“You’re pathetic,” Dornan growls, amusement in his voice.
I feel crazy. I am literally going insane in this room with him.
“So are you,” I reply, before I can stop myself. “Four sons dead before you even fucking noticed me.”
His amusement at my apathy transforms to unbridled rage as my words hit home. He bunches his fist and draws it back, aiming directly for my face.
At the beginning, I used to flinch. I used to shield my face with my hands, trying to avoid the pain, but as Dornan’s fist travels toward my face in slow motion, I smile and ready myself for the pain.
Crack! My head snaps back, hitting the wall behind me with enough force to knock me out for a moment. I feel my body crumple to the floor, paper-fragile and ready to shatter completely, my eyes slammed shut but my lips are pursed into a triumphant smile.
Because every time he strikes out at me is one step closer to death, and with it, an eternal sleep; a blissful relief from the tyranny of this agonizing existence.
And I’m so very, very tired.
Something cold pours over my head and I gasp, spluttering as I jerk awake.
I peer up to see Dornan standing above me, an empty water glass in his hand and a look of irritation on his face so scathing, it makes me want to giggle.
I’m a pile of tangled limbs on the floor, and I can taste blood in my mouth. The fresh blood swims around on my tongue, mixing with my saliva and the old blood that’s stuck to my teeth after weeks of being hit in the face. So much blood, it has become a normal thing for me to taste.
I lean over and spit some of the blood on the floor beside me, completely uncaring at how that might look. After all, Dornan’s the only one watching, and I’m pretty sure he’s used to my blood by now. The room reeks of dying - of dried metallic blood, and piss, and resignation. It doesn’t reek of death yet - death has a completely different smell to actually dying. Death smells of rotting flesh and old blood that’s no longer circulating, no longer able to well up on a blade’s painful cue. Dying, my dying, is full of energy and pain, but death is quiet and cold and so very final.
Soon, I’m sure of it, death and I are going to meet in this room, and then I might finally have some relief from this hell.
***
Time passes, but everything remains the same. The torture. The food. The sickness. Until one day, Dornan visits me, and he does something different.
“Do you want to die today?” he asks me. I stare at the ceiling from my spot, tied to the bed frame, still wearing the same bra and panties and ruined shirt.
How nice of him, giving me the choice. I shiver as his hand slides down between my legs.
“Do you know what the French call an orgasm?” I gasp in surprise as he applies pressure to my clit and begins to knead it ever so gently. Tears prick at the corner of my eyes as I fight to retain some semblance of control.
It feels awful. It feels good.
I’ve had nothing but pain for the past days and weeks. Nothing but blood and electric shocks and water boarding. Nothing but knives and broken glass and hate.
“They call it petit mort. The little death. What do you want today, baby girl? The little death? Or the big one?”
He stops, and I take a long, shuddering breath attempting to compose myself.
The word please sits on the tip of my tongue, feathery and desperate, and I physically bite down to stop myself from uttering it. Begging would be foolish. Begging just makes it worse.
He licks his bottom lip thoughtfully and grabs the knife from beside my head, holding it vertical with the pointed end of the blade pressing lightly into the bare flesh directly above my heart. I try to recoil, but flat on my back, there’s nowhere to go.
“I could cut out your heart,” he says, pressing the tip of the blade a little harder. I wince as it breaks into my skin, a nasty, stinging warmth bubbling up from my chest. My blood. Again. He seems to read my thoughts.
“I wonder how much blood you have left inside you, Julie?” he muses cruelly. “I could drain it all out of you, slowly. I can make your death last a lifetime.”
Part of me wants to say Better get started, then but I don’t. I close my eyes tightly as his other hand takes some of the blood seeping from my chest and pushes my bra down, smearing the blood over my nipple. It’s warm at first but turns cold almost immediately, and I cringe as I feel my nipple stiffen to a hard peak.
He repeats the action on my other nipple, pinching it hard. The cold blood makes my skin prickle and I shiver involuntarily.
“You like that?”
I squeeze my eyes shut tighter as he dips his fingertips in the wound on my chest and applies that same finger to my clit, pushing my panties to the side and rubbing shallow, wet circles.