Chapter 4

Freya

Day 95 of captivity

The first time I woke it was dark outside, the room I was in had a small window along the back wall which set my heart racing for all of a second before the bars in front of it registered. It took way to long to get my pained mind to realise that the bars weren’t on the window however, they were surrounding me.

With a pained groan, I tried to shift around, noting the enclosure I was in but the space was so small I could barely sit up. My legs were crushed against my chest as I shifted into a slouched seated position with head touching the bars above me and I felt out with my tender hands toying to find a way out.

Once my eyes adjusted ad I was awake enough to register what I was seeing it truly sank in. I was in a cage. An animal create, with thick metal bars and a lock on the gate. I tested the cold metal, tugging on the bars one by one but none of them gave, even the gate didn’t move.

The rest of the room was filled with five other cages, although they were all empty, I didn’t doubt they would be occupied before long, but still I wondered again why I was here, why I was never sold, why they hadn’t just killed me.

I shifted my weight again, trying to find a comfortable position without any luck, every part of me hurt from the last beating I took, I tentatively touched my face, checking for broken bones but all I felt was swollen skin, at least they didn’t break my nose again, I wasn’t sure it would set right if it broke for a third time.

I tried to take a deep breath but even that hurt so I settled for small shallow ones as my eyes scanned the room and I tried to figure out how the fuck I had ended up here and wished, for just a moment, that I was the kind of person that could leave people behind because, although there had been the opportunity to escape at the old place, there was no way I would be getting out of this cage.

No now I had to change my attitude, play scared, play meek, always. I couldn’t be the mother hen anymore, I needed the assholes to drop their guard around me long enough that I could get away when I was let out for toilet breaks, if they let me out for toilet breaks.

Starting now. “Meek and scared.” I muttered the words over and over, drilling the personal into myself, and praying that I could keep my reactions realistic enough to save my own life.

Day 148 of captivity

I sat in silence, watching and waiting as the new girls were brought in. I sank back in t he cage away from the men as they walked by me, but they pai me no mind, that hadn’t for a couple of weeks now. It was working, slowly they were coming to trust that I wasn’t a threat, that I was broken. Which was exactly what I needed them to think.

The new girls were shoved into their cages, injuries ignored, and a small cup of water was handed to each of us.

I drank mine down greedily, they had started giving us less and less as the weeks went by, and I worried at this rate I was going to starve to death, or die of dehydration, I wasn’t sure which was worse.

I begged and pleaded and cried for more most days now, they never gave me any, but it was working towards the persona I was portraying. Meek and scared.

One day, one moment that’s all I needed, then I would get out of here, I would go alone but I would be back, and when I was, even the goddess wouldn’t be able to save them.

Day 165 of captivity

One of the girls died last night, they beat her pretty bad for biting a buyer and left her moaning in her cage, some time during the night the moans had stopped, and at first, I had been glad of the silence, we all had. Now I felt sick with guilty for wishing for the quiet. And just wanted the moaning again. She had been such a sweet girl, real innocence.

As each day past and I continued playing the meek and scared little girl, my anger grew in leaps and bounds. I had started dreaming of paying them back in kind, of locking them in a cage for months with little to no food or water, of selling them to the highest bidder, I had fantasised about how I would take my revenge. My dreams slowly became more violent and terrifying as I saw the faces of the girls, their screams and their last breaths before my subconscious put them into the most horrendous versions of the hell they could be living in, but the worst of it all was that half of them were probably about right.

The door to the room opened and I flinched violently at the sound of the hinges squeaking, before one of the men stepped into the room with a slight limp. I didn’t even need to see his face ow to picture it. Nine men in total had stepped foot into the rooms we were kept in, and I knew everything about each one of them. I knew their facial features, jaw lines hair colour walk and voice, I would be able to pick them out of a crowd without a moment’s hesitation but the man I really wanted was one that had never shown his face in here.

He visited often and I would know his voice anywhere, but I had no idea what he looked like. He was the one calling the shots here the one issuing orders and arranging saes, he was the man behind the curtains, and his punishment would be worse than the rest. I needed him to suffer, really suffer, the way we had.

Twenty minutes later I was alone in the room again. The men didn’t speak to me at all now. They barely even looked at me. Like I was no longer of interest to them. They hadn’t even raised a hand to me in weeks, not that I was complaining but it did have me thinking that the time would come soon when I would need to make a break for it. I waited, watched and listened to every word that was spoken inside the cabin but there was never a word spoken about me. In months of being kept here, not once had anyone ever mentioned why I was here, I was never taken before a buyer, never beaten to the same extreme as the other girls. I had even deluded myself into thinking that I was being tortured like this on purpose, forced to watch as one by one, the girls were taken, beaten and sold, stripping them of their self-worth and dignity. Something I didn’t have any longer. I had been naked for the better part of five months, I actually didn’t think I would know what to do with clothes if they were handed to me.

I had no idea how many hours passed before the door opened again and a new girl was brought in. This one was different though, she wasn’t blindfolded or tied up. She was unconscious and had blood running down her face from a nasty cut. I didn’t say a word, but I watched, memorising the girls face. She would be one more to take revenge for.