Oneshots

broken

huge trigger warning: read at own risk

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“I told you not to do that.”

There’s a mechanical clanking and my arm is twisted back until I can hear it crack.  He lets out a howl of laughter to match mine of pain.

“I don’t understand why you can’t just stay put and do what I say.”  His voice is even.  Calm.  He’s pacing behind me.  His boots click on the stone floor.  “Good girls don’t have to be punished.”

I don’t speak.  There’s a dozen things I want to say but I don’t.  I know better.  

I can feel his breaths behind me.  Even.  Calm.  Always those two things.  He’s all about consistency.  No surprises.  

“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asks.  “It’s not like you to be so quiet.  Usually, I can’t get you to shut up.”

I spit at the floor.  It hits the tile the same time as his palm collides with my face.  Cause and effect.  Symmetry.  Order.  The whips along the back wall are in perfect alignment.  Everything has its place.  

 “No?  Well that’s a shame.”  I can hear him move back towards the wall and flip a switch.  The rope around my wrists tighten and I am forced to my feet.  Past my feet.  When I’m dangling just an inch off the floor- I can sense the cold tile but cannot feel it- he stops, and steps forward.  I listen to him walk around until he’s directly in front of me.  

“I guess I’ll have to try harder,” he says.  His fingertips dance along my naked shoulder blades, up past my neck and up up up to my arms.  When he finds the broken bone, he presses his thumb deep into the skin.  I bite my tongue so the sound comes out as a moan, rather than a cry of pain.  If he thinks I like it, he’ll stop.  

He releases my arm and steps back.  “I think I’ll leave you here,” he says, shutting off the light.  The crack of brightness around the edge of my blindfold goes dark.  “Just to think about what you’ve done.  Good luck trying to get yourself out of that.” 

Click.  Click.  Click.  The heels of his boots go up the stairs and then the door closes.  It’s just me in the pitch black dark dead still quiet.  He’s gone.  I can hear a flash of his voice before the door finally clicks shut, but never enough to tell who he’s talking to.  Or what he’s saying.  But it’s a different sort of voice.  Never the one he uses with me.  Never so cold, or calculating.  Always softer around the edges.

I twist my arms trying to redistribute the weight onto my non-broken side.  The rope bites into my wrists.  I don’t know how long it’s been since it was changed, or even loosened.  This isn’t the first time I’ve been left hanging in the dark, and it won’t be the last.  I never know how long it’ll be until he comes back.  Sometimes it’s just a couple of minutes before I can feel his fingertips across my skin again.  Sometimes it’s what feels like hours.  Sometimes it actually is hours.  In the dark, I’m blind to the concept of time.  

I twist again and the chain clinks.  Somehow, I manage to hang myself further off the ground.  Reaching now, my toes cannot touch the floor.  So I don’t move.  I hang until my wrists fall asleep my arms my shoulders the top of my spine it’s all fuzzy.  And I wait.  

And wait.

And wait.

Yesterday I was tired of waiting.  He was sloppy, even careless.  I was able to lift my hands off their hook.  Still bound, but free.  That’s how I know what the back wall looks like.  Neat.  Aligned.  Everything with a place.  I almost wished I hadn’t.  Until that moment, I had never seen the inside of the room.  Now I’ve seen the sorts of things he keeps in it.  The sort of things he’s hooked me up to and I never knew the difference because I was blind to it.  Blindness is the cure to fear.  Blinders.  Cataracts.  In my case, a dirty bandana.  Red.  I had almost climbed through the window before he came down the stairs and dragged me back.  Left me hanging the whole night.  No food.  No water.  No beatings either.  Nothing.  Just left me to hang with my own pee dripping down my leg and drying cold and sticky on my calves.