Chapter Four

 

Tamara

I lie awake all night. Strapped down hand and foot to the bed, I yearn for sleep that never comes. My piercings throb and chafe. Heather is asleep. I can tell by the sound of her heavy, even breaths, and I don’t try to wake her up or talk to her. After what Micah did to her yesterday, she just curled up and pulled her blanket over her head. She’s withdrawn into her own little world of misery.

I’m guilt-racked that she’s here too, another victim of Micah’s madness, but I remind myself that if I’m going to have any chance of helping her, I’ve got to look after myself first.

What is the morning going to bring?

Getting pierced was painful, and getting kissed and fondled by him was revolting, but I know that the worst is yet to come. I’m sure he’s starting slowly and building his way up. Every day will be worse and worse until…

No. I can’t think about it.

Instead, I think about Joshua.

I tried to escape him—violently—the second I had the opportunity to. And I don’t regret that.

But when I saw his twin brother and thought he’d killed Joshua, for that split second, I was sick with grief. It makes no sense, but it was undeniable. I’ve developed strong feelings for Joshua. I don’t know if I’d call it love or obsession or Stockholm syndrome, but the thought of a world without Joshua fills me with panic and sorrow.

It took that moment of devastation to make me wonder if it would actually be possible to forge some kind of relationship with Joshua…if I survive Micah.

If I were free…would I stay with Joshua?

I know it’s insane for me even to think about wanting to be with him.

Joshua imprisoned me. He tortured me. He had every intention of keeping me locked up in his house for the rest of my life or, at the absolute most, letting me take walks with him outside in the woods. My heart ached every day with the knowledge that I’d never have friends, never have a career, never get to make another person smile, never see anything outside his house again. He would have trapped me in amber, suspending me in time.

He snuffed out my dream of going to college and becoming a lawyer. That was all I wanted from the day I started high school. I wanted to save little girls like me from the hell of child abuse and neglect. I was a poor girl from a grubby little city in Nebraska, with no connections and no prospects, but I’d hauled myself up out of the gutter. I’d worked two jobs while I was in high school and worn clothes from the Goodwill fifty-cent bin so I could afford to move to New York. I’d been so proud of myself when I got that college acceptance letter. And that meant nothing to him. Nothing.

I begged and begged him to let me go free. I begged him to kill me rather than force me to live as his prisoner, and he coldly and heartlessly refused.

But I have to admit, he changed over the months I was staying with him. He changed because of me. He didn’t even want to, but something about me really did touch him inside, and he became a better person. He actually made compromises. He was more than proud, he was arrogant, but when I needed to rage at him and curse at him after I woke up from my brainwashed stupor, he permitted it. He let me get it all out of my system.

And he promised things would be different between us. He tried to make things work. He coaxed me with bribes, giving that enormous donation to the battered women’s shelter just for the privilege of a conversation with me. He bent as far as a man like him was capable of bending.

For me.

And I can’t lie to myself and say I hated every minute of being with him. I didn’t.

I loved the sex. It was out-of-your-mind, explosive, weep-with-ecstasy sex, every time. He was utterly devoted to my pleasure. He wasn’t satisfied until I was panting and gasping from orgasm after orgasm.

Before I met him, I always yearned for a man who’d dominate me. Not to that level, of course, but Joshua forced me past my limits and taught me new things about myself and what I really wanted.

And it wasn’t just the amazing sex. It was being special to a man like him. It was our conversations, where he opened his whole world up to me—the heartbreak of his childhood, the Godlike power he wields today.

It was the way he made me forgive myself for what I did to my stepfather. It was the way he helped me see that what my mother did to herself wasn’t my fault.

What would it be like if I were with Joshua again, but free?

He’d never set me free.

But I could never be with another man after him. The thought curdles my stomach.

I struggle to push these thoughts from my head. I’ve got to concentrate on survival. There’s no point in using up mental energy worrying about a future I may not live to see.

A vicious voice slices into me. “Rise and shine, you little whores. It’s another morning in hell.”

I start and stifle a shriek. I was drifting off into some dreamland of exhaustion, and I didn’t even hear Micah come in.

