by Stella Noir
“That’s actually a topic we could start with right now, Abby. This ex-boyfriend of yours, Jake, is that his name? Tell me about Jake,” he said as he uncrossed his arms and rested them on the desk he was leaning on. He was still mere feet in front of me, towering over me as I sat there and stared at the floor, completely worn out and deflated.
This was infuriating. Why was he doing this to me? Was he getting off on this? I was suddenly realizing that I had dodged a major bullet by breaking up with this psycho. But, what did he do that night? Did he follow me when I left his apartment, then bring me here to his hospital mansion in the woods after I got into an accident? I didn’t even know he had a fucking hospital mansion! Or did he cause the accident just so that he could bring me here?
Good lord, this is really starting to sound like the plot in one of my romance novels.
My head was still swimming and all I wanted to do was go back to my room. That horrible, creepy, cold-floored room was starting to sound pretty good to me. There was no way I could reason with this lunatic. All I could do at this point was hope that I would be able to talk some sense into him after a night of sleep, and that meant spending another night in this damned place, but I didn’t have a choice. I looked up at him and shrugged, asking with my body what the hell he wanted with his insidious stare.
“We were talking about Jake. You were about to tell me about him. Please continue.”
I laid my head back on the couch and closed my eyes. If he wanted to play this ridiculous game I was just going to have to go along with it for now. I needed some time to figure out how I was going to get out of here and I was just too weak to argue at this point.
“Ok, what do you want to know?”
“Why is he your ex-boyfriend?”
“Because we broke up.”
“Would you care to elaborate? I can’t really help you if you won’t let me, Abby.”
I lifted my head off the back of the couch and narrowed my eyes at him.
“Can you, at least, quit hovering over me like this?” I said, gesturing at his standing in front of the desk just a few feet away from me.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
I didn’t say anything and he got up from the edge of the desk where he had been leaning and walked around to sit in the chair behind it. I sighed deeply and looked at the books on the bookcase to the right of the couch. I would rather look at anything but him right now, even books with titles like Psychoneuroendocrine Dysfunction and Sin, Science, and the Sex Police: Essays on Sexology & Sexosophy. I didn’t really understand what kind of doctor this guy thought he was. He apparently took care of me after I got into the accident, but now he’s acting like he’s some kind of psychotherapist. But what if there never actually was an accident? I didn’t even know what to think anymore.
“We broke up because I didn’t want to be in a relationship anymore. I was the one that broke it off. It was me, my problem. It had nothing to do with you…I mean him. Is that enough information?”
“Can you tell me why you didn’t want to be in this relationship any longer?”
I sighed deeply and closed my eyes.
“Relationships end. There’s no mystery to it.”
“Has this sort of thing happened to you before?”
“What do you mean happened to me?”
“Have you broken off a relationship before? Is that a common denominator in many of your previous relationships?”
“I…I don’t know.”
I felt his eyes on me as I continued to stare at the books on the shelf. I was suddenly getting very tired of talking about my private life with this lunatic. Not that I had enjoyed it earlier, but now he was starting to hit a nerve and I didn’t like it one bit. Yes, I had broken up with a couple of previous boyfriends, but I most definitely hadn’t ended every relationship, that’s for sure. I knew I had issues and had a tendency to leave when things started to get serious, but everyone had their flaws. I was still young and I didn’t think there was any reason for me to tie myself down just then. And I didn’t need to explain my actions to anyone, especially not this asshole who thought he had the right to kidnap me and pretend to be my doctor just because he hadn’t gotten his way. I finally got the courage to look at him in the eyes again.
“I’d like to go to my room now. I had a suitcase with me in my car. It has my clothes and things I need in it. Is it here in the hospital?”
He smiled that barely perceptible smile again and looked down at his hands.
“I’ll check with the next shift nurse when she gets in. Is there anything I can bring you in the meantime?”
I glared at him for a few seconds longer than was necessary, then stood up to leave.
“No.”
“Then let me show you back to your room…” he said as he came around the desk and reached for my arm. I pulled away from him and backed up a few steps.
“I can find my own way back, thanks.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist, Abby. I can’t have patients just roaming the halls on their own. There are many things that can pose significant danger within these walls,” he said as he moved closer to me, reaching his hand up to the side of my face. I froze for a moment as he moved his head down closer to mine, running his thumb over my lips and cheek and gripping my head like he was about to kiss me. I was suddenly paralyzed by his gaze and couldn’t move away. His dark eyes were boring into me as his face grew closer and I felt his hot breath close in on my lips. I tried to take another step away from him but the couch was right behind me and his towering body seemed to have me surrounded. Just then I felt a sharp pain in my arm and the room slowly dropped away underneath me.
ABBY
I woke up in a daze, with sunlight streaming through the window, but no idea what time it was. My lips and mouth were incredibly dry and I licked them futilely, only succeeding in briefly getting my tongue stuck to my lower lip. I tried to sit up but my head was pounding so I slunk back down under the covers, deciding that it would be best to stay where I was for a little while longer.
