Held & Pushed (2 book bundle) (23 page)

“How could
you?” I sounded pitiful. Even as I said it, I realized I was lucky. If this was
all he done to me, I was thankful. I should stop bitching.

“You lied
to me, Nicole. You’re lucky that’s all I did to you.”

He turned
to leave the basement.

“Wait,” I
said urgently.

He slowly
turned to me as he stepped onto the first stair.

“Aren’t
you going to take it out?”

“No.” He
continued up the stairs.

“But it
hurts,” I whined, still aware that things could be so much worse.

“I know.”
With that, he shut the door at the top of the stairs, leaving me alone in the
cold, damp basement, naked and bleeding from the finger.

I cried
for a while, but finally decided to stop being a baby about it. I’d had worse
pain. After all, I’d had natural child birth. But still, the tip of my finger
throbbed ferociously with every heartbeat.

Ron must’ve
found the broken comb tooth while sweeping. I hadn’t been able to see it, but
he’d found it somewhere and had known that it was because of me. Of course he’d
known it was me. There were only two of us in the house and he knew he hadn’t
done it. It was painfully obvious that it was me. And when questioned about it,
I’d lied to him. That pissed him off. It was funny how a psychopath who lived
in a world of delusions could be so hell-bent on people being honest.

Chapter
40

Ron left
me shackled in the basement. Minutes felt like hours, and then became hours.
Hours felt like days, and then became days. I had no way of knowing this. I
could only guess at how much time had passed by the angry growl of my stomach
and the amount of times I’d peed and defecated.

At first,
I did a lot of thinking. I thought about my husband and son. I thought about my
mom. I thought about everything I could possibly think about. When I’d
exhausted my thoughts, I slept.

What
started out as an escape from my boredom soon became a necessity. I was weak
and growing weaker by the second.

My serious
thirst was evident in more than just my dry mouth and guttural craving. I was
urinating very little now and far less frequently. I held it as long as
possible, pleading with my body to hold onto it and suck as much sustenance
from it as it could. Eventually, I lost out and what little urine my body had
produced seeped out of me, ran across the floor and dripped away into the
drain, following the same route the blood of so many others had taken.

Along with
the lack of urination, my defecation soon ceased. Taking in no food, I was
producing no waste. That didn’t mean that the waste I’d already produced wasn’t
still lying on the floor underneath me. I gave up the hope that Ron would come and
wash it away. Apparently he wasn’t going to.

Scary
thoughts crossed my mind. What if something had happened to Ron? What if he’d
been killed in a car accident and no one knew I was down here? How long would
it be before anyone came? I tried to push those thoughts away before I
succumbed to madness.

Instead, I
thought of all the things I was going to do as soon as I got out of here.
Because damn it, I was going to get out of here. As hard as it was to keep
pretending that escape was possible, I clung to it with every fiber of my
being. There had to be a way, and all I had to do was find it.

As I
imagined myself soaking in a hot bubble bath, surrounded by lit candles and
classical music, I fell asleep. I dreamed of water.
Lots and
lots of water.
It started out as a babbling brook nearby, then turned to
rain, and then became a raging waterfall. I tilted my head up and enjoyed the
feeling of the water as it splashed off my neck and chest and against my face.

I slowly opened
my eyes and realized that it wasn’t a waterfall at all but a crazy man with a
water hose.

When he
saw me open my eyes, he didn’t smile the way he used to. In fact, he didn’t
smile at all. He briefly met my eyes, and then looked away, continuing to spray
around my body.

“You’ve
made quite a mess down here, Nicole. I understand the urination and defecation,
but what I don’t understand is the vomit. Are you sick?”

Was I? I
couldn’t remember throwing up. I vividly remembered feeling sick at my stomach
because I still was.

I tried to
speak, but my mouth was too dry. I closed my mouth and wiggled my tongue around
in a futile effort to work up some saliva to coat my mouth and throat. It was
no use. My body was too dry to even make spit.

Ron
must’ve seen this.
“You thirsty?”

Had I been
able to talk, I would’ve called him some of the new cuss words I’d invented as
he’d hammered a splinter of plastic under my fingernail. But all I could do was
nod.

