A metal door slid open and slammed shut, and I paused as unease crawled through the room and made its way to me, fear sliding over me like oil. I didn’t know what had just entered the room, but I bit my lip to keep from making another sound.

The room was dark enough that I couldn’t see the floor, and I hoped the darkness would hide me from whoever was here with us . . .

The sound of heavy boots grew closer and closer, every now and then hitting what sounded like a puddle or squishing something. My stomach rolled.

Just when I thought the boots would pass by me, a hand pressed my head roughly against the floor.

“No, no, n—” I thrashed against the strong hold, screaming when something pinched my neck.

My loud sobs tore through the room, echoing back to me as the heavy boots moved back in the direction they’d come. When the metal door screeched open, I pled for someone to help me. But my words were soft and slurred.

No one hushed me again, and no one came to save me as darkness engulfed me.

“Beautiful,” a familiar voice whispered into my ear. A pair of warm arms curled around my waist, pulling me back against his chest.

I bit down on my bottom lip, abruptly cutting off the song that had been flowing from my mouth. Despite my sudden unease, I couldn’t stop my smile as my fiancé’s lips ghosted along my neck.

“Don’t stop,” he pled just as gently.

My smile slipped even as a hum of appreciation slid up my throat from the feel of Kyle’s teasing lips on me, but I didn’t continue singing. He knew I wouldn’t.

When seconds ticked by with nothing, he laughed against my shoulder. “You’re so confusing, Briar Rose.”

My body stilled, already knowing what he would say next.

“Never heard a voice like yours, but you won’t let anyone hear it.”

“That’s not true.” I turned in his arms when another breath of a laugh left him and worried my bottom lip as he studied me with a challenging expression. “I just . . .” I lifted one shoulder when I couldn’t find the words to explain it.

“Won’t let anyone hear you,” he provided, echoing his previous statement.

“You’ve heard me . . .” I blinked quickly as I tried to think back, then sputtered out, “countless times.”

“And you stop singing every time you realize I’m listening. Is there anyone you don’t stop for when you realize they’re close enough to hear you?”

Not anymore I thought as stabs of pain and betrayal sliced through my anxiousness.

My nanny’s face flashed through my mind, and I heard her words as clearly as if she were whispering them to me. “Every fear and every worry fades to nothing when you sing, Briar Rose. Your voice is your comfort and your security . . . don’t let anyone take it from you.”

My parents had attempted to do exactly that years later. It was the first time I could remember them paying attention to me, pretending to be the loving parents they always should’ve been.

It took a few years too long to realize their love was conditional.

Ever since, I’d been leery of anyone who pushed me to further my future with my voice, and eventually anyone who wanted me to sing for them.

I tried to ignore conversations with Kyle when he asked instead of pushed, and kept telling myself one day he would understand. But that day had still yet to come.

“What could you be afraid of with a voice like yours?” he asked when I didn’t respond. “People would crawl over each other to be able to listen to you. Others would fight to represent you if that’s what you wanted.”

My lips curved at the corners in the faintest of smiles, and I reached up to wrap my arms around his neck. “I’m not scared,” I said, soft enough so he wouldn’t detect the tremble in my voice. “I grew up in a world where nothing was my own. I want my voice to remain mine. Not something on display . . . not something my parents try to control.”

“This? Where we are? It’s no one’s world but ours, Briar.” Kyle’s head dipped low so his mouth could brush across mine. “Confuse me. Just don’t stop singing around me.”

After four years, he still couldn’t understand, and I was beginning to doubt he ever would.

I forced a smile when I pulled away from the kiss and tried to change the direction of his thoughts and the conversation. “Technically this house is only yours for two more weeks.”

“My ring is on your finger, your clothes are in the closet, and I came out to find you making coffee, wearing nothing but my shirt. Ours.”

“And what would the governor say if she found out about that?” I asked with a wry smile and raised brow. He lifted me onto the granite island countertop—his hands slipping under the shirt I was wearing.

“I’d like to see her try to say anything.”

I inhaled sharply when Kyle’s fingers moved over my breasts as he pushed the shirt up, up, up—

And exhaled just as fast when his phone began ringing.

His light eyes flashed with annoyance, but he and I both knew who was calling at this time on a Sunday, just as we knew he had to answer her call.

