The DARK Trilogy: Titan's Song Chronicles Volume 1 (Books 1 - 3)

by Jacob Stanley

  And in the minutes between, when the pains relented, there were periods of sweet relief, during which times her exhausted body would occasionally drift off to sleep, and she would dream strange brutal dreams of other women’s lives. Women who committed acts so obscene that they were borderline unfathomable; acts she couldn’t even think about without wanting to vomit.

  The dreams were meant to teach her, she felt sure. It was a formal education in the art of being a psychopath.

  She sensed that she would be a good student. Eventually. When she finally broke…

  But in the meantime, she would savor the darkness. It was a great help. It made all the little moments blur together in just the right way. The blur softened things up, made her forget about the fact that she was tied up like an animal, made her stop thinking about the terrible future waiting to swallow her.

  The mercenary named Bobby was in the room with her, forcing himself to tolerate the darkness. After the sun went down, he had wanted to turn the light on, and the two of them had argued bitterly.

  Myra had walked in during the argument—to put the goddamn pyramid right next to Simone’s bed again—and while she was in there she told Bobby to let Simone keep it dark if she wanted.

  Since then, he hadn’t said a thing.

  Simone could see him over there, a dim outline made visible by the beams of moonlight coming through her window, sitting in the little chair by her makeup table, hands in his lap, staring down at his knees.

  She could sense that he was still somewhat afraid of her, but now that she was tied up some of his fear had obviously subsided.

  Earlier, while there had still been enough light to see by, she had caught him leering at her several times in an obviously needful way, probably thinking about her attempt to bribe him with sex earlier.

  Now, as she lay there in the darkness, a thought occurred to her: maybe he likes the way I look tied up. Maybe he’s into that.

  “Why not try him again?” said a very familiar voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere right next to her.

  Simone jerked with surprise and looked toward the sound.

  It seemed to originate in the region of her bedside table. But there was nothing there, except the pyramid.

  And her clock radio.

  The voice, which sounded exactly like her mother’s, came again: “That’s right, I’m in the radio. But don’t be alarmed—only you can hear me. I’m using a secret frequency that transmits messages directly into your mind. It’s a special way of communicating, just for mothers and daughters. And you can even talk back if you want without ever making a sound. All you have to do is think clear, loud thoughts and I can hear them just fine.”

  At first, Simone had to fight to keep from bursting out laughing.

  Then suddenly she felt sad.

  I wish you were real, she thought. I miss my mom so much.

  “But what if I am real? How can you be sure?”

  No, sorry. It’s just too dumb.

  “Okay, fine. You caught me… I’m not really your mom. I’m just tricking you. I thought it might make you trust me more. Would you like it better if I pretended to be your dad instead? Like before?”

  The question hit Simone with the violence of a slap in the face.

  “Yeah, that was me too,” the voice continued. “But don’t be mad. We have to do it, for your own good. It makes sense for us to play on your sympathies. But now, the time for little games is over. Because the shit’s really about to hit the fan. Now it’s time for you to quit fucking around. Which means, if you want, I can tell you some special secrets about yourself. I can tell you about a way to get the hell out of here. It’s a crazy plan, and you’ll have to be kinda nutty to even try it, but if you have enough guts, it just might work. If you wanna hear my scheme, just let me know. But remember, don’t speak out loud! Just think clear thoughts at me. Or—better yet—you can just look at the radio and give me a sneaky little nod. I’ll be watching.”

  Simone glanced over at Bobby, to make sure he wasn’t hearing any of this.

  He was still staring into his lap, clearly oblivious.

  She spent a few moments debating with herself about whether or not she should even pretend she was really hearing something, and finally realized that she didn’t really give a fuck one way or another about the difference between reality and self-delusion at this point.

  She looked directly at the radio, and nodded sneakily, as instructed.

  There was a long moment of silence, and she thought the voice wouldn’t come back.

  Which was a great relief, actually.

  But then it did come back. “Okay then. I’m glad you see things our way. Getting out of here won’t be as hard as you think. You already have everything you need inside yourself. If you follow my instructions to the letter, and if we have a little bit of luck, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

  And then the unnamed, unknowable presence that was hiding inside her radio, pretending to be her mother, talked for a few minutes without stopping, outlining the specifics of a daring escape plan.

  The impersonation was so convincing that Simone wanted to believe it really was her mom, but it soon became clear that the plan was definitely not something that could’ve come out of her mom’s mind.

  Definitely not.

  Eventually, the voice went away, and Simone lay there for a short time, trying to decide whether the plan was a winner or a dud.

  At first, she was pretty fucking skeptical. There were lots of little problems, such as the fact that she didn’t know whether or not she could even buy into the basic underlying premise. The scheme presupposed a certain knowledge of what was happening to her—the specifics of her strange condition and the way the venom worked—that, while logical, seemed almost too obvious. It made her feel dumb that she hadn’t already thought of it, and she would almost rather think it was all just bullshit instead.

