Held (16 page)

When we were finished, he said, “I’m going to do things a bit different today. I hope you don’t mind.”

“What do you mean?”

As he cleared away our plates, he said, “Normally, I work on my novel after I’ve put you to bed at night and before I wake
you in the morning. But Crystal has given me so much to write, I need to get it down while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure of how this was going to affect me.

“I’m wondering if I should gag you. I mean, if someone was to ring the doorbell, and you were to scream, things would get bad, wouldn’t they?” He looked at me and considered whether I was trustworthy.

“I wouldn’t scream, Ron.”

After a moment of intense scrutiny, he said, “You probably wouldn’t. But just in case, I’m going to leave the door to my bedroom open. If I hear anything from you that constitutes trying to gain attention from anyone other than myself, I’ll cause a great deal of damage to our young friend in the basement. Do you understand?”

I nodded. It pissed me off that he always threatened me with harm to others.

“Very well. If you need me, you may loudly say my name. I should easily hear you.” He kissed my forehead and left me sitting at the table while he retreated to his bedroom.

For the first few minutes, I tried to pull
myself free from the handcuff.

For the next few minutes, I tried to pull the metal hook out of the underside of the table.

For the few minutes after that, I rested, having used up a lot of strength with all the pulling and tugging.

Then, I decided to do whatever exercises I could
with one hand shackled so low. In my time with Ron, I’d noticed changes in my body. A weakening of muscles, especially in my right arm because it was always handcuffed to something. My legs were weaker too. There was going to come a time when I’d need to fight Ron or run away, and this was no shape in which to do either.

I stood and did some
stretches. My muscles were weak from lack of use, and they were stiff. I knew I’d be sore tomorrow, so I tried not to push myself too hard. I didn’t want Ron to know I was doing any exercises. I didn’t know if it would make him angry, but there was no sense in poking the bear.

After
managing to do some push-ups with my hands on the seat of the chair, I quietly slid the chair out of the way and laid on the floor. With my right hand shackled to the table and held up above me, I managed to do several sit-ups. Exercising made me feel better. It made me feel stronger and more in control.

When I’d finished exercising for the day, I sat in the chair
.

I was thirsty now. When my breathing had returned to normal and I didn’t think Ron could notice anything different, I called out to him. He didn’t come the first time. Or the second time. On the third time, he came.

“What is it?”

“I’m very thirsty. Could you please get me a glass of ice water?”

“Sure.” He poured me a glass and brought it to me. “It would be nice if I didn’t have to restrain you, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could live here without me worrying you would try to get away?”

“Yes, Ron.” It would be. Because then he could remove the handcuffs, go to his room, and I could get the hell out of here.

“Well, if that’s all, I guess I’ll get back to work. Call if you need anything else.” Another kiss on the forehead, and he was gone.

Had he not been a psychopath, he would’ve surely made some lucky gal a great husband. If you left out the sadistic serial killer part of him, he was a great guy. He was clean and orderly. He was kind. He catered to the woman he loved. He was a great cook. He had high hopes for his career. He didn’t plop down in front of the television for hours at a time. He enjoyed playing games and great conversation. His sexual stamina was impressive. And he was a handsome man. It’s just that pesky habit of his where he raped, tortured, killed, and dismembered women that was a turn off.

I sat there for what felt like hours more, thinking, but trying not to.

It angered me that there were no clocks visible to me. The microwave was digital and
had a clock, but it was always flashing twelve o’clock. The stove didn’t have a clock. None hung on the walls, and Ron didn’t wear a watch. I had no idea how he ever knew what time it was.

So I never knew
the time, I never knew what day it was or what week it was or even what month it was. All I had to go on were my periods, which thankfully, came like clockwork. So I knew that I’d had three periods here so far. So I’d been here about four months. Damn. That was way too long. Of course, four minutes would’ve been too long also.

Even though I needed to pee, I didn’t call for Ron. The more he wrote on that stupid book, the quicker this nightmare would end. Or so I hoped.

The next few days went the same way. We ate breakfast, he ran down and offered Crystal a fresh bowl of dog food, which he complained about her refusing to eat, and then he went to his bedroom to write while I secretly exercised at the table. I would yell to him when I got hungry and he would come and make us lunch, after which he returned to his room. The same thing happened for supper. I was hungry. I yelled for him. He made us dinner. Then, he retreated back to his room. We didn’t even have drinks or play cards. Which was fine by me.

Except after a few days of that, I grew extremely bored. Just sitting at the kitchen table all da
y was mind-numbing. I hated it.

During dinner one night, I begged him for something to do while I sat at the table.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Crossword puzzles, real puzzles, word searches, magazines, books, anything really. Just something to do other than sit here and stare at the floor.”

“You could always try staring at the wall.”

I looked at him and he laughed, clearly trying to be funny.

“You’re hilarious,” I said dryly.

“Come on, Nicole. Don’t be so serious all the time.
I’ll see that you have something with which to occupy yourself tomorrow.”

“Can I read your book?”

“I told you, not until it’s finished.”

“Not that one. The other one. The one you said bombed.”

“I never said it bombed. Bombed is such a negative word. Why would want to read that one?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just to get a sense of your style.
” I was curious. I wanted a closer look to how his mind worked.

