by Marni Mann
And there was pain.
“Kyle…”
“Ahh-ahh-ahh!” I screamed. My heart pounded so hard that it made me stutter. “Wh-where are y-you?”
I didn’t recognize the voice, but I had to find where it was coming from. I turned my head from side to side, slapping more of my wet hair onto my cheeks. The freezing strands made me shiver even more. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t feel him.
“I’m here.”
His breath was hot. It scorched my ear.
“W-who are y-you?”
“That’s not the right question.”
He had an accent—not as thick as Beard’s and a different tone. This guy’s was deeper. As far as I knew, Beard didn’t speak English.
“Wh-what did y-you do to me?”
“Still not the right question.”
I couldn’t stop my chest from heaving, and I couldn’t draw in a breath. I expected to pass out at any second, the lack of oxygen causing my brain to shut down.
“But I’ll answer it because I like you, Kyle.” He moved to the other side, to my other ear. His mouth smelled like rotten fish. “I ripped you away from the bed that Garin had you tucked into and slowly, very slowly, took off all your clothes.” His lips moved down to the base of my neck. “You were dirty. So very dirty. So, I dropped you in a bath. It was a special bath, you see, filled with special things. And I made sure the water was very cold. Ice cold.” His laugh was so sinister. “I liked watching the way your nipples hardened when they got wet. They wrinkled around the circles and pinched together in the middle.”
Every time his tongue curled around an R, my stomach churned.
“Nice, tight pink nipples, big enough to fit and tug between my front teeth. Most nipples are too big to fit between there. Not yours. You have small tits and one hell of a fucking ass.” He licked the length of my neck and stopped at my earlobe, flicking it with the tip of his tongue. “Mmm, that cunt of yours. Without a razor in your cell, I was surprised to see it was still bald.”
He moved down to the top of my shoulder and chomped into my flesh. It was impossible to hold in my scream.
“It was a good surprise though; don’t worry. I didn’t punish you for having a bald cunt. I admired it, and I took pictures of it…after I rubbed my cum all over it.”
My body shook, as though I were being electrocuted. Tears ran into my mouth as they streamed from my eyes. He had violated my body. He had taken something that wasn’t his. He had…
“You ra-raped me.”
My tongue suddenly felt too large for my mouth, and I gagged. I turned my head and urged whatever was in my throat to come out. Saliva pooled around my teeth and on my tongue. I spit it on the ground. No food came up, no bile.
I was empty. Again.
How long had I been in here? Naked? With him doing whatever he wanted to my body? With whatever objects he deemed appropriate? And whatever secret bath sauce he had marinated me in?
“I didn’t rape you.” Two long breaths and a lick on the inside of my ear. “You’re my prisoner; your cunt isn’t lucky enough to feel my dick.” He laughed again. This time, it sounded like it served as a confirmation. “I won’t fuck you until you give me what I want. Until then, I’m just going to use you as a landing pad for my cum. But, mmm, my cum looked so fucking sexy on your bald cunt.”
I should have felt relief. I should have started breathing. But knowing he had seen my body naked, had touched it, had put me in the most vulnerable position hurt almost as badly as the thought of him raping me.
Could I really trust anything he said though?
I squeezed in the walls of my pussy, searching for that small ache that always came after sex and lingered for at least a day.
I felt nothing.
Maybe he was telling the truth.
“What do you wa-want? Wh-why am I h-here?”
“Wrong questions. Again.”
The smell in the air told me he was now in front of me.
“I want you to listen,” he said.
“Li-listen for wh-what—”
Whap.
I screamed as his hand slapped my cheek. I screamed again as the sound echoed in the room. Each repeated noise felt like another slap. The pain seared through my jaw and behind my eye, like it was going to fly right out of the socket.
“Don’t make me punish you, Kyle. When I tell you to listen, that means shut your fucking mouth.”
I just wanted to rub my face. I just wanted to soothe the ache. All of me was hurting, and I needed relief. Just the tiniest bit of tenderness before he hit me again.
A grunt filled the silence, pulling me from my self-pity. It was much louder than my scream had been. It didn’t sound like it came from a place of sadness or anger. It was far beyond pain or hurt.
This was the sound of someone being tortured.
And the sound had come from Garin.
“What are you doing to him?” I yelled. “Don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him.”
“QUIET!”
“Wh-what do you want from m-me?”
He reached inside my mouth and clamped my tongue between his fingers, pulling it so hard that I gagged again. “I told you to be quiet. One more sound, and I’ll rip this fucking tongue out.”
Tears were falling even faster. I didn’t know what was causing me to cry harder—the torture Garin was going through or the fear of what this guy was going to do to me. But I wasn’t stupid enough to make a sound. I cried silently, holding it all in, the sobs causing tremors in my stomach and chest.
I was so tempted to bite down on his fingers. Resting under my teeth like they were, I’d be able to gnaw right into the muscle and tear off a piece of his flesh. But I worried about what would happen to me if I did that and what would happen to Garin. There could be someone else in this room with us or someone waiting outside the door. I was sure this guy carried a gun like Beard.
