The Waning Read online

  Perhaps if I curled up with this old friend, she would whisper sweet nothings in my ear to drown out that vile dripping. Maybe she would envelope me under her paralyzing blanket and keep me warm. She could drain me enough that I wouldn’t feel all this pain.

  “Lei…” I whispered. “Lei…”

  I wanted my mind to go dark with her name on my lips.

  Just as I really started to let go, I heard the door crack open.

  5

  The movement of the door was near deafening after so much silence. Just that steady drip. I forgot the drip the instant the door moved. The dim light spilling in from whatever lay on the other side of the door was glaring. I forgot the darkness as the light blasted in, filling and painting my cell, and slamming into my pupils. It was my first glimpse of my prison.

  It was more damning than I had imagined from the sounds in the dark.

  I felt my heart seize in my chest as adrenaline flooded my veins again. I curled up like an animal and crouched in the furthest corner of my tiny cage, huddling against those dreaded bars for safety now. I shielded my eyes against light that now blinded me and made my head ache.

  I squinted until my sight adapted and the low light stopped assaulting my eyes. It took a moment for my mind to process the images transmitting from my retinas. Then, it started to process; I saw the dank, cold walls, my concrete box. Holy fuck, I am in a closet or a basement somewhere. I had no idea where. There was no indication. No window, no markings of any kind. Only the gray.

  I cautiously let my gaze explore. I traced the walls slowly; then my breath stopped.

  What in the fuck is on that wall?

  What is that?

  Oh my God, is that a fucking whip? Is that rope? What are those straps? Dear Christ, so many blades.

  I’m going to die in here. And it’s going to hurt.

  Then I found You. I laid eyes on my Master for the first time.

  My heart stopped in my chest. Terrified does not begin to articulate it. My mind and my body locked up. I had no idea what to do, what to expect. My mind went inextricably blank, like I never knew how to think at all. I simply stared at You, slack-jawed.

  You towered above my cage, a simply massive man. Your silhouette nearly consumed the doorframe, shielding me from the seemingly aggressive light. The first thing I noticed about You, amidst my terror, was how composed You were. It was striking enough to permeate my flailing mind.

  You did not look like a psychopath, quite the opposite. My senses were heightened by fear, and I found myself inventorying every detail somewhere behind my physical panic. Your clothes, though basic, were clean, crisp, and fit You perfectly. Your posture was meticulously symmetrical, shoulders stacked over hips stacked over knees stacked over ankles. You had Your gloved hands interlaced as You looked down and observed me in kind.

  There was no expression on Your face. No anger, no hate, no excitement, no glee. It was simply blank and slack. Your face was clean, as if hair did not even grow there to be shaved. Your dark hair was cut short and shaped tightly against Your head, every hair in place. Your eyes were large and took me in whole, and Your facial features were strong. A nose that could cast its own shadow, cheekbones that jutted out harshly, a strong jaw. Everything about You would be striking in a normal setting, much less cowering below You in a metal cage.

  You stood there for the longest moment. You set both feet inside my world and remained just inside the doorframe, parallel to it, in a perfect formation. I was frozen, waiting for You to move, waiting for You to speak, waiting for any indication of what I was in for. You appeared as much of a mystery as the darkness itself.

  But You were a man, so my immediate thought was simple. He’s going to rape me. Of course, You were going to rape me. That is what men kept women captive for. I waited in anguish to hear Your zipper drop, to feel You drag me from my cage and pin me down. I cringed at just the thoughts. I think You were amused at my flinching and my fear, tickled by how naïve I could be.

  When You did move at last, Your footsteps were slow, methodical. You waited, watched my every reaction. In a calm and measured stance, You drank me in. I would say You were savoring my raw state, relishing our beginning. I tried to look up and meet Your face, learn my captor; however, the fear kept slapping my head back down. My instincts demanded I keep all parts of me close and tucked in.

  Without a word from You, that moment passed, and my education began.

