Resilience | ✔

Chapter Twenty

TRIGGER WARNING: torture, mentions of rape, homophobia

By Marley's count, it had been three weeks. At least—three weeks since she started counting, which meant it was more like four. And it had been all kinds of brutal.

The first couple days, she couldn't figure out how she'd gotten here. Her ears rang for—well, about three days, though that was before she was keeping track of hours—and whenever she moved spots crowded her vision. She couldn't remember anything between walking into the parking garage and waking up here.

She couldn't remember ever being as scared as she was when she woke up. By the time she realized what had happened, her body had picked up on all the hints and signals—blindfold, bound hands, gag, throbbing pain in her skull, unfamiliar smell, unfamiliar sounds—and decided to be scared shitless. She'd been kidnapped. She couldn't see and couldn't cry for help. When she wriggled her wrists, tied awkwardly around the back of the chair she was tied to, the ropes were so tight that all it did was break her skin.

There was a very real possibility that she would die.

She'd been too scared to try to do anything for hours, and when she'd finally worked up the courage, she couldn't even get the blindfold off. That was what really scared her. Being tied up didn't strike the fear of God into her, and being gagged was unpleasant but not awful. It was not being able to see that terrified her. She relied on her vision a lot. Without it, she had no way of telling where she was. A cell? A house? An apartment? A plane? An eighteen-wheeler? Outside? She wasn't moving, that much she could tell, but planes and trucks weren't always in motion. She could hear birds, but she didn't know enough about them to try and identify her location.

She worked herself into a full-blown panic attack thinking about every single way this situation could get worse, managed to calm herself down, and did it again. She was working on regulating her breathing, desperately thinking about dogs in an effort not to freak out again, when something slammed. Heavy footsteps sounded, and every muscle in her body tensed, and the blindfold was ripped off.

She blinked furiously in the sudden glare, trying to take in as much as she could as quickly as possible. A sink—a mirror—a person—sunlight—

"Good morning," said a horribly familiar voice. "I'm glad you're not dead. I was pretty sure Carlin overdosed on the chloroform. It was a delicate balance between keeping you under and making sure you didn't die." He sighed. Marley was beginning to see better, but she didn't want to look up, even though she knew who it was. "The problems with not being able to hire an anesthesiologist, I guess."

It looked like she was in a public bathroom, the kind you see in national parks. The door was propped open by a brick; several chains with padlocks hung from the handle. Both of the windows by the ceiling had been barred vertically and horizontally. Her chair was bolted to the floor.

"It's nice to see you again," the man continued. He reached around and untied her gag, then carefully pulled it out of her mouth. "This has been a while in the making—but it is so worth it."

She recognized his shoes. She'd given them to him—carved the little flowers around the laces in by hand. A thank you present.

"Yeah, so I was fine with you going to live with Tony," he said. He was rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. He looked like he'd come straight from the office. "I got over it. But then you decided to be gay, and I just—I lost my shit, Marley. You can't be gay. I won't let you."

Even now, even when it was clear what was about to happen, she nearly corrected him: Bi. Bisexual, not gay.

"I know, I know, saying that is petty." He shrugged. "It sounds stupid, but I've worked out a system to . . . well, I guess people would call it conversion therapy. Although that makes it sound like it's healing you, when really it's just whipping you into shape. Oh—I'm not going rape you either. I'm not a pedophile."