Remember to Breathe (Book One of the True Desires Series) (5 page)

Gina leans back coolly and lowers her voice to affect a masculine rasp. “I'd be way too much man for you, sweetheart. And look what I found!” Gina scrambles to the closet and comes out with the tote bag from the scavenger hunt. Gina holds it with an outstretched arm like David clenching Goliath's severed head. She spills its contents onto the bed and then moves back to the closet.

Allie smiles as she sifts through the items and flips through the notepad  she had used to write down the  addresses of the houses they had stolen from. She intended to return the items or pay someone else to do it, so technically she would only be guilty of borrowing without asking.
Someday,
she thinks.

One place she definitely won't be going back to is thirty-three Cranberry Lane- the house with the crazy mother and drug dealing son.  Sorry, '
human potential pioneering
' son, if you're listening, Tommy.   She  inspects the  desk calculator Tommy gave  her. There is a piece of tape over the battery compartment that she hadn't noticed before. Allie peels it off and removes the cover. A small neatly folded rectangle of paper with “Allie" written on it in pen falls out. Allie shivers as she stares at it, unsure if she can take the creepiness that surely lies inside. In the end, curiosity gets the best of her, and she opens it. A small baggie falls out with two tiny round pills in it. A note is scrawled on the paper.

      
  
Take one pill with water after waking up in the morning, then go back to sleep.  Congratulations on taking a big step toward becoming a great artist.

-Tommy

“
What are you doing?” Gina asks.

Allie covers up the pills and note.  “Just thinking,” Allie says.

“Remember this?” Gina asks. Gina is holding the vibrator she'd given Allie in college. It's still in its original packaging.

“Guess I'll be putting that to use now,” Allie says, but she can't possibly fathom when, since her sex drive is dead and buried, thanks to Nick.

Spare Bedroom or Studio
 
         

     
Allie wanted the opposite of Nick and thought she found him in Kevin, a one-time  love interest of Gina's from grad school. He had an easy, disarming smile, didn't brood or drink to excess and was practically a eunuch.  Like Allie after Nick, his feelings about sex lived in the spectrum between ambivalence and fear, which was the main reason his romantic involvement with Gina was short lived.  Gina warned  her.

“I don't know, Allie. I mean, he won't even share a bed or a bedroom with anyone. Ever.”

“Then he's perfect!”

They would get a multi-decade jump on the inevitable. They would prove that a sexless marriage between people in the prime of their lives didn't have to be a joyless, cobwebbed pit of despair. In fact, it would be better than a typical marriage. It would be less complicated and more honest. Sexual passion? That was a relic of another age, the province of the less evolved.  Allie and Nick would tour the world extolling the benefits and virtues of a sexless marriage. The dust jackets on their coauthored books would have pictures of them in matching outfits doing things like walking together on beaches during sunsets and riding tandem bicycles. She could imagine their photo  on the cover of a Sunday newspaper magazine insert under the following headline:

Romance Without Sex: How One Attractive Young Couple Does it. (Or Not.)

She remembers this and chuckles to herself on a Sunday morning when sprawled out on the couch with one of these inserts.  Kevin is out of town on business. It's their first weekend apart since they'd gotten married.

Allie looks up from the insert to the  three by eight foot oil painting that dominates their east living room wall. And it looks back at her. She titled it
Horus Revisited
- a rendering of the Egyptian deity's eye in angry slathers of yellow, orange and black. The painting took her a week and a half from conception to completion.
It's good – not great but very good
, Allie thinks.
Far better than I could do now.

An ophthalmologist’s offer of five thousand in cash for the original took her by surprise. But Nick pointed out that he was probably just hoping to get into her pants. She told the doctor that it wasn't for sale, and that he would have to wait for her next painting. 
That
would be more than worth his money.  But then Nick assaulted her and she fell into a creative dormancy from which she has yet to emerge.

She realizes now under the gaze of her own creation that Nick's trembling hands had never really left her throat. Allie feels her anger rising- not only at Nick but also at herself. She had let him get the best of her. Deep down, she knew the notion that her lack of sexual interest somehow made her more evolved was a delusion.

And what does she really want?

First, she knows what she doesn't want. She doesn't want to be an economist for the rest of her working  life like her father or be an evangelist for abstinence who poses for tacky photos, and she certainly doesn't want to be back with Nick. The wealth and fame of being a great artist isn't even that appealing. No, all she wants is to have her heart back- or at least enough of it to rediscover her passion for creation.  To create with abandon! She wants to get lost in the process-
the lifestyle
-but fully submersed  this time in its flow. At its worst, she would make progress and learn. At its best, it would be a joyful, more meaningful existence, one that she had only sampled.

Spare bedroom or studio.

She told Kevin that this would be the weekend that she would decide what to do with the room she'd  set up as a painting studio and then abandoned without ever lifting a pencil or paintbrush in it.  The natural lighting from three directions was a major reason why they'd chosen the house but now the room is almost a source of shame.  She has long insisted that the room remain closed.

Her thoughts wander to the pills.  She visits them in her bathroom where they are taped to the cabinet frame under the sink. Two little pills. Holding them in her palm, she knows the time has come: either flush them now or try one. Otherwise, why keep them around at all?   

Spare bedroom or studio.
Tony Robins is a nice guy. What's the worst that can happen? Studio!

