Gilded Cage

Chapter One

Lizzie

My life's... complicated.

You know that feeling you'd get when you'd start to run down a steep hill?

As you ran faster, there was this single moment... just a moment... of pure joy.

You would stretch your arms out wide as you embraced the sensation that you were almost flying. You believed, truly believed, if you ran just a little bit faster, if you allowed yourself to dare just a little bit more... maybe you would actually fly. Maybe your toes would lift off the ground and you would touch the sky.

So, you dared.

You ran faster.

Faster.

You swore you could no longer feel the ground beneath your feet.

All you could see was the bright, beckoning azure sky.

And then it happened... you glanced down, back to reality.

It was just the barest of seconds, but it was enough.

Suddenly you realized, you weren't flying.

You were falling.

* * *

I could feel Richard's even breathing against the sensitive skin along my neck. His chest hair tickled my bare shoulder as I laid within the circle of his arms.

A lover's embrace.

Except we weren't lovers.

I didn't know what we were, but this wasn't love. It couldn't be.

Obsession, perhaps?

His arm wrapped possessively around my waist controlled as much as it protected. There was nothing in my life that Richard did not reign over; how I dressed, what I ate, where I went, who I talked to. But really, those were just artificial things. His control went much deeper. My thoughts were no longer my own; my desires, my wishes, my dreams.

All were of Richard.

All were focused on pleasing him.

I could feel the final vestiges of my soul slipping away.

Every day a little death.

Every time he bent me over a table, or forced my legs open wide, or commanded me to fall to my knees and open my mouth... the person I once was died a little, only to be reborn as his ideal fantasy woman.

I was Richard's living doll, to be played with or punished at his will. Soon there would be nothing left of the person I once was, nothing left of my former life. It would all be a distant, fragmented memory.

My life could be divided into two distinct phases, the time before Richard and after. The time before was already a hazy blur of faces, mundane routines, and the basic motions of life.

After... was everything.

After was blindingly clear. Full of bright colors, intense emotions, pleasures and pain. After was living a life so extreme you feel the heat of the flame as it gets fed by your own desires. It unfurls and stretches toward the sky, burning hotter and brighter. Soon it will consume you... and you don't care.

Richard had become as much my obsession as I was his.

An unholy fusing of two damaged souls.

It wasn't supposed to be like this... it had all started out so innocently, with a chance encounter and a stolen kiss. Even now, I wondered how I could have been so naive? As if Richard ever left anything up to chance. He had planned this... every moment of our mutual destruction, from the very beginning.