20
Kaya’s POV.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.
My eyes snap open as a whelp escapes my lips, and I jerk up to a sitting position. I find myself in a room that I don’t think I recognize until I hear someone shuffle next to me, and my face darts there.
Seeing Melissa, I tell myself to calm down, realizing that I’m in her room and not elsewhere. I’m not in front of Kyle anymore.
While comatose, my brain keeps relieving the moment, putting me in an endless turmoil of pain. As if that isn’t satiating enough, I feel like I spent the last decades of my life on a rollercoaster of agony.
My voice comes out as a croak when I call her. “Melissa.”
“Kaya, are you okay?”
My throat hurts from not having taken water since I woke up today, and judging from the absence of light behind the closed curtains, I know it’s night already.
“I…” My voice caught up in my throat, wincing at a pain in my shoulders. I almost forgot that. “My shoulder…” It’s fixated with plaster, but I can still feel numb there, more like I can barely move it.
“The damage took quite a lot of effect, but I’m sure it should start healing properly in about a week or so. You should be fine in a month or more.” Melissa enlists the fate of my shoulder, and that shouldn’t make me paranoid.
Like the rising tide in an ocean, unexpected and unforeseen, my tears drop. My lips are opened, and I stare ahead at nothing.
Slowly, my cries rose, with my throat awfully releasing hefty brisky hiccups.
As though Melissa doesn’t understand my pain, I catch a look of perplexion there, and knowing I can’t take it anymore, I shift towards her and use my still-functioning arm to pull her close.
Resting my jaw on her shoulder, I close my eyes, uncaring how weak and fragile I seem right now. “I can’t take it anymore, Melissa. Please, I can’t. I know I sounded strong when I first came here, but I never thought such cruelty as I’ve faced here was ever real.”
In-between stiffled words that kept getting hung every few seconds, such that I am unable to keep up to one simple sentence without hitching or stuttering, I continue, “I just want to be done with all of these. Please, help me. Kill me… please.”
Unlocking myself from her, I look into her eyes and grab her hands, placing them on my heart. “There’s nothing there anymore; no more fighting. Just end this for me.”
“No…” Calmly and objectively, like she has decided to pick her words carefully, she talks. “You cannot die. You don’t deserve that.” I see genuine fairness in her eyes, but it doesn’t matter.
It won’t stop my pain.
“I swear, I can’t. It’s too much. The suffering is endless; it’s everyday. I just want to die.” My voice screeches off there into tears that won’t stop today if she doesn’t put an end to my life for me.
“I cannot be a murderer. You have no right to push that on me.” As she speaks, not agreeing with my wants, I cry more, letting all my guards down. I can barely see her through wet lashes and eyes brimmed with tears, reddened from the sense that I know I can’t live another day seeing those triplets.
“I’m begging. I swear, I can’t take it. I’m not… I really can’t. It’s too much. The pain is too much. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
My memory flashes back to being an object that they use like some lifeless material, or how they control my feelings, my senses, my wants or needs, how I eat just once a day, how I cannot think for myself, how I haven’t left this place in weeks now, and how I’ve been forced to follow some unfair rules.
I’m living somebody’s fantasy, and it’s cruel. I want out… now!
Melissa grabs me by a shirt that I wasn’t wearing this afternoon until now and dares me to look into her eyes. “Hey, I have a plan. You just have to be calm. You want out, don’t you, and you want it anyway possible, either dead or alive, don’t you?”
Her voice is etched with a reason to be distrusted, but I’m no attention to that. Without hesitation, I nod my head with all my might. “Yes, I just want out. I don’t care if the route is dangerous or not. It’s death here, anyway, except slowly. I’d rather want it fast.”
Melissa walks over to a cupboard, standing there akimbo, and I await her next choice of words.
“Okay, let’s do this. You promise to keep this inside you?” She asks as though it’s not even a question, because there’s even no one else to trust. Nodding my head in agreement, she adds. “I have a plan to escape, but it’s dangerous. There’s a tunnel that I found a few years ago, but finally, there’s an opportunity to get to it. I have some people who would help me… us when we are out of here.” Again, her pausing there gives away uncertainty, but I push off the thought.
“All right. When is the escape?”
“Whenever the triplets are out of here, maybe on an outing or something of the sort.” She suggests.
Do they ever leave?
“Do they ever leave?” I ask her my thought.
“Yes, and I have a feeling soon.”
I can’t explain the bubbling feeling arising inside me.
A knock lands on the door, sending the both of us haywire momentarily.
A minute later, Melissa comes back to the room after having answered the door. “You’re called by the triplets.”
My chest suddenly feels heavy, but in a corner, there’s a sense of joy leaning inward, knowing there’s a chance of freedom.
I make my way to the room, and at the door, I sigh, hoping that tonight goes well so I can live enough to see another day without torture and another till I can finally escape here.
“Good evening, Master.” I must greet them, which I did, grasping their attention.
Kyle and Kieran are on the bed; both of them paused at my presence. Kieran is on top of Kyle with his hand brawled into a punch. Then, there’s Kade sitting on the armchair with a cup of coffee in his hands.
He rings his finger around the top of the mug before he calls for me with a look.
I don’t know how I know that, but well, weeks of constant punishment make you learn the hard way.
“Yes, master.”
“You did her bad, Kyle, but for a witch though,” he says, locking his eyes at me, “she’s quite not as weak as I thought.”
He stands up to tower over my frame, his face lowered, to sniff my hair. “Hm, Melissa must have bathed you while you were… down.” His words are soft like silk to the ear, but their intentions are untrustworthy.
It reminds me of what Kyle did today. He fooled me into thinking he wanted to hear my pain.
“We are going on a hunt tomorrow.” When I hear that, my stomach churns at a prickle of nostalgia.
What does that mean, for heaven’s sake?
“I wish you good hunting…” My voice breaks off into subduction.
“You wish us good hunting? Isn’t that such a good wish from a toy that has nothing but been damned ever since we captured her?” He fits a snicker at me, to which I shift my face.
By the way, Kyle and Kieran are back to wrestling each other on the bed in a playful manner until Kieran pauses to speak up, “oh, yes, let’s take her along; use her as bait.” She’d do well in helping us catch some meat.”
“Trust me, bro, you’re right. She does know how to cry aloud. It’s annoyingly ear-piercing but beautifully beast-catching. Oh, that doesn’t make sense at all.”
Laughing, they go back to their play.
Kade notices how I’m shaken in one spot. “Oh, no, we aren’t doing that. There are better ways to bait those beasty meats. We just want you to stay the day in this room till we arrive back, so go to bed now, pet. I’ll remind you of the rules tomorrow.”
“Yes, master. I understand clearly.” I utter it like a robot before I go to the map to stoop once again.
As I close my eyes, disregarding the creaking sound that Kyle and Kieran are distracting me with, I only imagine how utopian it would be when I escape here.
Please, nature, allow Melissa to work without a waffle.