Breaking Beth

by Bene, Jennifer

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m one of the slaves.”

  “Then don’t act out like one.” Anthony got in line, ready to be out of the presence of so many squalling children and chattering people. “Have you made progress on your house?”

  “I just woke up an hour ago.”

  “Well, then perhaps you should get to work instead of interfering with mine. I was doing this before you were even aware.”

  “I know, asshole. You don’t have to keep pointing it out. I think I’ve more than proven I’ve got my own set of skills,” Marcus mumbled under his breath, and Anthony decided he was done with this coddling session.

  “We’ll see how you handle this new enterprise before we make any real judgments on your skills.”

  “You’re just afraid I’m better at this than you!” Marcus was angry. Throwing a temper tantrum like he had when they were children and he’d lost an unknown number of games of checkers.

  All emotion, no strategy.

  “We will see,” was Anthony’s only reply before he ended the call. Stacking the various items on the automatic belt, he reminded himself to stop at the pharmacy to get the girl’s pills, and then he would return to see if her attitude had improved.

  Seven

  Beth

  Her teeth were chattering and, even curled into a ball on the floor, Beth couldn’t manage to concentrate her body heat enough to stop shivering. The thin layer of water atop the concrete seemed to sap the warmth from the air as well as her skin, and just the existence of this horrible room confirmed how screwed she was.

  Normal people didn’t have rooms set several inches into the floor so water could pool half an inch deep. They didn’t have hoses installed inside, or steel brackets embedded in the floor for chaining girls by leather collars. Collars locked closed with a tiny version of the padlock that kept the chain fixed in place.

  Another set of shivers shook her, making her curl up tighter, as far away from the bracket in the floor as the chain allowed. It didn’t make it easier. Beth still couldn’t believe she was in this place. This room. This house. Couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong, what misstep she’d made that had brought her to him. She couldn’t even remember him taking her. There was a hole in her memory even after the drugs had completely left her system.

  She remembered leaving work, walking down the same sidewalk she always did. Heading towards the public lot they shared with several other companies, and then — nothing. Absolutely nothing until she’d woken up on that bed.

  But at least the bed had been soft, and warmer than this nightmare room.

  Trying to sleep on concrete all night had been almost impossible, and she was sure it was only the physical exhaustion, her body wrung out by pain and fear, that had eventually made her pass out.

  And then the motherfucker had woken her up with the fucking hose. Cold water blasting her at full pressure.

  Are you ready to be obedient, he’d asked. Stoic, standing several feet away so the spray bouncing off her skin wouldn’t reach him.

  Beth had told him to go to hell, and he had left, leaving the hose running on the floor to slowly fill the room. An icy puddle turned into a pool, spreading, eventually touching her skin no matter how she skittered back from it. Inching its way across the concrete until it had crept into every corner.

  She had no idea how long he was gone, but he returned in a clean button down and slacks, which did not match the tall rubber boots on his feet. When he’d finally turned off the water, she’d already been cold, but that wasn’t the worst part of this nightmare room.

  It was the electric shock that moved through the water whenever he touched something on his phone.

  Blinding pain, the air ripped from her lungs on a scream, unable to draw another breath until he stopped it. She’d earned two more shocks in those first hours. One for telling him to go fuck himself, and the second for staying silent when he’d told her to recite the rules.

  Whining, freezing, sore — he had towered over her, breathing evenly while she panted, and the chaos tore cohesive thoughts to shreds.

  You should think over your decisions, slave. His last words before he’d walked out. Left her in this fucking concrete room, with the A/C running, soaking wet and unable to even push up onto all fours because the chain was too fucking short.

  Was this really her future?

  The idea was almost too horrible to process, but once it had appeared in her head it wouldn’t be quiet. It coiled in the center of her mind, a dangerous viper with icy blades for fangs, hissing, waiting. Waiting for her to accept this nightmare as reality. Her reality.

  She didn’t want to accept anything. Beth wanted to rage, to rip the chain from the floor — not like she hadn’t tried — but it was all so useless. The man was so much stronger than her, and colder than the water pooled around her.

  It had been ridiculously easy for him to push her through the house with his fingers wrapped around the back of the collar. Pulling it flush to her throat, tightening it as she prepared for his promised punishment. With the metal of the knife still fresh on her tongue, Beth hadn’t even tried to fight. She had let him haul her into this room. Let him push her to her knees. Watched like a sacrificial lamb as he’d gathered chain from a metal table and tethered her to the bracket embedded in the concrete.

  She had expected violence. Expected him to hit her, or at the very least to shout at her —but he’d done nothing.

  Turning around in his polished shoes he had simply walked out of the room, the heavy door shutting with a loud clap, and she’d been alone. The concrete had bruised her limbs, made her hips ache, and she’d thought she felt cold. But last night was nothing compared to this.

  Her bones ached, each shiver making them jerk against stiff muscles and tendons, and she almost laughed at the bitter idea that cold was used to make pain stop. Cold hurt worse than any volleyball injury in high school or college, hurt worse than the time she’d been rear-ended at a stoplight — it was nothing but hurt. Pinpricks of fire as her nerves sparked in desperation, and then the deep, shuddering ache that followed every bout of shivers. The foolish, automatic response of her body trying to keep her alive.

