Chapter 7: Captive.
300 Words
The following days were a brutal trial of will. Isolation was his weapon. Deprivation. Loneliness. The air within my cell was stale, heavy with threats unuttered.
Imprisonment only made my determination more fierce. With each passing hour, each minute, my rage grew, a tempered resolve. I would not break. I would not surrender.
My head was a battlefield of strategies, schemes, and plans. I probed the confines of the cell for its weakness, its failure.
There must have been an exit.
A glimmer of hope one evening. A cracked brick in the wall. Small, hardly perceptible. A thread of hope.
Hours of agonizing labor thereafter, fingers bleeding, muscles screaming.
And then, at last, the rock split apart, and there was a tiny hole. A blemish on the outside world. A ventilation pipe.
Liberty.
No sooner had I even begun to stir than my cell door groaned open. Axel stood in it, a silhouette in the darkness.
"You tried to escape me?" He asked.
"I will not be dominated," I told him, trembling.
His face set in determination. "You have no choice, Zoe."
"Perhaps you have not thought of this."
He moved closer, his hand outlining through my hair. "I need to protect you."
"You want to protect me?" I said, shoving against him. "Then let me go."
"I cannot. Not yet." He said, his hand gliding down my face. "The world outside these walls isn't safe."
"I was fine before," I replied.
"But now," he said, his hand down my face, "you are mine."
The pressure was crushing, and went racing in my veins. I was filled with shame, fear, and confusion.
I shut my eyes.
"I want you," he breathed into my ear.
A row of thudding sounds rattled the compound before I could act.
"Trouble," he told me.
- Writer