  As You approached the cage, I screamed at You. I attempted to raise my hackles and scare You off.

  “Get the fuck away from me!”

  “Who are you?”

  “What the fuck do you want from me?”

  You slowly opened the cage door, and I felt my heart slamming against my ribs. Then Your hand stretched in toward me.

  “Let me go!”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “No! NO!”

  “Fuck you!”

  I puffed my chest, hardened my body language, blinked back tears of sheer fear. You effortlessly snatched a flailing ankle out of the air with a gloved hand and dragged me from the cage and out onto the concrete floor in one fluid motion.

  I felt my limbs bounce harshly along the bars and the opening to the cage. All my floundering grasps were entirely futile. I only felt the bars slip past my twitching fingers. The floor greeted me harshly, my skin audibly slapping against it and the air forced out of my lungs. I lay stunned and breathless for a split second before recoiling from You again.

  I scrambled, tucking all my limbs into my body, huddling down as low and as far away from You as possible. As I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, I noticed that I was no longer wearing my tailored button up and suit. The cloth that greeted my fingers was thin and baggy. Where had these clothes come from? When had I been changed?

  I did not dare look up. I did not dare see what was coming for me. I only trembled, waiting to learn my purpose in this prison. I heard You step away from me, in the direction of that terrifying wall; I heard Your fingers at work selecting an implement. Yet I continued to keep my eyes down on these foreign clothes draped over my body.

  I felt Your footsteps come up behind me. I tightened into my fetal ball. You slowly reached down and guided the hem of my shirt up to expose my back. My heart and my breathing stopped. I was quivering uncontrollably.

  Then that first introduction of pain. The strap. I felt the thick, supple leather paint a sting across my back, tearing the pain deep into my flesh. The sensation blanked out the world; my mind only knew the shape of the lash, the pattern in which my nerves ignited.

  At such exquisite pain, I could not resist glancing up. I could not control my curiosity, my blatant need to visualize my attacker and attack. You kept as much distance between us as You could. You stood above me, cold and stoic, and let the strap lick Your commands over my flesh.

  I saw Your shape, tall and clean, in black. Black clothing, black hair. Perhaps I even saw black eyes. I could only manage to steal a glimpse of Your figure before the strikes bore my head down again.

  Do as you’re told.

  Shut your mouth.

  Respect my control.

  Forget that old life and old self.

  You are mine.

  Each command split my flesh; each instruction bit and drew blood like a vampire. It would take weeks before I understood the language of the lash.

  How I howled at You. Something changed in me when You parted my skin for the first time and invited the warm blood out into the dusty air. An electric rush of adrenaline blazed through me, and I suddenly lunged at You wildly. The animal was surfacing. I leapt as a blur of clawing limbs. I imagine it was a very pathetic attempt, but I was led only by instinct.

  You greeted me with that strap around my neck. You managed to loop it around my neck effortlessly amidst my thrashing arms. I felt the pressure against my neck, the constriction of blood and air, and my fight diffused. My sight instantly clouded as You denied my lungs air, reprimanding me until the w
orld was fuzzy enough to dull the pain. My defiance was choked into feeble gasps.

  In the haze of oxygen deprivation, my mind retreated back from my flesh. Even when You released the strap and returned to the lashes, it became just a distorted cloud. I remember the ever-throbbing pain migrating around my body, stopping to pay attention to each new lash. I remember the taste of the concrete when You released my throat and let me suck air off the floor again.

  I remember thinking, I am here to suffer.

  After it was over, I lay twitching and whimpering, curled up in a pathetic, welted, and bloody ball on the floor. You stood over me immobile for an instant—a perfectly silent and paralyzed moment that stretched out into each second, so thick I could feel time slow down through my pain. Caught up in the intensity of the stillness, I had stopped breathing again.