  It would be wiser to die before he came back.

  Beth sniffled, curled tighter as the thought burrowed close to the viper that promised a future more hellish than even this. Torture, rape… or death.

  Are those really my only options?

  Being rescued, the idea of police bursting in to help her, that seemed far away. Too impossible to hope for. The warm tracks of tears across the bridge of her nose were the only way she realized she was crying, too cold to make noise, too distracted by the weak shudders of her body to focus on her hitched breaths.

  None of it mattered a second later when the pop of the electric current turning on reminded her of just how much pain she could be in. A scream tried to escape her lips just before her head cracked against the concrete floor, vision turning white as every inch of her body went rigid, agony coursing along her nerves like they were open wounds. Salted and burning. It felt like it lasted forever, lungs trapped around too little air, and then the buzzing ended and she went limp. Water lolling back and forth around her, tiny waves on the ocean of her ruin.

  As her eyes regained focus, flickering on and off like a cheap movie reel, she saw him.

  Standing over her, head tilted to the side, upside down from her point of view. Dark hair cut so that it laid perfectly, not a strand out of place, and those cold blue eyes that held no human emotion to speak of — he was simply watching her. Gaze drifting down her body as she tried to pull air back into her lungs, too weak to even try and shield her nakedness.

  Not like any of it mattered.

  He’d seen everything.

  And he didn’t even seem interested. It wasn’t lust she saw in his face, it wasn’t hate, or rage, or hunger, or joy — it was nothing. An absolute emptiness behind a face that could have been attractive on someone with a soul. />
  His silence grated like sandpaper on her frayed nerves, the cold returning as her body abandoned the memory of the shock and let the icy water creep back into her perception. A shiver shook her again, teeth clattering loudly in the quiet, broken again by the soft splash of the water as she managed to bend one leg against the other to try and block the view between her thighs.

  There were five cameras.

  One at the center of each wall, and a final straight above the bracket in the floor.

  Whatever assholes sat on the other side of those glass eyes had seen everything as well, but she didn’t have to gift it to them. Not if she could avoid it.

  The man hadn’t moved, had barely breathed from what she could tell. An automaton. A shell of a person in fine clothes. “What do you want from me?” she croaked, voice cracking.

  Weak. So weak.

  “Everything,” he answered, taking a step, and then another, until he stood beside her hip and she could see him clearly. Still in his big rubber boots, his protection from the electric current he tormented her with. “We’ve already had that discussion. Now is when you decide if you’d like to start being obedient.”

  It was so tempting to curse him, to damn him again. To rage against everything he’d already done to her — but it was the threat of what he would do that kept her silent.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I’m cold,” she whispered. A shiver coming on cue, her aching joints tightening to make her whimper.

  “I know.” His gaze slid over her body again. “Would you like to get up? Leave this room?”

  Something dangerous lurked behind the offer, something with teeth, but she couldn’t resist. “Yes.”

  That strange smile graced his features again. “Then tell me the rules, slave.”

  Even her reaction to that word was dulled, slowed by the cold, the pain, the memory of the knife in her mouth. “Don’t bite.”

  A strange huff left him, what might have been a laugh had he been a real person. “That is not one of the rules, but I am encouraged to know you retained that lesson. Now… recite the rules.”

  Bastard.

  Beth wanted to scream at him again. To shout like she had that morning, but her fingers were stiff and almost useless in the cold. Even the stinging burns from the rope had faded from her awareness, and that was concerning.

  Turning her head, eyes focusing on the inflamed, broken skin at her wrist, she knew it should hurt more than it did — but nothing was getting through the cold. She needed out of this room.

  “I am not a person.” Everything was empty as the words moved past her numb lips, but she continued in a daze, struggling to remember his poster of fucked-up expectations. “I should address you as Master.”

  Never, she promised herself. Holding onto that one flapping scrap of her dignity.

  “Continue.” He walked away from her towards a panel on the wall, pressing buttons before it popped open.

  “I have to crawl. Ask permission for everything.”

  “For what specifically?” he asked, shifting something inside the panel just before a click came from the far side of the bracket in the floor. The sound of water rushing into pipes made hope flicker inside her. Dim and desperate.

  I just want to be warm.

  “Slave?” The man was looking at her, his hand still inside the panel, and she dropped her head back to the floor so she didn’t have to see his dead eyes.

  “Permission to orgasm”—never going to happen—“to speak to you. And I cannot wear clothes.”

  Air sucked loudly into the pipe, the swirl of the water down the drain visible as she turned her head to the side. Shivers rushed through her again, tightening her weak, exhausted muscles once more.

  So tired.

  She was so tired.

  Would it be so terrible to die?

  “There are worse things than the cold, slut. You’re not done.” He leaned against the wall by the panel, watching as she turned onto her side.

  Beth answered the thinning water instead of him. “I must keep my eyes down. Thank you when you hurt me.”

  “Punish,” he corrected.

