Treat me like a fool
Treat me mean and cruel
But love me
Wring my faithful heart
Tear it all apart
But love me (won't you love me?)
~"Love Me", Elvis Presley
Marlena woke with a start, confused by her surroundings. Glancing around the room, she took in the small round table with two chairs, a chest of drawers, her luggage tossed hastily in the corner, and the entrance to the bathroom. Suddenly she remembered everything, including the day before when Kristen had locked her in this room in the wine cellar. As she shifted in the bed, she felt a sharp pain in her forearm, and saw the bruise forming there, complete with teeth marks. In her desperation to lock Marlena down there, Kristen had bitten her. Marlena gingerly palpated around it, realizing that Kristen had broken the skin with her bite.
Slowly rising from the bed, she noticed that every muscle in her body hurt. She had spent hours, the evening before, trying to find a way to escape. Screaming, beating on the door, moving furniture, all to no avail. She was stuck. All she had was a television monitor in which to watch the goings on in the house. Kristen was more like Stefano DiMera than she would ever admit, but the television monitor, and taunting Marlena via video feed...that was definitely something a DiMera would do.
Grabbing her luggage, and digging through it for her toiletry bag, and a set of clean clothes, so she could shower, she heard Kristen's voice, "Well, good morning Marlena!"
Turning towards the television monitor, she saw Kristen standing on the stairs by the front door, with a small device in her hand. Marlena hated feeling trapped, and out of control, and this situation had her feeling both. "Damn you!" she yelled at the monitor. Kristen just laughed, and waggled her fingers at the camera, as if this were some massive joke. "You're just like your father!" Marlena shouted.
"Now, now, now," Kristen said in a condescending tone. "It's not going to be so bad. Now, this is truly fascinating, I have cameras, and microphones hidden throughout the house, and in the garden, and I control them all with this little monitor here," she said gesturing to the black box in her hand. "So, I can see and hear you anytime I want to, and you can see and hear anything I want you to. I promise, I will keep you entertained."
"You'll pay for this," Marlena told her, but in her heart she wasn't so sure. There was no way out of this room, she knew that.
"It's your own fault you're locked in that room, Marlena. You were just so determined to tell John that Susan had the baby, and it was Susan who married him. I begged you, and you refused."
The monitor switched, and Marlena no longer saw Kristen, instead she saw John, asleep on the living room couch. "John," she gasped.
"He fell asleep waiting up for you last night on the sofa. Isn't that sweet? The entire time, you were down there in the cellar, what do ya know?" Kristen said sarcastically.
"He will find me," Marlena told her.
"Well...I'm sure he's going to look for you, but he won't find you...and certainly not before Stefano gets you, and takes you awaaaaay," Kristen said in a sickening sing song voice.
The monitor clicked off, and Marlena fell to the floor, still staring up at a black screen, with a growing sense of doom in the pit of her stomach. Stefano. Kristen was calling Stefano, if she hadn't done so already. Marlena had spent the better part of the last year trying to get away from that man, and now she was trapped in a sound proof room in the wine cellar, with no way out, and no way to save herself from him.