She swallows  a pill with water, then lies down in bed. She is hesitant to close her eyes.
Be brave,
she tells herself. Or maybe the voice is coming from somewhere else. She has lost the ability to tell.

Soon she feels the sensation of fingers moving gently down her arm, then to the smooth plain of her stomach and the underside of her breasts. Her aureoles tighten. She smiles and yawns. “You're back  early. And...horny! I must....must....say, this is a very...very pleasant surprise,
”
she says. “We're both...ready.”

A little bite on the nape of her neck makes her shiver. “Mmm,” she hums. His breath is hot on her neck and ears. She stretches and backs up closer to him. He is hard and warm.  His fingers make their way down her stomach to her aching sex. They trace her outer labia and then gently tap her clit at the same time he nibbles on her earlobe. She moans softly and sighs as he slowly rubs her lips, occasionally dipping a finger into her wetness. She turns her head to give him a long kiss but instead of seeing Kevin, she is met with a blood smeared pillow pressed hard onto her face. She thrashes and flails but only long enough to claw into his back with her nails once before her supply of energy and will to fight  is cut off and  her conscious shrinks and shrinks until it is just a small, terrified dot.

Panic.

The room is dark and musty and warm but still, she shivers. A dim shaft of light filters through a small dirty window near the ceiling.    Allie isn't dead but since she is naked, immobile and gagged on a hard mattress, she figures death isn't far off. She can hear someone walking on a wooden wooden floor above, each step sending a dangerous reverberation as though any step could crash through.

Her wrists and ankles are cuffed with itchy leather strips and tethered at angles out to her sides, forcing her body into an  'X' and exposing her to whatever might be lurking in the shadows.

She convulses with fear. The gag is cloth. It cuts into the corners of her mouth and leaches away moisture. She is desperate  for water.

She waits.

If her captor or captors don't kill her, she is certain that dehydration or spiders and/or the billions of  mold spores that must be wafting through the stagnant air, will. Her mother's eulogy: “
Poor thing. But there's a certain type of girl whose shriveled corpse is found bound to a filthy mattress with her chest cavity filled up with spiders and mold.  Allie was that type of girl and we all knew it. (pause for laughter) Her father and I just were relieved that they didn't have to pry a stolen TV remote out of her ass, though.” (more laughter)

A new light appears opposite her that illuminates a set of stairs. The light disappears and  the stairs creek under the weight of a figure that, from the light of the window, appears to be wearing a black cloak, cowboy hat and mask. After her initial jolt of terror dissipates, Allie can't help but be amused.
Alright spiders and mold, let's give a big dungeon welcome to Darth Brooks!

Allie's heart pounds. The figure shines a blinding light on Allie.

“Welcome.” the figure says. His voice is impossibly low. Marrow freezing low. Tingles race up her spine.

Voice modulation. Nice touch, Darth. Maybe this is a joke?

Even with her eyes closed and her head turned away, the hot light is painful. The light is set further away and put on a dimmer setting. When Allie's sight returns, she can see the mattress, the cuffs and tethers, and her captor's well defined torso.
Well at least there's that.

“
I am going to remove your gag. If you make a sound without permission, the gag will go back on and you will start losing digits, starting with this little piggy.”   Darth pinches her right pinkie toe and draws the blade of a box cutter across the pad.  He shows Allie the bloodied blade.  “Nod if we have an understanding,” he says.

Not a joke.

Allie closes her eyes and  nods but is about to scream anyway- just to get it all over with; screaming until  she has no toes left and all her blood drains out her feet and then her assailant will have to be content with violating a corpse. W
ait, that's probably his endgame,
Allie thinks.

“
Good,”  he says. He removes the gag and squirts what feels like a tablespoon of water into her mouth.

Is that it? If that's all the water I'm getting, there's no point in dragging this out. I should scream.
And she almost does when the figure produces what appears to be a small chainsaw with large red protrusions from the chain that look like horns.

“You may scream now,” the figure says.

Allie screams as loud as she can. She goes hoarse quickly but still, she keeps at it to distract herself from the feeling of being split in half and then...and then...she realizes that the figure is holding the  chainsaw against her but it isn't splitting her open. The protrusions are somewhat soft and instead of biting through her, they rub over her like a kind of...tongue. She hopes they aren't the real thing but if they are...
wow...and..
And there's a wetness too, some sort of lubricant.

She is given more water and after some time, Allie lets herself succumb to the rhythm of the machine.  She is sure her body will be hollowed out or quartered soon enough but for now, the situation calls for pragmatism. These are her final moments and she feels it's wise to take Gina's advice for situations like this. 
“Just go with it and try to enjoy it as much as possible. If you're overpowered, what else are you going to do? ”
  Allie closes her eyes. She'd be moaning if her voice would allow it.

The saw is put into a higher gear, quickening the
slap slap slap
against her delicate creases. It sounds like a remote control car racing up against her. She bites her lip. It feels very good now- so good that when a blindfold is slipped over her eyes, she doesn't notice it until the chainsaw stops.
Oh shit. I'm going to die now.
  Allie squirms and taps into her well of self preservation even though her voice is barely a squeak.  “No! No! You fucker why did you stop? Fucking fuck me with that thing you fucking fucker! FUUUCK!”