  As You took a step, I heard Your shoe scrape across the concrete, reanimating the scene. I let a breath puff against the floor and back into my face, and my chest began to rise and fall again. I left my skull heavily draped, staring down at the floor, as I heard You move. I listened to the strap gently graze the wall as You hung it in its place. Your steps neared me again; Your shadow fell over me as You crouched. I felt a gloved hand rest on my shoulder, and I flinched desperately.

  Slowly, calmly, You simply pushed my shoulder and rolled me onto my back. I felt the pain light up in the straight lines of the lash as my wounds met the cement. I squinted and prepared myself for more punishment. Yet none came. The lesson was over. Your face was no longer stern and vacant; the hard edges had relaxed.

  I flinched as You crouched down to me, as if I could curl any tighter into myself. You waited, frozen in a composed squat, until my twitching subsided. Then I felt Your gloved hands guide me to a seated position. At some point, I had started crying, and my sobs trembled my body as I sat hunched over.

  I did not know what to expect.

  I did not know what to hope for.

  You carefully cleaned the wounds of the shell that remained of me. Your harsh abuse had given way to a soft touch as You pressed a cold cloth to my welts and wiped away the blood. Then You gently guided me and placed me into the cage, like a seed into the ground.

  With the lock to my cage secured, You departed for a moment, leaving the door to my cell ajar. I wished I had the strength to chase Your path and try to catch a glimpse outside this box, but my body was too depleted from the pain and the fight. I could only lie crumbled at the bottom of that cage.

  I did not even strive to look up when You returned. I let myself stare through watery eyes at the blank wall while You still granted me light to see it. I heard You unlatch the lock and open my door. I felt You place something near my feet—what I later would fumble through the darkness to discover as adequate food and water. Enough to buy me another day inside this cage.

  I knew You were gone when the darkness fell around me again. Despite my hunger and thirst, I did not move to the provisions at my feet. I let myself wallow in the hum of my pain as Your lesson secretly began to permeate my mind.

  The beating left me in shock, rattled everything in my head much deeper than my dark and unexplained imprisonment. I did not know the woman You pulled out of the cage, who crumpled into a protective ball so quickly. I had not made the decision to give up, to lay there and cry as You cleaned my wounds. Fear, survival, abject confusion had made me a stranger. Even more than the hum of pain on my nerves, I felt the crushing fear at the foreign feeling of myself.

  When I think back on this night, our first night, I can barely stand to remember that old foolish me who met You, with my oh-so-progressive and liberal lesbian relationship and my oh-so-important high powered career. How I stupidly resisted You. I was so ignorant, so blind as I clung to the idea of freedom, to the belief that I couldn’t be owned.

  He is a nut case. He just has to be some fucking nut case, I told myself in the painful dark. Something is broken is his head. Clearly, it has to be. What kind of demented piece of shit keeps a woman in a cage? What kind of loser just takes someone to beat them? He is just fucked, and I am just a casualty. I repeated to myself over and over, I will get out of this; I will find a way out and back to her. I told myself there was a way back to that precious life.

  Why did I fight so long? What did I expect to gain by resisting so hard? Could I honestly believe there was ever any hope? I convinced myself for a while, but I think that deep down, in the depths of my heart, I knew from that first moment. When my mind said it was the end, it meant it was the end of the me I knew, the end of that life.

  Yet eventually, it faded. Even that first night. The adrenaline died out. My muscles burned and quivered. The first wave of hope died faster than I expected, faster than it had when I wrestled alone. As the anger and fight drained out of me, dripping from my body as if I was bleeding out, I wrapped up in despair. Sadness cradled me against those bars so uncomfortably pressing into my hips, my sides, my shoulders. The tears burned hot down my cheeks as I just whimpered to myself.

  My mind crumpled down to its one vestige of clarity—Lei. I imagined those wide, dark eyes greeting me at the door when I returned home from work. I imagined my news transforming her irritation into bliss.

  “I made it,” I whispered to her between sobs. “We can finally have it all.”