He walks over to me, his face blank of expression, and lets me up so I can use the toilet positioned at the far end of the room. There’s no privacy, just a toilet sitting out in the open. There’s a sink and a cart with towels on it next to the sink. I hunch over, trying to hide.

Micah stands there, impassive. I’m woozy from lack of sleep. My piercings are still sore and tender. And I know there will be another torture session today.

I can survive this. Joshua will find us, or I will take Micah out myself, or both. I repeat it to myself to keep myself from breaking down and panicking.

He hands me a bowl of scrambled eggs and chains my ankle to the bed, leaving my hands free so I can eat.

Then he repeats the process with Heather. I watch her. There’s no fight in her. She’s shrunken in on herself and she shuffles to the toilet and back without looking at me. She sits down on her bed and gulps down her food and hands Micah back the bowl and the spoon without a word. This is a familiar, terrible routine for her.

I wonder how much longer she’ll be able to hang in there. She’s so dazed and lifeless, anything could send her toppling over the edge into madness. And if Micah does succeed in killing me, what will he do to her then?

Micah flashes me a malicious smile. “I’ll be back in a bit. I’ve got to fetch something I’ll be using on you this morning. I won’t make you wait too long, though, Joshua misses you. He’ll need his daily video. Won’t this be fun?”

I wait until he leaves before I return my attention to her. “Have you been here this whole time?” I ask her.

She twists around and looks at me with hollow eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says to me.

“What? Why would you be sorry?”

She sucks in a breath and lets out a slow sigh, and the seconds drag by so long I don’t think she’s going to answer me. When she speaks, her voice is cracked and husky.

“The last day I saw you, I snapped at you. And I never got a chance to explain myself. I have bipolar disorder. I don’t tell a lot of people, but sometimes I just get these flashes of rage.”

That makes a lot of sense. Part of what made Heather so fun was that she was so giddy, so whacky, always on a high. That’s not uncommon with people who are bipolar. The problem is that for all the highs, there are going to be lows too.

“It’s nothing,” I tell her. “We’ve other things to worry about.”

“Yeah, we do. I don’t expect we’ll make it out of here. We had some fun times, though, didn’t we?” She manages a sad smile.

“We did. We really did.”

She seems to revive a little as she talks. “Remember when we went to that drag club and the drag queens let us sing with them on stage?”

“Because you lied and said it was your birthday! We were terrible.” I manage a smile at the memory.

“Yeah, we were.” She smiles back. “Thanks for being my friend. I can be hard to deal with sometimes. I’d say that I’m glad to see you again, but given the circumstances…”

“Yeah.”

We both fall silent for a while.

I know there are cameras watching us and listening to us, so there’s no point asking her about anything that would help us escape.

My eyes are fluttering closed with exhaustion when the door flies open and Micah marches in. He looks completely different than he did a little while ago. His face is animated and his eyes spark with malice.

This is bad.

“Time to play,” he sings out. He’s carrying a long chain with a tiny clasp at the end. He hooks it to the hoop in my clitoris and gives it a little tug, making me cry out in pain.

Sick bastard. Sick, evil motherfucker.

Then he unchains me and leads me, with cruel jerks of the chain, across the room to his little makeshift torture chamber.

When we get there, he chains me up facing the wall, with my arms over my head. There’s some play to the chains, which means he wants me to be able to thrash around. I don’t resist; the less I fight now, the less he’ll expect it when I finally do lash out.

He unclamps the little chain that was attached to my clit.

He grabs something from the tray table and shoves it in front of my face. It looks like a large vegetable that’s been peeled and carved into the shape of a curved dildo, with a thick clump of roots as a handle. The end of it is tapered and then it gets thicker and thicker, almost conical.

What the hell?

He leans in and kisses my cheek. “My brother did a lot of kinky shit to you, but he never took you up the ass. It will be my honor to pop that cherry. Today we’ll use the ginger root. Tomorrow it’ll be my big fat cock.”

Horror jolts through me. I struggle to keep my face blank as I press my lips together and turn to face the wall.

