AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If they had brought food I doubt I’d have eaten it. Such a small innocuous pile of things. Most people carried all that in their medicine cabinet.
If I’d had paper and pen, a book to read, or a laptop, I’d have diverted myself, and fuck me how likely was that? I craved reading and writing. The other thing I craved was him. Pitiful.
I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the fact that he’d killed, exterminated, another human being so easily. It wasn’t simply the quickness or the efficiency; they were expected considering his training. It was the lack of effect on him. He’d done it, dusted his hands, and moved on. Mister Cold-blooded Robot-killer.
Cliché alert.
I sighed.
I still wanted him here so I could wrap my arms around him. So abnormal for me – I’d never been one for excessive hugs and had never even kept a teddy bear when I was a kid. Pieter was my teddy bear cross killer. A little hard to accommodate those two together.
When you make yourself not look at something, the mind has a way of seeing it. The plate pulsed like some black creature hiding in a corner. I could’ve pointed to it without turning around.
Don’t look.
My stomach growled but I ignored it. I smoothed out the sheets, plonked myself down on the bed, and covered my face with my hands. Imagine you’re about to write an article on all that has happened, plan that out, Jaz.
It worked. I sank into the mind space where words were my playthings, my slaves, my pieces of a big literary jigsaw. Damn this would make an amazing story, if only I could survive. Pulitzer Prize, here I come.
There was always hope.
When the key turned in my door, my heart flip-flopped and I nearly swallowed my tongue.
Being led, blind, along the corridors, off to become Gregor’s screaming plaything had never been so terrifying. Every time I went there it was worse.
The opening door into the Room, the echoes of their boots and pat pat pat of my bare feet on the cool concrete, the tinkle of the chains and the laughter of the men – these were as familiar to me as the decoration of a Christmas tree in that season of joy.
Chapter 17
A splash of water across my floor reminded me of playing noughts and crosses with her. The flutter of bird wings up high, outside my pillbox-style slit window, reminded me of looking up at her window while lying on her bed, with my arm under her shoulders. When I sat and regarded my open hands, I recalled spanking her, holding her throat, and the wet warm lick of her tongue on my skin.
I’d doomed myself in her eyes. I’d come to see that within a few hours. Maybe I could still make her understand. I’d try.
For a man trying to become better than I was, I was good at fucking up. What to me had seemed the only solution had made her see me as evil. If I’d had time to think more... My naive librarian angel had seen me murder someone. Even if it was a kill or be killed situation, what else would she be but shocked?
I paced up and down then saw sense and went through an exercise routine. Chin-ups on the window edge. Star jumps. Push-ups. All the while, I thought through the routine in this House, looking for flaws. The place was built so soundly I’d need locksmith skills, explosives, or some free time with a jackhammer to break down the walls or door. Concrete and steel, that was it.
There was only one weakness I could see so far – the cleaning lady. She never spoke to me, hadn’t answered my few trial questions, but this last time, after the boy’s death, she’d given me this determined look, with her lips pressed together. There’d been a nod. A nod could mean anything, but in that second, I’d seen sympathy. Had she perhaps known the guard?
If that was so, possibilities opened up.
I’d keep trying. I couldn’t talk to her anyway. My room would be bugged but maybe I could pass a note? I just had to figure out how to do it secretly.
Sometime late morning, they came for me, locked me up, bagged me, and marched me away.
If only I was Bruce Lee and able to defeat armed men with my kung fu skills while blind and restrained. I’d loved those old movies but I knew when not to push, when to cooperate. Rebelling might get me injured and I needed to be fit.
The guard had been stupid to take a job here, and stupid to blurt out his plans to us like he had. When a cop, I’d reserved my sympathy for the victims, not the criminals. Always.
It occurred to me that I’d not have thought much of myself for falling into my current predicament. I’d have shrugged, muttered poes and moved on. Those who live by the gun die by the gun. Only in Gregor’s case, it was often the knife.
When they took off my bag in the Room, I saw that today the knife wasn’t being featured. Under the center lights, they had a roll of single-stranded barbed wire, pliers, and a pair of heavy gloves.
And...
I swallowed.
Jazmine, naked, hands tied above her head to the chains, with her head still bagged. Seeing her like that always shot a jolt of lust into me.
