I start screaming as loud as I can, choking on the force of it.
Night rears his arm back and slaps me. Hard. So hard everything, including me, goes silent.
He grabs my shoulders and shakes me. Like someone trying to get someone's attention. His eyes are fiery but huge, pleading.
I've learned to read him, his eyes and gestures a language of their own. He's trying to get me to just calm down and look at him.
I grab my cheek, flaming hot and pulsing from the slap and begin to wail. He's never hit me before. It's one of the reasons I guess I trusted him or believed him. I know, it's ridiculous considering all he has done, but the cuts, the bruises from the bindings, those were all unintended consequences, or so I thought. But this slap, I've never been hit like that in my entire life. And it works, to an extent, to get me out of the complete spiral I was being sucked into.
He shakes me again, less forcefully, and I open my eyes, still holding my cheek.
He shakes his head. Over and over again. No.
No what? You're not trying to kill me? You didn't just try to poison me? No—don't you scream again or I will hurt you?
But I don't ask. I don't want answers. I don't want to talk, I just want to keep believing he's poisoning me.
He stays on top of me. Both of us still panting from the wrestling and screaming. And he does so until the poison wears off, my vision clears, my breathing slows.
When he's confident that I won't run or go apeshit again, he slowly slides off of me. Night keeps his eyes on me the entire time as he backs away and plops himself on his seat. He turns it to face the corner, like a punished child, bows his head and pulls off his mask. With a great sigh, he runs his hands through his wavy light brown locks and then buries his hands in his face.
This is it. I'll finally see the face of the person I have been living with and fucking for months. The sadist who broke into my home, spied on me, stole my grandma's necklace, raped me over and over. The person who I wait for every day and miss when he doesn't visit. The person I fantasized about, not understanding the full repercussions of wanting a man like him. I'll see the face that houses those eyes, beautiful and evil.
I sit up, waiting, resisting the temptation to peek and perhaps cause him to rebel and mask himself again.
But just as I am convinced he will show me that we are something more than just a prisoner and a sick, twisted psycho, he bows his head down and pulls the mask over his face again.
I snarl as my expectations sink.
If he had just given me that, reached out to me a bit, I could believe that this morning was a mistake. A panic attack, food poisoning. But he has made it clear with that small gesture that all I am is his fuckhole.
He stands up, straightens out the chair, and heads to the bathroom to inspect the damage to the door. That's just a few seconds. On his way out, he grabs the used plates and utensils.
Night kicks the door open with his foot, and before leaving, he turns and give me one final look. I can't read it. I'm conversational in his language, but not fluent. Maybe I could be if he’d let me see more than his lips and eyes. But I can feel it’s a new look. One laced with disappointment, perhaps regret. Though those aren't words in his vernacular, so I must be projecting.
When he leaves, I throw myself back on the bed. Just like him, I run my hands over my face and through my hair trying to understand how a morning that had started out so quiet, had dissolved into a hurricane of chaos. I'm losing my mind, I think. And he won't help me keep it. This fucking newspaper, designed to taunt me, to remind me no one cares, is not enough.
I don't care how many times he shakes his head. I know what happened. And that sickness I felt after I ate his food was real.
So I do what a person in my position, someone who is weak and left with nothing but an empty room, the clothes on her back and her body does in protest. I guess I should be grateful to him, he's trained me to endure a physical agony I never imagined. If he wants me dead so be it, but it won't be quick. If he doesn't, well then he's going to have to listen to my fucking demands. If anyone is going to kill me, it'll be me.
Today marks day one of my hunger strike.
I think Sam was angry at me at first. He didn't come back for two days. Punishment I suppose. No food or fresh water. I was annoyed because a hunger strike only works if your captor tries to actually feed you. The hunger was sharp, but nothing like what I experienced down in that basement. On day three, he left breakfast for me. When he came back in the evening and it was untouched, he petulantly grabbed the tray and stormed out, leaving me alone.
I still feel sick. Whatever he put in my food, it hasn't worn off. Usually, I'm fast asleep when he brings my food in, but this morning, I've woken up feeling ill and am dry heaving over the makeshift toilet as he comes in.
I swing the door closed for privacy, but once he sets down the tray, he pushes the door open. He always has to counter any act of independence. I pretend I'm just washing up. I don't look at him. I don't say anything. I simply sit on my bed and stare at the sun through the skylight.
Night gets my attention when he pulls out a pad and paper. My heart almost screams with joy. I'm supposed to be mad at him or at the very least indifferent. So I pretend to be unimpressed by the first signs of possible non-sadistic interaction.
He quickly scribbles something on a pad and holds it up.
I didn't poison you.
He had to have.
I scoff. “Well, I don't believe you.”
He huffs and scribbles again.
You're no good to me sick.
How romantic. “Yeah, well maybe you wanted me dead, but I wizened up and threw up the crap you gave me. And I won't eat your food again. I'd rather starve to death.”
You're losing your grip on reality.
When I read that “concerned” note, I start to laugh. At first it's an ironic giggle, but the more I think about the hypocrisy in that statement, I start to laugh hysterically. I'm not trying to piss him off or even mock him, but is he really claiming I'm the one who doesn't operate in reality?
