Broken Wings

Chapter 5

The days rolled on into weeks, very long, monotonous weeks for Jane. For the first several days, each morning Blake would securely tie her to the bed, leaving her alone in her own misery while he went to work. She slept a lot. When she wasn't sleeping, she had nothing else to do but let her mind wander. She wondered what her friends were doing without her during these last few weeks of summer before they went back to school, and how much they missed her. She wondered if her boss at the restaurant where she worked as a waitress had found someone else to cover her shifts. But mostly she worried about how her poor mother was coping with her disappearance. And also about what exactly Blake planned to do with her, and how she could somehow manage to find a way to escape from him.

Blake, on the other hand, was growing more comfortable in his new routine. He would go to work at the job that he hated and sit in front of a computer entering data for 8 hours. He would much rather be writing the programs for the system than entering the data into it, and he could do it too, but he had never been to school for it and he lacked the necessary social skills that would have earned him a promotion. Still, it was a paycheck.

After work he would come home and make food for himself and Jane, or sometimes he would bring home pizza or Chinese food. He still left her in the bedroom during the day, and he had brought in the TV from the living room for her to watch while he was gone. She seemed to have warmed up to him, at least a little, although her willingness to talk to him now was partially out of boredom. It simply wasn't in Jane's nature to remain angry and cold, so she couldn't help trying to make the best of her situation by being somewhat pleasant. They would spend the evening together, watching TV or movies, and conversing.

It took awhile for Blake to get used to having someone to talk to at home, but once he did he found that it was quite enjoyable to not be alone night after night. He had never been able to talk to anyone else like he talked to Jane, and he found himself telling her things he had never told anyone before. He was happier than he ever remembered being with her there. He was happy to have someone to come home to and someone to share things with, even if the circumstances of her being there were a little twisted.

Of course, Jane had noticed the change in Blake's overall mood. In fact, it was hard to believe that he was the same person who had tried to kill her weeks earlier. She could see through his feeble attempts to hide the fact that he was completely infatuated with her, and she had gotten him to open up to her enough to know that he had no other friends. Given her compromising situation perhaps she should have been more wary of his fascination with her, but she found that it was her only form of leverage over him.

Jane figured it was best if she tried to gain his trust this way. The nicer she was to him, the more he seemed to respond to her. Maybe eventually he would allow her enough freedom to escape. His moods were often volatile, and she learned there were certain topics of conversation that were best to stay away from, but as long as she didn't place any judgment on him she was now quite good at placating him.

Blake constantly tried to impress her or win her approval, and she used this advantage to delicately convince him that it was cruel to leave her tied up all day long. So, he had gone to the hardware store and bought plywood to board up the bedroom window and locks which he installed outside the door to keep her in.

He had also not hurt her or touched her since the night he tried to kill her, which was a huge relief. Jane had no way of knowing how much effort Blake was actually exerting to do this, or that he actually believed that he eventually wouldn't be able to resist the temptation any longer. She had no idea that nearly every night while he slept he dreamt of fucking her. But in his dreams she was willing to do it with him. No, Jane had no idea about any of this. She only figured that he was afraid of doing anything that might cause her to turn against him, and that made her feel a little bit bolder.

A few nights ago, they were sitting together on the bed watching episodes of an old sitcom when Jane asked, "Blake, are you going to keep me here forever?"

"I think it's the only arrangement that works out best for the both of us, my dear," he replied. He reached his hand out and gently stroked the side of her face, and she pulled away immediately, frowning.

"I was supposed to graduate college, you know, this December," she said, "I was going to be a teacher." She knew it was a dangerous thing to say to him, but right now she didn't care. She had been growing increasingly restless and maddeningly bored, locked in this tiny room day after day, and she really didn't know how much more of this confinement she could take without losing her mind.

The way she had spoken softly barely concealing the emotion behind her words irritated Blake, but he managed to stay calm. For once in his life, he was happy, and he had been treating her well but she would never be happy there with him and he knew it. He told himself that he didn't care and he hadn't said anything to her then, but since then he had been turning it over and over in his mind for some reason.

He was thinking about it that evening when he returned home from work. He climbed up the rickety steps to the old house, fumbling around for the house key in the dim twilight, when he heard a crash from the narrow alley that was between his house and the neighboring apartment building. He rushed around to the side of the house, and there stood Jane in the alleyway and not in the bedroom where he had locked her. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second and hers were wide with fear before she whipped around to run from him. She was much too slow, and he caught her in a matter of seconds, running into her and tackling her to the ground with a heavy force.

It took her a few seconds after having the wind knocked out of her to recover, and she didn't even have time to scream before he clamped his hand over her mouth and wrapped his arm tightly around her neck. She struggled weakly as he drug her back into the house through the back door, barely able to breath due to the pressure he was applying to her neck. He knew he was hurting her and he didn't care, in fact, he was almost glad. She had betrayed him. He had been a fool to believe that she ever actually cared about him, that she was a real friend to him. But she had led him on, and now she was going to pay. He would teach her to show some appreciation for how nicely he had treated her.

Once inside, he turned the corner into the bedroom and gave Jane a hard shove away from him and into the wall. Her body slammed against the wall with a sickening force, and she collapsed to the ground breathing in gasps from having her airway constricted mixed with sobs. Blake was disgusted by the sight of her tears, and his face was contorted in rage. He was utterly terrifying in his fury, and Jane could find no trace of the boy she had talked and joked with only yesterday.

"Where were you going, Jane?!" he thundered. "Decided to go for a walk, huh? Maybe you weren't aware of who makes the rules here. Well, let me make it clear."

Jane cringed as he moved at her, grabbing her by the shirt and pulling her onto the bed, pinning her down with his body. Furiously, he began undoing the button on her jeans with one hand, holding her down with the other. She felt his hand moving hungrily over the soft skin of her stomach, and she let out a strangled sob.

"No!" she choked out, "Please...don't do this."

But he ignored her, sliding his hand lower and then tugging roughly at her jeans.

"Blake, stop!" she wailed loudly, piercing the small room with her desperate cry. She was sobbing so hard now that her breaths were coming in gasps, and Blake could feel her whole body trembling beneath him. He wanted so badly to believe that she deserved this and he wanted to stay angry, but he could feel his anger dissipating at the sound of her pathetic crying. What was it about this girl that always got to him?

Blake let out his breath in a frustrated huff and pulled his hand away from her jeans, instead wrapping her into a tight embrace, holding her close and feeling the warmth of her body against his. He rested his head against her chest, listening to her hammering heartbeat as her sobbing slowed. He was emotionally and physically exhausted from their skirmish, so he did the only thing that seemed appropriate; he fell asleep to the sound of Jane's soft tears with her safely secured in his arms.