Page 66 of Web of Lies
I crouch against the farthest wall of the crate in an effort to keep as dry as possible. The air doesn't help. It blows a constant current of cold, damp air over me. I begin to shiver again and that's all I do for a long time. I just huddle against the bars and shiver with my teeth chattering so hard that my jaws hurt.
Hours. I stay like that for hours. But the pain in my bladder is too much. It's been hours. He said dinner and that means that I haven't gone to the bathroom in twenty-four hours. That can't be right. Granted, I haven't had anything to drink in as many hours, but still. A person can't go that long without going. Thoughts of urinary tract infections, kidney infections, and bladder retention start circulating in my mind and the more I think about it, the worse I have to go.
It's unavoidable. I can't wait any longer. It's entirely possible that I involuntarily went while I was unconscious, but I didn't feel or smell like I had an accident when I woke up so I don't know. It doesn't matter, anyway. Whether or not I had an accident all over myself then has no effect on the fact that I have to go now. Badly.
So I go. Everything is already wet, but I still pull the crotch of my panties to the side when I shuffle to the other side of the crate where the misty spray is heaviest. There's no proper or modest way to do this, I just do it, and I concentrate on how much I hate Adrian the whole time. It hurts to relieve myself every bit as much as it did to hold it, even after I'm finished. The best I can do to clean up is to tip the metal tray the few scant inches I'm able to and push all the collected liquid out onto the floor outside. I make it as clean as I can and scoot back to the dry side of the cage.
I hate Adrian. I thought I hated him before this moment, but the hate I feel right now is hot enough that I don't even feel the cold air freezing me. The hate turns to anger and I try again to break free from the crate, kicking and shoving and screaming, but all I accomplish is cutting my elbow and adding a few more bruises to my collection. Still I fight. I keep trying until I'm too exhausted to continue. And then I cry. My body curls in on itself and shudders with my sobs until that, too, exhausts me. Then my sobs turn to silent tears and eventually lead to a black sleep.
I wake up with another harsh, jarring bang on the crate. I keep falling asleep. It's similar to when Adrian was drugging me, except I haven't taken or been forced to take anything. This is all from trauma. There won't be any escape from it. The rest of my life is going to be trauma after trauma until I eventually die from it.
“Asleep again? And you didn't drink a drop of your soup. You'll have to eat, princess. I can't take a pile of bones back to your husband. He expects to see his wife whole and happy when she gets home.”
He turns off the water and the fan and I sag in relief. I haven't stopped shivering in hours.
“There now,” he says. “That's better, isn't it? Let's see now …” He removes the bottle of soup from the side of the crate and brings it up to eye level to swirl it around. “No, princess. This won't do. You're going to have to eat something, one way or another. We can give you another day. Aren't you hungry? I'm hungry.”
I halfway thought he'd take a drink from the bottle. I don't know why, but I did. He doesn't. He puts the bottle on a nearby shelf and leaves for a minute, returning with a plate piled full of food. Toasted sandwiches, stacked high with toppings and meats, potato chips, pickles, cookies, some kind of pasta salad, and some grapes. It smells so good. Up until now I've been too miserable and cold to notice how hungry I am. The overwhelming sensation of a too-empty stomach is suddenly all I can feel and I wrap my arms around my middle, pressing in to lessen the awful ache.
“Yeah,” he says as he sits down in the chair. “You're hungry.”
He holds the plate close to the crate so that I can see it closer and smell the food more clearly. My stomach clenches and growls so loud that he smiles. He picks up a piece of sandwich and holds it out to me, close enough for me to reach through the bars. I lift my hand to take it from between the bars and my fingertips barely brush against the crust before he pulls it away and shoves half of it into his mouth and laughs again.
He sits there, just a few feet in front of me, and eats every single bite of food on the plate, smiling while I watch. He burps when he stands up to put the empty plate on the shelf and takes up the bottle again. He shakes it up until it's bubbly and he attaches it back to the crate. “That's what you get. Your husband was adamant. It's still good. You drink this soup, little wifey. We need you to keep your strength.”