He puffs his chest and stands up, circling away from me in frustration. I try to stop laughing. I am terrified, genuinely. But my body or mind has gone rogue and the laughter won't stop.
“You—” I laugh again. “Put me here—I haven't had a two-sided conversation in months. Or read a book. Or watched TV. One minute you won't speak, the next you're asking me how my pussy feels. If I am losing my mind, it's all your fault!” Like that, the switch flips from uncontrollable laughter to manic rage.
In one quick motion, he turns, grabs a piece of toast from the tray and holds me by the neck, smashing the food against my mouth.
“Eat!” he orders through gritted teeth.
I claw at his arm. My mouth hurts from the impact, and the little buttery crumbs that do reach my tongue are so tempting, but I purse my lips in defiance.
He pulls his hand away and I spit out the bits of bread lodged in my mouth.
“You see?!” I scream. “I'm supposed to trust you? I'm supposed to believe you don't want to kill me when you've been killing me little by little every single day? You can beat me, you can strip me. Put me out in the woods. But I won't eat!” I screech at the top of my lungs.
There's no logic in my protest. This strike started out to keep me alive, but he might kill me right now. No. This is about something else. I'm still not sure what. It's not survival, that's for sure.
He picks up the tray and flings it across the room, juice, toast and hardboiled eggs exploding every which way.
“You want to play this fucking game?” he points a finger at me. “You have no idea how bad things can get. I'm gonna give you one day to reconsider. Because if you don't, you will know what it really feels like for me to want to kill you.”
He marches out of the cabin, slamming the door so hard I swear he's dislodged the frame.
I let out a desperate scream. I don't know what I'm doing or why. I don't know if t
his man cares that I live or die. And it hurts more than anything to think he might actually care more than my own mother. The man who mocks me with articles reminding me that I am one of the forgotten. The man who keeps me locked in a room. I'm supposed to believe he wouldn't dare poison me?
The mess he left torments me. Not in the way that I want to pick through the debris to eat it, but in that it roils my stomach. I run to the bathroom and vomit bile.
“Nononono…” I whisper to myself with a sudden realization, the thought so traumatic, that perhaps I've deluded myself into thinking of grand poisoning conspiracies.
In nursing school, we had to take a psychology class. I remember learning that sometimes people disassociate to protect themselves from their reality. As I crawl into bed, that thought sits on the surface. I'm unwilling to fully uncloak it and examine why I would make myself believe I was poisoned, and exactly what aspect of my reality am I trying to mask.
I don't want to hit her or torture her. We had a good thing going for a while. A routine. We gave each other what the other needed. She was complaint and it seemed accepting of the circumstances. Then one minute, I'm watching her masturbate to thoughts of me, the next she's in a frenzy claiming I've poisoned her.
She had asked me for weeks for ways to stimulate her mind. Maybe I fucked up and was too hard on her. But now, if I give her something, it'll make her think acting up reaps benefits. No. Four months and I'll have to go back to square one. No contact. No food. No water. Until she breaks again. Hopefully this time, it'll be even harder on her and she'll realize she needs me. That she's happier when she just accepts that.
But I still don't get it. Yes, she was acting a little odd, but not much more so than what I see average people doing alone. Average people talk to themselves, they cry alone, they do all kinds of weird things when no one's looking. Her demise came so abruptly.
I keep rethinking my strategy. What if starving and isolation completely break her and I'm left with just a shell? No, I want her, the parts of her that fit into me. Maybe, in trying to kill the parts of her that get in the way, all of her is dying.
It's been two days since I tried to force feed her, and in my desperation to communicate, I even brought a notepad. I felt like a little bitch scribbling that shit to her. Like I have to explain myself. But she's just stuck in her head.
I haven't gone back. Not to watch her, not to feed her. I needed time to carefully think of how I can steer her back onto the right path. But it was two days of agony, not touching her, smelling her, tasting her. Not even getting a peek at her silky skin and long, wavy hair. She thinks she's the only one who wants company. That disciplining her isn't an exercise in discipline for myself. But all I ever fucking wanted was to be a part of their lives. A part of someone's life. Indispensable. Why is she suddenly fighting what seemed inevitable?
I trudge over to the cabin, first canvassing it. There's a trail of ants leading up to the wall where I threw the food. They are crawling in and out of the slats, collecting little crumbs. I take my boot and scrape it against the colony. I enjoy destroying their little collective. I'll have to clean the cabin sooner or later, it'll start to stink and I like to take care of the things I build.
I make my way to one of the peepholes facing the main room. She's not in there. So I go to one facing the bathroom. There she is, looking pale and weak, hunched over the waste hole like she's gonna vomit. She heaves, but there's nothing left. I can't tell what came first now. Maybe she is really sick and it's giving her a real reason to believe I've poisoned her.
She staggers to her feet, her eyes red. From gagging? Crying? I don't know. She pulls her hair out of her face and goes back to the main room. I follow her trail to another peephole.
