18. Taken
1267 Words
I came to myself through waves of nausea. My head hurt as if someone was banging with a hammer and I felt something drip through my forehead. Was I bleeding? When I tried to move my arms, I felt them stuck.
I opened my eyes but couldn’t see much. It was dark, it was cold and I was tied to a chair. Someone had stripped me of my warm clothes and I was shivering in a t-shirt and my leggings. I was so, so cold…
A light made me go blind momentarily and a voice sneered:
"Lights and headaches are such a nuisance, are they not, my love?"
I recognized his voice. I would recognize it everywhere. Now I was trembling in fear as well as cold. How had he found me? Where were we? How had he appeared there so fast, so soon? Wait... how many time had passed since I had lost consciousness?
"You made a fool out of me, Nadine."
His voice... How was it possible? I never noticed before how cold and void of emotions his voice was. I had heard Alex happy, joyful, preoccupied, angry... his voice always changed according with his state of mind. Thomas had always the same voice timbre. And it never failed to give me the chills.
He came into my sight. Although I could see more pointy colorful dots that shapes, he was there and my brain was slowly reconstructing his features. The black hair, carefully combed, his cruel dark eyes… His voice was calm and cold, as always, but I was even more fearful. The calmer he sounded, the crueler he could become.
"I don’t like when women play me for a fool, Nadine."
He kissed me. He forced his lips upon mine but I kept mine resolutely shut. He tried to insert his tongue in my mouth but I kept my lips firmle shut. I would not allow him to abuse me ever again. I owned it to Alexander and mostly to myself.
He sneered again:
"Have you grown a backbone after all, my dear?" He bit my lower lip with enough force to draw blood. I tried to countain a whimper. I would not yield!
He straightened himself and let his fingers travel freely in my face:
" Or are you waiting for your knight in shining armor to come to your rescue?" I looked at him, my eyes wide opened. His scornful eyes never left my face: "Yes, Nadine, I know of him… I’ve been keeping tabs with you… have you forgotten I have cameras all over my estate? Did you really think you little stunt would make me believe you had died? No, dear. You’ll only wish you had died. Because I’m going to punish you, Nadine. And then punish some more until you know where your place is, you little slut."
He slapped me. My head throbbed with the force of the impact, and I couldn't countain my whimper. I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth and realized I was bleeding. He seemed stunned when he saw the blood. Thomas had put me in hospital more times that I could count, and now he seemed fascinated by a small thread of blood. And suddenly he was enraged, he slapped me, threw me out of my chair. Being bound I fell and hit my head hard on the cold, hard ground. Tears were falling from my eyes, and soon his hands were around my throat, pressing furiously. I gasped for air. Thomas was about to kill me, and I would never see Alexander again... the love of my life...
As suddenly as he had fallen upon me, he let me go. I coughed and gasped for air, a fire in my lungs that seemed to prevent the air passage.
His finger traced a line on my neck, as if he was considering slitting my throat with his nail.
"He won’t come, Nadine, because I did a good number on his old grandfather. Were you screwing them both? Now you’re the one screwed."
My voice was raspy but I managed to say:
"You're disgusting."
"You will respect me!" he screamed, slapping me again. I was already on the ground so he started kicking me while screaming atrocities that I managed to block somehow.My world was reduced to pain. There was a fire in my throat, a lightness in my head, a throbbing in my shoulders and hands and a searing pain in the rest of my body.
He stopped. Between coughing fits, I wondered if he was getting tired. But when he kneeled around me and grabbed fistfull of my hair, I thought fleetingly that I had never seen him so utterly out of control and I was as good as dead. He banged my head on the ground, once, twice before saying maniacally:
"Did you, Nadine? Did you f****d them both? You were never really good at anything else..."
With each question he banged my head even more and soon I grew dizzy… I was losing my conscience, a numbness spreading throughout my body; I was gasping for air. How could he be so monstrous? What had he done to Herbie? He had been nothing but a sweet to me. And Alexander… I would die here, at the hands of this monster, and he would never know what had happened to me. Would he miss me? Would he forgive me for being so weak? I was so, so tired…
A shot was fired and all of a sudden, the pressure in my throat lifted. I gulfed for air, my teeth nearly shattering of how cold I was. I couldn’t hear or see anything but, for the look of it, neither could Thomas. He looked wildly around but he could not see nor hear anything.
"Where are you?"
He shouted into the nothingness, and no one answered. I was beginning to think I had imagined it all when a voice loomed in the darkness:
"You like hitting on women? Why don’t you try a man, for a change?"
"Where are you?"
Thomas was enraged, wildly pointing a gun into the emptiness. I didn’t even know he had a gun, up until now he had only used his hands. Where did he take that gun from? My eyes were deceiving me, my vision was blurring and I fought to remain conscious.
"You want me, here I am."
But no one came to the light and Thomas seemed out of a balance for a change. This man had made my life miserable, had been the cause of such sorrow and now he was facing the void with crazed eyes.
Then he locked eyes with me and seemed to remember I was there.
"I shoot her. She won’t be yours."
Nobody answered.
"She is mine ‘till death do us part, you hear me?"
Only the deafening silence answered him. The only sounds I could hear was his own ragged breathing and my teeth shivering… I was so cold, but I the same time I was feeling numb… it couldn’t be good, I thought… I was going to pass out or fall asleep and death would claim me, I was so cold…
"She is mine!"
Distantly, as if seen or heard through water, I heard someone’s roar and Thomas screamed. The sounds of guns went off but I couldn’t feel anything. Nor even the cold. My last thoughts were for Alexander, the man I loved with all my heart.
- Writer
