Greys IV - Chains

Chapter 5 - The Door

I sat rigidly in the center of my cold, damp cell. It was more comfortable to prop myself up against one of the walls, but the stone never warmed, only pulling heat from me faster until it felt like I leaned against broken glass. My body had stopped shivering hours ago, and now it was just a constant, thrumming numbness, but I knew I couldn't die from the cold, or I thought I couldn't, so I tried to put the discomfort from my mind.

Instead, I plotted.

I couldn't reach my sight to look beyond the walls around me, so I couldn't see if it was day or night. Technically, I didn't even know how long had passed before I woke. Hours, days, weeks? Longer? I had checked my nails and hair, and they seemed the same, but maybe my body had shut down at my death. That would make just as much sense as anything else I supposed since I didn't even know how I was alive, how I had come back. Those threads of thought wouldn't help me though, so I pushed them from my mind as well.

I stared into the dark ahead of me and pictured a gray, metal door with heavy locks and bolts running along its edge. The door was plain and unassuming, but thick, unyielding. And it would be my salvation. It would hide me, keep me, protect me. I would lock every part of me that I needed, that I valued, behind that plain, gray door when the time was right. Lock it away in my mind, leaving it untouched and disconnected from what I would become, what I would do, and what would be done to me. So when I escaped I could open that door and those parts of me would still exist, but while I was here, while I was his, I could convince my father that he had won.

So I sat and stared, and planned and practiced, hours upon hours until I could pull myself apart and piece myself back together. Until I knew the door would hold, and the Human, good, and light parts of myself would be safe. But not yet. If I locked them away too soon, my father would be suspicious, he would notice their absence, my lack of humanity, of emotion, my lack of guilt and fear and remorse.

I gritted my teeth and pulled myself together one last time, ready to face the first of his trials as fully me, so he could see the damage he was doing, revel in it as I knew he would. And so eventually, when the time was right, I could lock myself away and he would think he had broken me, not that I had broken myself, separated myself, in order to save myself in the future.

I closed that gray door in my mind, leaving it empty, ready, and waiting for when the time came for its use. But no sooner did I slide the last bolt into place in my mind, then a very real door opened before me, shining light into my cell, enough to blind me with my nature's power still hidden by my spelled chains.

"Hello, dear partner."

A voice, high and ethereal and jarring like the Fates plucking their strings swept into the room. I hated that voice more each time it resurfaced in my life, a corpse that just wouldn't stay dead.

"Hello, Ambriel. I'm surprised my father trusts you with such a job, as you've failed him in every other."

"Job? Oh no, Jamie, this isn't work. I asked for this time with you, begged for it actually. Whatever he has planned for you will surely be worse, but I wanted you first. Waited three long days for you to come back, and then even longer before he placed you here, just so I could get the first, fresh, screams from those new lips. You know you have a pretty mouth, don't you?"

She sauntered in as she spoke, slithering like the snake she was. I was glad it had only been days here since my death, wherever here was, but my thin relief was quickly snuffed out as she approached and I realized I couldn't lunge for her or shrink away, that I couldn't move at all.

One small hand laid on my bare shoulder, running across it, and through my hair to the other side. Her touch made my skin crawl, but my body refused to move. The manacles and collar immobilized me in their dark control no matter how I fought it. So I sat, still and silent as she tipped my chin up to look into her glacial eyes, as she smiled at me and leaned down to whisper in my ear.