“I’ll think about it.”

I dropped the subject for the rest of the evening. I guess he felt bad for me because he actually stayed and played cards with me that evening after dinner. As much as I hated to admit it, it was better than nothing. I never would’ve thought that I’d find myself preferring the company of the sadistic over loneliness.

That night, as he shackled me to the headboard and hovered over my body, he smiled.

“Do you still want me?” he asked.

What the hell was I supposed to say to that? No, I did not want him to do anything except drop dead. But I couldn’t tell him that.

I slowly nodded.

He ki
ssed my neck gently while he caressed my breast with his hand. His light kisses on my neck gave me gooseflesh, which made my nipples hard under Ron’s hand, which made Ron think I was enjoying his touch. It wasn’t true, but that’s what he thought.

“Oh, Nicole,” he whispered breathlessly. “You really do want me.”

Damn the goose bumps.

He got up on the bed on his knees and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it to the floor. He reached back and took his shoes off one at a time, each falling to the floor with a thump. As he reached for and unfastened his slacks, I tried to prepare myself for what was about to happen. As he slid himself out of his pants, I figured myself lucky to have gone so long without this happening already.

My only hope was it wouldn’t hurt too much.
But even if hurt a lot, I would still be better off than Stephanie, Melinda, and Crystal. And it was better to have this happen here, upstairs in a real bedroom, than in the torture chamber downstairs on the cold concrete floor.

Positioning himself between my
legs, he lowered his body onto mine.

I tried to relax, telling myself that if I were tense, it would be more painful. But how could you relax while something like this was happening?

As he entered me, I was surprised. In fact, I gasped. Ron thought it was a gasp of pleasure, but it was surprise. I’d expected him to be rough, but he was gentle. He had never been gentle with the other girls, at least not that I saw. I had every reason to expect him to be forceful and fierce with me, but he wasn’t. I’d been expecting a brutal rape like those that I’d witnessed downstairs, but instead, this was more like...well, more like lovemaking. In his mind, that’s what it was. He was making love to me. But in my mind, it was still rape.

As he rocked my body, the images of him with the other girls flashed through my mind. The choking, the yelling out my name, the way he’d
rammed himself against Stephanie’s dead body. All of it entered my mind. I tried to push the thoughts away, and find a happy place.

I imagined myself on the beach.
I felt the sand squishing between my toes. I could feel the water hitting my ankles. I could hear the sound of the waves and the seagulls. I could feel the warm sun beating down on me.

Before I knew it, it was over. He
kissed me all over my face and left the room.

I lay there, feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted from my back. The thing I’d been dreading had finally happened, and it hadn’t been so bad.
And he was halfway through writing the book, which meant he was closer to possibly letting me go. Things were really starting to look up for me.

But of course, what goes
up must come down.

The next morning, Ron kept his word and brought me a few things to occupy myself with. He brought a book of word searches, a book of crossword puzzles, a crayon to write with, and a book to read. To my surprise, it was his first book. I honestly hadn’t expected him to let me read it. But here it was.

After breakfast, he headed off to his bedroom to write
, and I picked up his book, titled
Welcome
. The cover was reminiscent of a romance novel, except it depicted a man strangling a woman. Nothing romantic about that. I opened the book and began reading.

Hours later, I closed the book and yelled to Ron that I was hungry. He came in and made us each a bowl of soup. While we ate, he asked me if I was done with the book.

“Not yet. Almost.”

“By dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I can’t wait to hear what you think about it.”

“How’s the other one coming?”

“Good. Everything’s flowing nicely. I did hit a snag, however. Nothing for you to worry about, though. It’ll all work out.”

We finished our lunch and he rushed back to his bedroom. I hurried through my secret exercises and got back to reading the book.

It was no wonder the damn thing hadn’t sold well. It was horrible. It was sloppily written. And the story
- a group of lost hikers stumble across a shack in the woods in which a family of murderers live and are killed one by one (like that hadn’t been done to death, no pun intended) - didn’t hold up. The timeline was wrong, and the names were confused a few times. The people in the story did things that normal, real people could never do. They had impossible strength and their bodies were pushed far past the point that would’ve killed any human.

As I closed the book and thought about that, I realized that was why he tortured people in the basement. He was testing the human body for that realism he talked about. He needed to know just how far a person could be pushed before they fell. Just how far they’d bend before they broke.

I shuddered to think I was one of his subjects, even though I hadn’t really been tested physically.

Then I gasped. He wasn’t testing me physically. He was testing me mentally. He was pushing all my buttons, arousing my emotions and messing with my mind. He was seeing how far he could push me before I snapped.

Well I wasn’t your average broad. I was a mother. I wasn’t snapping that easily. If he wanted to break me, he had his work cut out for him.

As we ate dinner, Ron asked the inevitable question that I’d spent the afternoon preparing to answer.

“What did you think? And be honest, Nicole.”

“It was interesting,” I said.

“How so?”

“The things your characters did and how they interacted with one another were interesting.”

“Did you like it?”

“Yes.” I didn’t.

“Did you think it was good?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t.

“What was your favorite part?”

The end, when it was over. “I kind of liked the ending. When the girl got away.”