Insanity // J.Valeska

Part Nineteen: The Escape

I'd like to give a warning that there is a rather graphic rape scene in this chapter, so if you'd like to skip this one you may; it is only significant to book 2.

VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

[Stephanie Harlem]

**Flashback - 3 Weeks Ago**

The movies always depicted it as much easier than in reality. The kidnapped person always manages to do one of three things: be rescued, fight back, or escape.

It just wasn't that simple.

One would think she hadn't tried to escape, fight back, rebel. She had, she really had. her uncle was a cop for gods sake. She really tried. It just wasn't so easy.

Her first week she hadn't slept a wink. Her nights were spent with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her body alert and entirely aware of her surroundings. She had waited until the house was quiet - which had taken quite a while, oddly enough. She could detect small, high-pitched feminine gasps and moans radiating throughout the corridors of the house, and only in the deepest hours of the night had they quieted. It was strange; apart from Tabitha, Steph was certain she was the only woman in the penthouse, and the Galavan's kept themselves secluded from the others; there was no way another inmate could have weaseled their way into one of the sibling's bed.

When the house was finally quiet and dark early into the morning, that was when Steph made her first move. She crept along the sides of the hallways, creeping slowly through the slumbering penthouse. The first night she only managed to make a mind-map of the house, mentally tallying the various windows, the lone balcony and the single elevator door - if there were any staircases leading to the main floor, they were hidden. Of course all the windows were secured with bars, and none of them opened. The elevator only operated with a passcode, and the balcony was tightly secured with bars, padlock and impenetrable glass (she figured this out the hard way, when, one night, she slammed it with a frying pan, and then a hardcover Oxford Dictionary). Her little 'midnight rendezvous' had resulted in a rather sever punishment of mild shock therapy with Tabitha while Theo taunted her with food and water - her consensus was that she was not leaving here easily.

Her second and third night were spent scouting the personal rooms of the others in the house. The Arkham inmates were pooled together for the most part in the common area, sprawled out while Steph kept to herself, huddled in the corner nearest the door. Tabitha and Theo's quarters were strictly off limits and locked off too, complete with a large, heavy, mahogany wooden door. Any ploys of killing them in their sleep had been safeguarded against - getting near them after hours was next to impossible. And with Tabitha's stellar (borderline kinky) skills with a whip, her chances at defeating the siblings was low in the daytime as well.

The other inmates were as thick-skulled as they came. With a mild exception of Jerome, who could occasionally be useful. Apart from that, it seemed as though she was on her own.

It occurred one night early into her kidnaping. The incident that she regarded as the worst of her life; the moment in her life she regretted more so than anything else that she had ever done. The worst part was, this precise moment in time would forever haunt her, forever torment her when she was alone, when she was scared, when she was at her weakest and most vulnerable. Hell, she regretted it more than when the siblings had subjected her to electro-shock therapy.

Steph hated how curious and determined she was sometimes.

It had always been a rather burdensome character trait for her; from accidentally walking in on her parents having sex at the ripe age of six (noises had kept her up and was curious as to where they were coming from), to the time she had walked in on her father snorting up a line of coke with his business partners (they'd been quite nervous when she had answered the door for them minutes before; nervous and anxious for the impending high) - really she had the worst timing.