He aimed
the hose at my face, particularly my nose and mouth. I had to turn my head to
avoid drowning. While he laughed, I let my mouth fall open and allowed the
steady gush of cold water to pour in. It tasted like old, dirty rubber, but it
was delicious. I swallowed until he moved the hose.

“Better?”
he asked.

“Yeah,” I
said hoarsely. “How long have I been down here?”

Continuing
to spray the floor around me, he said, “Five days.”

“Why’d you
leave me down here so long?” I wanted to yell and scream, but my throat was
sore, and the words came out no more than a husky whisper.

“I needed
some time away from you. I planned to leave you down here a day or two, but I
got so wrapped up in the novel, I lost track of time. I might still be in my
room writing if it weren’t for my physical needs.”

“Physical
needs?” I assumed he’d been eating and using the restroom over the past few
days.

Tossing
the hose to the floor beside me, he stepped over to me and I suddenly knew what
physical needs he was referring to. With the water streaming from the hose
beside me, Ron unfastened his slacks and took his position between my legs.

Before I
could begin to fathom how anyone—psychotic or not—could be aroused and feel okay
about taking advantage of someone in this position, the nausea overwhelmed me
and I vomited, though it was no more than water and stomach acid. I turned my
head to the side and let it run out of my mouth as Ron went at me frantically.

Having sex
on the floor was uncomfortable. Having sex on a concrete floor was worse. Being
raped on a concrete floor while naked was the worst. Ron was putting everything
he had into this, slamming himself against me furiously. His forceful thrusts
had slid me on the concrete, creating scrapes on my backside. The shackles
holding my feet were pulled taut now, and with each of his thrusts, the chains
jerked my ankles and caused stabbing pains in my hips. Eventually, every inch
of my body was hurting in one way or another.

He grunted
in frustration. Occasionally, he stopped and repositioned himself.

After a
while, he said, “Damn it.”

He
stopped, sat back on his heels, ran his fingers through his hair and wiped the
sweat from his face. While he struggled to control his ragged breathing, he
stared at me.

Deciding to
give it another go, he forced himself into me again. He stared into my eyes.
When it was apparent to him that just slamming into me wasn’t going to bring
him to orgasm, he wrapped his right hand around my throat and squeezed.

When his
squeeze became tight enough to restrict my airway, I started to struggle. I
jerked my head back and forth, desperately trying to shake his hand off my
neck. I gasped for air and tried to scream. He laughed and continued going at
me, seeming to enjoy it now.

As he grew
closer to climaxing, his grip around my throat tightened and my vision grew
dark. When he closed his eyes in ecstasy, I closed mine in submission, both
welcoming Death and hoping he would pass me by.

Chapter
41

I was
shocked awake by the cold water hitting my face. I opened my eyes and turned my
head. Ron was standing beside me spraying me again with the hose. Up and down
he went, spraying my body.

“You’re a
pretty dirty girl, Nicole,” he said while he sprayed me. “We’ve got to keep you
clean.” He walked down and stood between my legs, spraying my private area. “We
need to keep this clean, now don’t we?”

I’d
thought I was cold before, but lying on a cold wet concrete floor while being
sprayed with cold water made me rethink it. I was freezing. My teeth were
starting to chatter.

“Please,”
I managed to say between teeth chatters.

“Please
what?”

“Let me
go.”

“Let you
go?” He stopped spraying me.

I nodded.

“You want
to go?”

I nodded
again.

“Where do
you want to go, Nicole?”

“Home,” I
said, my teeth clicking harder.

Ron threw
down the hose and stomped away, toward the cabinet.

I closed
my eyes and hoped he was just going to turn off the water. When I opened them,
I saw that I was wrong. He hadn’t turned off the water. What he had done was retrieved
the knife. The same knife he’d used to carve my name into other women’s flesh.
The very same knife he performed mastectomies with.

The dim
light of the bare bulbs bounced off the shiny blade and briefly illuminated
Ron’s eyes as he turned the knife around in front me, making sure I saw it.
When he saw my eyes fall to the blade, he smiled. Not the usual smile he gave
me. This was an evil smile.
The smile of someone about to do
something bad.
Something very bad.

