Page 77 of Caged
I start to hyperventilate as I cross the room and crouch in front of the metal door. The wires on the bottom of the cage bite into my palms as I crawl inside. The cage door slams shut, followed by the click-clack of the padlock.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Kieren announces as he places the gun back into the top drawer of his desk. “Don’t bother screaming. No one can hear you anyway. And even if they could, no one here fucking cares.”
I’ve been curled in the fetal position, sobbing, for hours. The sharp pain of the metal cage digging into each pressure point resting against it – my hip, my shoulder, the side of my head – somehow is dull compared to the unforgiving pain inside my mind. I haven’t even gotten to the point of my own failure. I’m stuck in a loop of despair, wondering how another human being, someone who I thought cared for me, could treat me sohorribly. What did I do to deserve treatment this vile? Why am I condemned to a life of suffering?
Keys jingle in the many locks, snapping me from my spiral. I push myself up to see Kieren clamor into his bedroom with at least half a dozen shopping bags from the local supermarket. He drops them to the floor without acknowledging me, heads into his bathroom, and slams the door.
I peer through the crisscrossed metal wires, my eyes swollen and puffy, but am unable to discern the contents inside the bags.
Kieren reemerges from the bathroom with a toiletries bag and tosses it onto his bed.
“What are you doing?” I squeak.
“Packing.”
“Am I coming?” I ask timidly.
“What do you think?” he deadpans.
Cold terror races through my veins.
“Let me out of here,” I demand.
Bile rises in my throat at Kieren’s mocking laugh.
“You can’t keep me in here!” I shout. “I’ll die, Kieren!”
“Then maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to get on that fucking bus! You’re lucky I’m a nice person, Monroe. I got you all this food,” he shouts, motioning to the grocery bags.
“You can’t keep me locked in your room all week!” I shout back, trying to mask my breakdown. “I’ll call the police!”
“With what phone?” he asks with bitter sarcasm. “This phone?” he jeers as he holds my phone up for me to see before tossing it into his backpack. “Yeah, I don’t think so. This phone is coming with me. Oh, and don’t think I forgot about email. I’ve also disconnected the Internet router.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t hold me prisoner. People will come looking for me, Kieren!”
“Who?!” he asks with a mocking laugh as he tosses clothes into a weekender duffle bag. “Who’s going to come looking for you, Monroe? Your friends don’t give a fuck about you. You’ve been here every night and not once have I heard you talk to any of them. None of your sorority friends. Not even Gabi. Your mom’s fucking incarcerated, and your dad left your ass when you were three. So, guess what, Monroe? I’m all you’ve fucking got.”
He zips the bag closed and unhooks his laptop from the charging cable running behind his desk.
“If you do this to me, consider me dead to you! We are done! And I promise, I will hate you for the rest of my life,” I scream with shaky breath. Hot tears of panic stream down my face.
Kieren shakes his head, chuckling to himself as he stuffs his laptop into his backpack. “You’re worth more to me dead than alive, you know?”
“What is wrong with you?” I cry. “You’re a psychopath!”
“Yeah, well old habits die hard, I guess,” he says, unbothered, as he squats in front of the cage to twist the combination of the padlock. The metal hook pops open, and Kieren rises to his feet, pocketing the lock.
“I don’t care if you hate me,” Kieren admits, sliding open the top drawer of his desk. I remain in the cage, motionless, as he unloads the magazine of bullets, including the remaining bullet in the chamber. “In fact, I always knew we would end up here. I guess we just arrived earlier than I predicted.”
“If I’m worth more to you dead than alive, then why don’t you just fucking kill me?” I grit out.
“Because, like I said, this isn’t over for me. But I can’t bring you to Connecticut, I think you know why, and you’re too much of a liability to have running around. You’ve proven as much.”
“We aren’t over until I say we’re over, and spoiler alert Monroe, that’s never going to happen,” Kieren says in a deranged sing-song voice. “The only way you get to leave me isin a fucking body bag, so I suggest you take some time this week to reflect on how you’re going to be better. Hopefully, a week of solitude will help you remember how much I’ve fucking done for you, and how you would be nothing, have nothing, if it weren’t for me. When I return, I better find you sitting naked on my bed, legs splayed wide, begging for my forgiveness. When I slide my dick into your tight cunt after nine days away, I want you to moan my name loud enough to raise the dead. I want you to tell me how sorry you are for trying to leave me, and how you’ll never,evertry to run again.”
I suck down jagged breaths amid tears of anguish.
“You may hate me, Monroe, but you’ll never hate me enough to make me stop. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
