“So you know nothing of the experiments.”
Experiments, what experiments? I stare at the floorboards. I shake my head, “no.”
“Good,” he says.
There is a moment filled with nothing. I can feel something unexpected coming. He wants me to feel this. He is forcing me to acknowledge it, the anticipation. I know there is something in him, something unusual.
“I know you are his child,” he says. “When I first saw you, I could see him.” He smiles at me. “We need you.”
That’s it. I am transported far away from myself. What the fuck? I shake my head, “what?” I utter.
“Ah, you thought it was a secret. I believe that,” he laughs. “Yes, I definitely believe that.”
I stare at him open-mouthed.
“We were encouraged to donate you know, Stephen, me and the others.”
I shake my head, slowly, slightly.
“Anyway, that doesn’t matter right now,” he says. “What matters is that you, Stephens’s daughter, are here with me.”
My head is spinning, my mind is out of control.
“You must be, what seventeen or eighteen now?”
“Seventeen,” I stammer on auto-pilot. “No eighteen.”
I can’t believe I forgot my own birthday.
“Good. That’s good. That’s a good age. You are very pretty, you know,” he says staring intently at me. “It will make it so much more… more fun.”
He laughs loudly and stands up. Make what so much more fun? I want to ask. What the Hell does he have planned for me? He walks over to the hoop and unchains me. He starts reeling me in towards him. I am a fish, and I am caught. He pulls me right on top of him. We stare at each other for a few moments.
“Did my men treat you properly?” he says
I think of Paul and say “yes.”
What else am I supposed to say, he doesn’t care either way anyway, that much is obvious.
Archie puts the candle into a holder, turns to the corner of the room and opens another door, a secret door. Something I hadn’t noticed until that moment. He pulls me inside a dingy, murky, damp smelling room. In the dim candlelight, I see that there is a prison cell in it. Instinctively I try to run. Archie laughs. Yanks the chain and drags me towards the cell. He pushes me inside and locks the door. No, no, no.
“Put your hands through the bars.”
I hesitate.
“Now,” he yells.
I jump. All the joy is sucked from me at the sound of his voice. He is much, much scarier than Mark. I feel an energy burning away within me and it has come from him, a deep dread, a deep fear takes over my emotions. I have no choice. I do what he tells me. He unlocks my hands. I stare up at him. His face is dark like a shadow. He throws the chain into the corner of the room, away from the cage. He stands breathing over me like a dragon. I step away slowly, all the way over to the other side of the cell, until my back is pressed up against the damp wall. He grins then steps over to the wall on his side and sits on a chair. I glance about the cell, there is a bed with a blanket. There is an empty bucket and some bottles of water. I shake my head as reality dawns.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I mutter to myself.
Archie laughs, then stops laughing abruptly. He stares at me. From here I can see half of his face bathed in orange candlelight, the other half is black, like the half-moon of night.
“Yes, you are very, very pretty,” he says in such a way that I take it as a threat. “You need to realise who you are, what you are.”
What am I? As I stare at his face, the words ‘they’re more than that, so much more’, echoes through my mind in terrifying hallucinations. My eyes flicker as the memory kindles. I look up at Archie. He watches me momentarily, grins, then gets up and leaves, shutting me away in almost complete darkness. The only light is a sliver of orange candlelight at the bottom of the door, which disappears as Archie leaves the office. I hear his boots stomping out of the office and into the other room. I am left in total darkness and trapped. I am hollow and empty. There is nothing left. I am one with the shadows. I collapse to my knees and break into tears. It is uncontrollable. I can’t think. I crawl towards the bed. I feel about for it in the darkness. I pull myself up and into it. I cry until I can cry no more.
I am awoken at some point by the door opening. I forget for a moment. I remember. I jump to the corner of the bed away from the bars. Archie is holding a candle and a bowl of food. His face looks evil. But the food smells good, really rich and flavoursome. My mouth starts to water, my stomach rumbles. He inserts the candle into a holder on the wall then puts the bowl through a flap at the bottom of the cage. I don’t go to grab it, despite how much I want to.