I was defenseless in this prison.
“Do you hear that?” He knelt at my side, his fingers still in my mouth. His lips were uncomfortably close to my cheek.
The muscles in the back of my throat tightened as I prepared to grunt my answer, but I stopped myself. What if this was a test? What if he was goading me into disobeying him?
I shook my head.
“Listen, puta…”
I squinted my eyelids together and tried to calm the pounding in my body, so I could really focus. The sound was quiet, just barely above a whisper.
“Kyle…Kyle…Kyle…” Garin said my name over and over. It was like someone was standing on his throat, and he was exhaling his final breath.
His last words.
No, I wanted to scream.
They needed to stop hurting Garin, to leave him alone, to release him from this hell we were both in. It wasn’t Garin who they wanted. He had done nothing wrong.
It was me.
I was the guilty one.
But, like a coward, I kept my mouth shut and said nothing. Instead, I let the anger simmer inside me, slammed my back into the chair, and thrust my hips forward to try to loosen the bolts that held it in place.
Breath, who was still at my side, laughed at me. It was the most evil sound I’d ever heard. It made my skin prickle like swarms of ants were crawling all over me.
Tears dripped down my aching swollen cheeks. Spit foamed around my lips as he held my tongue between his foul fingers.
I only stopped rocking when he yelled, “Enough!”
I froze, and he rubbed his nose along the bottom of my jaw.
Breath was breathing me in. “Next time I come for you, I want you to ask the right question.”
I nodded, the movement causing his fingers to tighten around my tongue until I gagged again.
“Next time, I might not come only on your cunt.” He moved in front of me and licked across my bottom lip. “A big load right on your mouth will look so fucking sexy.”
I held in my sobs, but they racked my whole body.
“Good nig
ht, Kyle.”
Good night, Kyle.
There was a prick on the side of my arm, and then I felt the liquid drain into my muscle. A warmth immediately spread through me. It was a kind of heat I’d never felt before.
My fear was gone. The pain had dissolved. There was happiness even though it wasn’t caused by Garin. Happiness and contentment and coddling. The shackles felt soft. His fingers felt tender, and his breath smelled like pineapple.
And then everything went black.
Eleven
Kyle
Cold—that was the first sensation I felt. Stiff was the second. Not just in my legs and arms, but in my jaw. It was like I had been chewing gum for weeks straight. Even my tongue hurt and the roof of my mouth. I didn’t know where all this aching had come from. It couldn’t have been from just sleeping on the floor. I’d been sleeping on it every night. I’d…
It all came back to me as fast and as sharp as the slap Breath had given me across the face.
The chair. The ropes. The clamping of my tongue.
“Wrong question.”
Garin’s screams.
My eyes shot open. The only thought on my mind came flying out of my lips, “Garin!”
“I’m here,” he said.
He was standing in front of the sink. I could relax a little now. He must have been the one who tucked me under the blankets and folded one under my head. But had he gotten me dressed? I feared that was Breath. That those vile, repulsive fingers had grazed my skin while he slipped my clothes back on. I was worried his fingers weren’t the only things that had touched me…or dropped on me.
“What happened to you?” I asked Garin, waiting for him to finish so that I could wash my body. “Where did they take you? How long have we been back?”
He said nothing. He didn’t even look in my direction. He just moved his hands under the water.
“Garin?”
He still didn’t answer, so I rushed over to him and grabbed his shoulders, trying to turn him around. The burns and cuts on my wrists stung, but I ignored the pain. I needed to find out what was wrong with him. He wouldn’t budge.
“Show me your face.”
“Why don’t you go lie back down? They gave you some heavy drugs and—”
“Show me!”
“Kyle, I don’t want to scare you.”
“It’s way too late for that.” He still didn’t move, so I dipped underneath his arm and squeezed myself into the tiny space between his body and the sink. “Oh my God.” I did everything I could not to cringe at the sight of him.
He had bruises everywhere. There wasn’t a section of skin that wasn’t darkened to some shade of purple. I couldn’t tell if the imprints on his cheeks were from someone’s fist or the sole of a boot. There were open cuts around his eyes and forehead, dried blood surrounding every one. There was a scrape by his lip. Gashes ran the length of his throat. The wound by his ear looked like it was becoming infected.
“What did they do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re right. You’re alive, but…” I remembered the fear that had crippled me when Breath made me listen to Garin’s whispers. “I thought…” My voice trailed off, unable to finish.
“You thought they killed me?”
I nodded.
“They wanted to.”
I touched the sides of his face gently. “How could they hurt this?”
I brushed my fingers over the bruises, staying clear of the cuts so that I wouldn’t dirty them. There were more than I thought. Some were even hidden in the thickness of his beard, which had grown so much since we’d been in here. He didn’t make a sound the whole time. He didn’t even wince.
“Let me clean it for you.”
“You don’t have to.”
The guilt was almost unbearable. All of this had happened because of me. I owed him much more than just the cleaning of his skin.
“I want to.”
I grabbed several squares of toilet paper, soaked them under the faucet, and gently rubbed the clump across his chin. I was only able to get off a tiny bit of blood before he grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
“Stop. Just leave it.”
