Comfort Food
Kitty Thomas
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 © Kitty Thomas
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Publisher's Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contact:burlesquepress@gmail.com
To Silence.
Not always the enemy of communication.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the people who supported and helped bring Comfort Food into existence.
K: for offering critique, feedback, copyedits, and for taking fifteen pictures of chicken noodle soup, which didn’t end up making it into the final cover design.
M, C, and SEP: for beta reading.
C and J for their formatting help.
Disclaimer
This is not a story about consensual BDSM. This is a story about “actual” slavery. If reading an erotic story without safewords makes you uncomfortable, this is not the book for you. This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any behavior done to another human being without their consent.
ONE
The first day of my captivity was like being born . . . or dying. They’re both kind of the same thing with the long tunnel and the bright light at the end. Maybe it wasn’t like either, actually. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong because for me that day all there was, was darkness.
I was blindfolded, sitting in a hard metal chair, with each of my legs bound to a chair leg and my arms tied up behind me. The sharpest bit of sensory input I had was the silence. It was a suffocating blanket from which there was no escape. Unless I started talking just to hear my own voice, a desperation I refused to display in the first five minutes of consciousness.
I remember thinking this was how spy movies often started, with sensory deprivation: the first step to get the prisoner to spill his secrets. I had no secrets. I was an open book, and maybe that was the problem. I was a minor celebrity on the public-speaking circuit, self-assured, articulate. The poster-girl for everything others wished they could become. Not a threat to anyone really.
I’d written a few books and had started to grow a following of loyal devotees. Someone would notice I was missing, at least by the time my next speaking engagement rolled around in a couple of weeks.
The day had started at one such engagement. A very nice luncheon, in a very nice restaurant in downtown Atlanta had been booked for the event. I usually started and ended my book tours in Atlanta because it was close to my home in the suburbs.
The audience was mostly comprised of women, my primary demographic, though I’d never set out to become some voice of women. There was a smattering of men, but I wasn’t paying much attention.
Women go through their lives a bit differently than men. We’re always cautious. It’s not that we live in abject terror twenty-four hours a day thinking some random man is going to come along and rape or kill us. Only the most neurotic of us think that way.
Still, you never know what kind of wacko out there has become fixated on you. And despite all the empowering speeches and the women’s movement, in the grand scheme . . . women are prey.
This was the place I was at, the almost complete denial it had happened to me. Me, who is always so careful. Locks her doors, doesn’t walk or jog with ear buds in her ears, doesn’t take candy from strangers in vans. You know the drill.
I was listening to the silence and wondering how the hell this could be happening. Other things were running through my mind as well. Things that had me hoping maybe I did have some government secret and once I shared it, I could go on my merry way.
Rape. Death. Dismemberment. Maybe in that order, maybe not. Though that order would be preferable to Dismemberment. Rape. Death. Or Rape. Dismemberment. Death. You always want your dismemberment to happen after the death.
Death first would be the absolute best-case scenario. I’d seen enough woman-in-peril movies, and I was no MacGyver. I didn’t really have any kind of ballpoint pens on me that I could somehow get out of a pocket and turn into a ballistic missile.
My mistake was a stupid one. I’d left my drink unattended. Men never have to worry about this shit. I guess because statistically speaking there are fewer female psychos stalking men than the opposite, and most confrontations between men are pretty straightforward.
Like all women raised in the current climate of fear and loathing of men, I was taught never to leave my drink unattended. All women know this. We do. Even if we aren’t explicitly told, it seems to come with the packaging and wiring of being female. Just common sense in the age of the date rape drug. Expecting even the most sensitive male to truly understand any of this is like expecting a wolf to understand the finer points of being a rabbit.
Still. We seem to think there are exceptions. Like my luncheon.
There are no exceptions. If there were, I wouldn’t be sitting tied to a chair listening to the questionably comforting sound of my breath going in and out.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how my parents were going to react to all this. My sister, Katie, had died several years ago in an accident. She was deaf and hadn’t heard the car barreling around the curve. The driver wasn’t used to ice on the road. No one in the south is. My parents hadn’t spoken about her in years because they couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t imagine how they’d cope with my disappearance and wondered if they’d curse God for doing this shit to them twice in a row.
The door creaked open then, exactly like doors do in scary movies. At least now I knew what kind of story I was in, no sense fooling myself about it. The sound of his boots echoed eerily loud on the concrete floor as he approached me. He stopped maybe a couple of feet away as the silence stretched on for a small eternity. Finally, I felt compelled to speak.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice shook when I said it, and I hated that. I sounded weak. I’d never sounded weak before in my life.
It was such a cliché question. If these were to be my last words, they felt like stupid and unimportant ones, but I had to know. Why had he taken me? Did I send out a vibe or was he just obsessed? Was there something about me that screamed Victim?
I’d always tried to give the impression that I wasn’t easy prey. I’d been fooling myself. It had been ridiculously easy for him to take me.
Then again, maybe I was being all wrong-headed in assuming right from the start my captor was male. Theoretically, it could just as easily have been a woman.
Somebody jealous of my professional success. Someone who hated me for some imaginary reason, like that her husband thought I was pretty or something. As if I can control who thinks I’m pretty. There was always that one-in-a-million reason for some woman to go apeshit psycho on you.