  6

  After that first lesson, You left me to process alone. Pain was radiating over me. I could articulate the pattern of welts in my mind from how my nerves sang out in chorus. Long stripes horizontally across the widest part of my back. The lines mingled at their root then splayed out at wide angles. I imagined the welts I could not see or reach to touch. My skin was humming so hard, I practically vibrated against the bars as I lay lifeless in the fetal position. Warm tears would have steadily poured down my cheeks, but my body did not have fluids to waste like that.

  My biological needs rose to rival the sensations of my injuries. I finally hobbled and crawled to turn around in my cage. The square was impossibly small. Just turning around was an endeavor, especially on my fatigued and injured body. I had to move slowly, by degrees, before I was able to fumble through the darkness to discern what You had left me. My fingers clumsily articulated a small bottle of warm water and a couple of crusts of bread. They felt foreign in my hands; my fingers began trembling in anticipation.

  Awkwardly, I tried to eat and drink hunched down on my hands and knees, craning my neck upward, feeling the pressure bloom in my contorted shoulders and neck. There was nothing natural about feeding in this condition, just as there was nothing natural about being locked in a cage in a concrete box in the dark.

  I had not realized I was still sobbing until I went to lift the bottle to my lips. It quivered and splashed against my mouth. I stopped and breathed deliberately to calm myself. When my sobs subsided, I gulped desperately at the water. My mouth rejoiced at the fluid; I could not drink it fast enough. Long before my thirst was quenched, I heard the bottle crumple empty.

  I snatched up the bread and inhaled it, barely chewing the substance before swallowing it down. The bread sucked the freshly introduced moisture back out of my mouth. The introduction of food after so many hours set my stomach ablaze. The full bottle of water did not even wet my throat. I should not have ingested so gluttonously; I should have known, even this early, to ration.

  With an empty plate and an empty bottle, I simply and sadly dropped my head, curling up on the small blanket. With my writhing stomach muffled, I thought of Lei again. No matter what happened, I could not stop thinking of her. She was the disease of my heart. Loving her so much made this box all the more painful. Remembering her, longing for her was the real torture. I wanted to die every time I envisioned the curve of her hip or felt the warmth of her skin.

  She began to mock me from outside this cell. Even if she did gnaw off her fingers with fear for me, she sat free in the comfort of our home. She was able to stand and walk and pace. Why had she not found me with all that freedom yet?

  Why was
I here long enough to feel the sting of Your wrath?

  My own thoughts were turning to poison as my stomach curled around the meager crumbs and swallows. I had no refuge if I soured the thoughts of Lei. I chose to blank out my mind. I curled up with my bodily pain and focused on the sound of my own breathing over that never-ending drip.

  How long did You leave me alone to break me? Cut off from all interaction. Sealed in my dark little box until You could starve out my pride and delusions of self, carve me down to just a shell. It felt like days, but everything felt like days and years in the darkness. I could count the seconds, but the numbers began to grow too massive for me to keep my grip. They too faded away into the black. I just knew it all felt like a horrific eternity.

  I knew it could not have been too long. I still had not died for lack of food and water. My body still had not processed my tiny meal enough to force me to soil myself. Dark hours were ambiguous and shapeless.

  Then out of the darkness, with no real pattern or indication, You returned, just as unexpected as the first time. My heart slammed into my chest and pulled me back into a sloppy consciousness at the sound of the door. My muscles tensed in unison and brought me slamming up too rigidly for my space. The bars halted my ascent with a sting deep in my hair. I ignored the sensation and recoiled deeper into myself.

  You looked exactly the same, the same pristine plain clothes, the same gloves. Fear gripped me tighter than before, specific, channeled fear at knowing what was coming. The tension wound around my chest, clenching my heart into struggling beats that knocked against my ribs. I did not waste time trying to think, trying to forecast my pain. I only thudded with my pulse as I waited.

  Your shape meditated briefly in the space before moving to the lock of my cage. Again, You denied me so much as a glance. With Your intimidating gaze downcast, I took the opportunity to actually look hard, to do more than glance and observe my captor. Time appeared to freeze to grant me the chance.