Page 16 of To Have and to Hold

The scrape had me mumbling out of slumber.

I rolled, feeling for my fiancé, the soft silk of his hair against my hand, but met cold mattress instead, pilled with age and damp with…my sweat?

My temples throbbed, and there was clotting on my skin near my hairline, crumbly and wet, scab-like.

The creaking doorknob had me bolting into a stand.

I pushed into a corner, concrete bolstering me on both sides, the deep freeze of it starting at my lower back and spreading its icy wings across the backs of my shoulders. I covered myself as much as I could, my dark locks spiraling down my chest, much like a mermaid’s who’d been caught and dragged out of the ocean against her will.

There was nowhere to go, turn, hide. This space was empty, with nothing but the dirt of my footprints to prove anything had been alive in here. I had my nails, my teeth, my wits, but how much time could that buy me?

As much as it takes.

The click of locks snapped back.

The door slammed open, cracking against its hinges. A floating skull took form, white and stark in the gloom and gaining speed. I glanced around for something, anything. My hands held air.

I darted to the side, my face wrenched into some emotion that felt unrecognizable. But the door. It was open, so wide as to fit two of me.

He hooked my waist and tossed me, still flailing for escape when my elbows hit the ground. I scrambled to a stand, my defense doing nothing to impede his strut toward me.

“Stop!” I screamed, but couldn’t be sure. Incomprehensible sounds escaped me. I held my hands up—in surrender or fists—but he didn’t slow.

He picked me up by my arms, ramming me into the wall and moved one hand to my throat, pushing until guttural whimpers bubbled out.

“Behave.” His dank voice resonated through the mouthless mask.

I writhed. Twisted. Hiccupped. Anything to get out of his hold and stop staring into those black pools. Rasping, barely breathing, the pressure built behind my facial bones, swelling to the extent that my eye sockets would crack.

My hands gripped his wrist, fighting to pull him off my neck. Spots prickled into my vision. I was going to pass out. Or die.

“The more you fight, the more I’ll punish,” he said.

His free hand moved down. Squeezed painfully.

Cringing, using the tiny remaining spaces in my throat for air, I nodded my assent. Okay. I hoped he understood. You can let go. I won’t fight.

The release allowed a gush of oxygen so pleasurable and crucial I doubled over, heaving.

“Good,” he said. Then hooked under my jaw again.

The back of my head hit the wall with star-blinding force. My nails scrabbled to gouge his skin but I was blinking into unconsciousness.

“You’re going to learn obedience in here,” I heard him say through the fog in my ears. “You’re going to listen to me and cede only to my voice. I am all you have now. I am all you’re ever going to want.”

His porcelain face was within inches of mine, and though he breathed hard, a muffled bull’s breath before the charge, no air hit my cheeks.

“You’re never getting out of here,” he continued. I pushed against his forearms, desperate for the oxygen he was keeping all to himself. “This is your place now. With me. You will never leave these walls. You will never interact with another human being. You’re going to start craving me, you hear that? When I go, you’ll be begging for my return. You’ll be desperate for my touch, but it’s not you who can make requests. You see that open door over there?”

When I didn’t comply, he forced my chin until I could see over his shoulder.

“I’m going to keep it open every time I come in here. Whatever I choose to do—or not to do to you, you’ll be staring at that possibility, escape only steps away, and you will never make it.”

Tears scraped down my swollen cheeks.

“But what is humanity without hope?” His empty sockets drew closer, so much that through the screen, I could make out the whites of his true eyes. “What is captivity without the wish for freedom? That is a divide you’ll soon discover, and I can’t tell you how much I look forward to the day that I will leave you here, standing on your own, with the door wide open.”

His cold, bone-colored nose brushed against mine.

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