I feel her lips on mine, so warm and soft and tender. My body is cold, so cold, and her lips so warm that I don’t have it in me to protest. I feel her tongue slip into my mouth and gently tangle with mine. My eyelids, heavy before, now slam shut and leave me absolutely no control over them anymore.
“You’ll always belong to me, Cassia,” the woman whispers onto my mouth. “You owe me.”
The coolness of her hand grazes the skin on my stomach and she slides her hand into the front of my thick cotton pajama pants. I feel her fingers hook inside of me harshly, painfully, and my eyes spring open to see her face looking back at me with malice and menace, her dark eyes swirling in the blue hue of the night sky, her slim outline illuminated by the streetlamp several feet behind her. Her hair is jet black, cut short around her oval-shaped face, each side following the curvature of her jawline. She is beautiful. She is evil.
I’m afraid.
And then in a whirlwind the vociferous sounds of the frantic city catch up to my ears again. I begin to choke, coughing so terribly that I think my lungs are going to come up with the black-tinged saliva I expel into my hands. I roll over onto my back and stare upward at a starless black sky, rolling with winter clouds and brisk with winter wind. My body shakes so harshly that it feels like my bones are going to shatter like glass if I can’t control it. My head falls back to the side and I see a pile of boxes. The leg of a couch. A black trash bag with a hole ripped in the bottom and some kind of fabric pushing through it. A cracked mirror with a weathered wooden frame. A red milk crate full of random things: old beat up boxes of food, a bottle of anti-freeze, a crushed soda can.
The woman is gone. I thought I heard her tall black boots crunching in the snow behind me when I went into the last coughing fit.
My body aches. I think my leg is broken. It’s a wonder how I didn’t feel it before. I grit my teeth and screw my eyes shut tight as the pain sears through me. I hear more voices approaching. Cops. Firemen. No…it’s an EMT.
My eyes open and close from pain and exhaustion, but I try to fight the sleep. I want to see what’s going on around me. I want to see if the woman is still close by. While the paramedics are tending to me, I don’t pay them any attention, not even when they ask me questions looking to see how alert I am. But I look beyond them, toward the street filled with red and blue flashing lights that bounce off the nearby buildings. A crowd has gathered on the other side, all bundled in thick winter coats, pointing upward with their gloved hands at the building still engulfed in flames behind me.
But there is one tall, dark figure amongst the crowd that appears out of place. He stands with his hands in the pockets of his long, black coat. He is calm, unaffected by the chaos in the streets.
He is you.
You look at me instead, across the street and through moving bodies and vehicles that pass by and temporarily block our path. Your eyes pierce through me like…like nothing I’ve ever felt before. All I know is that my stomach feels hot and that I’m afraid, yet I still want to look back at you.
I-I don’t know why, but…but my heart is breaking. Tears sting the backs of my eyes and my chest feels like it’s falling in on itself, like a star burning up its last breath before it collapses into a black hole.
And then I wake up in your home and I barely remember my name much less anything else about me.
Chapter Five
Cassia
Fredrik reaches out his hand and wipes the tears from underneath my eyes. I gently coil my fingers around his strong wrist and I shut my eyes softly to savor his touch.
“She said that you owed her.” Fredrik’s voice pulls me back into the moment and my eyelids carefully break apart again.
His hand falls away. He places it back within his lap.
I look at for a long moment and then back up at his eyes.
“What?” I’m confused.
Fredrik tilts his head slightly to one side.
“You didn’t say that before,” he explains. “That the woman told you just before she left that you owed her. It’s a new memory.”
I blink, a little surprised, and nod as the realization sets in.
“Yes,” I say. “She did say that. But I don’t know what it means.” I lower my head with regret and even shame. I want to give him whatever he needs or wants from me. I have since shortly after he brought me here many months ago. Even if it means that I’ll lose him to that woman, I love him enough that I would let him go if it’s what he wanted.
I don’t know why I love him. I don’t know how it’s possible to love a man who keeps a woman chained in a basement. But then again, there are so many things I don’t understand because I can’t remember anything. So much doesn’t make sense. Actually, nothing makes sense. I feel trapped in someone else’s life. Out of place in the world, and as it goes on all around me, I stay put in the same place trying to recall a life I had before that doesn’t seem to want to be found.
“Cassia,” Fredrik says kindly and I raise my tear-filled eyes to him. He sighs regretfully. “If you can’t make progress on your own, you know what I’ll have to do.”
My hands begin to shake within my lap, my bottom lip begins to tremble.
I shake my head. “No, Fredrik, please—”
He leans toward me in one swift motion, punishment in his eyes. I ground the palms of my hands against the mattress on both sides of me and push myself backward against the wall.
“I-I’m sorry,” I say with fear lacing my voice.
“Do not call me by my name,” he demands. “I can’t have you doing that.” He lowers his eyes and I can tell by that look of pain hidden behind them that his own rule burdens him in some way.
Fredrik stands from the chair and takes a seat on the edge of the bed closer to me.
“Come here,” he says gently, holding out his hand.
I take it with only slight hesitation because even as much as I fear him, I still want to be with him.
He guides me next to him and I lay my upper-body in his lap, my cheek pressed softly against his firm thigh. His large hand strokes my blonde hair. His touch is gentle and kind and euphoric, but I know too what else those hands are capable of. I’ve seen the things he does to people. Terrible, nightmarish things. The very things he is threatening me with now.
“I can’t bear to watch again,” I say. “Please…don’t make me watch.”
His fingers continue to comb through my hair, leaving shivers to dance along the length of my spine.
“But you’ll have to,” he says in a calm, relaxing voice, “because I don’t see any other way. Your memories only seem to be triggered by traumatic experiences. You wouldn’t know what you know now about the fire if it wasn’t for making you watch.”
I move my head against his lap so that I can look up at him. His fingers fall from my hair and he brushes the backs of them down the side of my cheek.
“Tell me about her,” I say in a powdery voice, trying not to force him away like I did the last time I insisted such a forbidden thing. “What did Seraphina do to you? Why do you want to find her so badly?”
He shoots up from the bed, leaving me to fall against the mattress.
“I’ve told you—”