  Also, the plan was woefully incomplete—the second phase, which included the very important issue of how she was supposed to get free of these motherfucking restraints, was still a mystery. The radio woman had suggested that it would be an easy thing to deal with, once Bobby was out of the way, but hadn’t bothered to elaborate further. Presumably, the rest of the plan would be forthcoming when, and if, Simone managed to navigate the first part successfully.

  These problems were pretty hard to reconcile, and the fact that the whole thing had come from a disembodied voice didn’t help things even a little bit.

  Simone probably wouldn’t have tried it at all. But then another wave of pain hit, the worst one yet, and after it was over, as she lay there gasping, she felt different in a way that she was beginning to recognize; it was that new part of herself, that inner psychopath, responding to the prospect of violence like a dog perking up its ears at the smell of fresh meat.

  Suddenly the plan almost seemed like it might actually be fun.

  She glanced over at Bobby, and caught him leering at her again—he probably couldn’t see more than a vague outline in this much darkness, but he was apparently still thinking about her body.

  Worst case scenario, she thought. If it doesn’t work, I could probably calm him down before he hurt me too much—pretend I was just playing around, tell him I’m into rough sex or something. Then I guess I could just let him finish…

  It should be pretty easy, really. There were lots of ways to go about making it happen. She knew how to manipulate men, knew how to play with their heads. If you wanted to make a man do something stupid, sometimes it was best to just be direct, to bypass his logical brain and aim directly for the inner reptile part.

  With that in mind, she met his stare in the darkness, hoping that he could at least sense the intensity of her gaze, and said, “Do you still want to fuck?”

  He hesitated for several seconds. “What did you say?” She could tell by his tone that he couldn’t quite believe his ears.

  She tried to make her voice sound as sultry as possible. “I can tell
you’ve been thinking about my offer from earlier today… Do you still want to have sex with me? Cause if you do, then now’s your chance.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure. If you don’t waste any time, we should be able to manage a decent little quickie without drawing any attention. Unless you’re too scared of getting caught.”

  “Why would you let me do that? What’s in it for you?”

  Simone was annoyed—he was still trying to be logical, which meant the direct approach might not work after all.

  Guess I need to make up some bullshit…

  Not really a problem—she was pretty good with bullshit too, when she needed to be. In her experience the best lies were three-quarters truth, with just enough deceit on top to add the necessary amount of spice. Right away she saw an angle that would probably work just fine.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’m not asking you to help me get away—obviously you can’t risk your life like that for someone you barely know.”

  “What then?”

  “You see how sick I am?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s because I’m going through withdrawal.”

  “Withdrawal from what?”

  “Heroin.”

  He laughed. “You sure as hell don’t look like a heroin addict to me.”

  “You can’t always tell by looking. I got hooked back in college. Started off taking different kinds of uppers, to help me do better in school. Then I started taking pain pills at night to help me sleep. Things just escalated from there. My habit got expensive, and I had to find ways to make extra cash, which got me into all sorts of other things that I’d rather not talk about.”

  “So you’re a junkie then?”

  “Not a junkie. I’m a fully functional drug addict, which is different. I’m addicted, and I use, but I keep my shit together most of the time. Everything was going great till that gigantic bitch downstairs showed up and took my drugs away. I don’t know what she told you guys, but I’m starting to think this whole thing is supposed to be some kind of intervention, to clean me up.”

  “You’re telling me somebody hired mercenaries for the purpose of a drug intervention?”

  Does sound pretty ridiculous, she thought.

  And then she saw how to fix it.

  “I know, it’s crazy, right? Truth is, I’m not sure what’s going on, but it has to be something like that, and I think I know how it might’ve happened. See, when I was in college—when I was working to fund my habit—I provided services to some pretty powerful men… Politicians, CEOs from big companies, even mobsters. It was mostly a lot of rich guys. Guys with huge egos. Once you’ve spent a few nights with a guy like that, even if he knows from the outset that it’s strictly business for you, he starts to get ideas in his head. Feels like he owns a little piece of you forever. Guys like that do whatever they want to get their way, and I can think of a few who took a special interest in me, who might go to all kinds of crazy lengths to interfere in my life, to try and fix me up.”

  He took about half-a-minute to consider her story. Finally, he said, “What about the fat guy?”

  “What fat guy?”

  “The one you killed this afternoon?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know what happened to him. I didn’t kill him. I just found him like that, figured it had something to do with you guys.”

  “Don’t lie. We all saw it from the woods. You sprayed him with mace or something, then lit it on fire.”

  For a moment, she was speechless. Is that what you saw?

  In college, she’d been working toward a political science major, which had required her to take a bunch of psychology classes. She’d heard plenty of lectures on stuff like this; about the amazing capacity people had for self-delusion when the evidence of their eyes conflicted with their accepted concept of reality, but this was the most extreme example she’d ever actually witnessed personally.

  In this case, she supposed it was actually working in her favor.

