Chapter Text
Her first thought was that she was unbelievably groggy, even though that word felt like a gross understatement.
Her thoughts were struggling to piece themselves together, drifting out of touch each time she tried to unscramble them.
But she knew she should wake up. At least make sure she didn’t sleep through her alarm.
Wow she felt heavy.
She felt herself stir, slowly trying to reach around for her phone.
Trying was as far as she got— her body didn’t seem to care about her brains prompts to actually move.
‘Wake up, wake up, wake up’
But the words just swirled in her brain, the lure to fall back into a deep sleep proving to be overwhelming.
She decided she wouldn’t fight it anymore.
If she was this sleepy, perhaps she should let herself sleep.
“Wake up.”
Except the words weren’t hers anymore.
It was hard to think, to blink, to do anything, but she tried her best.
She leaned into the hand on her cheek, finding comfort in the touch through the haze of sleep.
Her vision was blurred as her eyes fluttered around the room, not registering with anything or anyone in particular.
She decided to scold whoever was waking her up for doing it so early.
“Good girl.” The voice drawled out softly.
Her brain told her that the voice didn’t sound familiar.
She didn’t care. He sounded nice. And she was sleepy.
The voice tutted a sound of disapproval.
“Wake up sweet girl.”
The hand moved to her shoulder and shook gently.
She slowly rose out of a deep haze, body beginning to work with her brain again as she moved to rub her hands over her face.
Except her hands didn’t move.
Her eyes blinked open enough to see that they couldn’t move.
The haze melted away faster.
Bound. Her hands were bound.
She darted her eyes around the room.
The voice.
Her brain was right, she didn’t recognize it.
Or him.
He sat across from her in a wooden chair, eyeing her intently.
She scrambled to sit up and back away as much as she could, instantly regretting the head spin it gave her.
“Hey—“ He started, reaching a hand out to try and steady her.
She flinched and immediately pulled away.
“Who are you?” her own voice was now the foreign one, coming out timid and confused.
He didn’t respond, watching her with curiosity.
She took a moment to process her surroundings as the last few spins of her head went away, immediately realizing something was wrong.
Really, badly, gravely wrong.
She didn’t recognize the man, or where she was.
She quickly surmised that it was a basement, and the bed she was in obviously wasn’t her own.
Her gaze shifted to the reason why she couldn’t move her hands, making her go rigid.
Silver handcuffs looped between the bars on the metal headboard wrapped tightly around her wrists, giving her little leeway to move.
They were cold and biting. She wondered what caused her to be so out of it that she didn’t notice them being placed on her from the beginning.
“You really should be more careful.” He started easily.
“I had to give you a lot of—well. Let’s not worry about that. I don’t want to confuse your pretty little head with any big words.”
A primal shock coursed through her entire nervous system, the magnitude unlike any anxiety she experienced before waking up here.
Her mind flashed a dark red Danger, Danger, Danger. The sudden surge in her heart felt worse than anything she imagined a heart attack to be.
Maybe this was a joke...? A prank? A dream?
“What’s going on?” her voice laced with panic.
He ignored her again.
”You should drink something.”
Her eyes followed his gaze to the cup of water on the stand not too far from the bed.
She wasn’t taking anything from him.
She realized she said it out loud.
He laughed in response, making her current situation feel even more eerie.
“Silly girl.” He smiled. “I already have you. I don’t need to drug you.”
He visibly reconsidered his words, slightly tilting his head in thought. “Not again anyway.”
What the fuck. What the fuck.
The spinning came back to her head as she began to loudly hyperventilate, desperate for any answers.
“What is going on?” she asked again through heaving breaths.
He leaned forward in the chair and rested his elbows on his thighs, fingers interlocking before he placed his chin on his hands.
He looked deep in thought, yet she found him completely unreadable. All she could sense was a crushing feeling of dread, feeling exposed in the spotlight of his attention.
She could feel the bad intentions he had for her.
“I’ve thought about how I was going to answer that.” He pondered and gave up the thought, sitting back in his chair to open the floor to her.
“What do you think is going on?”
“I— I don’t know—are you—“ she stumbled over her own panic.
She couldn’t bring herself to say it, but she had to know.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Kill you? Now why would I do that?”
I don’t know, because you drugged and bound me to a bed?
She stayed silent this time instead.
“I don’t want to kill you.“ He continued. “You should be considering this as me saving you, actually.”
She didn’t know what he meant, and his response left very few options.
The bed and the handcuffs now made a little bit more sense.
She cried before she realized it, mind racing with a million different questions and outcomes all at once.
“You can’t do this—” she shook her head in rambling disbelief and wriggled at the handcuffs. “I’m not property you can’t just take me! I’m a person I have a family—I—I have friends I—“
“It happens all the time.” He stood up and nonchalantly interrupted her manic ranting, moving to reach a hand to the knees bent to her chest.
She whimpered and flinched away from him, curling towards the top of the bed even further as she shook her head again.
"No-" she whined.
“Yes.” He insisted. “People go missing, and people die.”
She visibly buzzed at that word.
“But you’re here now. And I’m not going to kill you. I have other plans.”
Somehow that didn’t bring her much comfort.
“You’re one of the lucky ones, you know.” He added matter of factly.
”Most girls get their bodies dumped in the nearest ditch.”
Her heart skipped wildly.
“You’re fucking crazy—” she wept in disbelief.
“Let me go you can’t just keep me here! I wanna go home—“ she broke down in wracking sobs, tugging harder on the nearly too tight handcuffs.
She could only imagine how she looked right now. Terribly desperate. Terribly scared. Cornered.
She continued backing away towards the top of the bed like a cornered mouse, as much as the handcuffs would allow.
”Please—”
He ignored her cries and put a hand on her knee, thumb rubbing slow over her skin.
