Page 6 of Dear Owen

Owen watched me in silence, his expression unreadable. When I finished eating, he took the tray and left the room without another word. The sound of his footsteps echoed in the silence, a haunting rhythm that faded away as he ascended the stairs and disappeared from sight.

Alone once more, I curled up on the mattress, my body rocking back and forth in a futile attempt to soothe the ache in my chest. The world around me seemed to blur at the edges, the reality of my situation slipping away from me like grains of sand through parted fingers.

I existed in a haze of disconnection, each day bleeding into the next with no clear beginning or end. My conversations with Owen, if they could even be called that, were a series of monosyllabic responses, my voice a hollow echo of its former self. I spoke when spoken to, my words carefully measured to avoid inciting his wrath.

“How are you feeling today?” Owen asked one evening, his tone deceptively gentle as he fastened the handcuff around my other wrist.

“The same,” I replied, my voice devoid of emotion.

He pulled me closer, his arms encircling me in a parody of an embrace. “You’ll get used to it,” he murmured, his breath warm against my forehead.

And in the depths of my despair, I realized that he was right.

In the quiet moments of my captivity, when Owen left me alone, my mind would often drift back to the night when everything went wrong. The images flickered through my consciousness like an old movie reel that refused to stop playing. The laughter, the whispers, the sounds that still echoed in the depths of my soul—they all melded together into a symphony of horror that shook me even now.

I would close my eyes, trying to banish the memories, but they were etched into the very fabric of my being, and the quiet had a funny way of tormenting you with the things you were trying to hide. The sensation of hands on my skin, the humiliation that twisted like a knife in my gut, the chilling realization that I was utterly, irrevocably alone—these were the ghosts that danced through my dreams, taunting me with their silent, spectral presence.

I tried to hold onto the fragments of who I used to be, the girl with the simple dreams and the quiet strength. But that girl seemed to be slipping away from me, her image growing fainter with each passing day. A character in a story that I could no longer relate to. In her place was a shell of a person, a creature of shadow and silence who existed in a perpetual state of dread and longing.

Owen’s visits were the only breaks in the monotony of my existence, the only moments when the suffocating stillness of the basement was disrupted. He would come to me with the same unsettling mix of tenderness and control that had become the hallmark of our relationship.

“You’re mine, Kira,” he would whisper, his voice a dark caress that sent shivers down my spine. “You always have been.”

And I, in my weakness, would find my traitorous heart racing at his words, my body betraying me with its response to his nearness. I hated myself for it, for the way my pulse quickened, for the heat that flooded my cheeks, for the flicker of something that felt dangerously like hope.

But it was a twisted, perverse hope, a hope that clung to the edges of a nightmare. It was the hope of a drowning man who reaches for the very thing that is dragging him under, the hope of a moth that flies too close to the flame, knowing full well that it will be consumed.

As I lay there, chained to the man who was both my tormentor and the object of my darkest desires, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was any coming back from this. Could there be redemption for someone like me, someone who had been broken and remade in the image of her captor?

I didn’t have the answer, and perhaps I was afraid to seek it, to delve deeper into my own wounded psyche. So I lay there in silence, my thoughts a chaotic whirlwind that threatened to tear me apart, and I waited for the dawn to break through the basement window, a pale imitation of the light that I feared I would never see again.

Six

The silenceof the basement wasn’t comforting anymore. It was a heavy, crushing thing that wrapped around me like an iron shroud. It wasn’t the kind of silence that offered peace or rest—it was oppressive, alive, mocking me with its weight. It was as if the silence itself was laughing at me, at the pitiful state of what my life had become. The quiet only reminded me of how utterly alone I was, of how everything had been stripped away until there was nothing left but this still, suffocating void.

I had been waiting for him, holding out as long as I could, but Owen hadn’t come. My body ached from suppressing its most basic needs, from clinging to a routine that had been my only anchor in this hell. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness. Hours? Days? I couldn’t tell anymore. My stomach twisted painfully, the hunger gnawing at me having long since turned to a dull, empty ache. The pressure in my bladder was unbearable now, demanding release with a sharp, burning urgency.

Trembling, I reached for the bucket Owen had left in the corner. My hands shook with a sick combination of shame and desperation as I dragged it toward me. It was humiliating—degrading in a way I hadn’t let myself fully acknowledge before now. Before, Owen had at least kept to his rigid schedule, allowing me those few precious moments in the adjoining bathroom. It was one of the few things that kept me feeling human, like I still had some small shred of dignity.

But now? Now I was nothing. Just an animal in a cage, reduced to the most basic, primal acts of survival. As I crouched over the bucket, the weight of it—of everything—hit me. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I couldn’t even cry properly. The humiliation swallowed me whole, pressing me down until it felt like I would break from the weight of it. I was nothing more than a broken thing, reduced to this—degraded, and discarded, left to rot in the dark.

When it was over, I stayed there for what felt like an eternity, numb. The shame, the degradation, the hopelessness—it all churned together into a sickening, bottomless pit inside me. Owen’s absence was a black hole, sucking everything else into it until there was nothing left but that aching void. Had he finally tired of his game? Had he decided I wasn’t worth the trouble anymore? Maybe he was just going to leave me here, forgotten, to waste away in this godforsaken place.

The thought should have terrified me. But it didn’t.

I dragged myself back to the air mattress, its slow deflation echoing the collapse of my will. Owen’s scent lingered on the blanket—his cologne, woodsy and masculine, once intoxicating, now a twisted reminder of his presence. It clung to me, reminding me that even in his absence, he was still here, still everywhere, like a ghost haunting the corners of my mind. I curled into a ball, clutching the blanket to my chest as if it could somehow protect me from the reality of what my life had become.

The tears came then, hot and silent. They soaked into the fabric beneath me as I lay there, unmoving. I didn’t sob. I didn’t break down in loud, ugly cries. The tears simply fell—just like everything else. Even the act of crying felt hollow, like I was a puppet going through the motions of a life I no longer understood.

I was breaking. No. I was already broken. A part of me knew that. Another part of me didn’t care.

But somewhere in the pit of that despair, a flicker of something else stirred. A bitter determination, a fierce, reckless need to escape. It was a fragile thing—more desperation than hope—but it was all I had. I couldn’t stay here. I wouldn’t. I had to get out, even if it killed me.

I pushed myself up and scanned the basement, my eyes falling on the scattered remnants of forgotten furniture. Desks, chairs, old shelves—dust-covered relics of the building’s past. They were discarded, abandoned, just like me. But they were all I had. If I could stack them high enough, maybe—just maybe—I could reach that tiny window. That one sliver of light, the only connection I had left to the outside world.

I moved to the nearest desk, its wooden surface marred by the initials of students who probably hadn’t thought twice about their lives when they carved those marks. My muscles strained as I shoved the desk across the floor, the legs scraping against the concrete with a sound that echoed in the oppressive silence. It felt too loud, too real, and for a moment, I stopped, my heart pounding in my chest. The silence was my enemy now, and the sound was my only weapon against it.

Piece by piece, I moved the furniture, stacking it into a precarious tower that wobbled with every chair I added. My body was running on adrenaline now, driven by a frantic, wild hope that was barely holding me together. The chairs were lighter, easier to manage, but my hands shook as I worked, my fingers numb and clumsy.

---