Chapter One
Ava
There is something ominous in the cold, dank air of my cell this morning. I feel it wrap around me like a cloak as the springs of the creaky bed I’m sitting on poke into my thin frame. I urge my sluggish brain to try to figure out what day it is, but there’s no sense of time in here as one day of captivity bleeds into the next. How long have I been gone? Is anyone looking for me, or have they given up?
Staring at the stone walls of my prison, I picture Derek’s dead eyes staring back at me as I willed him to be okay. I begged and screamed for him to wake up, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. The man who had given up everything to save me had now paid the ultimate price. He was dead because of me
Even then, with Derek’s rapidly cooling body lying beside me, his hand grasped firmly in mine, his brother broke me once more. I had lain there as I suffocated in a cloud of guilt and grief, detached from what was happening to me. I focused on Derek’s glassy-eyed stare as my body jolted forward with each thrust, knowing this would be the last time I saw him. The man who saved me and loved me unconditionally was gone. I could only hope he might now be able to find peace. Even if that meant leaving me behind in the pits of hell to face the devil alone.
“Daddy missed you,” the monster whispered in my ear as he finished inside me, but I shut him out and locked myself away in that quiet place inside my mind where he couldn’t reach me.
I remember waiting for him to climb off me before I rolled away and puked on the cold tile of the kitchen floor in the apartment Derek and I had been staying in. I heaved up everything inside me, hoping to somehow, someway, purge the evil seeping into my skin, but I couldn’t.
His evil is in my blood, flooding my veins with its taint, and the only hope of enduring and surviving was to become as detached from reality as he is.
I jolt when I hear the key in the lock, the memories of that fateful day drifting away as I prepare myself for his arrival. I don’t turn toward the noise when the door swings wide, banging against the wall. I don’t acknowledge the malevolent presence when it enters, sucking away all the oxygen in the room and making the bile rush up the back of my throat.
Keeping my gaze on the far wall, I count the gouges and scratches of the people held here before me. When I first arrived, the horror of finding bloody claw marks embedded in the stone walls where people had tried to dig their way out almost broke me. I’ve added my own marks since then, clawing away until my nails snapped and my fingers bled, but there was no escape for me. Now though, I find an odd kind of comfort in the scratches. Whoever made them isn't here with me; even if that means they’re dead, they still escaped. I’ll take death over being stuck down here for a lifetime of pain and torment.
“It’s time to eat,” the monster commands.
I don’t fight him. I turn my head a little and open my mouth, accepting the bland spoonful of oatmeal he feeds me.
I don’t look at him, keeping my eyes lowered submissively as he likes while I focus all my energy on keeping the oats down.
“I think it will be time for us to move soon. Some of the drama has died down, and it shouldn’t be too hard to hire a pilot to charter a plane and get us somewhere nice and quiet. As you've been such a good girl, I think somewhere near the beach with a window for you to look out of. You’ll like that, right?” he coos, but I don’t answer him.
I never do.
It's not that I can’t talk; it's that I refuse to. At first, he beat me, over and over, for denying him. Then he would hold a gun to the center of my forehead and taunt me, but by then I had nothing left to lose. Death would have only been a blessing. After a while, I think he accepted he’d fundamentally damaged something in me.
The vibrant little girl he once knew is now a shell of a woman. Or at least I lead him to believe that. I don’t speak because that makes me seem more fragile. To him, my flaws make me weaker so I play my part in the starring role of the victim he cast me in, until my performance is so convincing, I almost believe it myself.
“Daddy has to go out today. After you’ve finished eating, we’ll say our prayers, and I’ll tuck you in. I’ll be a day or two, so try not to worry.” He speaks conversationally, as if I’m not a captive being held in an underground prison.
As if I’m not his daughter who he kidnapped and raped over and over.
My silence has changed things. He thinks he broke me, that my mind is somehow fractured, but instead of killing me to put me out of my misery, he prays for me. He asks for absolution and forgiveness while I sit in silence, marveling at his hypocrisy.
He continues to feed me the oats, spoonful by spoonful, until the bowl is empty, humming along to a nursery rhyme I vaguely remember from my childhood. Once I’m finished, he holds a bottle of water to my lips. I almost pause but manage to stop myself. The water will be drugged, especially if he’s leaving for the night, but fighting him won’t help me. I’ve spent too long perfecting this act to blow it now.
I accept the water and swallow the tepid liquid, feeling some of it spill over my chin and down my naked body.
“Oops, sorry, sweetie.” He reaches up and wipes the water from my chin, tracing the fallen drops from my collarbone to the valley between my breasts.
The room sways as whatever he gave me takes effect. I don’t try to fight it. When I feel his fingers edging their way lower, I welcome the sweet dark oblivion that has been my only comfort in this place.
When I wake up, the room is empty and I’m lying on the cot bed with the thin blanket pulled over me.
I roll over, it taking a moment for my unresponsive limbs to follow my command, and sit up slowly, gripping the bed frame when the world tilts once more.
A quick gaze around the room shows he’s taken the bowl, spoon, and empty water bottle with him, leaving me alone with just a bucket in the corner and the bed I’m sitting on.
He doesn’t leave me alone much. In the beginning, he never left, but now that I’m defective, I suspect he goes out hunting for girls to fill the void I’ve created. He likes it when they scream, and I refuse to give him that. I’d bite off my own tongue before I ever give him the satisfaction.
The guilt eats at me, thinking about the other girls he is likely hunting, but I can’t do anything about it from down here.
I pull the blanket from my body and close my eyes for a second as I fight back the tears of humiliation when I realize my chest and stomach are sticky, and in this cold, dank basement, I know it's not from sweat.
I stand and make my way to the bucket on shaky legs and take care of business before returning to the bed. Only this time, instead of sitting on it, I slide under it, the dirty gravel-strewn floor cutting into my back, but I don't care. I focus on the spring I have been working loose since I got here. It's not much, but it's something, and with how much it bends now, it's only a matter of time before it snaps completely.
I don’t know if I’m talking about myself or the spring, but I guess the analogy works for both.
I’m not sure how long I stay under the bed, twisting and turning the broken spring. I focus on my task until my hands are numb and my eyes are too heavy to keep open.
When I wake, I’m in the same place, shivering at the cold, which lets me know it's likely evening. The days here tend to be stifling hot. It's the only way I’ve been able to measure any passage of time. I continue my chore, determined now more than ever to get this spring off because I know if he gets me on a plane and out of the country, I’ll never be found.