And I don’t hate men. There is a very small percentage of men who choose to perpetrate violence against women, despite the ease with which they can do it. Most women don’t hate men. Those that do, though, probably do so not because most men are violent towards women, but that they could be, if they wanted to. This knowledge sets up a kind of helpless rage in some women. One I’d never succumbed to until today.
He still hadn’t spoken. I was carrying on this internal monologue in my head because I was afraid I might say something that would get me killed. Or worse. It was naive, but I wanted to believe I could somehow alter the course of events here by saying the right thing. My words, the thing that had made me so compelling to people, were more useless than I wanted to admit. My only weapon had the efficacy of a squirt gun.
I could feel the heavy lump forming in my throat as he stepped closer. I couldn’t see him because of the blindfold still covering my eyes, but I knew he was observing me, probably taking me in with amusement. It pissed me off that he held my life in his hands, and yet he might be amused with me.
I continued to wait for him to answer the why are you doing this question, but the answer didn’t come.
There is a standard victim/victimizer protocol, an etiquette if you will. Why are you doing this? is the introductory question, sometimes followed by screaming or crying. I wasn’t screaming or crying. I wanted to conserve my energy for my one possible moment of escape. Eventually he’d do something stupid. He had to.
After the victim’s opening line, the victimizer usually says something so terrifying the victim wishes they’d never opened their mouth. This man, however, seemed to be capitalizing on the terror of uncertainty.
After all, if he spoke to me perhaps there was something human in there, something I could reason with, some tiny, frail hope I could bargain somehow. A large, cool hand rested softly against my cheek.
There was no violence or threat in the way he touched me. It was my cheek, so it certainly wasn’t an overly sexual touch. Still, it was a threat to me. It said, I have no problems breaching your personal bubble or touching you at any time.
His hand remained pressed solidly against the side of my face like that for a couple of minutes at least as my heart continued to hammer in my chest. That huge, strong hand. He could easily beat me to death with it, or he could be gentle. Although at this point, even gentle was an act of violence. I didn’t know which I preferred.
With violence I could have the appropriate socially-approved victim response. I knew from experience anything else could produce a very different physical reaction.
At seventeen I’d gotten involved with my first real boyfriend. He was cute and had that edge of danger that girls of that age are so fond of. He gave off an air of something wild and frightening, and I’d been along for the ride
We’d fooled around a lot. My strict religious upbringing didn’t allow for more without fear of God’s wrath coming down on me, and orgasms weren’t worth an eternity in hell. Though in hindsight, the idea that some deity could be bothered to punish any one individual for what they chose to do with their clothes off, seems stupid at best.
He’d pressed me down on the bed, my legs hanging over the edge. We were in his room; his parents were downstairs. The sounds of the nightly news drifted up to the bedroom. I was lying there, my pants forgotten on the floor, though I was still wearing a shirt.
He wanted to go down on me. It was more than I was ready for at the time, and I was paranoid about getting an STD, the STD. Yes, this was how empty my education in sexually transmitted diseases had been in the abstinence climate. Still, I’d said no. I’d meant no.
He’d ignored me, spreading my legs wide for his perusal, gripping my wrists tightly against my thighs as he held me down. “You’ll like this, I promise,” he said.
I struggled, but he was too strong, and I didn’t have the proper leverage to shove him away. He buried his head between my legs, slowly laving the bundle of nerves there. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t face the shame of his parents running up there and finding me half naked on his bed.
Somehow it was worse knowing I could have stopped him. It was one violation or another. His tongue on my clit, or his parents knowing what we’d been up to, thinking I was a slut.
“Please, please don’t.” I’d begged him, and yet he hadn’t stopped.
It was incredible how little time it took for my resolve to melt, for “Please, no” to turn into “Oh God, don’t stop.”
When he was finished, I just laid there, my legs shaking from the force of my orgasm. They’d turned to jelly, and I felt weak, drugged in the post-orgasmic afterglow euphoria. The orgasm I couldn’t possibly go to hell for. He looked up into my eyes, a self-satisfied smirk on his face and said teasingly, “I told you you’d like it. Now, what do you say?”
“Thank you.” It was our little inside joke. It had never previously been applied to anything sexual. The words had slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them, and on some level they were true.
He and I never talked about the incident after that, and he never directly forced me again. He never had to. I didn’t give him the opportunity because it was too confusing. In his mind, I’m sure he believed he hadn’t done anything wrong, since he’d successfully changed my mind by turning my body against me. In the end I’d liked it. The entire sordid event from start to finish.
The juxtaposition of fear and helplessness, set up next to complete pleasure and eventual surrender. I’d masturbated for months afterward to the memory of the event. It was several years before I mentioned it to a friend.
She’d insisted it was no different than rape. I suppose she was right, but I’d never seen it that way. I’d for some reason never had the normal emotional response. I’d gotten off on it. Something was different in the way I was wired and that, perhaps, was the only thing that had saved me. Over time I developed an intense shame about it, not because I’d been violated, but because I wasn’t properly traumatized by what had been done to me. Because I sometimes still touched myself thinking about it.
I thought he’d left me alone again, but then I heard another metal chair scrape against the floor. His heavy weight fell into it, and he placed something on a table. My breath hitched.