“Nicole,
you know what I’m starting to think?” When I didn’t answer, he yelled, “Do
you?”

I shook my
head slowly, which took all my waning strength.

“I’m
starting to think you don’t love me. I’m starting to think you don’t even like
me. Only someone with no heart could not like someone like me. Wouldn’t you
agree?”

I nodded
slowly, feeling that this is what he wanted me to do.

Ron slowly
lowered the knife to my chest. I thought he was bluffing. Even as I felt the
tip of the long blade poke into my cold flesh I thought he was bluffing. I was
certain he’d say something he found to be clever, and then he’d stop. But I was
wrong. It seemed I was always wrong.

He sliced
into me and I screamed. I didn’t want to, but the pain was terrible. It was
sharp and it burned, making any paper cut I’d ever had seem like lotion on the
skin. He made two cuts that crossed each other in the middle, forming an X
between my breasts. When he was done carving on me, I lay crying and shivering.

“If you
ever make me think you don’t love me again, I’ll open you up right there,” he
said as he tapped on the cut with the bloody blade.
“Where X
marks the spot.
And I’ll find out if you have a heart or not. Do you
understand that?”

When I
failed to answer quickly, he stuck the tip of the knife in the center of the
cut where the two lines met and twisted it.

I nodded.

“Good.”

He got up
and used the hose to rinse the blood from the blade. He returned the knife to
the cabinet and finished hosing me down. When the water filled the open cuts on
my chest, the burning intensified and I cried harder.

When Ron
felt he’d sufficiently cleansed me, he turned off the water.

My entire
body trembled uncontrollably. My teeth clanked together loudly.

I was so
caught up in my
agony,
I didn’t notice Ron digging
around in a dark corner of the basement. It wasn’t until he turned it on that I
realized what he’d been doing. He’d dug out a fan, plugged it in, and set it on
the floor at my feet. It blew air up and over my body, making me colder than I
already was.

“Can’t
leave you down here wet, now can I?” He smiled and turned to leave. At the
bottom of the steps, he said, “I’ll be back soon.” At the top of the steps, he
said, “You’ll be happy to know that the book is coming along nicely. I’ll be
finished in no time. Isn’t that great?”

I planned to
nod in response, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and walked through
the door, leaving me freezing and bleeding on the basement floor.

Chapter
42

Cold.
It was so
cold. My muscles had been tense with shivering for so
long,
they ached and knotted up in spasms. My teeth clanked together so hard, I was
sure they’d shatter at any moment. I couldn’t feel my toes. I could barely tell
that I was wiggling them, which made them ache and throb angrily. It’s the only
way I could remind myself that they were there.

The only
good thing about being so cold was it numbed my skin just enough to ease the
burning and stinging sensation radiating from the open wound on my chest. I
still couldn’t believe he’d cut me. He’d actually cut me. If I wasn’t so
worried about starving, thirsting, and freezing to death, I would’ve spent more
time contemplating that. But as it turns out, I had more important things to
worry about.

I drifted
in and out of consciousness. At this point, I welcomed the darkness. When I was
unaware of my situation, I could escape the pain. It was the only time I could.

Having no
way to keep track of time, I wasn’t sure how many days passed before Ron came
back. As much as I hated to admit it, I was glad to see him.

“Nicole,”
he said and nudged me with his foot the way he’d done all the others before me.

I slowly
opened my eyes, afraid that if I didn’t, he’d deliver one of those hard blows
to the ribs he was so fond of giving the ladies.

“You look
terrible.” He stood over me, soaking me in with his eyes. Finally, he shook his
head and squatted beside me. “It’s a shame. Such a shame it had to come to
this.”

I thought
he was going to kill me. I almost hoped he would just to end my suffering.

But he
didn’t kill me. Instead, he began releasing my wrists and ankles from the
shackles. Had I not been so close to death, I would’ve kicked his ass and ran.
But I could barely roll my head to the side, much less fight or run. It took
all my strength to blink, which I had to do because I sure couldn’t keep my
eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time.

“You’ve
really took a turn for the worse in the four days since I saw you last.”