I just lay there, rubbing my temples and trying to remember what had happened the previous night. My head felt like it was filled with molasses and I was having a hard time forming any kind of image of what had taken place at all yesterday afternoon, or why it was that I felt so incredibly rotten. Suddenly, my eyes flew open and a flash of anger seared through my chest as I remembered.
Jake! I’m being held in this horrible hospital by him, I thought as the events from the previous day slowly leaked back into my consciousness. I just couldn’t believe that Jake had kidnapped me and was pretending that he was a doctor. Well, honestly, for all I knew about him, he might have really been a doctor, but he had told me that he was the CEO of some tech company that had offices downtown. I admittedly didn’t know much about that part of his life, but he had never volunteered much information and I had never been that compelled to ask. I loved the person he was, not the job he had. And to be honest, I had never told him what kind of novels I wrote, I think mostly because I still felt like a bit of a fraud. I guess we had both been keeping things from each other. I realized that communication wasn’t really my strong suit, but I had never lied to him or tried to trick him like he was doing to me. A wave of sadness swept over me and my heart sank while thoughts of my childhood came flooding back to me and my eyes flooded with tears.
How could he do this to me? How could he treat me like they did?
I curled up into a ball as flashes of the cruel kids in eighth grade came back to me and I turned and wept into my pillow. I wasn’t a child anymore, so why did a trick some horrible kids played on me ten years ago still make me so sad? And why were all of these horrible memories flooding back to me in this hospital? This place is seriously bringing up things that, as far as I was concerned, were way better off left in the past. It had been a long time since I had thought about those awful kids and I guess I hadn’t really gotten over the pain.
I thoug
ht it was true. I thought that when I had been asked out on a date by one of the most popular boys in the class that I had finally been accepted by the cool kids. I was so excited that a boy really liked me, and in those few moments when I believed that we were really going to go out on a date my mind raced. I sat at my desk and imagined the date and the first kiss and then hanging out with the cool people throughout the rest of the year and into high school. I pictured myself standing with them at my locker and laughing as we walked down the hall together, talking about cool kid stuff. I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore or feel like such a freak. Then the harsh reality came crashing down when I heard them all laughing in the back of the room, but not right away. I thought to myself that someone must have told a joke, or said something about the teacher, anything just so that they weren’t laughing at me. But then he came up to me. He actually came up to me where I was sitting in class and said it out loud.
“I thought you knew it was just a joke, Abby.”
Silly, gullible Abby. How did you not realize that it was a joke?
Of course, a cute, popular boy wouldn’t really want to go out with someone like me. Of course, it had been a joke all along. I should have realized it sooner but I was too gullible back then. I could have laughed when he came up to me and I could have told him what a funny joke that was instead of looking down at my hands and saying nothing and trying to will myself invisible for the rest of the year.
I know it seems like a small thing, an event that barely took up 5 minutes of my life. But small moments can have a big impact. And if I was being honest with myself, it wasn’t just that one thing that made me scared of being tricked. But I wasn’t about to get into all that and dredge up more old, painful memories. I’ve had enough of painful memories this week to last me a lifetime. And now I just felt so incredibly stupid that I had, once again, been gullible Abby, and had been tricked into thinking that I was loved.
It made me sick to think that I had trusted him, that I had let my defenses down and opened my heart up to that maniac. I really thought that he was different, and even though I didn’t even know then what he was capable of, I was so right to have left when I did. Well, sooner would probably have been better, then I wouldn’t have gotten myself trapped in the basement of his house or mansion or hospital or whatever the hell it was.
I slowly opened up my eyes again and looked around the room and as I did I noticed a piece of clothing on a chair that looked like the nightgown I had packed in my suitcase. I guess he decided not to bring me the whole suitcase and was picking out my clothes for me. What he had chosen was a sheer baby doll nightgown that I had bought when were together.
Great. I’m stuck in a hospital mansion with a psycho and I managed to bring the most revealing, almost non-existent, nightgown I own.
It was incredibly sexy and I thought Jake would love it, but I never got a chance to display it for him. In all the time we were together we only had sex twice. We fooled around plenty, and I really liked how Jake would control me with his dark eyes and sexy whisper, telling me to strip in front of him and then watch me masturbate until I came. But in the six months we were together, actual intercourse was pretty rare. It happened twice.
Many things crossed my mind when I thought about the number of times we had actually fucked. Like maybe it was his way of taking things slow or maybe I wasn’t sexy enough for him. And yes there was a part of me that wondered what he might be hiding, but there was an even bigger a part that loved the attention. I loved being told what to do by him and I loved the way he watched me. Sex was so different with him than it had been with other men. He wanted to watch me and touch me and lick me. He wanted to explore my whole body with his mouth, and to be honest, I was more intrigued by our lack of intercourse than bothered by it. But now that I was being held prisoner by him I was starting to wonder about everything and I was really starting to wish I had possessed better communication skills.
I looked at the nightgown on the chair, wishing I hadn’t packed in such a hurry. I had thrown it in without thinking and, of course, it was by far the skimpiest piece of clothing in the suitcase. He also included some of the underwear that I had packed, but from where I was sitting it looked like he had chosen only the most revealing styles.