“You can eat it. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
I sit with my arms folded, not moving, I glare at Archie across the room. He laughs and sticks his hand through the bars and grabs the spoon and eats some food from the bowl.
“See no poison. I want you alive.”
He drops the spoon back in. Why? What is the purpose? I would never ask. His presence surrounds me in a dark cloud. I fear him from my very core. I have to do as he tells me. I am almost compelled to. I stand up and slowly walk over to the bowl. I grab it then rush back to the other side of the cell, away from him. I sit on the bed and eat the noodles. He just sits there in complete silence, and watches me, like I am some kind of freak show exhibit. My skin crawls. I eat as fast as I can. All I want is for him to go away and leave me alone.
“Good,” he says. “Now push the bowl back through.”
I do as he says slowly, keeping my eyes on him. I race to the far end of the bed as soon as I set the bowl back down. We sit in silence for a few minutes watching each other. My heart is racing, I am heating up. He suddenly pushes himself up, picks up the bowl and leaves, taking the candle with him. I am plunged into darkness once more. I lay on the bed, under the covers and think. What am I going to do? I try and remember the journey I took to get here. I imagine I am a bird surveying the land. It is no use, Mark and Paul took me round in circles. They knew what they were doing. I close my eyes. I listen to my surroundings instead. I try and understand the place from the sounds. I can hear the muffled voices of people outside. It is all no use. I am too wound up.
twenty-nine
The office door opens. Shit. I have no idea how long I’ve been here for now. Hours, days? Who knows? I jump up out of the bed and stand against the wall. Archie laughs and puts two candles up on the wall. He shuts the office door. We stare at each other in silence. What is he doing? He laughs menacingly. My skin begins to crawl. Oh no. He steps towards the cage door and unlocks it. I can’t move backwards any more. He steps into the cage. I am exploding within. This is my chance. I bolt for the cage door. He grabs me. I scream and fight him, trying to get out of his grasp. He laughs and pushes me onto the bed. I lay there glaring at him as he locks the cell up. We are caged in together. My heart, I can’t take it. What is he doing? I shimmy across the bed to the corner of the room. I clutch my knees up to my chest. I am panicking. I am hyperventilating. This is not good. This is not good at all. I bite my tongue and try not to implode. He sits down on the end of the bed. He turns his head towards me. I can only see him in silhouette. I stare at the black shadow before me. What is he going to do? I can hear him breathing. I can hear him thinking. I want to say something. I want to grab the key out of his pocket. He turns his head. I can see him in profile now. He leans forward and rests his arms on his knees. There is a strange moment. I begin shaking with fear, swaying forwards and backwards. What is he doing? He suddenly lunges towards me. I can’t recoil any further. He grabs my ankle and pulls me down flat on the bed. He jumps on top of me. He is heavy, very heavy. He grabs both my arms and holds them above my head and presses them down into the bed with one of his hands. He looks down into my face. He kisses my cheek. I try to move my head out of the way, it’s useless. He laughs. I am trying to writhe and struggle. I can’t even move. He laughs more an
d grabs my face and holds it still and kisses me on the lips. I start crying and screaming. He slaps me around the face. I shut up. He runs his hand down me and undoes my jeans, then rips them down. I start to kick my legs until he lays back on me. He rips my knickers off. He undoes his trousers and then forces my legs open. I can’t move.
“No, no, no,” I say weakly, over and over.
I cry even more. He is breathing heavily all over me, I can smell his breath and the heat and the moisture of it too. He kisses me and watches me squirm, then laughs. My whole body seems to go numb, like a wave is passing over me, like it is preparing me for what is about to happen. Then he pushes himself into me. My mind turns off. I don’t know anything. I can’t move. I can’t say a thing. Why is this happening? When he finishes, he just stands up, pulls up his trousers, and leaves. I am plunged into darkness once more. I lay there, frozen. I am dazed, unsure of what has just occurred. I roll over in the bed and cover myself up. I cry myself to sleep.
thirty
“We’re coming for you Izzy, stay strong,” my brother tells me deep in the darkness of my cell.
