Page 9 of Monster

4

Charlotte

The first thingI felt was a pain in my shoulders. It was beyond excruciating, and it hindered my breathing. But, when I started breathing normally again, I tasted something akin to disinfectant at the back of my throat. I licked my lips and found them chapped, with a twinge of metallic taste to accompany the sensation.

My lip is bleeding.

I tried not to move too much as I kept my eyes closed. Not that they felt the best anyway. They almost felt swollen, or weighed down by something. My entire body felt sluggish, even though my mind was quickly working through the fog and the mire of the situation I had found myself in.

I’ve been abducted. At the beach.

But, every time I drew in a silent, even breath, I didn’t smell the ocean. Or even the city.

All I smelled was disinfectant.

This isn’t good.

I took a chance and opened my eyes, despite their heaviness. And when I saw my beautiful one-of-a-kind gown torn and scuffed and stained with what was probably my own blood, I sighed. Of course, my dress was ruined. There couldn’t have been one thing to salvage this insane situation and turn it into some kind of a positive.

But, when I had the balls to raise my head, the disappointment of my dress quickly fell away from my gut.

“Rise and shine.”

The first thing I saw was a towering man standing in front of a door. He was clad in an all-black suit, and for some reason it looked familiar. I blinked a few times to try and push the headache away that I felt wafting up the back of my neck, and as I slowly scanned the room, I clocked the very few things around me.

Specifically, a bucket in the corner by a bed on the mattress.

“You can’t be serious,” I murmured.

“Shut up,” the man said gruffly.

I glared up at him. “Can you at least untie me so I can take a piss?”

He chuckled. “Maybe.”

“And while you’re at it, I’d like it if you turned your back so I knew you weren’t watching.”

He shrugged. “Tough.”

I furrowed my brow. “Tough? The hell does that mean, ‘tough’?”

He stepped away from the door and into the light, and I almost vomited all over myself. The man looked absolutely gruesome. He had a deep-set scar that slashed from his right temple to the left side of his jaw, and the cloudiness of his right eye boasted of the one casualty of war that scar had taken from him. He reeked of cheap cologne and roast beef, a combination that made me heave the closer he got to me.

“Leave her alone,” a voice said.

It took me by such surprise that I yelped. And when I whipped my head over to my left to follow the sound of the voice, a pain so sharp wafted through my body that I almost puked on myself.

Again.

“Who are you?” I asked.

I saw another woman looking up at the man hovering over me. “All she has to do is go to the bathroom and have some water. The least you can do is let her do that. Or, do you want this entire room smelling like urine for the next however many hours?”

I slowly looked back up at the man. “Yeah.”

He snarled at me before he walked around behind me and I felt my binds falling away from my wrists. But, before I could launch up and defend myself my head went wrenching backward.

Because that damn fucker had a solid grip on my hair.

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