by Rod Kackley
Bree could figure that out later. Now it was time to get ready for battle. Time to fight. Time to find a weapon. Time to escape.
She needed some kind of weapon, yet Bree saw nothing but junk and dust and cobwebs and who knew what?
In the piles of junk, she might find a weapon of convenience or opportunity. Something that was not designed to be a weapon or a fighting tool, but something that could be used to stun, injure, or even kill an opponent. A hammer, a crowbar, some kind of a cutting tool, even a child’s toy with a sharp edge or a point that could be driven into an eye. Bree had read about the concept in a survival manual.
This is one time reading would pay off.
Something has to be down here, to help me get more out there, to escape, Bree thought.
There were footsteps overhead coming closer. Bree turned her head to the noise, heard the rusty hinges of a door and then saw light coming through the bag over her head. A white light. Whoever belonged to those feet — and it had better be Tim not that loser friend of his Paul — making that noise was coming her way. It sounded like he was walking down wooden stairs.
Bree felt more naked, more cold, more alone and more scared than she ever thought she could possibly feel. The closer the steps got, the worse she felt, the more naked she felt.
It didn’t matter if it was Tim or Paul. Neither one of them had ever seen her naked in real life. And it had to be now? Bree could not help wondering self-consciously if her nipples were getting hard in the cold. She was conscious of the feeling of sitting on her bare ass on the cold, wet dirt, even her cold toes. She could feel the dried blood hard and stiff on her face, in her ears and on the back of her neck.
She had to admit it. This was exciting. The idea of being naked like this was a thrill. But, what if she had gotten herself into something that she couldn’t get out of?
Bree was in bad shape and she knew it. She might only have one chance.
Survive. Fight. Escape.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Two hands grabbed her ankles and pulled them out, forcing Bree to land flat on her back. A cold-steel knife blade was laid against her leg. Bree wasn’t sure what it was until she felt the sharp edge on the inside of her thigh.
“Don’t you dare move when I cut the tape off, or I will kill you.”
Bree whimpered. She couldn’t do anything else. Whimper and try not to wet the dirt floor. She was shivering so badly her teeth were chattering, again.
The knife cut the tape on her ankles then her wrists. Bree didn’t dare pull the bag off her head, and Tim or Paul, whoever it was, didn’t offer.
Wherever she was, it was pitch black, nearly perfect darkness. Bree knew there was someone in the basement with her. She could tell it was a man. She smelled the testosterone on him.
“Cover yourself, girl,” a voice said as a blanket was tossed her way.
Bree scrambled on her hands and knees to it, wrapping herself, grateful for some semblance of clothing and warmth.
A hand pulled the bag from her head. Bree blinked like mad, her eyes having trouble adjusting to what little light was available.
She was still shivering. More than shivering, her bare feet were tapping out a rhythm of fear on the dirty, filthy, cobweb and spider infested basement floor. Bree felt like she was vibrating.
The man, covered by a shadow, turned and walked back up the stairs. The door closed. The light was gone.
Bree was alone.
Bree slept. Bree dreamt. Bree was warm and happy for a few hours in her dreams but woke to find herself trapped in the same reality. The cellar. But not now sunlight was coming in the narrow, rectangular window above her head, too high for her to reach, too high for her to see out of. But she could see the light. She could almost feel the warmth of the sun.
She felt hope.
Bree heard the footsteps again over her head. A door squeaked and slammed. A minute later, she heard a car door open and close, the car’s engine started and the tires crunched over gravel just outside her window as someone drove away.
This wasn’t fun anymore. Bree had wanted this. Tim wanted this. Both for different reasons, but they both wanted it.
Now Bree was starting to wonder and to actually doubt herself. That was unusual.
Bree was alone. But this time it was a good, alone.
Survive. Fight. Escape
She hugged the wool blanket closer to her body, naked except for it, and stood, stretched, moved her muscles, like the fighter that she was. Bree could fight. Bree could also run and knew she might have to do both. She was ready for battle.
Now she needed that weapon of convenience for combat.
Still, Bree knew that first she had to do a better job of figuring out where she was.
She had to walk before she could run. Slowly, carefully, picking her way in the dark, Bree moved cautiously step by frightful step. Bumping into piles of junk. Books stacked up on the floor. Old toys tossed about. Picking them up one by one, trying to figure out if they could break someone’s skull or gouge an eye.
The sunlight was coming through the window full force now. It both distracted Bree from her search and gave her a chance to see her prison, her dungeon, her new reality.
She walked on tip toe, moving quickly, quietly, still wrapped in her blanket, still holding it tight to her body, as she got closer to the stairs, hoping against hope that the door might be open.
The door the man came through last night. The door the man with the blanket came through. Slowly she walked up the steps. One foot up. She waited. Heard nothing. The other foot up. One stair step higher. She waited. Heard nothing.
Nothing except the sound of her breathing.
Trembling.
Sweating.
Praying.
Whispering her promises to Jesus — first time for everything, right?
