Enslaved

Chapter Ten: What's Past is Prologue

Shock pierced my feet to the floor into petrified inaction, terrified that the slightest movement would jeopardize my liberty as if this was all but a phantasm. I had fallen asleep in Gabe's arms, only to awaken in an apartment that had long ceased to be but a hopeful memory. Had I merely had an exceptionally vivid nightmare and imagined the long months of my captivity?

I sprinted to the bathroom, relying on the mirror to act as an impartial observer. My fingers gripped my bared neck. My flesh was divested from the weight of the collar's oppressive burden. I examined the exposed skin of my ankles and wrists. They too had been unshackled from the manacles that once pinioned me to a life not of my own choosing. I half-turned my body. Angry welts of pain marked my flesh in the reflection. Violet, indigo, and golden discoloration splotched across my buttocks and upper thighs. Gabe's brand was still puffy on my inner thigh.

When I flung the closet doors open, my clothes were neatly arranged. The television's local news feed confirmed the date. Long months had indeed passed since my abduction. Seasons had greeted me. A birthday had aged me. Life had continued absent of my participation. I stood motionless in my apartment, incredulous as to the events that had facilitated my return. It was then I noticed the items on my coffee table. A solitary envelope, my wallet, my phone, my house keys, a gift bag, and cash. My shaking hands lifted the seal flap and pulled out a single printed piece of paper.

My dearest Amelia,

I wanted to introduce you to a world that you had denied yourself from experiencing. You needed to be shown what your destiny is but were too afraid to embrace. You know you're mine. You understand it in your heart. You feel it in every orgasm you experience. Your submission to me, while initially wrenched from you, was finally freely given when you professed your love to me. You've been trained. It is time I allow you to find your own way with what you've learned. In time, your journey will bring you back to me. I am prepared to take responsibility for what I've done. I love you, Amelia. You will always be mine. Until we meet again little one.

Forever,

Master

My legs, destabilized by disbelief, suddenly buckled, no longer able to bear the weight of the terrifying reality that descended upon me. My arms swathed around my torso as I heaved thick, ragged breaths from my tightened lungs as I lurched forward in panic. The tears splattered to the flooring below in ceaseless rivulets. What had the past months been about? Gabe had abducted me, recreated my apartment to deceive me, fulfilled my fantasies by way of introduction to all manner of sexual proclivities, punished me into compliance, and then released me.

As I quaked on the floor, swaying, trying to quell the tremors, I pondered Gabe's motivation to action. My underhanded manipulations had enabled me to claw out from beneath his heavy hand. My fragmentation of self had indisputably contributed to my release. The damage Gabe was concerned about imprinting on me with permanence, had been cause for his unexpected benevolence. That, along with my confession of love, had forced his hand. I fretted that this was a test of my devotion, the legitimacy of which could only be substantiated by my voluntary return to him. He had mentioned my stubbornness as a cause for my extended captivity. Was I to experience an epiphanous realization on how meaningless my life was without his guidance, and prostrate myself before his magnificence? The note suggested so.

My hands shakily reached for the banded stacks of crisp hundred-dollar bills. Each pile fastened by a currency strap denoting $10,000. There were five bundles. Did Gabe believe that compensating me would remedy the injustice of wrenching me from my life? Money didn't pardon him of the sexual violence he had subjected me to. Money would not grant absolution. I hurled the stacks against the wall in disgust. Gabe couldn't bribe me.

I remained on my knees until my kneecaps ached from the firmness of the floor. I braced myself against my sofa, wobbling as I rose. The cackles started then, hysterical whoops of incomprehensible mirth that stole my breath. I danced in place, my limbs flailing as I celebrated my unexpected liberty. Euphoria loosening my movements. No man's collar restrained me. I was no longer shackled, naked, left to enact a maniacal millionaire's sexual inclinations. Though, I would eternally bear the marks of his ownership, and the consequences of his actions.

My fingers unthinkingly circled the bare skin of my neck. I felt strangely exposed. "Master?" My voice was barely audible, as if whispering the word from my lips would cause Gabe to miraculously materialize before my eyes. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if the cameras' gaze still surveilled me. "Master?" I repeated. "Call me please?"

