two
Two years later…
Thesoundoffive deadbolts being unlocked woke me from my fitful sleep filled with strangers chasing after me with clawed hands. Although I couldn’t say being awake was much different from the nightmares, in some ways it was worse since I knew it was real. The lights flicked on followed by the stomping of heavy feet as Father made his way down into the basement I’d been locked in since my sixteenth birthday.
“Do you know what day it is, Cammy?” he asked, his tone showing how pleased he was with himself.
He’d taken great delight in making sure I was fully aware of the countdown to my eighteenth birthday and how much money he would make. There was a bidding war between three Alphas, and he’d been holding the winner back until today—my birthday. I refused to answer him, using my silence as my only weapon, knowing he wanted me to beg and cry. Those first few months that’s all I did and the beatings never stopped. When I finally decided to wall off my emotions and protect myself however I could, it drove him wild that no matter how badly he hurt me I didn’t make a sound. The thrill was lost and he found other ways to punish me by withholding food, leaving me in the dark, and finally, chaining me to the wall with only a ten foot radius to move. That also could have been because I’d managed to pick the old locks and almost got out of the house. For that I got a broken leg and chained to the wall, he also replaced the locks with deadbolts that could only be opened from the outside.
“I’m going to bring you a bucket to wash in and a new dress for you to wear. We can’t let your new owner see you look like a caged rat, now can we?” Father scoffed as he tossed me a bag. “We only have an hour before I need to take you to the meeting place so don’t take too long, or I’ll make your last moments with me the worst you’ve ever experienced,” he warned, and sparked the taser he always kept with him after I bit off a chunk of his ear.
Going to the utility sink he filled a bucket, brought it over to me just close enough to me to reach, and stepped back. While I was his captive I’d learned how to get my jabs in when I could. I refused to let this break me. This was the moment I’d been plotting for since I knew what his plans were. If I wasn’t going to draw attention to myself I needed to look clean so I didn’t fight this order. The water was tepid but at least it wasn’t freezing like I thought it would be. I yanked off my oversized t-shirt and sweatpants that had been hanging off my body that wasn’t much more than skin and bones.
From the bag I took the washcloth and got my skin wet before using the shower gel that was made specifically to remove all scents from my body, allowing my natural scent to be strongest. While I’d have to do something about my scent later, I just wanted to be clean at this point. Quickly, under the watchful eye of the bastard who calls himself my father, I cleaned my body and pulled on the loose flowing mustard yellow sundress with a floral pattern. Did it matter that it was the end of March and I’m sure to be far too cold to be wearing this? Of course not, because my father’s goal was to make me look like the pure innocent Omega of any Alpha’s dreams. Now that I was clothed, I washed my hair and dried it as much as I could with the towel that was little and riddled with holes. My blonde hair was now all the way down to my butt and with how wavy it was, I tended to keep it braided, so that’s what I did now.
“Times up, let’s go,” Father ordered gruffly as he walked up with a pair of zip-ties he’d made into cuffs. “No funny business or I’ll knock your ass out, and you’ll wake up in your new home as someone else’s problem.”
That was something I couldn’t let happen. If I was going to get away I needed to be awake the whole time. Even though it crushed my soul to let him bind my hands I did, then he wrapped me up in a trench coat so no one could see my hands. He made sure the taser was ready as he unlocked my ankle cuff. I couldn’t blame him since this was how he’d lost the tip of his ear. I remained perfectly still as he tossed away the chain, grabbed my arm, and dragged me up the basement stairs. We had an old beat-up sedan he shoved me carelessly into the back seat of. This was what I’d prayed would happen, that he wouldn’t put me in the front seat next to him. He pulled out of the drive and headed down the street like all was right with the world and he wasn’t about to sell his daughter off.
“Would you like to know who bought you?” he asked, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “I’ll only tell you if you ask nicely.”
Fucker knew I wasn’t going to say a damn word to him, but it gave him the joy of leaving me in the dark.
“He’s a very powerful man who will be able to give you a life you never dreamed of, but they say his tastes in the bedroom tend to be too much for most people. So what if the man likes to cut his women up? I’m not one to judge what gets a man off if he’s willing to pay a million dollars for it,” Father rambled.