Moments later, a spoon was prodding at my lips. I opened my mouth, and warm chicken noodle soup slid down my throat. Comfort food. Oh, sweet irony. I wasn’t worried he’d drug me. Why would he?
Drugging had been a convenience of transport. He had me where he wanted me, no doubt in some eerie sound-proofed basement cell. I heard him crumble crackers into the soup before feeding me another bite. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. Intense fear tends to shut down the hunger response.
After the second bite, his hand gently fondled one of my breasts through my clothing. I stiffened and flinched away. He didn’t yell or hit me. He simply placed the bowl back on the table and got up. Then his footsteps started to recede in the direction they’d come from.
So this was the game he was playing? Either I would accept his touch, or he’d starve me to death? I hear it’s a horrible way to die, second only to drowning or suffocation. Those things could still be on the menu. It was early yet.
“Please . . . wait.” I hated myself for saying it. Hated myself enough that had my hands been free and a razor been nearby, I might have pressed the blade into my skin and bled out right there in front of him.
I was already bargaining, doing the appease the captor and maybe he won’t hurt you too bad thing. In turn, he would show a small kindness here or there to gain my total dependence on him And voila . . . instant Stockholm Syndrome.
His footsteps stopped, and I heard him turn, still as silent as ever. After a moment, he returned and sat back down in the chair.
I was trying not to hyperventilate. I wasn’t sure what I’d have to allow him to do to let me breathe into a paper bag. This was how our agreement began. He never said a word, never made any kind of verbal threat. He didn’t need to.
It was a tacit agreement. I would give him what he wanted, or else. Right now the bargaining chip on the table was food. I was still arguing with myself over that one, berating myself for not being stronger, not holding out longer. He hadn’t tried to fuck me yet. Having my breast fondled was a small price to pay to eat.
The spoon prodded at my mouth again and I opened up for the warm liquid. He’d gotten the good crackers. The oval-shaped Townhouse kind. The kind I liked. I had a moment of almost hysteria wondering how long he’d watched me, how much he knew about me. Did he know this particular food somehow idiotically made me feel safe?
I tensed as I heard the spoon clank into the bowl again. I knew what that meant. Every cell in my body felt poised, on edge, trying to inch away as his hand closed over my breast once again. He hadn’t moved to take any of my clothes off. He seemed to want me to agree to every step of my desecration.
I didn’t want to respond, but his thumb caressed over my nipple through the layers of clothing so gently, so enticingly that I found myself arching toward him. I wanted to jerk away, but if I did he’d leave and take the food with him. This time my begging might not bring him back.
This pattern repeated itself over and over. First a bite, then a fondle, until the soup was gone. He wanted to make sure the conditions were clear to me, that nothing would be given to me freely. I would pay for it all.
I kept rewinding the day in my head. What if I’d done something differently? What if I’d never left the table? Had it been necessary to reapply my lipstick that close to the end of the day? Had a tube of waxy color called Sassy Vixen really been the catalyst to take my freedom from me?
I knew it was crazy to think that way. He would have gotten me sooner or later if he was determined enough. That moment in time wasn’t the definitive moment. I would have had another unguarded moment later and would have paid for it then.
We’d gotten through the bowl of soup and an awkwardness descended. It was as if he’d only planned this far and had no idea what his next step should be. Maybe he was waiting for me.
Okay.
“Please tell me why you’re doing this.” My voice was stronger now. Maybe it was the captive/captor alliance we seemed to have formed. He didn’t seem the kind to lash out with no planning. He instead seemed the type who could wait multiple eternities for everything to work to his desire.
No reply.
He placed his fingers on my lips, gently silencing me. He had no intention of answering the question, and I had no power to make him do so. He knelt on the ground beside me and I heard the knife as it cut through the ropes binding my legs to the chair.
I had the urge to kick him in the face, but I didn’t. If I kicked him, I was escalating the situation to real physical violence, and he would no doubt retaliate. This wasn’t someone with gentlemanly scruples. Before I could make a solid decision against kicking him, my chance slipped away, as he moved behind me.
He sliced through the ropes around my wrists. I hadn’t realized how much they’d cut into me, but they burned now that the air hit them. He came back to stand in front of me, bringing my arms around with him, placing my hands primly on my lap like I was a posable doll. I could barely feel myself breathing.
I have a deep and abiding fear of knives. Honestly, I don’t know many people not afraid of knives. For most, a knife is scarier even than a gun. If someone kills you with a gun, it can be quick, painless. Knives don’t offer that possible luxury. They are intimate and violent in a way a gun could never hope to be.
Despite my hands and legs being free, I still didn’t fight back. He had a knife, and I was blindfolded. It didn’t take a mathematician to work out those odds. Before I could reach up to remove the blindfold, his hands were encircling my wrists, rubbing them, as if he were actually concerned he’d hurt me.
But I knew that wasn’t the case. Anyone who drugs you, kidnaps you, and locks you in a cell doesn’t care if they hurt you. Maybe he just didn’t want to hurt me, yet. In one quick movement, he ripped the blindfold away.
Although the scrap of dark fabric hadn’t been pleasant, it had acted as a sort of safety, a filter. Now there was nothing between us. I looked into the coldest, blackest eyes I’d ever seen, fathomless pools of something I couldn’t quite recognize as human. There was an otherness about him, something that made him different from me, from anyone I’d ever spoken to before.