She wasn’t sure what he was trying to do. Comfort her? The thought of something else made her heart race with even more terror.
She screeched at him and harshly yanked on the handcuffs, wriggling away from his touch and violently kicking her legs out at him.
“Stop.” He straightened up and pulled away.
Her wails got louder as she futilely tried to free herself.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
“Stop.” He demanded again.
She didn’t register that he was speaking until he wrestled her kicking legs flat on the bed, quickly moving to straddle her thighs.
”Nono no —“
“Fucking STOP.” He clasped a hand over her mouth, and her survival instincts told her to bite him.
She immediately wished she didn’t.
He didn’t wince away in pain like she hoped, instead it earned her a rough hand across the face, unfairly harder than she bit him.
Her wild thrashes abruptly stopped as she sucked in a breath.
She couldn’t recall a single time in her life that anyone had ever hit her, let alone so savagely.
It stung. It ached. It felt like the air was slapped out of her body.
She couldn't fully slow her sobs, barely able to slow them down enough to try and put the air back into her lungs.
How was this happening to her? How could this be real?
He replaced his hand over her mouth then dropped his face close to hers, his tone low and menacing
“Don’t. Even think about trying that again.”
She shook underneath him and closed her eyes, desperately clinging to the hope that she was still dreaming.
He sighed with impatience as if her reaction to being kidnapped was unreasonable.
“You wanna scream so bad?” He taunted. “Fine. Go ahead.”
She shuddered as he removed his hand from her mouth, lips trembling in its wake.
It felt like a trap; like her screams would only make him angry, or bring him some sort of demented joy. Something was telling her she wouldn’t be heard by anyone but him even if she did.
Nearly every avenue of survival available to her had been exhausted, all but one. She began pleading before she realized it, desperate for escape like a bunny finally caught by its predator.
"Please—“ she sniffled honestly. “I’m scared. I’m so so scared. I just wanna go home—“
“Sweet girl,” He moved to place a hand over her still stinging cheek. “I know you are.”
Her head was spinning. Whether it was from the drugs, being hit, or his instant change in demeanor, she wasn’t sure. She just wanted to be let go.
“But that’s not happening.” He gently shook his head with understanding as if he was speaking to a child sobbing over candy.
“You have no idea how much has happened to get to this moment. All the prepping…” His voice trailed off as he looked around the basement.
“Let’s just say those drugs were expensive. And—you’re fairly more popular than you may believe. There was never a moment that you were truly alone.”
He looked down at her with admiration, smiling at the sight of her bound hands. “Until last night.”
“Why?” she whimpered, her head slowly blossoming into a throb after the blow to her face. “Why are you doing this?”
He placed his hands on either side of her and slid down her body, positioning himself to be closer to her face.
“Because,” He started, slipping his hand between the two of them and snaking it under her thigh.
“I watched you at your job. You never seemed truly happy.” He lifted her other thigh and continued.
“You’d give the prettiest smile to everyone. The most gorgeous sounding ‘have a wonderful day’. Then go right back to looking despondent.”
Her blood went cold as she realized he was nestling himself between her thighs.
He’d been watching her.
“So if you’d like to,” He continued his movements, “Use that as your “why”. Consider this as me taking you away from such a sad existence.”
“I wasn’t sad—“ she started softly, the amount of tears threatening to follow making her throat ache.
“Hm.” He countered. “Well, the antidepressants in your bag tell a different story.”
She pursed her trembling lips together in a loss for words. He seemed so bold in speaking about her own life, so confident— and it wasn’t any of his business.
Why did he care?
“It doesn’t fucking matter.” she spat. “There’s people out there that’ll look for me and—“
“I know, I know.” He dismissed.
“You had a family. You had friends. But maybe they haven’t noticed that you’re gone. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they already put you all over the evening news. It doesn’t matter.”
“What it won’t change, is the fact that you’re here. And that I found everything about you to be perfect from the moment I saw you. I can break you—“ He adjusted again so his hips pressed between her now spread legs.
“Then put you back together just enough to do it again.”
He put his face so close to hers that she could feel the steadiness of his breathing, exponentially calmer than her own.
She tried to shy away from his gaze but he held her chin level with his, leaving her nowhere else to look but in his eyes.
“And for so long I've wanted to know what sounds you'd make for me."
There was nothing else she could do in the moment but scream, then scream even more because there was nothing that it would do.
The handcuffs loudly clanged on the metal as she thrashed, cursing the entire world in her head.
"Let me go!" she started up again. "Please I won't say anything please-"
"Oh I know you won't." He pacified. "Because you're not leaving."
Her sobs grew louder as she shook harder underneath his weight.
"Get off of me you fucking psycho-" she reverted back to manic terror.
"Just because you don't have a life doesn't mean you get to take me you fucking los-"
He snatched her jaw in his hand so hard that the bruises wouldn't be far behind.
"You've got a mouth on you." He observed. "Keep going. I’ll give you something to do with it."
She stopped yelling but remained in distress, making him roll his eyes with impatience.
"I haven't even touched you yet." He released his grip on her jaw slightly.
"Contrary to what you made me do, I don't get off on hurting you." He tilted his head again slightly, mulling over his words.
"I won't solely get off on hurting you." He corrected.
"So just remember that if you want to fight me, if that's the route you want to take, I'll make you wish you were one of those girls who get found in a ditch. Understand?"
She gave up her fight as his body pinned hers into the bed, only giving him a frightened whimper in response.
"Hey." He snapped firmly. "Snap out of it."
"Do you understand?” He enunciated his words patronizingly slow and firm.
Her face was splotchy and wet, her nose was clogged and running, and her hair was wild from thrashing around.
She knew she must have looked exactly how she felt as she nodded.
Helpless and pathetic.
"Good girl."