“Speak of the devil,” he muttered under his breath as he released the shirt and grabbed the phone from his jeans pocket. Irritation leaked through his tone when he answered. “We’ve never forgotten a brunch before, Mom, we’re not going to forget today— Because you aren’t calling at the best time.” Kyle’s grin was slow and mischievous. “Yeah, she’s here— Yes— I’m sure you’re extremely surprised.” His free hand traced up one of my thighs and forced them apart when I tried to squeeze them shut.

“You are on the phone with your mother,” I hissed, low enough that my voice wouldn’t carry through the phone.

“Mom, I need to go. We’ll see you at brunch.”

I bit back a whimper when he ran his fingers over where I was bare and ready for him, and slapped at his chest when I noticed the hungry, yet amused, look on his face.

“You can tell me this at brunch. I really need to go— Mom— Mo— Never mind. Bye.” He hung up and tossed his phone on the island countertop next to me, and grinned wolfishly when I smacked his chest again.

“That was not—” He cut off my reprimand with his mouth on mine, and swallowed my moan when he pressed two fingers inside me.

“She knows now,” he said through the kiss. “And you know she won’t be able to say anything at brunch because we’ll be in public.”

My eyes fluttered shut, and I leaned away from him, keeping my hands secured to the back of his neck for support as his fingers brought me closer and closer to the edge. “You’re terrible,” I said halfheartedly, my focus mostly on what Kyle was doing to me.

“What was that?”

I sucked in a quick breath when his thumb pressed against my clit and murmured something unintelligible.

“That’s what I thought,” he said quietly, his tone laced with humor.

I woke up in the dark place sometime later, gasping and screaming in a pool of my own vomit. Almost immediately, I was forced back into unconsciousness the same way as before.

“Who’s that?” Kyle asked an hour and a half later when we were stepping out of the house to meet his parents for brunch.

I glanced up, my chest tightening when I saw her.

Jenna, a girl I worked with, was standing next to an idling car at the end of the driveway.

Even from where I was, I could see that her arms were wrapped around her waist tightly, and she was shaking.

“Jenna,” I whispered, and gave Kyle a knowing look before hurrying over to her. “Hey, wh—oh my God, Jenna. What happened?”

Her mess of blonde hair fell like a protective curtain around her face, but it didn’t stop me from seeing it. Her bottom lip was split open and her right eye was red and purple, and so swollen I doubted she could see through it.

In the year she’d been working with me at Glow, I’d noticed a couple suspicious bruises along her arms, but she’d always had an excuse for them. That is . . . when she’d spoken to me.

No one knew anything about her or her home life since she was incredibly shy and never said much to anyone. And she hadn’t said a word to me for nearly a month after I’d brought the bruises up.

I’d always mentioned my worries to Kyle, but it was obvious Jenna hadn’t wanted our help back then. Now . . .

“I have to go, Briar,” she said through her trembling. “I have—I have to get out of here.”

I stared at her in shock for a few seconds with my head shaking before I nodded quickly. “Of course, what do you need us to do? We can take you where—”

“No,” she said quickly, harshly. “I have a car, but m-m-my dad . . . he thinks I’m on my way to work right now, and he has my phone. If I don’t show up, they’ll call.”

I wasn’t understanding what she needed. All I could focus on were the bruises and the cuts on her face. The violent shaking of her body and the raw fear in her voice.

“Your dad?” I asked lamely, and wondered for a second how old she was. She had to be at least twenty-one to work in the restaurant. “What do you need, Jenna? Tell me what I can do. Do you need money?”

“N-no. No, can you cover for me at work? P-please, I n-need time to get away, Briar. I need time, and if he realizes I’m not there, he’ll come looking for me right away.”

“Of course,” I said without hesitation. “Of course I will. What time is your shift?”

“It starts in ten minutes.”

I nodded again, and tried to get my mind straight. “Okay. Okay, I’ll call and tell them I’m running late. That I forgot we switched. Are you sure we can’t help you in any other way? My fiancé can—”

“No, just—I just need to leave.”

“Jenna, my fiancé’s mom is the governor, so she can do something about your dad if he’s the one who’s been doing this—”

“No! Please don’t get anyone else involved. If you do he’ll come after me, I know he will. Just let me leave,” she begged, and the desperation in her voice tore through me until I was shaking too.

How could a father do this to his own child?

I could feel her fear start to consume me until a song was just a breath from leaving my lips—but I forced the impulse back, knowing distantly that the fear wasn’t my own. I needed to hold it together for Jenna now.