God, she's a fucking mess, and yet I still savor being this close to her. She sits on the edge of her bed, burying her head in her hands and shaking no. A breeze hits me and a foul odor wafts over. The eggs. She's been sleeping with that stench. I don't want to subject her to it, but she's not given me much of a choice.
She takes a deep breath and sits upright, slapping her palms on top of her knees. A new look of determination is in her eyes. She stands up and walks over to the corner where my chair is. I can't see it from this angle, but she reappears in my line of vision when she brings the chair close.
“What the fuck?” I mouth to myself as she stands behind it and mutters some words to up above. But I don't have much time to make sense of that when she plunges herself down onto the edge of the chair, landing on it with her stomach.
“What the hell?” I ask, my feet twitching, ready to run in there and stop her feeble attempt at suicide.
She does it again. I can tell there's not enough force behind it to do anything other than bruise. She has no idea the strength it takes to hurt oneself.
For a nurse, she's sure displaying an incredible lack of understanding of how the body works. The level of trauma she'd have to inflict to kill herse—I stagger back away from the peephole when it all clicks. Vesper's not trying to kill herself.
Sitting in my cabin, alone. Hungry. Tearful. Amongst the stench of old eggs and sticky juice, I watch the ants assemble. They invade my home, but it's just an illusion of a home. A home is a place where you can come and go as you please. Where you can cook a meal, or entertain yourself with books and invite guests. No, this is a prison designed to look like a home. These ants make it look so easy to leave as they form a continuous black trail from one slat in the wall to another.
Not having seen Night or having bathed or eaten for days, things become clearer, like some form of meditation. All I've had is the water from my bathroom and yet the nausea and dizziness come back every morning.
If he wanted to kill me, the man who mercilessly chased me through a forest, who fucked me at knife point—oh he would have found a much more fulfilling way to off me than with poison. Oh, he's poisoned me alright. Just not with chemicals, but with something far more insidious.
It's taken me days to chew on that reality, taste its bitter flavor on my lips. In the framework of whatever this is, killing me is the sensible conclusion. Being the father to my child is unfathomable. But this world I'm in: where my mother and the so-called sane world has already given up on me, and the man who stole me looked shaken up by my breakdown—a man whose presence I miss after two days of total solitude. Nothing is the way it's supposed to be.
But I am still Vesper Rivers. Underneath the yearning for the physical response to the stranger's touch and the company of his silent shadow, I still understand this is not the way I am going to bring a child into this world. He can have me. I can be his slave. His lover. There is something in me that grows in his shadow, like moss. But not a child. A child cannot know a father who hides behinds a mask with no words. Who relishes suffering and violation. And I can't accept that the fight is over. Because if we come together to create a human being—something from nothing— then we are forever united. He would have a part in my greatest creation.
So as I watch the ants, all bearing the weight of crumbs so many times heavier than their own bodies, I understand I have a weight of my own to bear. A load so much greater than I ever thought I could manage. I don't want this to be a slow death. I want it out now. Then, at least, we can go back to the way things were before that morning when I first felt ill, where it was just a simple disaster and not this complicated catastrophe a child would bring.
I come slowly to my feet, feeling heavy from the lack of nutrition and the weight of the impending mission. I've thought of ways to do it. He never leaves behind utensils made out of anything other than flimsy plastic. So I decide on the chair. I knew someone whose father saved his own life using a chair. He was home alone choking, and he flung himself down onto the edge with enough force to send the piece of steak flying out of his windpipe. If he can do that, I can do this. If that doesn't work, then I'll find something else. I will find a way.
I pull Night's chair from the corner of my room. The last time I touch
ed it was when I sat on it, my legs splayed open, and came to thoughts of him. It was gratifying, that moment I climaxed screaming his name shamelessly. But as the high settled, the tide of shame washed in. When I felt sick and Night walked in, old Vesper burst out of her holding place, demanding to rebel, to not let this monster swoop in and pretend to be her savior.
Maybe it'll be easier to just let her die. I can't keep fighting two wars at the same time: one with myself, the other with him. And I can't get rid of him.
I thrust myself over the chair, it hurts, but no more than walking into a piece of furniture. I can't bring myself to push past that limit, where I can inflict physical trauma. That must be a sign I am still sane. But I have to do this. I don't want this growth inside of me. I don't want that growth to become a person with a soul that will never know what it's like to have the sun kiss its face.
I thrust myself on the chair again, it's harder, but nothing more than a mediocre punch to the stomach.
I take a deep breath and collect myself.
You have to kill it. You have to.
I muster up the strength to give it another go, but the footsteps start. Hard and fast. Just like the night he came in sweaty, dirty, and angry and fucked me in the ass. My stomach burns at the memory and terror. I position the chair in front of me as some pointless barrier as he unlatches the door. He flings it open and his wild eyes jump around, the mask scrunches at the smell I have become used to.
He points at the chair.
I shake my head, stalling for an explanation as to what I am doing.
He walks up to the chair, yanks it away from me and holds it up between us, slamming it down with such force a leg cracks.
He wants me to explain the chair. Of course he's been watching me. Of course. But I can't find the words. I always thought they would be words said to Carter with joy. This is a horror.
Take Me With You Page 16