by Lola StVil
He would lean through the bars and poke at me with his fingers. Sometimes, he would heat up a poker in the fire and poke that through the bars. He’d laugh as I tried to avoid it. I never could. Eventually, he’d get me with it, and I’d scream with the pain, and he’d laugh and laugh.
He’d poke knives through the bars too, slicing at me whenever I fell asleep. Sometimes, he’d sit in front of my cage and fire small hard balls at me. I was a mess of cuts, bruises, and burns. They’d become infected, and I’d feel myself getting weaker.
I could feel my skin burning, the agony pulsing through my body. I’d become delirious, calling out in pain and misery while he laughed at me. When I was sure I would die, he would open the cage door and force me to drink a healing potion.
And then it would start over again.
“It took me a while to work out what was happening, but eventually, I did. At first, I thought I was just a plaything to him. Someone to torture and inflict pain on. But each time he fed me the healing potion, I felt weaker when I recovered.
I figured out that he was feeding on my misery and pain. I’d learned enough about him to know his style. He enjoyed toying with me. Hurting me. He enjoyed my screams of pain and my begging for mercy.
I clung to the hope that somehow, Lucas would know something wasn’t right. I knew he wouldn’t rest until he found whoever was responsible for taking me. I hoped he would know from our Rah that I was alive.
But I was so weak that I don’t think he would have sensed it. He would have assumed I was dead. But I had to cling to the tiny spark of hope I had. I had to remind myself that another world existed outside of that cage. A world where I was loved. A world where people cared about me. My team, my family.
That tiny hope got me through the worst of it. It kept me going when I wanted to just beg my captor to kill me and put me out of my misery. It kept me fighting on when I felt so sick I thought I would die and was in so much pain I almost wished I would.
It got so bad that at times I really thought I would die, and I was crushed when I was wrong and I survived another day.
After a couple of months, I had almost gotten used to the torment. I endured it, and I no longer cried out. It had become a battle of wills. The bastard would try to think up new ways to hurt me, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing how much pain I was in. Although he sensed it.
Whatever he did to me, I just stared straight ahead and willed myself to be quiet. It was probably a mistake. It angered him. But however small, it felt like victory.
Retaining what little dignity I had left was all I had. But he broke me down again. He stopped trying to physically hurt me, and started mentally hurting me instead. He got inside of my head and he showed me horrible visions.
“Visions of him torturing Lucas, all of you guys dead and bleeding. Visions of Lucas, his head at an impossible angle, his neck snapped. I blocked them out. I knew they weren’t real. They were so vivid, almost like when you watch TV with the color contrast just off. After weeks of the torment, it was getting harder to block him out. The weaker I got, the stronger he did.
He had another ace up his sleeve though. One I didn’t see coming. One night, he went to bed, and as he passed by the cage, spitting on me as he passed, the key fell from his pocket. I barely dared to move even an inch, afraid he would notice.
But he didn’t. He disappeared up the stairs. I managed to reach the key and I unlocked my cage. I was free. I ran to the door and pulled it open. Lucas was there on the other side.
I said his name and he just looked right through me as though he didn’t know me. He had a girl with him. Someone I didn’t know. He kissed her passionately, all the while looking at me.
I didn’t know what to do. I just knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t think about my broken heart too. I went to run past them, and Lucas stuck his arm out and blocked my path.
I blinked and I was back in the cage, the man sitting before me laughing. The sobs wracked my body as I howled and screamed in pain and frustration. He had made me see it. I think in that moment I broke a little inside.
After that, I begged him to kill me. He would reach through the bars and gently stroke my face as I sobbed. It was worse than the abuse. It was a gentle touch. The touch of a lover. It disgusted me, but at the same time, I craved it.
It comforted me. I would sob for hours and he would sit whispering to me, shushing me, stroking my face. And all the while, I could hear the delight in his voice. But I couldn’t stop myself.
Because he hadn’t been hurting me physically, it had been a while since I had needed the healing potion, and physically, I was starting to feel stronger. I would spend hours when he was out doing pull-ups on the cage bars, telling myself that one day, I would become strong enough to overpower him.
He must have come home earlier than I expected one day, because the next time I tried to do my pull-ups, the bars were greased and I fell to the floor. My leg landed awkwardly underneath me and I heard a crack. I felt a pain like I’d never felt before. When I looked down, I could see the bone poking out of my shin. The wound wasn’t bleeding much, which only made it worse as I could make out all of the details. I could see the skin hanging off the sides of the puncture wound in shreds.
And then I heard him laughing. I forced my eyes to focus and there he was, watching me, laughing at me. That was the last time I craved his affection.
He sat outside of my cage as I begged him to fix my leg. He kept reaching in and touching the exposed bone. Every time he did it, it was like having a thousand knives poked into my flesh at once. My whole body was a nerve ending that was being crushed.
When he stuck the hot poker on the bone, I passed out. I awoke to find him forcing the healing potion down me again.