“Okay, go,” I whispered, as if her dad might be near. Before she could turn to leave, I pulled her into my arms, and tried to keep my hug light in the chance there were more bruises I couldn’t see. “Be safe, Jenna. Get far, far away. You deserve so much better than this.”

A sob tore from her throat when she pulled away. I watched her turn and run toward her car. My shock mixed with confusion, rooting me to the ground.

The next time I woke, it was from the harsh spray of a hose. The other females in the room were screaming, and I wondered if this was the end. If this had been some unknown torture, only to drown us.

I was so focused on keeping my mouth shut so things I didn’t want to think of wouldn’t fly into my mouth, that I hadn’t noticed that the screams of the girls had started dying out. I hadn’t noticed that the spray of the water was focused more on my part of the room, or that I was surrounded by people who hadn’t been there just before. It wasn’t until that familiar pinch was at my neck that all of that came back to me. I welcomed the darkness like an old friend, hoping recent memories of Kyle would be there.

“Briar . . .”

I looked up when I heard Kyle’s voice, my face tensed with worry and fear as I hurried to tell him what had just happened.

Though he seemed worried for a girl he didn’t know, and just as furious and disgusted as I was with the kind of man who would hurt his own daughter, I could see his frustration when he realized what this meant.

I wasn’t just backing out on brunch, I was doing it last minute after he’d more or less let his mom know that we’d been living together. Something she’d specifically told us was forbidden in case the media caught wind of it. Anything that could make her family look anything less than perfect wasn’t allowed . . . ever.

A lifestyle I knew all too well being raised under my parents’ roof. Not that Kyle or I had cared about either of our parents or the consequences when he’d given me a key to his place and asked me not to leave.

As soon as I was done explaining what I knew about Jenna, I called the restaurant, hurrying through the house as I did to change into the satiny uniform dress and stilettos, and then Kyle was rushing me to work.

Working had been a constant argument with both my parents and Kyle’s. They didn’t like that I was a waitress, even if it was at a place that only catered to those with pockets as deep as the Atlantic Ocean. Kyle’s mom thought it was an embarrassment to her family, and my parents thought I was embarrassing them by embarrassing the governor. Kyle hoped I would stop once we got married, but he knew I had plans to return after our honeymoon.

He didn’t understand, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.

I’d grown up being handed everything and had watched as my parents threw money away as if it were nothing. I’d thought it normal. After all, that was how my friends’ families were as well.

It wasn’t until my parents had tried to use me as a pawn for their own personal gain that I’d realized how disgusting their money was—how disgusting the world I’d grown up in was.

From that moment on, I’d wanted to earn everything I had.

And, with the exception of Kyle and his need to spoil me, that was exactly what I’d done.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Kyle for the fifth time as we pulled up to Glow. “Please ask your mom to forgive me, and let her know I won’t miss next Sunday.”

Before I could hop out of his truck, he grabbed my hand in his and pulled me close. “Stop apologizing, Briar. My mom can get mad if she wants to; it won’t be long before she’ll find something or someone else to be mad at. Do you know if it had been my mom or one of my sisters, they would have sent Jenna away without helping her?” He brushed my hair away from my face with his free hand, and said in a soft voice, “I’m thankful for the woman you are, and I’m proud of you and proud to call you mine. I can’t wait until I can call you my wife.”

My lips stretched into the widest smile as he spoke. By the time the last word left his mouth, I was pressing my lips to his.

In a move made effortless from years of kissing each other, Kyle pulled me closer. One arm was wrapped around my waist, hugging my body against his, while his other hand was cupped around the back of my neck to deepen the kiss.

The second his tongue met mine, heat flooded low in my belly. The feeling was intoxicating, and I knew I could easily get lost in that feeling and that kiss for hours. But even through the haze of Kyle’s kisses, we were in the parking lot outside work, and I was already running late for the shift. A shift I needed to work for Jenna’s sake.

“So I guess you kinda love me, or something, huh?” I whispered against his lips, and pulled against his hold.

A gorgeous smile tugged at Kyle’s mouth as he let me back away. Grabbing my hand in his, he ran his thumb over my engagement ring, and vowed, “Until we’re old and gray, and then long after.”

My eyes slowly cracked open to pitch black again, but this seemed different. The movement of my eyelids seemed sluggish when I blinked. It took me a few seconds to realize there was a blindfold around my eyes, and I immediately tried to remove it, but my hands were still tightly bound. I rubbed my face against the cold floor, trying to get the blindfold to move, but had no luck.