I expected him to start the verbal threats now that the mystery of my captor was over, but he didn’t. He just stared. I was his science project.
In another situation I would have found him attractive. He was muscular, had a firm jaw, great hair, not an ounce of body fat. I imagined this was what Ted Bundy’s victims felt at some point, that it was utterly impossible he could want to hurt them and be so beautiful at the same time. The unbelievable shock someone so attractive could be a predator.
Why would he have to be? Didn’t women just fall at his feet automatically? I had the sudden bone-chilling terror that this man wanted something he couldn’t get from a date, perhaps my body chopped up in little pieces and arranged in neat white paper in the freezer. I shuddered at the thought and quickly tried to block it out.
Monsters aren’t supposed to be beautiful. It’s the rule. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was ugly. Frankenstein’s monster was ugly. Nosferatu . . . ugly. Ugly was in the rulebook. And yet the man kneeling calmly before me wasn’t ugly. Not on the surface. Look anywhere but into his eyes and he was the man women fantasized about from puberty onward.
He stood and backed away from me then, his gaze pinning me to the chair. He wasn’t holding the knife in a threatening way, but he still held it. He started toward the door, then thinking better of it, he turned, came back to me, and pulled me out of the chair. I was almost to the begging point again, but he wasn’t interested in me.
He stacked my chair on top of the one he’d been sitting on, folded the card table, and took the bowl and spoon.
I could have spent hours, days even, berating myself for not at least trying to run past him for the door, but I was glad I didn’t. There was a combination keypad on the wall. Leaving required a retina and thumbprint scan. Whoever had me, had some discretionary funds. Maybe I was part of a secret government study.
The door shut loudly behind him, and I was alone in the cell with nothing but the clothes on my back. Concrete floor, concrete walls, unknown ceiling composition, all gray. A toilet sat in one far corner with no lid and there was an odd drain in the floor a few feet from the toilet. It was like prison without bars, or windows, or a bed.
I didn’t know what time it was or why this mattered to me, but there was something disconcerting about not knowing whether it was day or night. When would I sleep? Not that it mattered. There was nothing to do but sleep.
In the movies, there’s always a way out. It doesn’t matter where the bad guy traps you, there’s a way out. You can pick a lock, or use some kerosene, a match, and some sort of fuse and make a bomb to blow the door off. You can crawl out through the ceiling tiles, or smash a window, or find some weak point in the wall and start chipping away at it with a sharp tool you just happen to have in your pocket.
My cell was a fortress. It made the movies seem very contrived. It really isn’t that hard to create an inescapable fortress if you stop to think about it. All you need is a solid floor, walls, and ceiling, and one exit using fingerprinting and retinal scans.
TWO
I once read somewhere that predators conduct something called the interview with their potential victims so they can determine if their intended prey is worth the risk. Of course they don’t call it the interview; that’s criminal profiler talk.
I wondered if I’d been interviewed. I was known to give several talks a month. Had he been at one of them? Pulled me aside? Asked me charming, disarming questions? Pegged me as a lamb? A Red Riding Hood?
I didn’t know. But surely I would have remembered those eyes. And if I hadn’t seen him for the predatory animal that he was, I would have noticed his good looks. Would I have gone to dinner with this man if he’d looked at me a fraction less coldly?
I wondered how long he’d stalked me and how easy I’d made it. Had I been careless with door locking, thinking no one was watching and just this once it was okay? Had he been in my home, rifling through my underthings? Making a checklist of all the items in my cupboards?
I had a lot of time to think about these things but not that first night. After being left alone in the cell, I escaped to dreams. I could feel the drugs still swirling around in my system, so despite the circumstances, it hadn’t been that difficult.
I dreamed about the luncheon, that he’d been there. We’d made eye contact, and he’d flirted with me. I don’t remember if in the dream I flirted back.
When I woke, it took me several minutes to separate fact from fiction. Waking in the cell was the real nightmare. The dream had been so vivid. Colors, sounds, and smells more alive and immediate than I’d ever remembered them in life. I drank them up to hold onto them, somehow knowing it was the only sensation I would get for awhile.
The cell was kept at a steady temperature, never too hot or too cold. There was a vent in the ceiling, but it was too high to reach even standing on my toes or jumping. I stood under it a few days in a row, just waiting for some temperature fluctuation, anything that felt like something.
Everything was too constant here. The vent existed only to taunt me over what I couldn’t have: a simple brush of air on my face.
The second day set up what was to be the routine. I’d been up for what felt like several hours, pacing back and forth. Part of it was the fact that I had no idea what was in store for me. This man held the power of life and death and everything else in his hands, and he wouldn’t even make verbal threats I could psychoanalyze.
I decided this was by design. If he’d stalked me for any length of time, he knew how I craved social interaction. To speak to me would be to give me something he didn’t want to give. Toward what purpose, I didn’t know. If his intention was to drive me insane, he had a winner of a plan.
It wasn’t until the second day that I noticed the lighting. It wasn’t bright or super dim; it was this monotonous low illumination that stretched evenly over the ceiling. Like fluorescent lighting, but not quite bright enough for that. Maybe fluorescent lighting that had dimmed some. I couldn’t begin to guess at the psychological makeup of someone who would buy lighting and run it constantly til it had dimmed to just the right level to torment me. Maybe that part was all in my head, and I was already going crazy.