That was the day I knew I was never getting out of there. I no longer fought him for my dignity. I’d scream and curse and beg him to just leave me alone. The more I begged, the more he hurt me. It was a vicious circle, but I couldn’t stop.
The night before I finally escaped him, he was gone. I heard him coming back, but when I looked, it wasn’t him. It was someone smaller. Feminine. She too wore a hood that covered her face.
She told me to hang tight. She said she was going to get me out. But then he came back, and just like that, she was gone.
At first, I wondered if she was another vision sent to play with me, but he didn’t act differently. He didn’t watch me intently for my reaction. And somehow, she was different from the other visions.
When I thought back to the visions he’d given me, something was always slightly off about them. The more I thought back to the vision of Lucas, the more I knew this was different.
In the visions, he got little details wrong. At first Lucas’s eyes were the wrong color. And he was kissing some other girl. I know he wouldn’t do that to me. But the girl with the whispered message had seemed real. And ferocious.
I had hope again. She was going to come back and get me out. She’d said so. I just had to wait.
I think he sensed the change in me. The excitement in me. He didn’t like it. He opened the cage door and actually came in. That was new. Normally, he sat outside the cage to torment me, and he only came in when it was time to pour the healing potion down my throat.
He started out by punching me in the face. Not hard enough for me to lose consciousness, but hard enough for my lips to explode in a bloody gush over my face. He rained blows down on me. On my face, my ribs, my stomach. I was battered and bleeding.
He was showing no signs of slowing down. My pain and fear seemed to be working him into a frenzy. It was as though my own excitement was catching.
Just when I was sure he was going to go too far and kill me, suddenly, he stopped. I thought it was over, but what I saw when I dragged myself from my stomach onto my knees turned my blood cold.
He stood over me breathing heavily.
“You will always be my candy,” he yelled angrily.
That was the la
st thing I heard before he used his giant foot to stomp on my face. Everything went black.
Nikki’s voice breaks and she stops talking. I let out a disgusted sigh I have been holding for who knows how long.
How could he do that to her? How could he put her through so much?
I realize I am angry. I am angry for the girl before me who has endured the worst things a man can force upon a woman. I’m not just angry. I’m heartbroken for her. And I admire her so much.
We knew she’d been through something bad, but I had no idea it was this bad. And the fact that she can sit before me and tell this story and be so withdrawn astounds me.
He didn’t break her mind or her spirit. He might have beaten her physically, but she beat him in more ways than he could ever beat her. She escaped his clutches, and she sits before me with her sanity intact. That’s real strength.
Nikki sits on her bed, her skin pale. She’s shaking so badly she can’t form any more words.
It seems that none of us know quite what to say or do. Nikki stares ahead of her, still trapped in her nightmare.
I want to say something, but I don’t know what.
Parker breaks the silence.
“Nikki? Honey? Come back to us. You’re safe now.”
Nikki blinks a couple of times and nods. She manages a weak smile as she looks around at us all. I can almost taste her relief when she sees the truth of Parker’s words.
Parker breaks the spell for Lucas as well. He’s almost as white as Nikki, and I notice as he stands up that he too is shaking. I think his is more rage.
He sits down beside Nikki on her bed and pulls her into his arms. She melts against him, putting her arms around him and holding him tightly. Her face is buried in his chest as she speaks again, but I hear her as loud and clear as if she whispered it in my ear.
“I love you, Lucas,” she says.
I see his arms tighten around her.
He glances over to me and our eyes meet. I can’t read his expression, but I don’t need to. He is seething. He knows something he is not telling us.
In that moment, I want to fight for Nikki. I want to find whoever did those awful things to her and rip his heart right out and hand it to her. I want to make him pay for hurting her in so many ways.
I know if it comes to it, and I get the chance, that’s exactly what I’ll do.
I know something else as well. I can’t fight her for Lucas. How can I even think about taking away the one thing she has left to cling to? The one good thing she has in her life. The thing that kept her going through all of that.
I can’t. It’s that simple.
And just like that, the ground beneath me is gone.
I glance around at the rest of the team. No one meets my eye. They all saw what I saw. Nikki is vulnerable and she needs Lucas. I want him. I want him so badly it’s like a physical ache, but I’m not sure I need him. I’m not sure I could ever be so dependent on someone that I need them in the way that Nikki needs Lucas.
If what had happened to her had happened to me, I would be raging. I would be planning my revenge step-by-step, but Nikki is different. She needs to be held. Needs to be loved. Needs to be told everything is going to be okay. It’s like the reassurance is a protective shield.
Lucas is doing all those things for her. He holds her close, murmuring to her that she’s safe now and everything is okay. I can see the look on his face. It’s a curious mixture of anger and tenderness.
I concentrate on the cold hard plastic of the chair I sit on as it presses into the backs of my thighs. I press my legs down, making it hurt. It gives me something to think about other than the hurt inside of me.
“I-I’m okay,” Nikki stutters, pulling back from Lucas slightly.
He releases his grip and goes back to holding her hand. I feel a pang of hurt stab me in the stomach as I watch his thumb gently caress the back of her hand. Something in the movement is so tender, so familiar, that it’s almost a subconscious reaction, and for some reason, that tears at me more than him holding her in his arms.