He appears in fits and starts now. I am finding that frequency which connects us. I can maintain it for longer and longer. I meditate, and in that deep state, I find him.
“Not much longer,” he tells me. “We’re coming, Stephen says don’t worry, we’re coming. I promise. I love you.”
And I believe it. I live for his words of comfort. I am reassured. What else am I supposed to do? How else am I supposed to feel? What else am I supposed to believe? I am trapped and all alone in here. I have to believe that we are connected and that I will escape soon. I need to escape. I need that belief. I have to believe that they are coming for me. I have to believe I will be saved. I will go mad if I lose that faith. And as the days drag on, my hope is growing stronger. In my meditative state, I connect to the outside, I connect with my brother. In a sense, I am already free. It is my saving grace, my reason to go on.
In the darkness, I stare at space. In it I see shapes, geometrical shapes bursting out of the black. They come to me as intensely bright fractal patterns. I am creating my own universe in here. This is my entertainment. Sometimes I can hear a faint buzzing sound which grows louder and louder. Sometimes it is so penetrating it is all I can sense. I realise that I can feel my cells vibrating. I can feel the molecules all around me singing their song. I can feel my cells dying and being regenerated. At times, I become overly aware of my own breathing. The time between breaths seems to be stretching out and extending. I know it is. I feel my movements as if time has stopped just for me. There is a whole other world in the dark. I am learning this. I am building on what Olly has shown me. There is a way to manipulate the world around me using nothing more than the connection to the minuscule. I know it, but I cannot grasp it. I am still out of reach. I will keep on trying.
I hear Archie walk into his office. I tense. My world collapses into his. He lights a candle. The doorway has a slither of gold beneath it now. My throat freezes up. I can’t breathe. Is it that time already? He opens the cell door and stands there staring at me in the candlelight. I lift my hands to protect my eyes from its glare, I squint. He puts new candles into my candlestick holders on the wall outside my cell and lights them. The room turns orange. He grins demonically. I shudder. Not yet, please not yet. He places my bowl of food on the floor and slides it into the cage. I stare at it for a moment. I scramble towards it, grab it and sit back against the wall. He stands there, as usual, and watches me eat. I am wishing him dead. He knows it. It is the unspoken language we communicate in. A language he understands. He… of all people understands me better than anyone else. He smiles infuriatingly. I slide the bowl back under the bars. I rush back and sit on the edge of the bed.
I am now in countdown mode. He usually waits an hour or so before returning. This is the part of the day I hate the most, between eating and being raped. I pick up a book off my bookshelf. This is a privilege. Books. Along with all the other bits he’s given me, like face wipes and toothpaste. He’s told me as much. Aren’t I lucky? I flick through the pages. I can never concentrate on the words while he sits on the other side of the door, waiting for the exact right moment to pounce on me. The exact moment when I forget about him. He always knows. And so the time ticks down, both of us on either side of the door waiting.
He re-enters as I begin reading. I hate him. He locks himself into the cell with me and smiles like he actually cares. I don’t put up a fight any more. What’s the point? When I used to fight him, I would end up with bruises and aches and pains and cuts. Being raped is just part and parcel of my life in this cesspit. Being abused, time after time after time is something that I have to endure. I never in my whole life thought that rape would be a thing that would happen to me, but what else am I supposed to do? How else am I supposed to feel? I have no choice in the matter, if I don’t try to come to terms with it, I will go mad. So I have chosen to accept this new reality, at least for the time being. Yet, even as I do, my hatred for him grows.
He stands there and undoes his belt. This is all part of the ritual. I sit on the edge of the bed numb and hollow and wait for him to lay his hands on me, and undress me, and lay on me, and force himself inside me. In my head I disappear, another me takes over, another me has all the repressed rage, waiting for that moment which signifies the end. That awful expression of pleasure. A sound which, though I despise, I look forward to. All I want is for him to leave as quickly as possible.