Breathing quietly. Hearing the stairs creak.
Reaching the door knob.
Grabbing.
Holding.
Twisting.
Hoping.
Nothing.
The door knob didn’t budge. It didn’t turn. The door was locked tight.
“Fuck, Fuck. Fuck!!!”
She prayed someone would hear.
But they didn’t.
There was no one.
Bree collapsed against the railing. She was more than scared. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs were collapsing. Urine dripped down the inside of her thighs. She might as well be dead. She was dead.
Taking one slow step after another, Bree went down the stairs. Ten steps in all.
The ten worst steps she had ever taken in her short, too short, soon-to-end, God I hope not, Lord why have you forsaken me life.
Back on the basement floor, Bree slumped, cried, screamed, hoping someone outside could hear. “How could this be happening to me? What do you want? Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”
Had this guy won? Had Bree finally bit off more than she could chew and spit out?
Finally with a peace that only a baby could understand, she fell asleep. Blessed relief. Blessed escape. Blessed dreams.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bree opened her eyes to find she was lying on a small cot. There were a pair of handcuffs on the ground beside her. She remembered what they had been used for. She remembered a man on top, slapping her, spanking her, fucking her — that was the only way to put it and she knew it wasn’t the first time.
The last thing she remembered was curling up like a baby, wrapped in the blanket on the floor. Now she was on the cot, not sure how she got there.
Bree also didn’t realize she’d been in her basement dungeon for a couple of days because a sheet had been thrown over the window that had been her only connection to the world.
The two-inch thick mattress she was laying on was soaked with her sweat. A metal bucket was in the corner with the word, ‘toilet,’ written on a piece of paper taped to it.
Bee was shivering. It was so damn cold and she was so damn scare
d.
She woke up consumed by the one, single thought that dominated her brain for a couple of days. Three simple words.
Survive. Fight. Escape.
Bree stood on the cot, gripping the damp, cement ledge of a window above her, the only window in her cell. That’s not how she was thinking of it yet.
One cot. One pee bucket. One leftover cereal bowl that appeared on the floor by her cot sometime last night.
She knew it was daytime now. Bree pushed the blanket aside and saw there was sun coming through the sheet over the window before she yanked it down.
Thanks to the daylight, for the first time Bree saw her new home was made of three sheets of plywood and one wall of cement. Shivering again, realizing again that she was naked, feeling her nudity, her vulnerability, her embarrassment, Bree covered her breasts with her arms and stood on her toes on the cot, hoping it wouldn’t break, trying to look out the window above her head.
She could see some ugly, little scrub bushes with daylight coming through the cracks. Leaves were blowing on the ground.
Red, dead leaves.
Bree shuddered. Had summer turned to autumn so quickly?
Everything was dying.
Bree might be close too. Bree could die any day.
She had to survive, fight and escape.
But even that would create a new problem.
What if she did get away? Was she going to be able to run away naked from wherever she was to only God knows where? Bree hadn’t a clue. Would she be in this basement for the rest of her life like that girl who got kidnapped, raped, gave birth and raised her baby in a backyard in California? Would she be raped and then have to keep the rapist’s child? Raising her little family in the basement? Is that all that was left of Bree’s life?
She screamed and this time not just in her head.
Bree screamed out loud, banging her fists on the plywood, kicking it, fighting refusing to give up, ready to run naked, ready to kill whoever has done this to her.
Footsteps.
Footsteps over her head.
Someone was home.
Bree fell to the ground. On her knees, she covered herself. No place to hide. The dirt and pee-soaked mud under her knees and legs so terribly cold and damp.
Footsteps.
Someone was getting closer.
Now.
Survive. Fight. Escape.
“Cinnamon! Cinnamon!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tim was upstairs getting ready to keep his promise to Bree. He was getting ready to kill her mother and stepfather.
He and Bree had spent time chatting about how to get rid of Steven, who could be a problem, since he was much bigger and looked much stronger than Tim.
“But who’s stronger than a Smith & Wesson,” Tim asked Paul. He had shared these plans with the only other person he could trust.
“Nobody is stronger than a Smith & Wesson.”
“Right Paul. And you’ve got a Smith & Wesson, don’t you?”
That’s one thing Tim loved about Paul. He was a cop and cops got all the guns they wanted.
One bullet right between the eyes would put that big motherfucker down, Tim thought.
That’s all it would take. But Tim didn’t want Steven to die that easy. He wanted Steven to suffer the way he had made Bree suffer.
And he was going to make sure Bree enjoyed it. They could enjoy it together.
Her mother too. She had to go. Bree would love that.
Bree would love him.
Tim knew what excited Bree. Tim knew what made her hot. What made her wet. She had sent him photos. They had been sexting together. She had shots of him too. No one but Paul had ever seen Tim the way Bree had seen him.
Bree was hot for him.
Tim was sure of it.
And Bree knew what was inside Tim. Bree knew what he wanted.
They wanted the same thing.
Tim had been planning this for days, just like she wanted.
