Page 83 of Cruel Riches

15

Alexis

Grimacing,I rolled over on the mattress and clutched at my belly. My greasy hair was sticking to my cheeks and forehead in knotted clumps, and my unbrushed teeth felt like they’d been coated in cotton.

I’d been out of food for a while now. I had no idea how long, exactly, because there were no clocks down here in my tunnel cell, but I knew how I felt. Every inch of me ached, and my stomach felt like it had shriveled up before being attacked by sharp claws.

Nate left food, water, and toilet paper occasionally, but I never saw him. I was quite sure he had a tiny camera hidden somewhere in the cracks of the dark walls, because he always seemed to know when I was asleep. That was when he’d drop off the food—bread, fruit, and the occasional packet of potato chips. Just enough to keep me alive, but not enough to give me any strength.

It was horrible to be dependent on a man like him, but that was what he’d done to me. He’d forced me to depend on him to eat and drink, and he made me crave the sound of his footsteps, his voice, and his woodsy scent, all because it meant I’d be able to eat and drink soon. But it never happened. He was like a ghost, and I was always alone down here.

There was no regularity to the things he brought me. Sometimes I’d wake up after what felt like a twelve-hour sleep to find nothing. Other times I’d only drift off for a few minutes and wake up to see a new bottle of water and a banana.

He clearly knew there was nothing more comforting than routine in a situation like this, and he didn’t want me to be comforted. He wanted me to lose all sense of time, too, and it was working. By my estimate, I’d been imprisoned down here for eight days, because my period had been over for a while, but it could’ve been more or less.

Nate hadn’t cared about my period, either. He hadn’t provided me with pads or tampons even though he was aware it was happening, so I had to scrunch up bits of the toilet paper and stuff it in my underwear to stem the flow of blood. It was the kind of thing I would’ve done in high school when I was caught out without any tampons and too shy to ask someone to give me one.

Later, when the makeshift pad was soaked through with blood and starting to break apart, I squatted over the bucket and used some water from the bottles I was given to remove all the crumbly bloodstained bits that had rolled up between my labia.

It was humiliating, especially because I knew it might be caught on camera for Nate’s twisted viewing pleasure, but I was still grateful that I had toilet paper. If Nate was a worse monster, he could’ve left me to rot without any, forcing me to bleed all over myself and soil my clothes with urine and feces.

Not that I was defending his actions—the paper was just a small mercy.

Wincing, I sat up and looked around the cell that had become my home. Although I knew every inch of it by now, my eyes continually roamed over it when I was awake, because there was always the thought that I might’ve missed something in an earlier search. A rusty old nail I could use to pick the padlock, perhaps, or a loose stone I could use for an attack on Nate when he finally showed up while I was awake.

Before this happened, I always assumed I’d think about my friends, family, and pleasant old memories in order to distract myself if I were ever trapped somewhere. I might even dream up bright, wonderful fantasies to pass the time. But that wasn’t what had happened at all. In my time here, I’d turned selfish and wild in my thoughts, like an animal. Food and escape were all I thought about.

On my first day here, I screamed at the walls, assuming Nate could hear me. What gave him permission to act as judge, jury, and executioner in the new Butcher murders? What gave him the right to decide I was guilty, snatch me from my life, and trap me in the dark with no recourse, no comfort, and no hope of a future?

Over and over, I screamed ‘you can’t do this to me!’ but after a while, when my throat was sore and my lips were parched, I gave up. I was wrong.

He could do this. He already had.

He’d taken me and held me against my will, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I could scream and cry and utter dark threats as much as I wanted, but in the end, it wouldn’t achieve anything. All I could do was hope that he slipped up one day and left something behind that I could use for an escape. Or maybe I’d get lucky and the Butcher would kill more people, and Nate would finally realize that I was innocent all along.

I cringed every time that thought occurred to me. It was a terrible thing for me to hope for. It meant I was wishing and praying for innocent lives to be taken in the worst kind of way, just so I could be free again.

God, maybe Nate was right. Maybe I was a monster. Or maybe he was just turning me into one.

No wonder solitary confinement was considered to be such an awful punishment. Deprived of human company and everything but the basics, a person could drive themselves mad just from sitting or lying around all day with nothing but their thoughts to distract them. The time dragged by so slowly, too, making the solitude even more torturous.

My stomach started growling again, and I slumped back on the mattress with a groan. How long had it been since that last piece of bread? How long had it been since my last sip of water? I truly had no idea. It felt like days.

A faint sound echoed in the tunnel outside the cell, and I sat up again, heart pounding. It could just be a mouse or rat, but I had to hope it wasn’t.

Maybe it was the police. Maybe my friends and family had realized I was missing and called them, and then they’d tracked me all the way down here. Maybe Nate was in custody right now, wishing he never met me and regretting all the terrible plans he had in store for—

My train of thought was derailed as Nate stepped up to the bars. He held a large, heavy-looking bag in one hand and the black knife roll that used to be in the torture room in the other one.

“Miss me?” he said with a cocky smirk.

“Fuck you,” I hissed. I couldn’t admit that I actually did miss him, purely because I was so starved of human touch and company. I wouldn’t allow him to have that satisfaction.

“I know I promised you pain, but I thought I’d mentally torture you first.” He carefully placed the bag and knife roll down on the ground. “Seeing you slowly lose your shit down here is almost as good as physically hurting you… but not quite.”

A shiver ran over my skin. I knew what that meant. The real torture was about to begin.

Suddenly I missed the solitude. Missed the mind-numbing boredom and soul-crushing isolation.

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