  A hell of a lot easier to deal with his delusion than to try and explain the truth.

  “Okay,” she said. “Yeah, maybe I killed him, but he was trying to blackmail me, and I was afraid he might rape me.”

  “Who was he?”

  She didn’t know what Myra might’ve told them so she decided to veer towards the truth. “Just some guy I used to know. He found out some stuff about me, and he wanted to tell my mom. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  He went silent for a long time, and she could almost hear his mind working as he carefully weighed everything she’d told him. Most of the stuff about drugs was actually true, with only a few minor embellishments; she wasn’t actually an addict anymore—at least not really—but she certainly had been; and even though her real-life habit had never escalated beyond prescription pills, she had still been deeply dependent on getting her fix everyday, and she’d had to go to rehab twice before she managed to—mostly—kick it.

  Even the part about the politicians and the mobsters was true. She lived in constant fear that one of those guys would track her down and try to get involved with her personal life. It was one of the main reasons she had severed all ties to the people she knew in the city and moved back home.

  In fact, for all she knew, maybe Myra really had found her through one of those people. It was as good an explanation as anything else she’d come up with.

  Now, Bobby leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and said, “To be honest, I think you’re a shifty little cunt. I’m almost positive most of what you’re saying is bullshit—and that’s fine. I don’t care. Bottom line is, I’m not in the habit of turning down easy pussy from girls as good looking as you. So I’m basically all ears. Spit it out—tell me what you want, and I’ll think it over.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal, really,” she replied. “I just need a little relief. I have some prescription pain-pills in my closet. They’re hidden in a box, underneath a bunch of papers. I found ‘em this afternoon while I was looking for my extra car keys, and I took a couple, just to take the edge off. Then I put them back—I figured if Myra hadn’t found them there already, chances were good she’d never find ‘em. They’re pretty weak, and don’t do much for me anymore, but If I could just take one or two, it might make things a lot easier.”

  “That’s all? You just want me to rummage around in your closet and give you a few pills?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And after I give them to you, what’s to stop you from welching on the deal?”

  “We’ll take it a step at a time. You can give me one pill, then I’ll give you what you want, and after that you can let me have another. We could even do the same thing again later if you wanted, depending on how long we’re stuck together like this. At least until the pills run out.”

  He shrugged and rose from the chair. “Okay then, that sounds easy enough, but you gotta let me turn the light on too.”

  “Why?”

  “If I’m gonna fuck you, I want to be able to look at you while I do it. And anyway, I’ll need light to find the pills.”

  The idea of light was so discomforting that she almost abandoned the whole thing on the spot, but then she reminded herself that this might be her last chance to get away, and she managed to put aside her reservations.

  “Okay,” she said. “You can turn on the fucking light.”

  “Great.” He went to the switch by her door and flicked it up. The blinding harshness filled the room, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

  He walked over to the closet. “Where’s the box?”

  “The one on the bottom,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He crouched, and started rummaging around. Soon he had the right box, and started digging through the papers.

  Simone stared up at the ceiling while he searched. About 30 seconds later she heard him approaching, and then he leaned over her with a smarmy little smile on his face. He had the little green pill bottle in his hand.
>
  “Demerol,” he said. “Pretty strong stuff.”

  “They don’t do much for me anymore,” she said truthfully. “Can you give me at least two, to get me started?”

  “That wasn’t the deal,” he said. “You get one now, and one after.”

  “Fine,” she said. “But you’ll have to feed ‘em to me. I can’t really do much with my hands tied.”

  “Sure thing,” he said, and got one pill out. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, a few inches above her mouth and said, “Open wide.”

  And that was when she almost ruined everything, because she came within a hair’s breadth of just biting the shit out of his fingers. For just a moment, it had seemed that she might be able to forgo the rest of the plan—including the sex part—and just get on with the violence. But then her logic kicked in, and she realized that if he was still upright when she attacked she wouldn’t be able to wrap him up and keep him from fleeing, and if he got any distance away from her, it could ruin everything—she needed him at close quarters, and preferably vertical, to have any certainty of success.

  So she held off, and she took the pill.

  He stepped away then, and started unfastening his belt. She couldn’t help but notice that he had a hard-on visibly bulging against his fly.

  She fought down a wave of nausea, and said, “You’ll either have to untie me or take my pants off.”

  “I’ll undress you,” he said. “I always enjoyed tearing the wrapping paper off at Christmas time.”

  He unzipped, and wasted no time getting his cock out where she could see it. It was a fat one, and crooked. He stroked the ugly little thing with one hand, and then ran the other hand up her leg, pressing it against her crotch roughly in an inept attempt to stimulate her.

  “Just get on with it,” she said, irritated. “Myra might come in any second.”

  “You’re really in a hurry to get those pills, huh?”

  “Of course not,” she said with more bitterness and sarcasm than she’d intended. “I’m just dying to get that juicy cock inside me.”

  He laughed. “I think I’m really starting to like you, girl. You’ve got spirit.”