I ran to my desk and with permanent marker scrawled out "CALL ME!" on a piece of paper. I held it up to various points in the ceiling before I sat on the floor, waiting. The phone never rang.

I forced myself to swallow down my breakfast as the small morsels of food caught in my throat. My fridge was stocked, as was my pantry. It was as if my apartment was a time capsule preserved from when I had first been abducted. The mismatching furniture that once held pride of place seemed suddenly ill-fitting in the space. The vibrancy of my orange striped curtains, strangely jarring to my senses. Nothing had changed, except me. My fork drew random doodles through my eggs with ketchup. The ring of the telephone jolted me out of my stupor.

"Mas..."

I was interrupted by the voice of my best friend Mary. "Amelia! You're back from travelling!" Mary shrieked excitedly. "We received your email a few days ago stating you were coming home. We must meet up at the club tonight. So much has happened since you've been away."

"Mary? It's so good to hear your voice. So much has happened to me as well." I couldn't suppress the sudden torrent of tears. I had forgotten the charms of social conversation, of sharing intimacies with ones that had formed bonds with you. I reassured Mary that I was only crying because I was delighted to hear from her, and that I had missed her. Of course, I would meet my friends at the club.

My friends were elated with my return to the city. They peppered me with questions, to which answers were difficult to provide. My muddled responses were barely satisfactory. "It was a last-minute decision," I lied. "I stumbled upon an amazing price and had banked vacation time. My boss told me I could take a furlough." I didn't know why I sustained the falsehood. How could I readily admit that I had been held captive when Gabe had, by proxy, emailed my friends of my travels? How could I confess that I had been the willing plaything of a man who delighted in humiliating me sexually, and more ashamedly, that I revelled in being used so thoroughly.

"Did you have a good time, Amelia?" Mary looked at me with earnestness as she wrapped her arm around my waist. "We all missed you. We were so delighted when you'd email us from abroad with tales of your travels. It was odd that you left without a word to anyone."

I smiled, trying to suppress the pained expression distorting my features beneath the punctuated bursts of the club's strobe lights. The flashes of white and indigo couldn't blot out the memory of when Gabe forced me to kneel by his side, my hands bound uselessly behind me, as I endured the indignity of his impersonation of my life. "Being by myself was excruciating at times and damaging to my health," I confessed. "But eventually through the journey I found myself, what I valued, what I needed in life. It was an indelible experience on my mind and body." It was a prevarication that was not entirely a lie. Nor was it entirely the truth. I had been forced to confront the desires that I could no longer sublimate in wilful denial.

Gabe had thought of everything. When I opened my smartphone after my conversation with Mary, I found he had uploaded additional falsified photos. I was captured smiling in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Buckingham Palace, and other attractions. I read the emails he had penned while in captivity, not only to my friends, but also to my place of employment. My furlough was ending I read. The resumption of my job awaited. The lies that Gabe had so effortlessly and believably crafted of my absence seemed implausible, if not for the marks on my soul that bore witness to my suffering. The blistering patches of colour across my flesh served a visceral reminder of the lies I knowingly embodied.

I showed my friends the photographs. Gabe even had some souvenirs prepared to gift to them as mementos of my travels. They loved the fabrics, and scarves, and trinkets I handed them. Had I met any interesting men they asked me?

I shrugged, being intentionally vague. "There was one guy. He was quite attractive, muscular. We were a good match sexually, but I haven't had contact with him since I returned home." The blatant misrepresentation were the only words I could find in describing Gabe.

My friends cajoled me from my thoughts onto the dance floor and my body writhed and thrummed with the heavy bass beat in an unrestrained dance of liberation. My hair whipped from side to side as I grinded my body against other men, pressing the curves of my buttocks to nestle against their firmness. It was cathartic. When large hands encircled around my hips and skimmed the indent of my waist from behind, I crushed myself closer to the heat of his groin, face unseen. I grinded against him, feeling the hard press of his excitement as my body pulsed with a rhythm of its own rejoicing. I sashayed and performed for my admirer's gaze, desperate to demonstrate to myself that I wasn't Gabe's property, that I had cast aside his ownership. I was my own sensual, autonomous being. Gabe couldn't control me anymore. The man's hands roved over my offered flesh, and I complemented his frenzied gyrations. But I immediately recoiled as his fingertips wandered up my inner thigh, almost knowingly brushing against Gabe's brand, as if in reminder that I wasn't genuinely free. The lingering aroma of soap, so recognizable a scent. The man's touch hauntingly familiar. I fled and leaned against the safety of the club's bathroom stall, struggling for breath in between the choking sobs I tried to stifle.