Well, that was big of him, I thought as I threw the covers back. I slowly sat up and massaged my temples again, briefly whisking away the pain that had leveled off to a dull ache. I stood and shakily walked across the room to retrieve the nightgown. I didn’t care that it was a ridiculously skimpy little piece of cloth that barely concealed my body, I just wanted to get out of this damned hospital gown. There is truly nothing quite as uncomfortable as a gown that opens in the back. I would be perfectly comfortable walking around naked with just a flannel robe on that is completely open in the front, but the feeling of not knowing what was going on in the back was incredibly unnerving. When I got the nightgown on, I turned the other monstrosity around and used it as a robe, tying it at the front.
There. That’ll show him.
Now that I felt somewhat covered up, I needed some water. The pitcher next to my bed was empty so I went into the bathroom to fill it. I had no interest in going out into the hall only to run into that crazy asshole or that horrible nurse, even though I knew one of those meetings was inevitable sometime very soon. I carried the water over to the bedside table and sat down on the edge of the bed. Everything was still moving slowly in my head, and I didn’t know if it was the terrible situation I was in or the drugs that were still lingering in my blood, but I couldn’t stop crying and thinking about how Jake had fooled me. I really thought that he loved me. I mean, besides the fact that he told me that he loved me there were so many other things that happened between us that slowly built up my confidence and had me believing that this time it was real; that this incredibly hot guy was really in love with little old me. The Jake I was in love with didn’t seem anything like the man who was holding me captive here, and I didn’t understand how someone could be so completely different from one minute to the next.
No matter how much I tried, I still couldn’t help but replay over and over the sweet events that had transpired between us during the months we were together. I sat on the edge of the bed, sobbing into a series of tissues from a box that I had brought back with me from the bathroom and dissected every moment, every word he had said to me when we were together. I didn’t know how much time had passed since there was no clock in the room, so I gauged the hour of the day by how big the pile of wadded up soggy balls of tissues had become on the floor next to the bed. I figured it was probably getting close to lunchtime unless I had slept through both breakfast and lunch today. Maybe some form of dinner was going to be brought to my room soon. I had no idea, and I wasn’t even remotely hungry, but I really didn’t want Jake to come in and see me crying over him, so I tried my best to get it together. But every time I tried to get a grip on my feelings the more they seemed to want to bust out with greater force. And no matter how hard I tried to get the glass of water to my lips, I wound up spilling more than half of it all over myself. I felt like a fool and a failure and I just curled back up under the covers and waited for the inevitable entrance into my room of someone I didn’t want to have anything to do with.
After wallowing in bed on my side for a sufficient amount of time, I rolled over to face the other side and let my eyes wander around the room, then gasped at what I saw on the bedside table. I had been so preoccupied with the water and tissues on the other side of the bed that I hadn’t noticed anything over there since I’d woken up. I reached out and picked up a paperback book that I had written under a pen name a couple of years ago. As I stared at the book that I now held in my shaking hand my mind raced.
I had never told Jake that name. I had never even told Jake that I wrote romance novels. How did he know? How the hell could he have found that out?
As I leafed through the book I heard the lock on the door turn and Jake and the nurse walked in. I hadn�
�t even thought about it until now, but of course, he had locked me in.
“I see you found the reading material I left for you. Did you enjoy it?” he asked with that horribly cold, hollow smile of his. I didn’t know if I wanted to confront him about it or not. I felt like he had too much ammunition against me already, and it looked like he knew a hell of a lot more about me than I realized. I also thought it was odd that he happened to come in the room right when I found the book. And the more I thought about it as I looked into his cold, unsmiling eyes, the more I realized that he had had probably been watching me on a surveillance camera this whole time.
“We have some more tests that we need to run so I’m going to need you to remove your gown now, Abby.”
He and the nurse were now on either side of the bed and I wasn’t sure what to do. I still hadn’t had a chance to plan out my escape or figure out how I was going to reason my way out of this place. I had spent most of the day drugged and had spent the last couple of precious hours I had to myself weeping my eyes out over this psycho, which I’m pretty sure he watched with that creepy smile plastered on his face.
“Look, I don’t even know what kind of doctor you are. I would really rather have my own physician run any necessary tests if you don’t mind.”
“According to my records, you don’t have a primary care physician, Abby. This is for your own good. We don’t want you coming down with anything serious if it’s within our power to stop it with some simple tests. Do we?”
He was talking to me like I was a child and it infuriated me.
“I told you I don’t want…”
“Nurse.”
With that, Jake and the nurse grabbed both of my arms and put my wrists in restraints that were attached to the frame of the bed. I writhed around and kicked as hard as I could but started to feel the strength drain out of my muscles a few seconds after I felt a sharp pain in my arm. He had given me another sedative, but with this one, I didn’t fall asleep. I could barely lift my head or move my arms or legs that were all in cuffs now, but I was still awake and could hear and see everything Jake was doing. He told the nurse to leave, then he turned to the bed and pulled a large black butt plug out of the pocket of his white coat.