He does his belt back up. I am furious staring at the floorboards. I grind my teeth and clench my fists. I try to pretend like he isn’t here.
“How are you?” he asks sarcastically.
How do you think? “Fine,” I mutter.
“Is there anything you need?”
To kill you, to get out of here, “no, nothing.”
“OK, then sweet Isabel. Until tomorrow.”
He knows that infuriates me. He watches me swallow the anger. He bends down and kisses me on the cheek, laughs, and leaves. As soon as the office door closes, I furiously rub my face clean of his kiss. I lay down and stare up at the ceiling in the candlelight. I hate him, but I hate wasting the light I am given even more. I force him out of my mind and pick up the book and read until the candles die. I roll over and sleep.
thirty-one
Spring is over the horizon. I know because I can feel the molecules in me growing excited as the wintry temperatures wane. I have been here for so long now. All alone. Everything has become a blur. I am a blur in the darkness, maybe I am insane. I really think I may be losing my mind. I am sat on my bed reading my book. The key is put into the door of the cell room, the key turns. I slam the book closed. Oh no. He’s coming back. Oh God. Not twice in one day I’m not used to that. I don’t think I can stand being raped twice in one day. I jump up and onto my feet. I step backwards until I am against the wall, I am completely rigid. The door opens. Please, please go away. He steps into the room. I expel all the air in my lungs. I laugh and cry simultaneously. It’s not Archie, it’s Paul. He smiles at me. I cry. What is going on? I’ve never been more ecstatic to see another human being in my whole life before. Why is he here? What is going on? I step forwards, slowly, gingerly. I take hold of the bars and rest my face between them. We stare at each other. I am mesmerised by him. He sighs and looks down at the floor.
“He’ll stop when you’re pregnant,” he says eventually, glancing back at me, glancing into me.
I blink and flinch as if I have touched something very hot. I stare into Pauls' eyes. The moment stretches out between us, bleak and level. I let go of the bars and step backwards. One little step. I have been hit. I feel sick. I obviously know that I will fall pregnant eventually, but having someone actually say the words out loud makes this whole God-forsaken experience all that more real. He sighs loudly.
“You’ll be fine. There are doctors here. Don’t worry, we know what to do.”
Has he come here to reassure me?
To try and make me feel better? It’s not working. My knees buckle and I fall back onto the bed and stare at the floor.
“Why me?” I mutter out loud, “why me? Why me? Why me?” I repeat shaking my head.
“You really have no idea,” he says.
I glance up and back at him.
“About what?”
His lips move slightly, but nothing comes out. He wants to say something. I can hear the words in him, they are fighting to escape. He stops himself, the moment passes. I am suddenly overwhelmed by a fluidity of thought, a motherly empathy. There is fear in him. He is being coerced. He is just as much a prisoner as I am. He stands up and unlocks the cell. He sits beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder. I deflate. He pulls me closer. I crumple into him and sob. For the first time in I don’t know how long I feel like a real human being, a woman, a real woman in his strong arms.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
thirty-two
There is shouting and yelling. I sit up. Something’s happening? Something big. I put my ear against the wall. A gun goes off. I am lifted by the sound. I am exhilarated. Rain begins to fall. It grows heavier and heavier. It must have morphed into hail. The tin roof is like a steel drum. I freeze. Olly. I feel the blood draining from me. Even in the darkness I know I am whiter than ever. Olly, he is close. He is coming for me, he is learning. He is saving me. I just know it. But how is he going to get me out of here? How? A shiver cascades over me. My skin begins to burn. I can see in the dark. The hail becomes so loud that there is almost no moments between the drumming on the roof. Instinctively I jump up and slip on my shoes. I hear shouting again, it is closer. I run to the bars and grab hold of them. What’s happening? Someone is in the farmhouse. I feel the floorboards move beneath my feet as the person runs. A message is being transmitted up through the grain of the wood and into me. I know what they know. I hear the door to the office open. I stare at the door.
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