“How did you get away, Nikki?” Nix asks.
Nikki smiles sadly at him. “I’d like to say I finally stood up to him and overpowered him, but the truth is, after the beating I took he’d worn me down physically and mentally and I’d given up.”
“She came back, didn’t she?” Nix says.
“She did,” Nikki agrees.
“You don’t have to tell us the rest now if you don’t want to,” Lucas says gently.
“I want to,” Nikki says.
“I need to get this all out, because after today, I never want to think of it again, let alone speak of it.”
Lucas squeezes her hand and nods at her to go ahead.
“I came back to consciousness and I was one giant nerve ending. Every part of my body hurt. Every single part of me felt like it was on fire. I could feel the wetness I was lying in—it was my blood.
“My vision was blurry. I kept sinking in and out of consciousness. I barely knew where I was. Hell, I barely knew who I was. But I knew he was there. Watching me. I could feel his glee. This went on for quite some time I think.
“I remember wanting to die, just so I could be out of pain. Every time I moved, it hurt more. Even blinking hurt me. When I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he came into the cage. I thought he was going to give me the healing potion again, but he didn’t.
“He sat down opposite me and just faced in my direction. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could feel them boring into me. He started feeding off my misery—the weaker I became, the stronger he got. It’s funny, because that’s the only thing that didn’t hurt. It felt strange, like I was becoming detached from myself, but it wasn’t painful. He kept repeating how sweet I was. I was so delirious and hurt that it almost felt like a relief.
“As I was on the brink of passing out, this time I knew I wouldn’t be coming back. I could see your face, Lucas. And I remember smiling. Yes, actually smiling.
“Then I saw her. The girl who had told me to hang tight. I don’t know what happened next. I passed out.
“I woke up who knows how long later. I was in front of a door. I thought I was dead and that door would lead me to the light. Crazy, huh? As my mind swam back into focus, I felt the pain again. And I thought I was in Difi.
“I felt like this torture would last forever. And then I felt soft warm hands on me. I thought it was another trick. I thought he’d taken me somewhere else. But the hands felt different. They were smaller, and it didn’t feel like they were trying to hurt me.
“I forced my eyes to focus, and the girl stood before me. She was gently shaking me. I realized it was her voice telling me to wake up that had brought me back to consciousness.
“She helped me to my feet, something I would have thought was impossible. My mind was whirling. I couldn’t decide if this was real or a vision sent by him to mess with my mind. I had to hold on to the hope that I was free, but I couldn’t fully commit to it. Not when I knew how easily it could all be snatched away.
“I asked the girl who she was and she told me it didn’t matter, that I would be safe now. I thanked her over and over again. She just shrugged.
“Then she knocked on the door before us and turned and walked away. I called after her, asking her how I could ever thank her. She turned back for a moment, and I could see sadness on her face. She said, ‘Just tell them I’m not all bad.’
“And then like that, she was gone, and the door before me opened. I stumbled forward. I caught sight of the girl before me. I knew then I was dead and she was the taker sent to guide my soul.”
Nikki smiles across at me. “It was you, Summit. You were my angel.”
I don’t know why, but I stand up and move closer to her. I wrap her in my arms and she puts her skinny, frail arms around me.
I feel such mixed emotions towards this girl. Part of me hates her, just for being back and having Lucas, but part of me feels like I want to protect her.
I look around at the others. They all look as stunned as me.
“Fish,” Nix says.
“Huh?” RJ says, looking at Nix like he’s lost his mind.
“It was Fish who got Nikki out of there,” Nix says.
He says it with such certainty that I believe him.
Nix and Lucas exchange a look I can’t read.
“She called me,” Lucas says softly.
We all look at him for a moment.
“I blew her off, and that’s what she was trying to tell me,” he says with more guilt than I have ever seen.
Parker looks down at the floor. I can see how upset she is at the mention of Fish. I go to say something to her, but she forces herself to look up.
“Whenever Fish is around, there’s always trouble. I don’t like this. Not one bit,” she says.
Nix glares at her.
“Are you serious? She saved Nikki and you still think she’s the bad guy here?” he snaps.
Parker shrugs.
“I just don’t like her around. It makes me uneasy. And after you two cut a deal to keep her here, I don’t know. I guess I’m always just waiting for her to show up.”
“Well I guess you’re out of luck, because when she did show up, she didn’t even bother sticking around to say hi,” Nix fires back.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Parker says quietly.
“Maybe it is to me,” Nix says. His anger is gone, replaced by something else.
I wonder to myself how Nix can be so incredibly blind to the fact that Parker likes him as more than just a friend. I don’t have long to ponder the question, because Ryder speaks up.
“Nikki, do you have any idea who he was?” he asks.
“Huh?” Nikki says.
She’s been watching the exchange between Nix and Parker, and it’s clear from her expression that she has no idea what was going on.
“The guy who took you,” Ryder clarifies. “Do you know who he was?”