Finally, I drifted to sit in one corner of the room, farthest from the exit. I pulled my legs up against my chest, resting my chin on them, and watched the door like it was going to do a trick. It was. Eventually it would open. Some part of me wanted it to because then at least whatever fate awaited me could happen and then be over.
When the door opened I changed my mind, silently begging for more time alone. My heart hammered in my chest so hard I was sure it was going to burst out. I took slow, measured breaths, trying to keep a level head. I’d considered rushing the door, but I had no chance of getting there quickly enough.
The door shut behind him with finality. That was it. Game over. That shot was gone. Not like I had any real shot, but when you’re in no-win situations, you have to play this imaginary game in your head, the fantasy where you beat the bad guy and escape.
The bad guy stood watching me with a metal tray in his hands. For a moment, I imagined beating him to death with it. But then I was back to how I would get his finger and eyeball up to the keypad. Plus there was the combination. I could starve to death trying to figure it out.
He smiled at me––not a friendly smile––as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. He probably did. I’d always had an incredibly expressive face; it’s hard for me to mask my emotions even under the best of circumstances. If I have a nice fantasy, my lips curl in a smile. If I’d done that, I was sure he knew what it meant, that I was running through various grisly murder scenarios that didn’t feature me as the victim.
He crossed the floor and sat Indian-style across from me on the very edge of what I’d always deemed my personal bubble. Chicken noodle soup. Again. I stared at the bowl trying to determine what his game was. If it was time for breakfast, shouldn’t he be feeding me something breakfast-like? Or was this another effort to confuse me on the time of day?
Did he seriously think soup was going to make me forget he had me locked up in what was basically a sensory deprivation tank? Or was this just a way to deaden the sense of taste so it was as deprived as my other senses?
He crumbled the crackers and lifted the spoon to my mouth. I’m not sure where my courage to speak came from. I was far past scared, but I was also angry, probably as much at myself for sitting and doing nothing as I was at him.
“I can feed myself!” As soon as I’d said it, I flinched. So much for bravery. I guess I expected him to hit me. Your average psychopath isn’t known for his restraint. I braced an arm over my face as if it would stop any blow he decided to deliver.
Nothing happened.
With slow wariness, I lowered my arm. He sat mildly waiting with the spoon in his hand. I looked for anger in his eyes, but all I saw was calm, and the slightest tinge of amusement. I amused him. That made me angry enough to stop being scared again.
I wanted to lash out, fight. At that moment I didn’t care if he killed me. I’d gotten it into my head that whatever he had in store for me would be worse the longer it took him to mete it out, and I saw no escape. If he killed me quickly, that would be better.
I was also more clear-headed than I’d been the day before. The drugs had worked their way for the most part through my system, and I wasn’t so hungry I’d do anything. I cringed as I remembered letting him touch me through my clothing just to eat. There would be more of that and much worse if I didn’t act now.
I slapped the spoon out of his hand and threw the bowl across the room. The glass shattered against the wall, breaking the silence. My mouth followed suit. “I don’t want fucking chicken noodle soup! I want you to let me go, asshole!”
I was sure that would do it. Someone as anal as he appeared to be would snap under the strain of my rebellion. I was adorably naive. He stood with the tray in one hand, picked up the spoon, and left the room.
That was when it occurred to me how unbelievably stupid I’d just been. Yes, he was anal, and yes my little outburst would likely make him angry. But the amount of restraint he’d shown so far made me realize it was unlikely he’d offer me a quick death no matter how many outbursts I displayed. He’d spent too much time on this plan.
He was only gone a few minutes, but during those few minutes, I ran through at least twenty possibilities of what he might do next. He might starve me was one option. I’d managed to get some bravery due to the fact that I’m not usually that hungry when I first wake up, but starving wasn’t something I wanted to do. I was reminded of this fact because I’d just the day before allowed him to fondle me once for each bite of soup.
He could kill me. A part of me wanted him to. It would be easier than living with what I would no doubt become if he kept to the same MO. He could have gone to get some dramatic implements of torture, or just the knife he’d used the day before to cut my bonds. I shivered at the last option and scooted back into the corner as if I could press myself through the wall to freedom on the other side. Maybe he would be quick about it.
The door creaked open again and my eyes shot up to meet his, terrified to see anger, but afraid not to know the status of my situation. He still had that calmness. He shook his head and grinned. If he hadn’t been a sociopath, he would have been appealing. He had one of those boyish lopsided grins that tried to inch a little way up his face and made him look safe. It didn’t fit with his eyes.
Instead of knives or guns or a million other nasty options, he had a broom, a mop, and a pail. He dragged a small trash can into the room behind him, and the door slammed shut again. I watched as he swept up the solid pieces of the soup and the glass from the bowl and dumped them into the trashcan. Then he mopped the floor, and without a word, took everything he’d brought into the room out again.
A few minutes passed before he returned to the cell; this time he wasn’t carrying anything. He strode too fast across the floor toward me, causing me to cower in the corner like a wounded animal. He stopped just short of reaching me and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked like a parent disappointed in a child, as if I had been petulant and not within my rights and the bounds of normal human behavior to react in the way I had.
