NINE

BELLA

He was gone. I was alone. I shrank into the corner of the bed, wrapping the blanket round me, trying to make sense of what the hell was wrong with me. I was sick, that was the only explanation. Why else would I have felt the way I did? I wanted to hate him, I did hate him. But when he put his hand on my ass, my insides melted in a way that was so wrong, I couldn’t begin to understand it. I wanted that hand to stay there, I wanted it to continue on its journey downwards. It froze me to the spot. I was unable to move until he did. Even then, I was already hating myself. I shouldn’t have reacted that way. It was wrong.

It was a long time before I moved. I had to shake the feeling that he’d left me with, the feeling that I wanted that hand back on me. I did it eventually by telling myself that he was responsible for me being put into this awful position, trapped in his cellar, without a hope of getting out.

Or was that true? I climbed up off the bed as soon as I asked myself the question. Was there any way out of here? Something I hadn’t seen before. I tossed the blanket aside, ignoring the cold as I explored every inch of the cellar. There was nothing down there other than the bed. Not a thing. No windows, no old nails or loose floorboards. It was a concrete floor, solid walls with no hint of damp, no crumbling sections I could try and tunnel through. I couldn’t even reach the ceiling, it was too high above me. All there was I could see already, a bed, a mattress, a blanket, and steps up to the door. That was it.

Demoralised, I sank back onto the bed, pulling the blanket tightly around me. I closed my eyes, my knees pressed to my chest. I rocked from side to side, whispering quietly to myself, “Hush a bye baby…”

The song always used to comfort me when I was little. It’s one of the very few memories I have of my father, him singing that to me, helping me drift off to sleep. My only memory of my mother is of her looming over me as I woke up, reaching down as if she was going to grab me. “Hush, my baby,” she hissed.” Then a voice, I’ve no idea who it belonged it, shouted something I didn’t hear properly. Her arms yanked away and she turned from me, leaving me to sit up and wonder where she was going and why her face looked so furious.

I tried to sink into my memories to get away from the awful present but it didn’t work. My mind kept going back to him. It was impossible to get him out of my head. I felt ashamed of myself. I shouldn’t have been excited by the coldness of his voice, I shouldn’t have been turned on when his hand settled between my legs, not after he’d so brutally spanked me. The spanking itself had done things to me, things that had never happened before.

I’d responded on a level that I didn’t know existed inside me. It was hard enough to even begin to comprehend what the hell was going on. All I knew was that deep, deep inside me, a hidden part had come to life, a part that had been excited by what he’d done, despicable as it was. I’d liked him telling me what to do, I’d liked the commanding tone of his voice, the way he had touched me, even the way he’d threatened me.

I felt like the world’s worst person. Society would judge me for how I’d reacted. It wasn’t right to feel like that about someone so awful, so vicious, so cold towards me.

I didn’t have a huge amount of experience about sex. I’d slept with two people in my lifetime, despite my boasts to Claudia that I was as modern as her, flinging it around without a care in the world. The first person was a tentative fumble when I was sixteen, a fumble that was over before it began, him crying and apologising whilst I looked around for something to wipe the mess away off my thighs. That put me off for a fair while. Then there was Gary, or at least that was what he’d told me his name was. Older than me, got me drunk, got me to his, got me naked. I don’t remember much else about it but I do remember feeling sore the next morning.

 I’d wandered around the internet, hasn’t everyone? I’d explored what I thought I liked. But to find out I was reacting in that way to being ordered around, to being spanked, to being touched by someone who had so much power over me, who could have done anything, it was a terrifying thing to find out. I told myself I was in a horrific situation and I should cut myself some slack. Once I was out, I could think logically about things. For now, I had to survive. And if surviving meant doing what he told me, letting him do those things to me, well that was what I was going to have to do. I was a survivor. I’d survived most of my life without my parents around to help, I could survive this.

I didn’t feel like I would though, laid there, rocking from side to side, trying to push away the thought of his hand sliding over my ass, my body still tingling at the memory. I thought the feeling would destroy me if I couldn’t get rid of it. I began to sing louder, “Rock a bye baby…”

I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. Was I dead inside? I had been afraid for so long, it was like there was no fear left. Instead there was a numbness that took gradual control of me, spreading through me as I continued to sing. I felt like I was floating above my body, looking down on it and judging it harshly. You are bad, you are sick. You got aroused by him spanking you, by him touching you. Do you have any idea how disgusting that is?

A long time later, I slept, though it was a restless sleep from which I kept awakening, hoping it had all been a bad dream. It only took a glance around me for the sinking feeling to return. It was real. I was trapped. By him. And worst of all, there was nothing I could do about it. No, that wasn’t the worst. The worst was the whispering thought that I wanted to stay with him.