Only Him

Chapter 36

My heart raced as I took in my surroundings. The dimly shadowed room, the naked fluorescent bulb hanging from a wire above me, the cold concrete floor biting into my sore shoulder and hip. No. No! I couldn't be back here! Dimitri and my mother had saved me, taken me away from my erstwhile prison. How was I back? It was all so real. I could smell the cold metal of the chains biting into my wrists and ankle, feel the way they squeezed on my joints until it felt like my bones were separating.

I tugged and tugged at my fetters, crying out in pain and frustration as they remained solidly in place. How could this be real? It wasn't real. Dimitri had saved me. My friends had come for me.

But it felt so real. Could dreams feel this real?

I looked down at myself. I was curled around the large bulk of my belly, trying to protect it and its inhabitant from our surroundings. The small protection of clothes was long since gone, the tattered remains of my blazer and blouse falling uselessly around me, unable to span my changing girth. The cold press of the concrete floor onto my stomach sent shivers down my spine and I felt the feeble struggles of my son moving away from the hard, cold press on my left side, orienting himself mostly to the right side of my womb. I wanted to cry. I did cry. I couldn't even protect him while he was inside of me. I couldn't give him a comfortable position.

Why was I here?

The room seemed to flicker around me and it took me a minute to realize that the light overhead was sputtering out, the filaments burned up at last.

I willed to live on. I couldn't be trapped here in the dark. The suffocating press of the shadows surrounding me threatened to move closer with each flicker of the light.

"Please don't go, please don't go," I repeated like it was a mantra.

But it did go.

The light sputtered out and I felt my breathing come in shallow gasps.

Not the dark. Isolation and restraints I could and had dealt with before. But the dark? When I couldn't see anything coming?

That was the worst. I couldn't stand being in the dark, both literally and figuratively.

"Why am I here?" I asked myself, panting. "Why? I haven't been here in months! My friends rescued me. They wouldn't leave me here like this!"

"They didn't have a choice," said a cold voice close by.

I shrieked as Marlen spoke to me. I hadn't heard the door open. Hadn't seen anyone come in. Had he been here all along?

His voice was amused. "Did I sneak up on you?" he asked. "I'm very good at that. I let you think you're safe and then I get you when you're most vulnerable."

I glared into the darkness.

"This isn't real," I told him stoutly. "I'm not really here."

"Aren't you?" he asked. "Did you ever really leave this room?"

"Of course I did! I've been back at Court for months!"

"That's not what I asked. Did you ever really leave this room?"

I was confused. I'd answered that question. Of course I had! I'd gone back to Court, graduated college, shared love and excitement with friends and family.

And had the worry and threat of Marlen hanging over me the entire time. I'd physically left this room but had I mentally? Had I been free mentally since Marlen had taken me or had I been hostage to my fears of both him and his partner ever since?