Something wasn’t right—something had changed. I lay still, listening for long moments until I realized I was hearing something. A loud whirring I couldn’t place. It sounded like obscenely loud white noise, but it was familiar. And there was no smell. For the first time since waking up in the dark room, there was no smell of vomit or other waste.

I took a deeper breath, but wished I hadn’t when my stomach rolled. Whatever was in that syringe made my stomach uneasy.

I wondered if the other women were with me. Fear slowly crawled through me when I realized I couldn’t hear them above the loud whirring.

If they’re gone, what happened to them? What’s going to happen to me? Where am I?

Tears burned my eyes and my throat tightened.

How long has it been since I was taken? Hours . . . days? Does Kyle know? What is he thinking? What is he doing to find—I choked back a sob and curled in on myself against the cool floor.

That movement also felt odd and caught me off guard. I straightened then curled into a ball again once . . . twice before I realized why it felt wrong.

I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

No dress. No underwear. Nothing but the blindfold and zip ties.

My jaw trembled violently and a jumbled prayer flew from my lips.

I repeated that prayer over and over, and eventually began mouthing the words to songs until I was singing to myself.

Relief flooded me when the first “Hush!” came.

“You’re still here?” I asked quickly.

“Hush!”

But again, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was terrified. The loud whirring was probably drowning me out for the most part anyway. It didn’t matter that there were others around me or that they could hear me. I sang when I was afraid, always had, and it was nearly impossible to stop.

“Stop. They’re going to come again.”

I didn’t stop, and the men with the needles never came.

“I’m waiting on one last check, then I’m taking my lunch,” I called out to the manager halfway through the shift.

I eyed the two full bags of trash sitting near the kitchen door that led outside and hurried over to them. It wasn’t part of my job, but I had nothing else to do while I waited, and Jenna usually threw them out on her smoke breaks.

In the hours I’d been at work, I’d worried Jenna’s dad would show—not that I would know who he was even if he had—but no one had come in asking for her. No one had given a vibe that he’d been beating his daughter for who knew how long, and had chased her out of town. But I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that at any second, I would turn around and Jenna’s dad would be standing there, demanding to know where she had gone. I’d felt anxious and uncomfortable in my skin throughout the shift, and was actually contemplating calling Kyle to see if he would come sit in my section for the next handful of hours.

I had finished throwing the bags into the dumpster and was walking back toward the building when I noticed the odd, almost ominous quiet around me. I was telling my feet to move faster, but fear was slowing them down.

No birds were singing, no bugs could be heard, and the air around me felt suffocating.

A song kissed my lips as my body began trembling, my soft voice sounding too loud in the quiet outdoors, and I focused on nothing but the words flowing from me and the door to the kitchen just twelve feet away.

Eleven.

Ten.

A cloth-covered hand clamped over my mouth and an arm wrapped around my waist. I screamed against it, panic and raw terror flooding me. The large person behind me lifted me off the ground and hurried backward.

I kicked at the air and clawed at the arm near my face, but my movements were already subdued, my screams dying out.

The person holding me fell back, landed with a thud, then began yelling in a deep voice, “Go, go, go!”

The light of day disappeared with the sound of a door sliding shut. I kicked uselessly at it when the vehicle took off, tried to breathe as little as possible, and thrashed my head back and forth to get away from the cloth. I attempted one more scream and felt a sharp pinch in my neck. Seconds passed before I realized my legs were no longer moving and I was no longer scratching the man holding me. The ceiling of the van blurred and the edges of my vision darkened as multiple men spoke quickly over each other, their words jumbled together and slowly faded to nothing.

Time dragged on as I sang, and eventually the other girls stopped telling me to be quiet. Occasionally some of them joined in. Others sang and murmured in different languages, the sounds all mixing together. My voice became hoarse, but I continued on when muffled cries could be heard throughout the room—knowing at least some of them needed this as much as I did—until our room suddenly dipped.

Gasps filled the room as we tried to figure out what was happening. Frantic screams and demands filled the space.

The jolt when we landed seemed to send an unspoken message through the room as we all fell silent and waited.

Oh God, oh God . . .

Where have they taken us?

The whirring eventually died down, but none of us moved or spoke as seconds turned into minutes. And minutes turned into hours.