Tim had been following her for days, just like she wanted.
And he had grabbed her just like she wanted.
Bree told him this is what she wanted. She wanted to fight. She wanted the blood, the bruises, the combat. She said it made her hot. Made her wet.
Of all the girls Tim had met online, Bree was the one that was perfect. She was ideal. She was so wicked.
The others had been online fakes. Tim had set up plans to meet them and either they had stood him up and he had to hunt them down, or they rejected him on sight.
He hunted them down, too.
A few laughed.
None of them survived. But Bree was different. Bree was so into what he wanted. She fought back just like they both wanted.
Bree stayed naked in the cold, dark basement, just like they both wanted.Tim watched her on the video monitor he had set up in the basement.
Everything was just the way she wanted it. But now Bree was screaming and crying. It was time to get her.
“Cinnamon,” Bree screamed. “Cinnamon.”
There it is, Tim thought. The safe word. She wants me. This one really wants me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bree woke up in a bed, not on the cot, in a bed. A nice, soft, comfortable warm bed. She was tied, bound, and gagged again, with the burlap bag over her head. She could tell someone had been between her legs.
But at least she was out of the basement prison.
Birds were singing outside the bedroom. Curtains on the windows made a flapping sound as the warm, early autumn breeze brought fresh, clean air into the room.
Bree laughed to herself as she heard a toilet flush. She heard footsteps on the wooden floor, followed by the smell of a man over her, close to her, then the bag being pulled from over her head, and then she felt tape being ripped from her mouth.
It hurt.
It hurt good.
It was a good pain.
It was pleasure.
Bree felt the hair on his hands and arms.
Bree felt the whiskers on his face.
Bree loved this.
She so preferred men to boys.
“Even their smell is different,” Bree told her friend Beth.
“Old man smell?”
“No, man smell. The aroma of a man,” Bree said. “A real man knows he doesn’t have so soak himself with cologne. His scent is what attracts a female. Not something he pours out of a bottle or sprays on himself.”
Bree stretched and wiggled her arms, legs, fingers and toes, after the ropes were cut from her ankles and wrists, loving the tingle as blood started flowing again, admiring the red marks left by the ropes when her blindfold was removed.
“I didn’t hurt you too much did I?’ she asked with a giggle, rolling over on her left side, naked as the day she was born, teasing and tapping his bandaged nose just enough to make Tim wince.
“It was just enough. I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Tim, every bit as naked as Bree, twisting his new love’s nipple tight. “You looked so hot, tied up like that, waiting for me on the cot, legs spread.”
“Oh, and it felt so good. Even better than I dreamed,” said Bree. “I didn’t break your nose did I?”
“Not much.”
“Not much? That’s like being not much pregnant. Is it broken or not?”
“It will heal.”
“Should I take that as a ‘yes’?”
“Yes.”
Bree felt so warm inside.
“Well, you dropped me on my head,” she said.
“I slipped. What can I tell you? Still hurt?”
“Not so much, but I can still feel the spanking you gave me last night,” Bree said.
Tim’s warmth inside was almost out of control. He felt like one of his favorite country songs, where the guy sings, “I’m not as good as I once was, but I can be as good once as I ever was.”
This was so much better than the internet. Bree was real. Bree was soft. Bree was his.
Tim hadn’t felt this good sinc
e Cheryl.
However, he still had to admit the age difference was also real.
As long as I can be as good once, it will be okay, he thought. And I was last night in the basement, and the night before, and the night before.
She is a screamer. Tim liked that too.
Tim opened his eyes and stopped pretending. Then he knew. No matter what he told Paul. No matter what he told himself, Tim knew.
But Tim also knew that Bree didn’t care, so why should he?
He just closed his eyes and pretended.
She did the same.
The fight to put Bree into the trunk of the car had been much more than Tim expected. Her idea of role play was much more real-life than what he was expecting. When Tim got on top of her on the cot in the basement, Bree really fought. The battle to put her in the trunk was just a warm up.
This bitch likes to fight, Tim thought running his fingers over the scratches on his head, face and neck. Bree’s fingernails had turned his back and shoulders into a relief map of the Great Rivers of the World. And, that was just from the last night in the basement.
And I love it, Tim thought so loud he almost said it.
Tim had taken Bree on the cot in the basement. Got on top of her, pulled the bag up enough to put his mouth on hers.
Bree bit his tongue, almost tore it off, punched and kicked, scratched and clawed.
Tim wrestled back, pushed her hands over her head with his right hand and slapped her across the face with his left.
Tim drew blood when he slapped her across the mouth with the back of his hand.
Both of them were sweating so much they stuck together.
Tim knew he was doing it was right. He was doing it the way Bree wanted it. It was the way he wanted it. Just like the night he had kidnapped her.
Fighting Bree on a sticky, sweltering August night that refused to give way to the autumn had left Tim drenched.
And I won, Tim thought and massaged the tent pole in his Levis.
That’s something none of those moron kids who watched us fight had ever been able to do.