Another You // Alan Ashby {discontinued}

Chapter 7

A/N: This chapter might be triggering to people who have/had an eating disorder so please read with caution, thank you c:

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The thing is, however, is that Alan never returned. Not when Jacklyne was conscious, anyway, but it was obvious that he only made one other trip to her room since her “birthday”, and that was to drop off a bunch of things that she would need to take care of the kitten, now named Slash.

Alan didn’t even bother showing up at her door with a tray of food anymore, at any time, and at this point the food that she was giving her cat seemed oh so tempting. However, considering the fact that if she limited it’s food intake it could very well disappear, leaving her all alone again - this time leaving behind the putrid stench of death on top of the every growing feeling of loneliness. Every once and a while she would allow herself to take a swig of the water provided in fear of dehydration. There was a time and place to die, but here and now wasn’t it.

Never once did Jacklyne complain, despite the fact that the situation she was in pretty much called for it. She caught on fairly quickly that yelling out for something, anything to eat was exactly what her captor wanted. He wanted to have the satisfaction of knowing that he had the power and ability to remain completely in control. He was feeding off of that control, all the while making him seem - be even more sadistic as he was at the beginning - if that was even possible.

She had lost all will to go on - giving up on trying to escape from here because now, there was no use. Her plan of sucking up to Alan in order to get him to have the slightest bit of trust in her, just enough to allow her to manipulate him into doing what she wanted, blew up in her face.

It had been two days without a single scrap of food finding it’s way down her throat, and her body was going into what is typically known as starvation mode. Without the energy that she is given by eating, Jacklyne grew weaker - given the fact that low energy intake resulted in the consumption of muscles, as well as the burning of fat.

Since it had only been a couple days, there was the damage of the low intake wasn’t effecting her as much as it would if the torture continued. Jacklyne expected that it would, however, so she avoiding having to move too much in order to preserve whatever energy she had from her last meal. This included not moving from her bed, having moved the cat’s things to the end of the bed so that she could reach them easily and without the hassle of having to get up every couple hours in order to check on it. Her movements were very minimal - turning her head in attempts to get comfortable in the bed that suddenly felt as if it was turned to stone.

For her own entertainment, she would spend hours on end watching whatever she could find on Netflix as well as daydream when she got bored. It wasn’t much, but it always gave her the ability to block out the thoughts of her captor, and the growing feeling of hunger that welled in the pit of her stomach.

The only sound she would hear would be the pounding of her own heart in her chest, the small rumbles as her cat, who was curled up in a ball beside her, purred to no end, and the faint sound of Sherlock’s voice playing from the television, Sherlock being one of the shows that she stumbled across an afternoon a couple days prior. Jacklyne didn’t pay much attention to it, however, but would occasionally look over at the screen in order to catch small glimpses of the abnormally tall man - compared to his companion, at least. There was something comforting about hearing someone’s voice, even if it was a material thing coming from the speakers of a television set. The silence that she more than often faced was far too much to handle, and just the soft words of someone on a show was the only thing keeping her relatively sane.

Most days, it didn’t exactly seem like Alan was in the house at all. There were no jingling of keys when he was letting himself in through the front door. No crashes coming from the kitchen where he might’ve stumbled and  tripped over something, causing whatever he was holding to crash. There were no sounds coming from the bathroom, which was something Jacklyne was used to hearing considering he would spend an hour, maybe two, in there every morning in order to get ready for the day.

No one seemed to come around anymore, either. The voices of Austin, Aaron, Phil and Tino were now just a distant memory. Jacklyne didn’t even know what they sounded like anymore - but considering she only met them once or twice, that didn’t come as a surprise to her. Regardless, she missed them.

It was even quite possible that she missed her captor as well. Even after all the cruel and unexpected punishments that he put her through, Jacklyne missed his company. The way that he would sit himself on the edge of her bed with that huge smile on his face as he talked about his day as if it was the most exciting thing in the world, and how attentive he was when he asked how her day was, even though nothing had really gone on with her. Jacklyne would always make up some bullshit story just to make him happy, to make sure that that happiness that he came home with never failed to exist - because oddly enough, whenever he was happy, she was happy.

Maybe it was just empathy. Jacklyne could’ve very well been a very empathic person before this, but of course she didn’t know that. There had to be some deeper rooted meaning behind her trying to keep the man as happy as she could. In a way, she felt bad for him, having to hide someone away from the world just to keep himself happy and all to himself.

This was all an act of compassion, right? The way that Alan provided her with presents even though it wasn’t really her birthday. The chaste kisses that he would pursue, even if he knew very well that Jacklyne wouldn’t return. Her captor probably saw them as acts of endearment, trying to get her to realize how he felt towards her without verbally saying it. It was clear now to her, anyway, and she would be a liar if she said that the butterflies in her stomach were just a side effect of the starvation.