After that night, I purchased a hidden camera detector and scoured every crevice of my apartment. I was, as far as I could ascertain, no longer being surveilled. I affixed sheets of tinfoil into the corners of my apartment's walls, nonetheless. Even in my absence from him, I couldn't trust Gabe. I imagined Gabe sitting in his bedroom, intently observing the monitors as I navigated my life post-captivity.

As I returned to my life and work, I settled into a disquieting routine. The adjustment was more challenging than anticipated. Concentration did not occur effortlessly as I was increasingly unable to cope with the sudden transition from pleasure and service to independence. I had been conditioned to desire nothing but sexual gratification; to slip to my knees at Gabe's impulses; to open my mouth and throat to taste his manhood, gagging on its enormity, and swallowing his seed; to spread my legs and accept his girth as he penetrated me in any orifice he wanted; to revel in his debasement of me at my insistence; and to scream in ecstasy as he applied marks of pain. The tasks of work I was charged to conduct overwhelmed my now stupefying thought processes. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to concern myself about student grants, though I had always enjoyed the work in the past. Even office gossip felt contrived. I laughed and smiled when expected. But, given the tumultuous months I had suffered, the minutiae of their lives seemed irrelevant to my existence.

I emulated the life I had prior to my abduction by resuming the activities I once derived joy from - exercising at the gym, shopping, galleries, and bookstores. It was full, and promising, and painfully empty at once. Numbness often my only accompaniment. I had been exceedingly isolated at Gabe's, save for Mittens. Agency had been denied. Independent action was an illusion. My kidnapping had inculcated a mental vulnerability to which I possessed no remedy. I frequently stared into the abyss of my now empty fridge shelves, my hands shaking as I closed the door, only to reopen it minutes later. The deafening alienation only intensified as I watched the world live, while I only peripherally existed in the shadows of its perimeter. I was free, yet the shackles of the past bound me to a life that was repressive in its bleakness.

I internalized his touch so deeply that even absent of his physical control, I moved my compliant body as if he owned it still. I reinforced my own submission to him, reiterating it in every act I permitted him mental dominion over. I remembered the way Gabe's touch had ignited my body ablaze with desire, and how his tongue had caressed my clitoris, and his hands had masterfully coaxed climaxes from me. I ached to be on my knees pleasuring him, the taste of him, the touch of him. Gabe had transferred the toybox of sexual aids he had gifted me in my ersatz apartment upon my return. Night after night, as my body cried for sexual satisfaction, I used the toys to reconstruct the scenarios of Gabe's control over my flesh. They were poor proxies for his manhood. Yet, I moaned as the fullness of the anal beads stretched my rectum, and the vibrator in my pussy spread me to once familiar widths of discomfort. When I clamped my own nipples and fingered my clit until the edge of unbridled release, I whispered out "Master", yearning for the intoxicating pull of possession to claim my submissive soul again.

I raged at the self-assured young woman who had acquiesced so easily, and who had cast aside her self-respect at the alter of desire. The guilt of my own culpability and wanton willingness in becoming Gabe's sex object startled me from sleep nightly in a sweat-induced panic, before transforming into a frenzied sense of helplessness. I had surrendered. I had slipped to my knees. I had begged Gabe for permission to fuck myself for his amusement and my own. It was in these moments that I tried to suppress the rising surge of anger at the realization that Gabe had strung me like a marionette without regard to my wellbeing. I was pulled in one direction for his pleasure, then yanked in another for his guilt. My agency abrogated for his will.

As I stared at myself in the mirror, reminiscent of Gabe's daily ownership affirmations, I pounded my fists onto the surface, screaming at my reflection that I had dignity. "I have worth," I shrieked. "I'm not his plaything!" Gabe would have to account for everything he did.