His cold gaze compelled me to speak. “I’m sorry.” My voice trembled and sounded foreign to my ears.
Could this weak, helpless creature really be me? I’d spent the past five years giving speeches on empowerment and self-improvement and here I was, reduced to this. And so quickly.
I looked up at him, and he continued to regard me with something like interest. I could practically feel the violence curling within him, waiting like a viper to strike, but it never did. Instead, he stared at me as if he expected me to continue speaking. So I did.
“Please talk to me. Why won’t you speak to me? Are you going to hurt me? Are you going to kill me? Please . . . ”
He smiled. I don’t know why I asked why he wouldn’t speak. I knew why. It was becoming increasingly clear. I didn’t know exactly why me, but I had a good idea why he wasn’t talking.
He’d studied me, stalked me, knew everything about me. Human contact, speech, words, music. I needed stimulation. And he wasn’t giving any of it to me. I was pretty sure he was trying to break me, and considering my lack of escape options, I was pretty sure he was going to succeed.
People always think they’ll never break. They’ll never give in. CIA operatives somehow crack, but not them. We live in this world where everybody watches so much TV, it makes them think they’re superheroes. I’m strong, but anyone can be broken. I knew this. It’s only a matter of opportunity, will, and persistence.
What prevents it from happening most often is most people sociopathic enough to break and condition someone properly don’t have the level of self-control required to do it. Most with the control aren’t big enough sociopaths. This was why I feared this man so much, not because I was his prisoner, but because I saw in him the blending of these qualities, which made the possibilities of what could happen endless.
He continued to watch me, cruel amusement curving his features, as if this was so much more fun than he’d ever anticipated the long nights he’d probably jerked off to the fantasy. Then he turned and left. The room felt quieter without him in it, as if his presence could somehow equal words for me.
Several hours passed, during which I paced the floor, and danced. I know that sounds insane. It is insane. It was day two, and I was flitting across the floor like a prima ballerina. But you don’t understand how desperately I needed sensation, any sensation to make me feel like something rather than nothing.
When I was a little girl, I took ballet. I was pretty good, going all the way to acceptance at a major dance academy in New York. But in the end I decided against it. A ballerina’s career is often over by twenty-five. By the time I was imprisoned in the cell, it would have been over for five years already.
I was glad I hadn’t made a career of it. It would have ruined my feet. Although, I couldn’t help but think ruined feet was better than being the prisoner of a sociopath.
So I danced. To distract myself, to move myself out of this plane of existence and into another, one where I was free. The cell was a perfect stage, plenty of room to pirouette and tour jete across it.
Even though the room was a static seventy-something degrees, I could feel the air move on my face as I whipped around and spun in circles. I felt my feet touching the floor with precision I’d never lost since giving it up. I heard the music in my mind as memories of old skipping records from the dance studios of my childhood played inside my brain.
I believed I’d won a round. I’d beaten the system he’d so carefully set up. When I couldn’t dance any longer I sank to the floor. I was thirsty and getting hungry, but I wouldn’t scream for him to feed me.
Screaming would have been normal; I knew that. But I’d already seen the way he didn’t react when I’d smashed the bowl. Everything would happen on his timetable according to his wishes, and anything I did to try to goad him would make it happen that much slower. Of that I was certain now. Besides, my throat was too parched to scream; it wouldn’t help.
I didn’t know when he would return with more food for me, or water, and I needed to conserve energy. Within minutes of my sitting on the floor in my corner, the door clicked open, and a bottled water was placed on the floor next to it.
It was cold, fresh out of the fridge, and I was profoundly, indescribably grateful for it. I was also suspicious. Had he been sitting outside the door listening to me? Were there listening devices? Something else? As I drank the water, I scanned the top of the walls.
This was an area I hadn’t paid much attention to. After all, I couldn’t reach the ceiling. What was the point of lying on my back all day analyzing it?
Then I spotted them. In the ceiling, at various points, were what appeared to be smallish black dots. On first glance, from the distance I was from them, they would look like random markings.
Pinhole cameras.
The son of a bitch was watching me. For all I knew, he had sound attached. He’d watched me dance and brought me water afterward. What the fuck did that mean? One thing was becoming clear, though. He’d entered the room three times since I’d been conscious. Each time I’d been sitting in the far back corner. That probably wasn’t a coincidence.
If I was right, he wouldn’t enter the room unless I was sitting in that spot. How could I use this information to my advantage? Obviously I had to eat, so I’d have to sit in the corner at some point, but I might be able to prevent extra unwanted visits by staying closer to the door when I wasn’t hungry. Sleeping closer to the door was probably a good idea too.
Now I was back to trying to figure out the water. I had a clear enough idea of what was going on; thank you Psych 101. Behavioral conditioning and studies of Stockholm Syndrome had not gone to waste. Though I was aware that even with knowledge of what he was doing, it wouldn’t stop him from succeeding, eventually. Or sooner, rather than later, since he’d known my weakness going into things.
I should have learned to be alone with myself, to not have to have noise or company or stimulation. I should have learned to meditate, taken up yoga or deep breathing practices.
