Page 33 of Ruin

After everything I have endured, I do not cry.

The final door cranks open, seven seconds to fully unlock before it can be wrenched open, but it feels like it takes hours.

Desperation runs thick in my veins.

Wanting to see him.

His emerald eyes on mine, brutal hands forcefully manipulating my body. His mouth working hard to rasp out husky words, sharpened teeth driving into my skin. I can feel the imprint of them in the space between my neck and shoulder, the right side throbbing where he bit into me, made me bleed. It feels like his clamped jaws speared poison into my bloodstream, penetrating all the way into my soul, infecting me with something addictive.

Something making me needy.

For him.

My breath catches when he moves back into the cave-like space, red light acting as my sun, the only light I’ve seen in however long. There was only ever darkness at my last place. Before they locked me in the smaller space. Left me to die.

His eyes find mine instantly. Glittering green, wide and bright, the right one scored with a red slash from my nails. He hones in on me. I follow him, nine long strides to his workbench, items in his arms clattering to the wooden top, his bare back to me.

It rises and falls rapidly, quickened, like it was when he was inside of me. My thighs twitch, wondering where he has been, who he’s been with, he said he would be right back, but it has been much longer than I anticipated. He doesn’t usually leave me for long. I wonder if there are others, perhaps he has more rooms like this. Lots of red lit rooms with girls in cages. Moving between them, taking whatever it is he wants from each.

My heart hammers hard in my chest and it makes me want to whimper. Jealousy, something foreign, but it feels heavy all the same. Foreign, unusual, uncomfortable.

I watch him, blood dried on his back, muscles rippling where his body trembles. I can hear it, his breathing, raspy and fast. He is usually oh so quiet, my captor.

His breathing quickens, faster and faster, his back rising and falling much too quickly. My brow crunches, a frown tugging at my lips, my fingers tighten around the icy, wet bars as I push my face between the gap.

I open my mouth to call out to him, to regain his attention. Even if there are others like me here, girls he also visits, right now, here, he is mine. And he needs someone.

I glance down at the duck beneath his workbench, white feathers and dull orange beak, small eyes unseeing. I wish it moved, could quack or ruffle his feathers, something to draw attention, because when I open my mouth, throat tight, lungs crackly, desperate to call his name, nothing comes. No creaking, no spluttering, no heavy breath, no broken words. Just increased breathing, my lungs constricting tighter and tighter, as though snakes are coiling and squeezing around them.

I think his name loudly, over and over and over.

Charlie. Charlie. Charlie.

Nothing happens, no sound, no noise, just a gurgling crackle deep in my wet sounding lungs. A cough is threatening, but it so hurts my neck when I can no longer hold it inside. A spluttering up my throat, wet and painful. I swallow it down, wincing at the throb beneath my jaw.

I study his back, his breathing erratic, mine catching his rhythm as though we are one person. His knees wobble, legs trembling, and my mouth opens and closes uselessly, unable to call out to him.

Staring at the open end of my cage, the gate swung wide open, darkness lit with red beyond the familiarity of my metal safety. My fingers flex, numb with cold around the steel bars. Indecision warring inside my mind.

Gaze dragging between the open-ended cage, my new owner, the way his breathing is loud now, too loud, as though he may be about to pass out. I release my hands from the bars, let them splay over the metal floor. I’ve never left before. And it seems an incredible feat to even be considering leaving the confines of this crate.

But my ears are so terrifyingly loud with his ragged breaths that it spurs me on.

Moves me forward.

Pushing me not to think.

Focus on him.

Just him.

My fingers claw me forwards, hands slapping lightly against the concrete on the outside of my gate. It makes me pause, the change in texture, nerves shooting through me, I suck in a sharp breath, inhaling as deeply as I can, then I start to drag myself out.

Instinct has my legs twitching. The way my nervous system kickstarts, firing instruction through my limbs, but the muscles don’t respond. Nothing but a dull agony pulsing through my legs. Fizzing in my toes, an ache in my ankles, burning in the souls of my feet as they try to stretch out. Pins and needles seem to ricochet up the length of my calves, piercing pain in my kneecaps as they drag across the rough ground.

My thighs feel like they have been set on fire, arms as though they’ve been lashed with something sharp and wicked. but my nails continue to claw into the hard ground, my naked body slithering behind me as I use all of my strength to get to him. I am so close now, sweat breaks out all over my flesh, and my shoulder punches with pain with every inch I crawl.

But I keep my eyes on him.

---