I could tell how much pain he was in. He just didn’t want to admit it. And even though I was trying to be so careful, I was hurting him. So, I got up and flushed the toilet paper, watching it swirl around the rusty bowl before it disappeared down the hole.
The next time we were taken, would he return to the cell at all? Would I?
I hadn’t asked Breath the correct question. What if I was only given so many chances to get it right?
“What did they do to you?” he asked, holding my hands, palm up, rubbing his thumbs across each mark.
There wasn’t any blood on my wrists. I suspected that was because Garin had cleaned them while I slept.
What if this was our last moment together? The last time he’d ever touch me?
When I didn’t answer, he picked me up and rushed me over to our bed, covering me in a blanket. “You’re shaking.”
He was right. My entire body was convulsing, my teeth chattering. I didn’t know how the fear would ever leave me, how I would ever stop trembling with these thoughts in my head.
“Tell me what happened to you, Kyle.”
As I tucked the blanket under my chin, he found his way underneath it and ran his hands over my legs to try and warm them. He never stopped touching me, not even when my shaking calmed a little or when I described everything that had happened—at least the bits I could remember before Breath had stuck a needle in my arm.
“He didn’t rape you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Are you sure?”
I crossed my legs, squeezing my thighs together. Once again, I searched for that familiar soreness that came after sex. “Yes. I’m positive.”
The relief was in his face and in his touch. “They’re prepping you.”
“For what?”
“So, when they ask you, you’ll give them what they want. It’s a mind game. They’re trying to break you, weaken you through fear.” As he paused, it felt like he was looking through my eyes, straight into my soul. “They’re getting to you. I can feel it.”
Every tremor in my body told me Garin was right.
Breath knew I cared about Garin. I had to believe that was why he was in here with me. Now, those feelings were being used against me.
Garin’s whispers, “Kyle…Kyle…Kyle…” were all I could hear.
His bruises were all I could see.
Breath was torturing me. Again.
“Was it Beard who hurt you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “There were two guys. I didn’t recognize either of them.”
That meant there were at least four men holding us captive. The more men, the less chance we had of escaping this prison.
“Did they ask you anything?”
It took him a minute to answer. “No.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being honest or telling me what he thought I could handle. Garin was a protector, so it didn’t surprise me that I was getting very few details.
“Then, why did they hurt you? Just because?”
“They can beat me and torture me all they want. I can take it. They’re not going to break me, Kyle.”
I stared at his cuts, at the bruises, at the gash on his throat. He was trying to hide the pain he was in by acting unfazed by it all. Dealing drugs on the streets, running the casino in Vegas, working with the bosses—it had all prepared him for this…whatever this was.
I wasn’t used to this at all—not the torture or the threats. Not the uninvited touching.
Not someone coming on me.
My whole body shook as I thought about Breath’s cum.
“What is it that they want?” I had asked him that so many times before. I doubted this would be the last time either.
“I don’t know.”
I looked up at the window, wondering what I would see on the other side
of it. Was there such a thing as normal beyond the bars of this cell? What was my brother doing right now? My employees?
“What’s the date?”
I was sure Beard or Breath or some other bastard had our cell phones and had texted a lie to our employees, so they wouldn’t be worried and call the police. They’d probably sent the same message to my mom and Anthony. My mom and I weren’t close at all. She lived on the other side of Tampa, and we barely saw each other. That was just the way things had worked out after she’d gone to rehab and moved to Florida. But Anthony called me every day. I really wondered how he was handling my absence and who he was trying to strangle to find where I was.
“The funeral was on the twelfth,” he said. “So, maybe it’s the fifteenth or sixteenth. I don’t know how long we’ve been in here.”
On the first, Anthony would be making his drive down to Florida. If I wasn’t home, if he didn’t talk to me before then, he’d start looking for me, if he hadn’t already. And he wouldn’t stop until he found me.
“We just have to hang on a little longer,” I said.
“You’ve got a plan?”
“They have until the first. Then, things will get interesting.”
Twelve
Garin
Twelve Years Ago
I waited for Kyle in the alley. She didn’t know I was here, but I knew she’d pass me because this was the route she took to get home from school. I used to walk it with her every day. But since Paulie’s death, she walked home without me. She’d run right out of that fucking schoolyard before I even got a chance to get to her locker.
But not today. Today, she was going to walk with me. I’d skipped my last few periods, so I’d be here when she strolled by. So, I could join her, and things could go back to the way they used to be because things were all fucked-up now. I’d bang on her front door; she wouldn’t answer. I’d call her place; she wouldn’t pick up. I’d wait outside her class; she’d walk the other way.
Something was wrong, and I was going to find out what it was.
I heard her humming as she came down the street. She hummed when she drew, and she hummed in the shower. I’d hear her from outside the bathroom when I’d wait for her in her room. I’d poke my head out of the doorway just so I could hear her. And I’d hope she’d open the door just a crack to let out some of the steam, and by chance, I’d catch a glimpse of her in her towel. It had happened a few times but not enough.