  “Right.” She did not repeat the correction, racking her brain for the list, but there was nothing more in her head. Nothing but the horrible memories of everything he’d already done to her, the nagging ache between her thighs as she clenched her internal muscles.

  “You forgot that you must kneel in all rooms, and again whenever I return.”

  “I can’t kneel.” Moving her feeble grip to the chain, she tugged it so that it clattered against the metal in the floor.

  “I am aware. I didn’t want you able to kneel, I wanted you on the floor.” His footsteps slapped wet and heavy against the concrete as he approached her once more, but she didn’t turn her eyes to him. Not even when she could see the towering form of him in her peripheral vision. “Do you understand that this is where you belong?”

  “No.” The word was out before her blurry mind could think to stop her, and she just closed her eyes, waiting for pain. Another shock.

  Instead, he simply crouched down and used a key to open the padlock that held the chain to the floor. Wrapping his fist around the metal links, he stood, dragging her up by force, her body rebelling against the movement. Joints screaming, muscles revolting. Reminding her in fits and starts of the chill, the lingering aches from the electricity and so many hours on the concrete.

  Beth found herself sitting up, legs curled at her side, one hand braced in a puddle left behind from the water draining down the dark hole at the center of the room. The man tugged the chain higher, forcing her head to angle back, but she aimed her gaze just to the left of his head.

  “Look at me.” It was a command, not a request. Clipped, abrupt, hard as ice.

  She obeyed and hated herself for it.

  “Tell me thank you and I’ll let you take a warm shower.”

  * * *

  Anthony

  The girl was freezing, almost no color to her skin except for the darker tone of her areolas, and the hint of blue at her lips and fingernails. Her toes were hinting towards blue as well, and he knew what she needed to stay healthy. Alive.

  Whether she got warm from him fucking her in a bed, or taking a shower alone, was up to her.

  It had only been a couple of hours in the cold, but it had done exactly what he’d planned. Stripped her of another layer of that willpower she was clinging to so desperately. He could sense the struggle in her, recognizing it from the other girls he’d taken, broken. But this one was more of a challenge, which meant he could, and would, do so much more to her before she grew boring and docile.

  Shifting his hand, he wrapped the chain around his hand another time, clenching his fist over the links to pull her higher, watching as she struggled to pull her legs beneath her so the strain on the collar wasn’t so severe.

  Oh, the things he would make her do to avoid the pain.

  “Last chance, slut.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, eyes down, but he tugged the chain instead of acknowledging her acquiescence.

  “Louder.”

  “Thank you.” Only a little louder, more of a growl, a promise of further defiance. Further opportunity to make her scream, and cry, and beg for a mercy that would never come.

  It was that thought that made him smile again. He didn’t wait for her to recognize his movement, he simply walked towards the door with the chain clamped tight in his grip. Her knees scraped over the damp concrete, scuttling after him with stiff limbs. She whimpered when he hauled her over the doorway, something impacting the lip of the room as she tried to stand, but he tugged the chain to keep her in her proper place.

  On her knees.

  Scrambling to keep up with his pace.

  He returned to the bedroom she’d awoken in, tapping the code into the lock as he hid the pad with his body. Not that she was coherent enough yet to pay attention.

  Her shuddering breaths, interspersed with whi
mpers, were music to his ears. Or it would be music to his ears if he could enjoy music at all. Screams and cries were his music, and he would make her a symphony before he sold her.

  Tugging the chain hard, he hauled her inside and then buckled her to the floor. Releasing the metal links, he ignored her whimpers to shut the door behind them. It auto-locked, as it always did, and he waited as she caught her breath. One hand braced on the floor between her knees as she pushed herself upright, forming into an almost perfect presentation.

  A happy accident, he was sure, but still delightful for the customers on the cameras.

  She had potential. So much potential. He just needed to carve away everything else until all that was left was the broken slave at the core of who she thought she was. Take away the sense of self, the sense of worth, the concept of individuality — then she’d be ready to sell.

  The girl’s brown eyes lifted, met his, and he contemplated slapping her. But she self-corrected too quickly, gaze diverting to the hardwoods under her naked, shivering limbs. It was likely she wasn’t even aware of the way her flesh trembled, it had probably been so steady for the last hour or so that she could only feel the more violent tremors.

  Her body’s desperate attempt to create warmth.

  “Slave.” It was only a word for now, but he noted how her head lifted slightly. Almost answering to it. Another step forward. “Ask for permission to have your shower.”

  It was the sudden tensing of her shoulders that telegraphed her resistance this time. No eye contact, no foul-mouthed curses, no violent thrashing. The tension bled out of her with the next hard shiver of her body, and he could hear her teeth chattering as she tried to stymie it. “May I please shower?”

  “Finish your request properly,” Anthony commanded and watched her body still, only the subtle tremors making her muscles jump unconsciously, but the girl stayed quiet. Sighing, he threaded his fingers into her damp hair and tightened, ripping her upright so that she had no choice but to shuffle on her knees and shins as he half-dragged her into the bathroom. The light switch instantly brightened the room, and he knew the action had activated the cameras so that his customers could enjoy this.