I had fleetingly thought earlier about masturbating. I know that sounds wildly inappropriate. When you’re in this sort of situation you don’t want to do anything even vaguely sexual; it looks like an invitation. But it wouldn’t have been sexual to me, not really. It would have just been comfort, stress relief, so I could avoid having a panic attack.
But there were cameras, and I knew it now. So no matter how much I wanted that release, I wasn’t going to do it. It was tactile stimulation of the best kind, a weapon in my arsenal against the insidious plans already set in motion against me, but the risks weren’t worth the payoff.
After I’d finished the water, I placed the bottle back beside the door and went to sit in the corner. I wanted to see if he was watching me closely enough to take the bottle right away, or if he’d wait. He was studying me, but I was also studying him.
I wondered if he’d tie me up to keep me from dancing, or doing yoga, or just plain moving in any way that had meaning besides mindless pacing. Tying me up would require violence on his part, something he didn’t seem willing to bring into the equation just yet. Of course, he could always drug me again.
I stared at the empty bottle, my eyes widening. I couldn’t remember if the safety seal had been on or not. I’d just unscrewed the lid and drank; I’d been too thirsty to think about it. Most mundane safety issues weren’t concerning me right now.
Several minutes of paranoia passed, and I didn’t feel myself getting sleepy. Finally, I relaxed and slumped against the wall.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I knew I’d slept when the sound of the door creaking woke me. The dream had been loud and colorful, my subconscious mind flooding me with the sensations I needed to keep me reasonably sane, to help me hold out through my waking hours.
I panicked for a second, thinking I’d been drugged and tied up, but my arms were free. I was alert, and sitting up, watching him warily as he came into the room. I could smell the chicken noodle soup coming out of the bowl and found I was hungry, much hungrier than I’d thought.
He placed the metal tray on the ground and sat across from me in the same manner as before. He arched an eyebrow as if questioning whether I’d learned my lesson or not. Would I throw my food again and be sent to bed without supper? My mouth remained shut but my eyes told him I understood. Throwing the soup was pointless. It wouldn’t result in a reaction; it would only make it longer before I could eat again.
He crumbled the crackers in and lifted the spoon to my mouth. It was still soothing, despite everything, a microsecond of safety and warmth in every bite, my mom taking care of me when I was sick. I tried to shut out those thoughts.
The soup wasn’t for my benefit. It was for his, to more easily break down my defenses. The water had been the same. Small kindnesses. So I would come to trust and depend on him. I couldn’t forget what he was, that I wasn’t his guest.
I’d been afraid he would fondle my breasts again, but he didn’t. Instead, every few bites he trailed his finger down my cheek. I fought hard not to flinch and equally hard not to lean into his touch. I tried not to react at all. I just sat there and let him do it, and then it was over and he was feeding me again.
Every few bites he’d do that same comforting gesture as if I were a wild cat he was trying to tame. As if he were rescuing me. Sometimes he stroked his hand through my hair, and once, in a moment of weakness, I leaned into the touch. It was stimulation, connection, communication. It was something. But every time I leaned in, I hated myself just a little more.
When the bowl was empty, he left the room. I sighed, leaning back against the wall, trying not to hold onto memories of his hand on me as if it were a good thing. A few minutes later, he was back, and I tensed again. Was this when it would start?
He held a strip of black cloth in one hand and moved slowly toward me. I struggled to my feet and backed away to a different part of the room. He advanced. Finally, I was backed into another corner and had nowhere left to go.
My eyes pleaded with him not to do it, but I didn’t fight him. I didn’t waste words because I knew he wouldn’t answer them. I was shaking as he tied the blindfold around my eyes.
But I let him. I let him because I knew he’d do whatever he wanted anyway, and I was developing a sense of gratitude that he hadn’t physically hurt me yet. He hadn’t hit me, or cut me, or any of a million other things he could have done. He hadn’t raped me, yet. And he seemed disinclined to do those things, at least in the classical way.
When the blindfold was in place, he took me gently by the arm and led me from the cell. We went down what I perceived to be a hallway, and he took me into another room, locked the door, then removed the blindfold.
We were in a large but plain bathroom. All decorations and pictures had been taken off the walls, if they’d ever been there in the first place. The mirror had been removed, and there was a faint outline on the wall where it had once hung.
There was a sink with toothpaste and a plain white toothbrush and a shower with a plain white curtain. On the toilet seat were clothes in my size: gray sweatpants and a white top that buttoned up like an art smock. No panties or bra.
There was a chair in the bathroom where he sat and regarded me.
“Please turn around,” I said. I didn’t believe he would do it, but he did. He turned his chair to face the door, as if he were a gentleman. I thought for a brief moment about wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to kill him before he could break my arm.
I turned on the water, quickly shucked my clothes, and got under the spray. I drank in each sensation, the hot water spraying over my body, the floral scent of the soap and shampoo. After I’d finished, I rested my forehead against the cool tile and let the water run down my skin. I was afraid at any second he’d jump up and pull me out of there, but he didn’t.
When I stepped out, I noticed he’d taken my old clothes away from me. Of course, I couldn’t keep those. Those clothes would make me feel too much like a person. I slipped into the sweats and shirt, buttoning it quickly, and picked up my towel.
The towel was warm, fresh from the dryer, and it smelled like a spring meadow. Well, not really. It smelled like what we’re told by the dryer sheet people that a spring meadow smells like. But I believed it right then. I resisted the urge to put the towel against my nose and inhale.