Tuning him out I let him believe he was scaring me with all this information on how twisted the man was while I listened to the road sounds. I needed us to get on the highway so my plan could work. If we stuck to city streets it’d be too easy for him to pull over and catch me. I needed to use the fact he was on the highway and the flow of traffic to keep him from coming after me. Living trapped and starved in a basement for two years left me with little stamina even though I did what I could to keep from getting too weak. Basic exercises could only get you so far when you had no cardio to build endurance.
YES! I felt the car speed up and the roar of traffic around us got louder. Now the trick was getting out of the damn car alive once I hit the road. I needed him to stay in the right lane, and with this POS I felt like that was a safe bet. Last I knew, this damn thing couldn’t go over sixty without making your teeth rattle. The car fell silent as Father got bored trying to get me to talk. I tried to keep as still as possible so he had no inkling of what I was planning. I didn’t know where we were going but one of the few reasons you took the highway was to get to the city. If this person was as rich as Father was making him out to be, then he would live near the heart of the city.
When I felt the car slowing I risked peeking out the window and saw it was just some traffic merging onto the highway. It was the perfect time for me to make a run for it, we were slow and I was near an off ramp providing an escape to disappear. Taking a deep breath and psyching myself up I hooked my barefoot on the door handle and pulled. The lock on that door had been broken for years and I knew Father wouldn’t remember since he never sat back here. The door released with a snick. Pulling my legs up to my chest I propelled myself forward, crashed into the door, popping it open, and dumped me onto the road. I rolled a few feet, the sound of screeching tires, and horns filled the air as I came to a stop. Turning so I was on my stomach I scrambled to my feet and ran without looking back. We’d gotten further down the highway than I’d expected and I could see the towering building of the city not far away.
This just meant I had even more places to hide in the swarms of people packed into these city neighborhoods. My feet slapped on the asphalt as I ran, flinching as the gravel and other debris cut into my feet but that pain was nothing compared to what I would suffer if I got caught by my father. I was ruining all his chances of getting out of the shitty life we’d lived in since Mother died. Once upon a time, I’d thought about finding out who my grandparents were, to see if they would take me in. Though that would be hard having never met them, they’d disowned Mother when she chose to be with Father. Can’t say I blame them, but it made me think I wouldn’t be welcome if I came knocking on their door.
So with two years to sift through all possible outcomes and no other options left, here I was running barefoot down an on-ramp as people gawked at me. Making it off the ramp I found myself on a busy road in an area I knew nothing about. Trusting my gut I turned left heading closer to the city proper, figuring there was a better chance at a shelter or something similar. Luckily from the basement I’d been able to hear the TV Father had blaring as he slept in front of it most nights.
Last year a new official, Marius Stone, was elected to the Council of Four. Official Marius was big on helping those less fortunate and providing a helping hand to get them on their feet. Everyone was saying he was a man of the people and his win had been a landslide, blowing away his competition. People wanted change, they craved hope that their world could get better, and Official Marius was fighting to do just that. His plan so far was free shelters for the homeless that provided a meal and a place to sleep. Apparently, someone in his pack had been running a successful shelter somewhere in the city proving it could be done. Knowing they existed helped give me direction making it my one and only goal to find a shelter and make it through the night. If I could do it once that meant I could keep doing it.
Feeling I was far enough away from the highway to pause a moment, I ducked down an alley. Leaning against a building’s brick wall I tried to calm my heart which felt like it was going to burst out of my chest at any moment. My wrists throbbed where the bindings bit into my skin reminding me I needed to get them off before leaving this alley. Looking around the space I found a fire escape ladder with a broken rung that I could use to break the plastic zip-ties. Using my entire meager body weight I begged for them to snap, and just when I didn’t think they would, I fell to the ground in a heap.
“Yes!” I cried out in joy, rubbing my wrists to get the circulation back into them.
Now that I was fully mobile I pulled on the trench coat properly, wrapping it tightly around me, then secured the tie trying to trap as much body heat as possible. The summer dress wasn’t what I would have picked for this mission but it was what I had and far better than the nasty clothes I’d been wearing for months. My next plan needed to be finding the location of one of those shelters and something to wrap my feet up in. The last thing I needed was to get an infection and die before I could even get away.
If I couldn’t find something before getting to the shelter I prayed they might have something I could use, even if it was a pair of cheap ass flip-flops. Turning up the collar and hunching my shoulders, I walked out the opposite side of the alley just to be safe and headed deeper into the city. The sun was still high in the sky giving me hope I should be able to manage this before it got dark.