A minute or two passes. I hear him rustling around. I assume he’s putting on his hood and turning on the camera, but I refuse to look. I hear him talking to the camera. “This is called figging,” he announces happily to the camera. “The ginger root, on its own, causes an intense burning sensation when inserted into the anus or vagina. I fermented the ginger root for weeks to increase the potency of the burn. When the figging is followed by a whipping, we’ll have even more fun. Each stroke of the whip will cause her to involuntarily clench her inner muscles, clamping down tightly on the ginger and increasing the painful burning sensation exponentially.”

Sick horror churns my stomach. Hearing him describe the intimate way he’s going to violate me, in those gleeful tones, is torture.

Then he strides jauntily over and leans up against me. He’s wearing the mask, and he’s rock hard. “With lube or without?”

“With,” I mutter.

“I didn’t quite hear you. And a please would be nice. Or I’ll set Heather’s hair on fire.” He says it so calmly, as if he’s saying he’ll go fetch Heather a cup of coffee.

“Please give me lube.” I raise my voice and clench my fists.

He turns and calls out to the camera. “Hear that, Joshua? She wants me to lube her up and then take her ass. Well, it will be my pleasure.”

He walks away, and I hear things rattling on the tray. Then he returns and spreads open my cheeks with one hand, and drips something cold onto them. I feel a gloved finger pressing against my clenched rectum. He pushes hard, and I squeeze, trying to resist, but he breaches the ring. One finger slides in, which is revolting but not painful, but then he thrusts another finger in and spreads them apart, and a dull burn throbs inside me.

“You like it, baby?” he croons in my ear.

“No,” I grit. In response, he slides his lubed fingers in farther and pumps them in and out. He pauses and spreads his fingers even wider, and I jerk and grunt in pain. “Gotta open you up a little. You’re so fucking tight.”

He withdraws his fingers, but there’s only a moment of relief before something hard presses against my rectum and slides in. He works it in, twisting it, forcing it past my tense inner muscles until I’m gasping in pain. He doesn’t stop until the whole thing’s inside me, and then the burning begins as the fermented ginger sets my sensitive tissues on fire.

I gasp and press my face against the wall, waiting for the whip. Nothing could have prepared me for what’s coming next. The very first slash wrenches a scream of agony from me.

After being held captive by Joshua for all those months, my pain tolerance is much higher than it used to be. But this is red, screaming torture. As he whips me again and again, I scream myself raw. My howls bounce off the walls and smack my eardrums. Trickles of blood run down my back, and I can smell it. With every slash, I clench my ass muscles, just as he predicted, and bolt after bolt of pain shoots up my core. My legs jerk madly, and I’m gasping and sobbing and praying to pass out.

Pain, pain, pain…

Micah works his way slowly from the top of my back down, and it feels as if a lake of fire is being poured over me, from my shoulders to my hips. He stops at my ass, sparing that for now.

When he finishes, I am sagging on my bonds and crying helplessly. Blood runs down my back and splashes onto the floor.

“You pathetic…inadequate little prick,” I sob. “Your daddy would be so proud of you right now.”

He grabs my hair and yanks it until I scream.

“Leave the ginger in? Sure, princess. I’m going to go see if Heather will suck my dick for me. This whole session really made me hot. If you hadn’t mouthed off to me, I’d have taken the ginger out first. You want to be very, very careful when you’re talking about my family. That’s something of a hot button for me.” He smacks my left breast, and the piercing flares in pain.

“Got that?” He smacks it again, harder.

“Yes! Yes!” I scream, and he lets go and walks away. A minute later I’m forced to listen to the sound of him groaning in pleasure as Heather services him.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts… My back is raw hamburger.

Joshua. Please. Save me.

After what feels like a million years, he comes over and slides the ginger out, tossing it into the trash. My rear tunnel still aches like I’ve been speared with a red-hot poker.

As I slump against the wall, he walks over to the door and uses the retina scanner.

“Tamara,” Heather calls out weakly. “Hang in there, Tamara.”

She’s being so brave. Still thinking about me, right after she was raped and forced to watch my torture session. But I don’t have the strength to answer.

This will be my life every day until I die.

No. No. Joshua told me I was strong and brave. I’m not giving up. I lived through everything that Joshua did to me. I can live through Micah.