“Okay, I’m finished.”
He stood and turned, giving me a once-over before replacing the blindfold. This time I was less afraid because it had become part of a routine, a natural continuation of actions before. He led me back to my cell and then was gone. That was the second day.
This pattern went on for seven days. I knew the time that passed because I used my fingernail to scratch a mark every day into the concrete behind the toilet. Three meals and a shower equaled a day.
He never tried to stop me from dancing. He must have known I’d eventually break anyway. There’s only so much pleasure one can derive from even a well-loved activity when it’s the only thing to do.
On the seventh day after my shower, he returned me to my cell. He removed the blindfold and stared at me, as if he could read my thoughts, or was trying to gauge his progress. He reached out and started to unbutton my shirt.
I pushed him away, but he didn’t try to force me. He didn’t start yelling; he did nothing but shrug and then turned toward the door. I panicked. I couldn’t be left alone like this, in this endless routine of nothing.
“Wait. Please don’t go.” It had been a week. He showed no signs of releasing me. On the first day I’d been willing to trade groping for food. I needed to be touched now.
Dancing wasn’t enough sensation, hot showers weren’t enough. I had started to crave the gentle caresses that accompanied meals. I knew it was sick, twisted, but I needed to connect, to feel some sort of communication with him.
He stopped next to the door and turned toward me. There was something almost like pity in his expression. It was the closest thing I’d ever seen in those black eyes, and I wished suddenly that I could read his thoughts, so I’d know what to do. He pressed his thumb up to the fingerprint scanner.
“Please! Please don’t leave me here. I’ll do anything you want.” I moved to him and reached out and touched him for the first time of my own volition. My hand gripped his arm; I couldn’t let him leave me alone again. I couldn’t keep up this maddening pattern forever. It had to stop, anything to make it stop.
My mind was going down trails I wished it wouldn’t. His soul was ugly, but physically, he was beautiful. I could give in to that. I could let that touch me without feeling the need to vomit. And I wouldn’t be blamed for it. I was the victim here.
He firmly, but gently removed my hand from his arm and walked me to the other side of the room to my corner. He shook his head at me, his eyes serious.
He turned again, and this time I didn’t follow him. He left me alone in the cell, and I slid to the floor and cried.
THREE
Another week. That’s what pulling away cost me. He didn’t beat me or throw me down and force me; he just gave me another week. This time it was worse. It was worse because he denied me his physical closeness, touch.
For the next seven days he fed me three meals a day, chicken noodle soup, no deviation. I wanted real food and I was willing to do just about anything to get it. Soup is great, but three meals a day and it becomes less filling. You start to feel full but hungry at the same time.
He didn’t come into the cell at all. He just opened the door and slid the tray in at regular intervals. He didn’t touch me or physically feed me. I felt completely bereft. I couldn’t believe I’d become so attached to my captor’s presence until I experienced the absence of it.
The hot showers became a distant memory. Instead, once a day he’d send in a large pail of tepid water, a sponge, soap, and shampoo. And of course a clean towel and a new set of the exact same boring clothes he’d been dressing me in for a week. And a comb as well as a toothbrush and toothpaste.
Now the drain across from the toilet made sense. When I dragged the heavy pail to the corner to bathe, I was aware of how completely exposed I was. If he wanted, he could watch me clean myself, and he probably
did. I was careful to ration out the water so I had enough to bathe, and also to wash and rinse my hair.
I’d stopped dancing. I didn’t want to hold out anymore. I didn’t want to hold onto whatever I could because I knew he was breaking me and succeeding. Dancing just made it take longer. I wanted to be done with it so I could move on to the next thing I would have to endure in his care.
Only in my dreams did I feel anything. I’d started dreaming about him, his hand on my face, feeding me. Even my subconscious mind had turned against me. Instead of dreaming in vivid bright colors and loud noises and vibrant tastes, I had begun to dream about the cell with him inside it.
My desires had shifted from wanting the outside world to just wanting him to come back into my cell and for my punishment to be over. I wanted to prove I could be better. I could obey and do what he wanted.
Finally, on the seventh day he stepped inside. He sat across from me as if nothing had happened, as if we hadn’t had a period of non-communication for days, and he started to feed me. When he touched my face, I leaned desperately into his hand. I wanted him to be pleased with me, to know he could trust me now.
When the soup was gone, he took the tray away. I experienced a moment of panic, fearing I’d done something to upset him, that he would abandon me for another week, but he returned a couple of minutes later. He approached me and started to undo the buttons of my top. I didn’t pull away this time.
. . . She didn’t resist as he removed first her top, then her sweatpants. She stood naked and shaking, self-conscious. She wanted to cover herself but was afraid if she did he’d punish her again. So she stood there, looking down at the ground as he observed her. She knew he must have watched her on the video monitors while she bathed, had probably stroked himself to the sight of her. And yet, it was different for him to be so close.
He raised her chin so their eyes met, and he smiled. He was pleased, and she couldn’t help the tiny flush of pleasure that went through her body at that idea. Then his mouth caressed over hers, an echo of everything he’d been from the beginning . . . gentle. As if everything he did, he only did it for her own good. To teach her.