Page 2 of Their Cruel Love

I shake off the darkness in time to decipher what Milli is saying.

“Just pay the ransom for my ass, dear, and we’ll be fine.”

I wave as she gets in the waiting car and find myself wishing I was going with her. Admitting that feels freeing, as if I’m suddenly lighter, as if I’ve told myself a secret that was bursting to get out.

Perhaps I am like my father and not normal. I have wondered. The thought of a man making me go to my knees and doing things to please him?

It’s so wrong, and yet I have fantasized about it, many times. Ever since Marcus Thompson grabbed me by the throat and kissed me against a wall, then did exactly that—put me on my knees. We were seventeen, and I never forgot.

I close my eyes and breathe deep… I cannot go and do what she did. Just, no.

It would be bizarre. I imagine meeting Father’s friends at a party, with them dressed in black leather and whipping each other. Sir Gregory must be too old for that? He would be close to sixty.

A week goes by, and she’s due back and never returns. No emails. Nothing. My queries to her and Sir Gregory go unanswered. I haven’t expected any contact from her until now. The event, whatever it is, was lasting a week. Some sort of introductory set of lessons, she’d told me.

It’s probably nothing and has simply played a bit longer than she expected it would.

Two days later, Sir Gregory answers my queries and says he heard she went off with someone but doesn’t know who.

After that, he stops replying, apart from telling me she’s an adult and clearly having fun.

Another week passes, and the cops aren’t interested in people missing for two weeks. She must have a sugar daddy, I am informed with a grin, by the officer at the station. Especially since she’s having what they consider a rich person’s smutty holiday.

I’m at a loss as to what to do. I discover how excellent I am at drinking as worry gets to me. My university degree in English lit and journalism seems frivolous, and I decide to ignore lectures. The birds are still out there, circling, crying, as is the foul weather and the off-colored Thames. Super-yachts cruise by going seaward.

Another week, another crate of champers, and the apartment is very lonely. I’d forgotten how cheerful she made it seem, the number of times she held my hand while I sobbed, the long talks we had about everything from K-pop to Bernard Cumberbuckle to why the moon is not made of cheese.

Words come back to me.

To the future. People can get murdered doing that.Our last conversation circles like the damn seagulls.

Then the dreaming starts.

I wake, gasping, and it’s early in the morning.Two AMonthe clock. When I turn on the bedside light, I remember the dream, perfectly.

There is a woman whose face I cannot quite see, being watched by a gathering of men as she dies, over and over. I cannot stop it. There are more men than I can count, but they keep shifting, blurring, and their faces are shadowed. I’m not psychic. I don’t believe in that sort of stuff.

It happens the next night, and then the next. I stop drinking, suspecting the wine in my system, but the dream continues to jolt me awake.

What if it is Milli in that dream, being killed to satisfy some snuff film fantasy of evil men?

What if I could have found her, and I did nothing? These are the questions revolving like a dark, deserted merry-go-round inside my head. I swear I can hear the residual tinkle of some childhood music box and the wooden painted horses atop the box.

Fucking horror movies. Fucking dream.

I bury my face in my hands on the fifth or is it the sixth night? The entire building seems to wait for me to do something; it’s low-key buzzing with anticipation. I cannot take this, not more dread, not more of this prickling fear that leaves me chilled. My stomach crawls with nausea.

Is it a warning? A premonition? Or just my mind going crazy with anxiety?

I wish I could see the woman’s face.

I must do something.

A hundred years ago, after my step-brother went off that balcony, I pushed the trauma out by taking up kick-boxing. Physical exercise helped far more than talking to a psychologist did. I was always wary of my words to them somehowreaching the wrong ears. Not that I confessed to a crime, but still.

I start going to the gym in the building, daily, and exhaust myself for hours. I text Seth, my nerdish friend from Oxford.

Phoebe:Theoretically, could one anonymously hack into the database of this CNC Fraternity? I want to find out what happened to Milli. She’s been missing far too long.

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