Copyright © 2015 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright GoingTo, used under license from Shutterstock.com.
A new spasm of pain jolted Reba’s head upright. She yanked against the ropes that bound her body, tied around her stomach to a vertical length of pipe that had been bolted to the floor and ceiling in the middle of the small room. Her wrists were tied in front, and her ankles were bound.
She realized she’d been dozing, and she was immediately awash in fear. She knew by now that the man was going to kill her. Little by little, wound by wound. It wasn’t her death he was after, and it wasn’t sex either. He only wanted her pain.
I’ve got to stay awake, she thought. I’ve got to get out of here. If I fall asleep again, I will die.
Despite the heat in the room, her naked body felt chilled with sweat. She looked down, writhing, and saw her feet were bare against the hardwood floor. The floor around them was caked with patches of dry blood, sure signs that she wasn’t the first person to have been tied here. Her panic deepened.
He had gone somewhere. The room’s single door was shut tight, but he would come back. He always did. And then he’d do whatever he could think of to make her scream. The windows were boarded, and she had no idea if it was day or night, the only light from the glare of a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Wherever this place was, it seemed that no one else could hear her screams.
She wondered if this room had once been a little girl’s bedroom; it was, grotesquely, pink, with curly-cues and fairytale motifs everywhere. Someone – she guessed her captor – had long since trashed the place, breaking and overturning stools and chairs and end tables. The floor was scattered with the dismembered limbs and torsos of children’s dolls. Little wigs – doll’s wigs, Reba guessed – were nailed like scalps on the walls, most of them elaborately braided, all of them in unnatural, toy-like colors. A battered pink vanity table stood upright next to a wall, its heart-shaped mirror shattered into little pieces. The only other piece of furniture intact was a narrow, single bed with a torn, pink canopy. Her captor sometimes rested there.
The man watched her with dark beady eyes, through his black ski mask. At first she had taken heart in the fact that he always wore that mask. If he didn’t want her to see his face, didn’t that mean that he didn’t plan to kill her, that he might let her go?
But she soon caught on that the mask served a different purpose. She could tell that the face behind it had a receded chin and a sloped forehead, and she was sure the man’s features were weak and homely. Although he was strong, he was shorter than she, and probably insecure about it. He wore the mask, she guessed, to seem more terrifying.
She’d given up trying to talk him out of hurting her. At first she had thought she could. She knew, after all, that she was pretty. Or at least I used to be, she thought sadly.
Sweat and tears mixed on her bruised face, and she could feel the blood matted into her long blond hair. Her eyes stung: he had made her put in contact lenses, and they made it harder to see.
God knows what I look like now.
She let her head drop.
Die now, she begged herself.
It ought to be easy enough to do. She was certain that others had died here before.
But she couldn’t. Just thinking about it made her heart pound harder, her breath heave, straining the rope around her belly. Slowly, as she knew she was facing an imminent death, a new feeling began to arise within her. It wasn’t panic or fear this time. It wasn’t despair. It was something else.
What do I feel?
Then she realized. It was rage. Not against her captor. She’d long since exhausted her rage toward him.
