If I Die By Sunrise

Break Me Broken

As days go by, the night's on fire.

"Do you really want me,

dead or alive to torture for my sins?

Do you really want me dead or alive

to live a lie?"

- Hurricane by 30 seconds to Mars.

"The rules are simple," His smooth as molasses voice went from charmingly deceptive to sternly authoritarian in seconds. "Don't leave the house, don't answer the door and don't think I can't see you." Jerry turned my attention to the security cameras discreetly positioned on the corner walls of the cell.

I blinked at their expensive appearance before dragging my gaze across the mostly bare room; aside from the bars on the windows and the security cameras watching my every step, this wasn't as bad as I thought.

The torture devices were no where in sight, and with the raised window I had access to at least some daylight. Apparently his trust in me extended that far, but despite the bathroom and working shower I hadn't yet earned the comfort of a bed. Only a mattress that had seen better days lay on the floor.

I wasn't at all surprised by his measures to subdue me, or the fact that he thought that I could be subdued. Without meeting his magnetic eyes I commented on his lack of creativity. "You know, Bela Lugosi's probably turning in his grave right now."

The tiny room, more like a cell, didn't leave me with enough space to avoid contact with him but I tried like hell just the same.

He turned to me, his eyes almost black from suspending his evening feeding, and gave me the kind of appraising look a lion gives an unfortunate lamb right before he pounces.

"You haven't seen the piece de resistance." He grinned, revealing perfectly white human canines before seemingly vanishing through the slim doorway and returning a couple of heartbeats later with a pair of handcuffs far more sinister than the ropes currently binding my wrists.

They were shiny and about a thousand times more industrial-strength than the ropes were. Before I could explain to him how I wasn't Houdini, he switched the shackles.

"It's a bit excessive I know, but I can't afford to have you enjoying your last few days here or forming any bright ideas in your head to get out of this world kamikaze-style you know? I have a reputation."

I huffed, raising my bound wrists to expose the flaw in his great plan. "What good can I be as an eternal slave if I can't do anything?" then realization dawned across my face, "What do you mean "last few days?" The memories of my excursion the previous night resurfaced, unbidden and harrowing. I narrowed my gaze. "What's going to happen to me?"

Jerry's laugh shook the ground. "I'm going to make you understand the meaning of the word "eternal." Within seconds I felt his cool breath ghost across my neck and his stone fingers plant themselves at my hips. He was standing behind me now, his voice a soft, low grumble in my ear. "And what it means to be a perfect slave."

The fear I was managing to conceal all day suddenly crept up on me. But so did something else. Something that made me feel high and a little dizzy and my stomach stir with anticipation. But I swallowed it down, trying to focus my dwindling attention on anything else except the cool chill of his fingers as they inched their way up my shirt.

It was suddenly getting harder to breathe. The natural urge to jerk out of his grasp tugged at the corners of my forgotten conscious before it was tampered down by common sense. I knew that one wrong move could have Jerry morphing his human fingers into vampire claws in seconds, and I wasn't very partial to the idea of having them in close proximity to my skin. No way.