He slaps the top of the crate again and leaves without turning on either the water or the fan. I'd be more grateful if I wasn't still wet and shaking with cold. And I'm not drinking that damn soup.
I think my concept of time has permanently altered. It started when I kept losing myself because of the drugs and I'm pretty sure I just never recovered because I've felt the same ever since I woke up in this cage. I can't grab onto a thought long enough to get to the end of it. I keep trying over and over. I bring up Shaun's face, trying to commit every inch of it to memory. I think about Wyatt and remember how he smelled when we were sleeping. I think about my dad and what my room looked like before I left for college. I think about the time I helped dye Regan's hair and she ended up looking like a calico cat. I bring up memory after memory, but I lose them within moments of calling them to me.
Then I start counting. I count the corners in this room. Every corner of everything. The doors, the shelves, the boxes, even this grate. I don’t know when I lose count, but I know I made it to at least one hundred and fifty. Twice.
I start spelling the things I see, but there are only so many times I can spell box, so I give that up. Then I make a terrible mistake and start thinking about recipes. All of my favorites first, then all the ones that were complete disasters or just not good. By the time I start losing track of them, my stomach is cramping with hunger. I remind myself that it will pass and I won't feel it anymore after a while, but that doesn't make the current situation any more bearable.
I try counting again but I know it's pointless. My mind keeps wandering off into nothing and I lose track of the numbers. After a while, I give up and I just sit there staring at nothing and let my mind wander. I can't keep up with it anyway and I'm so tired. Giving up is so much easier right now. I know sleep will claim me soon enough and maybe that's the best thing for me. Maybe it would be easier to just drink the soup. Adrian did tell Tabor it was my favorite and who knows what he put in it.
The sound of harsh breathing wakes me up. I open my eyes to the same bright light, and the first thing I see is Tabor sitting in the chair, watching me, with his hand rubbing himself. No, not rubbing. He's got his fist wrapped around himself. He's jerking off. I turn away so I don't have to see it. I can't do anything else, and he'd just enjoy me screaming at him to stop.
“Turn back around,” he orders. “If you're going to be awake for it this time, you should give me something fun to look at.”
I don't respond. I'm not giving him anything.
I listen to the sound of him standing up and then the crate groans, the walls straining to hold up his weight when he leans against it. I fight the urge to look. He's going to do whatever he's going to do, whether I watch him do it or not.
“I could always drag you out of there and stick it in you,” he grunts. “Now that's an idea. Maybe that's what we'll do when I get bored of this.”
It was much easier to dissociate when I was alone. Now I'm hyper focused on the sound of his breathing and the sound of his movements. It is utterly disgusting. Against my better judgment, I open my mouth to ask him a question. “Did Adrian tell you to do this?”
“Nope,” he grunts. “This is our little secret.”
“What if I tell him? Will he still pay you?”
Tabor laughs. A deep belly laugh. It's disgusting, too. “Want me to call him? We can find out. I know what he'd do, though. He'd watch. He's the type. He'd sit in that chair over there and watch me turn you into a great big mess. In fact, I'm going to take a picture and send it to him right now, just so he knows how his pretty little wife is doing.”
The thought of him sending a picture of me in this cage to Adrian is somehow worse than the idea of him jerking off on me. The shutter sound of a phone camera echoes loudly off the walls of the room and I can't help looking. Sure enough, he's holding his phone out so I can see the picture he took of me. I look away as soon as I see it and force my mind into nothingness. I can't stop it. If he sends it to Adrian, I can't stop him.
“That one's just for me,” he says. “Never know when I'll need a picture like that. Turn back around and let me see that pretty face. I'm almost there, sweetheart.”
I keep my face turned away. I don't want to see it and I'd rather that he gets it in my hair than on my face. That seems less disgusting and humiliating.