I reported my abduction to a detective. I showed him Gabe's note and money. I even lifted the hem of my dress to reveal the scars and bruises still healing on my body, and Gabe's brand that had been cold burned into my thigh. I told the detective about Gabe's mansion, and the fake apartment. I emphasized that I wasn't a willing victim at first. I had been imprisoned. Pleasure eventually convinced me to become an accomplice in my own capture. But I knew his name. Gabe's every bodily imperfection, every feature I had committed to memory and to touch.

The detective slid a business card across his desk. He reassured me that he'd "look into it". When I followed up with him a few weeks afterwards, he stated that Gabe had been exceedingly cooperative, and had allowed him to tour the unassuming bungalow titled in his name. There were no video cameras, or monitors set to surveillance. There were no bars on the windows. The house the detective searched didn't even have a finished basement I was informed. There was no mansion registered. There was no evidence of my abduction. Gabe admitted our acquaintance. We had been occasional play partners in the BDSM clubs, he lied. As for the bruises, he couldn't begin to hypothesize where I had obtained them. He showed the detective emails I had sent him stating that I was travelling through Europe, and that I was looking forward to playing with him upon my arrival home. If some man had marked me in pleasure, it wasn't him.

"Of course," I stated, my voice monotone. Hysteria was counterproductive. "Do you believe me?" It was comically absurd to imagine that wealthy, jet-setting Gabriel Magnussen had kidnapped me, recreated my entire apartment, and then returned me back to my home months afterwards without harming me physically. Given the emails I had supposedly sent, and the photographs I had apparently taken, my story was just that, an affront to the evidence that Gabe had provided in refutation of his involvement.

The detective only acknowledged there wasn't anything explicitly incriminating, even though the cash and the brand had been sufficiently probative for him to initiate an inquiry. Gabe had most likely purchased the mansion in an anonymous trust to hide his ownership. The detective couldn't obtain a warrant to a property that didn't exist or have the location for. I thanked the detective for his attention. "I'm not lying," I softly asserted in dignified desperation before I retreated from his office. I needed somebody to acknowledge the atrocity that had been committed upon me.

Gabe had thwarted accountability via legal channels. In my desperate efforts to ameliorate the injustice of the violence perpetrated on me, and to what I had willingly done to myself, I compulsively scoured online mapping systems endeavoring to find Gabe's mansion. We came from the same city. I was instinctively convinced that he hadn't flown me anywhere but had kept me within the perimeters of the city. It was the only logical explanation of how he could have abducted and returned me so quickly. If his mansion was nearby, it was undoubtedly secluded from other properties. I could describe from memory the details of the column he had trussed me up to, the dimensions of the pond I had run past as I attempted escape, even the number of evergreens lining the property's perimeter I counted every morning as I peered out the window longing for a freedom I dared not avidly dream about.

When stalking him via satellite imagery no longer sated my lust for retribution, I researched Gabe on the internet. Gabriel Magnussen was a tech magnate in his world. A wunderkind, he had amassed great wealth at age 23 selling one of the most popular apps used by smartphones. I clicked through image after image of him. Some depicted him with longer hairstyles, shorter styles, more muscled, less so. All the images reflected the same intense green eyes I became lost in night after night when I kneeled before him, and Gabe brought me to pleasure. I saved the pictures to my laptop, in remembrance of his monstrosity. It was a convincing distortion of rationalized thought I accepted as I accessed the folder daily, fixatedly, staring at the man who had been my Master.

I thought I sometimes saw Gabe as a fast-moving spectre from my peripheral vision. I dismissed that he was stalking me. Otherwise, he would have inquired about me, or even kept himself apprised of my life. The vivid dreams I had seemed so tangible, from the lingering smell of his soap on my pillowcase, to the almost realistic weight of his body on mine as I slept. The visions I had of Gabe caressing my cheek with tenderness and sitting on my window ledge watching me, seemed so real. He was never there when I awoke. The Gabe I knew would have comforted me on the endless nights I sobbed myself to sleep. He would have snuck in to stroke my arm and pull me into his embrace, provide me with reassuring words as he kissed my torment away. But on those nights when I would startle awake, gripping the blanket in my fist, as my body was too paralyzed to even move, much less scream from the fear drenching it in cold perspiration, I found myself invariably alone. Even Mittens could not provide me with solace despite her valiant attempts, sidling up to stand sentinel, as I slept through the night.