Page 39 of Like Fathers, Like Son
“You fucking bitch!”
23
Blaze
Whatthehellwaswrong with that bitch? She waited until she’d earned her fucking freedom from the cuffs, and then she tried to brain me with a glass. Of course, I dimly remembered there being a stack of paper cups in the back of the cupboard, so I should have used those again, shouldn’t I? I wouldn’t make that mistake a second time.
I lunged at Anneka as she leapt off the bed and ran for the door, her legs wobbling enough that she was unsteady and almost staggering across the room. I caught her, and wrestled her down to the floor. See, what happened next should have been the easy part, right? Pull out the syringe, stick it in her, and make her go night night.If only.
I got the cap off the needle, and brought it down, and her panicked yelp came at the same time as she shoved my arms, and somehow that needle ended up inmyleg.
The plunger was pushed down enough before I wrenched it free and tossed it behind us. Enough, as in it was enough to dose me, and must have been right into a bloody vein, because I was already feeling the effects of whatever the fuck it was.
My grip on Anneka was loosening, and I couldn’t keep hold of her. I started to feel woozy, and sluggish, and fell back on my ass.
“What the…” My words sounded slow and slurred, as time seemed to slow down.
“Fuck.”
Anneka
WHAT THE HELL WAS that stuff? Blaze went from scary strong and holding me down, to kinda softened and almost dizzy, like his balance was going. It must have been so scary for him, but did I care? I didn’t, right? He was trying to stick that stuff in me, so he deserved what he got.
He fell back on his ass, and seemed to be struggling to focus on me, his arms suddenly seeming too heavy to even reach for me.
This was my chance to get away from him. My chance to escape, to get free, to call the police. To get some kind of emergency contraception. All of those things I’d been desperate for, and yet, I was standing watching him as he sluggishly tried to sit up again, and rolled onto his side.
He kept trying to speak, but it was kind of slurred and hard to understand. I thought he was trying to say the word ‘sorry’ but why the hell would he? He probably meant that I’dbesorry, and that was the jolt I needed to kick me into action.
I tried the door, which was unlocked, and ran down the hall, wearing nothing but too scared to delay and find clothes. How would I get out? I ran throughout the house, starting with the scarily locked down door, checking all of the windows and finding them locked, and also frustratingly unbreakable. I tried, I even picked up a chair and tried crashing it through the biggest window in the kitchen, but it fucking bounced. What the hell was this place?
The kitchen was useless, although it had knives at least, and the other rooms I found were just as hard to escape. There was a really creepy room in the basement that I stared at in horror, even as I wondered why the hell I’d even look down there for a way out. It was like a cell, or something, and I realised that Blaze could easily have locked me in there, but for some strange reason he hadn’t. It didn’t make sense, but then nothing he did made any sense.
In the end, I went back upstairs, raiding one of the other bedrooms for some clothes. Strangely there were t-shirts and sweatpants in abundance in some of the drawers, but nothing else.
Finally I crept back to the room that Blaze was in, peering around the door cautiously to find him prone on the floor, face up, and blinking languidly.
“Blaze?”
He didn’t even respond, just stared around him, seemingly in a daze, before his eyes drifted closed. At rest, or whatever the hell this was, he seemed younger, and almost vulnerable. Was this really the brutal man who’d raped me? Who’d kidnapped me, and locked me up as his prisoner?
His pale blonde hair was a little long, and unruly, with a lock of hair draped over his cheek as he slept, his face now turned in the direction of the doorway. He didn’t look so scary now, or so dangerous. He didn’t look cruel while he slept. Instead he looked almost angelic, and sweet. I couldn’t reconcile this version of Blaze with the one I’d been tormented by.
Since I couldn’t leave, and I seemed oddly reluctant to leave him drugged and alone, I draped a blanket over him, and tucked one of the pillows under his head. I even stroked his hair back from his face before I realised what I was doing. He wasn’t to be protected by me. He was my captor. My rapist. The monster that I wish had only ever been under the bed.
I wrapped one of the blankets around myself and curled up in the corner, with my back against the wall and my knees hugged tight in my arms. I’d wait until he woke up, and then I’d make him release me.
After all, theoretically, I could have killed him while he slept, and I hadn’t.That had to mean something, right?
24
Blaze
Iwokeupfeelingsluggish and weak, and quickly figured out two things. I seemed to be on the floor, even though I had a pillow and a blanket like I’d made a makeshift bed.
The other thing that I discovered was a metal cuff around my right wrist, and it was connected to the leg of the bed. I tugged on the cuff, and rolled my head to my left, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here.
Anneka was curled up in the corner, a few feet away from me, fast asleep with her head on her knees. I tugged on the cuff again, trying to use it to pull myself up, because that weakness was persisting.
