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I go back to my breathing, a long, slow inhale, a long slow exhale, exactly as I’ve been taught.
Calm down.
They must simply be new Handlers.
Right?
Inhale, exhale.
The breathing isn’t really helping me, and soon the panic and my hammering heart become exhausting, and a slow tear slips down my cheek.
Oh, they’ve done it this time, haven’t they? Fucked with my head until I’m crying. It doesn’t happen often anymore. I’ve been a slave for too long. So they’ve found a way to mess with my head. They’re doing a fucking fantastic job of it.
Inhale, exhale.
Finally my body begins to relax into the rhythm of the tires, but very quickly a series of bumps in the road is accompanied by a hollow sound I can’t quite figure out. A bridge, perhaps? A minute or two later we’re on a smooth highway of some sort again. Maybe a different route down to the Carmel Valley where the Primal Ranch sits in a small basin between rolling hills?
I’m not going to figure it out; I must accept that. Just as I accept any of the punishments my Masters and Mistresses choose to inflict on me. This is, after all, what I signed up for all those years ago. Literally. To have my free will taken out of my hands. To give myself over to the Masters and Mistresses and Handlers who make those choices for me. It’s what I wanted, and still want. It’s the only way I know how to live anymore. But am I being given all of it on some newly perverted level? Or am I about to have it all taken away from me?
Inhale, exhale.
I may as well try to sleep. Once we reach the Primal Ranch, everything and anything could start right away. And if I’m to fight in the Primal Games, which is what I often do there, I’ll need to be in good shape. I close my eyes under the hood and will myself to relax, one muscle at a time, in the safety of the hard metal encircling my ankle.
I am bound.
I am in my Masters’ hands.
I am safe.
I dream of the one time I’ve ever seen my father. I’m seven or eight. A knock at the door of our small, dirty apartment in Hollywood, and my mother answers. When I hear arguing, I get up from my narrow bed and peek around the wall. He has my same dark hair and gray eyes. She yells at him about abandoning her when she was pregnant with me. He makes excuses, neither of them saying I was wanted, which is something that has always been very clear to me. She sees me and orders me back to bed, and I go, afraid of her rages. And still arguing, she takes him to her bed for the night, leaving me in my too-small pajamas and the vinegar-sweet scent of heroin drifting in the air.
I hear them fucking. I know what it is. I’ve seen it over and over, when my mother brings strange men home. This man is no less a stranger. I hide under the covers with my pillow over my head, but I can’t block it out.
Get out, get out, get out!
I wake up with my heart hammering in my chest. It’s so damn dark, and I forget where I am until I fall into the cadence of the tires rolling on pavement.
I am in the van. Going to the Primal Ranch. I am okay.
My hands are free and I wish I could wipe the tears from my face, but the hood is buckled too tightly around my neck, so I have to suffer the degradation of my own emotions—emotions I’ve done my best to pack away in the darkest recesses of my fucked-up mind.
God damn it.
I try the breathing again.
Inhale, exhale.
Eventually it begins to work. But how long was I asleep? This trip feels endless, when the Primal Ranch is only maybe two and a half hours south of The Training House, and I am aware once more that something is off.
The van slows and I hear the crunch of gravel, then we stop.
A moment later the sound of someone getting out, then the back doors open and a cold draft makes me shiver.
“Get her out of there.”
Hands on me again, just as rough this time as they unfasten the shackle around my ankle, then I’m lifted and set on the ground, sharp gravel rough under my bare feet. The hood is yanked from my head and I blink in the dim sunlight coming through the towering sequoia trees.
Sequoias?
