You Belong To Me

Chapter eighteen:

 The man had managed to get Scott back into his bed and Scott moved with no complaint, though the world felt sluggish. Everything around him seemed delayed and the slow-motion, the snow fall outside his window wasn't much help to his delusion. His whole body ached like he had been pounded with a meat hammer. The man had left the room and Scott could hear shuffling from the room adjacent to his; a shared wall was the only thing separating them.

Scott found himself desperate for the man to come back. Desperate to get ready to leave. For so long, he had been trapped in this alternate reality that left him completely dependent on one person, but not anymore – not for much longer. A strange, heavy delusion seemed to have settled over his mind, preventing him from comprehending that there was any world outside of this contorted one.

The man came back, he had a backpack with him, it was slung over one of his shoulders. "Scotty," he said, rummaging through Scott's clothes, "you need to listen to me very carefully, okay?" His tone was patronizing, it made something in Scott begin churning again.

"Okay..." he muttered, trying to push himself up in bed.

"I need you to be cooperative with me, okay? I can't have you snitching, and I certainly can't have you acting out." He crossed over to Scott with a long-sleeved shirt in his hand. He smiled, reaching out to help him out of the one he had sweated through already. Scott let him, raising his arms above his head, proving his cooperation. "Good boy, there we go."

Scott looked down at himself. He was pale and skinny, and his skin looked blotchy. His ribs were visible, and his hip bones protruded. There was no way the man would be able to cover this up; there was obvious malnourishment. Scott fought the smile of satisfaction from his face. Never in his life did he expect to feel so pleased by looking so disgusting. The shirt was then pulled down over his head. It smelled like old wood; slightly musty.

"Alright, then, are you ready?" The man's voice sounded completely different again. A different inflection, tone, accent. It was all off all of a sudden as if a different person was speaking. Scott found himself jerking away from the man's touch, a frown curled his lips. He couldn't explain the animalistic distrust that suddenly gripped him by the throat. Almost as if he craved who the man was moments ago instead of this new creature. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I was going to carry you, but if you don't want me to, then-" he shrugged, turning his back.

Scott pushed himself out of the bed, reaching out a shaking hand for the man, but as his feet touched the floor, he crumpled all the way down to his knees, his shin suddenly shocking him with more pain that he had felt before. Darkness clouded his vision, threatening to close in on him. "Oh dear. See? This is why we accept help, Scotty. So that we don't get hurt." The man scolded. He stooped to wrap an arm under Scott's knee and one behind his back to hoist him into his arms. "Light as a sack of potatoes, you poor thing."

The man walked carefully from the room, picking over the scattered clothes on the floor. Scott let his head loll against the man's shoulder, his eyes fluttering shut despite his desire to keep them open. A sudden thud resounded from the door the led to the locked room besides Scott's. It came again followed by the crunching sound of nails ripping against the wood as something desperately clawed from behind it. Scott's head lifted, his eyes widening, but the man pushed it back down, shushing him softly without looking back to the door.

Scott felt as if he were watching his life from the third person, everything blurring together in awful, nauseating patterns. He couldn't focus on anything, his breathing was sporadic, and his whole body was in complete pain and shock. A groan dragged from behind his chapped lips.

The air that greeted Scott when the front door opened was cold, and fresh, and burnt his nose with every inhale. It was so delectable. He felt tears well in his eyes when he opened them, head lazily rolling on a neck without muscles to look at the gray sky. Snowflakes settled on his face, tickling his cheeks and resting on his eyelashes. The sky through the breaks in the clouds was such a deep, royal blue.

"Having fun?" The man asked Scott, bouncing him slightly in his arms. Scott nodded, blankly, letting his lips turn into a soft smile. This was it; he was going to the hospital, he wouldn't feel sick anymore, and he would be free from the man forever.

The police would come, and they would arrest the man and discover all of the awful things in his basement and the fridge. They would see the blood stains, and the places that he kept Scott chained. Finally, Scott would be back in his home with his now-in-season Christmas lights, and his weighted blanket, and white-noise machine, and all of his pillows. He would be safe again.

The man set him on his feet but kept an arm around him to support him as he opened the backseat of his car, helping Scott inside and laying him down. "Remember our story, Scott? I can go over it again with you if you'd like." The man spoke softly, climbing into the driver's seat and cranking the car. Pleasantly warm air blasted Scott and he closed his eyes again, relief flooding him. Funny how the smallest things suddenly became so important.

"Yeah, I, uh, forgot about it..." Scott murmured, absent mindedly fidgeting with a loose thread in the seat that had fallen between his fingers. As the car jolted to life, he opened his eyes again, watching the sky pass by upside-down through the window.

"Dear Scotty, try to pay attention this time. We were hiking and you got hurt by an abandoned bear trap, we had no signal to call for help because all of our garbage communication had been ruined by the sudden snow. I had no choice but to carry you all the way out of the woods which took several days." The man said, looking at Scott for a second in his mirror.

"Oh okay. I was wondering why you were dressed like that." Scott hummed, trying to come up with enough fake, trust-worthy comments to keep the man talking.

"Like my little costume?" The man laughed, darkly. "Don't you worry, Scotty, it's a good plan and soon you'll be out of that antiseptic hell and back in your bed again."

Scott felt his sheets, recalled the smell of his candles, the warmth of his space heater. He would be out of the slaughterhouse that he had found himself and back in his apartment. He would sleep for at least 12 hours first, and then he would eat the nicest breakfast he could get for himself, and then he would sit in his reading nook and try to remember where he had left off in his book. All he could remember now was that it had been such a drab and obnoxiously long book, but he was excited even for that.

The clouds had begun to slowly clear up and the sky was so unbelievably beautiful that Scott felt tears well in his eyes again. He would be going home after today. He would see the man's face in the newspaper and maybe actually learn his real name instead of just "the man". Everything would go back to normal, and he would forget that this ever happened. Maybe someone would want to write a book about him or an interview in the papers. Scott didn't want to think of it any longer than he had to, so maybe he would only do two interviews and maybe a book. But that seemed a little dramatic. God, what day was it? Scott was thinking maybe December, but it could also be late November.

He tried to gauge the stops and starts of the car, the sounds outside the door, any traffic or other cars. He couldn't really hear much, but the car stopped often and if he craned his neck back enough, he could see the towering stoplight polls. What were the odds that the man would get pulled over and he could just scream. He was getting ahead of himself, though, he just needed to be patient for the hospital. A wave of nausea gripped him again, turning his stomach and flooding his mouth with saliva. His vision swam and he gagged, gritting his teeth tightly together.

"We're almost there, Scotty, don't worry, my love." Scott turned his head and spit, feeling it drip down his cheek and leak through the sleeve of his shirt, cooling from the air. His head was swimming and his neck started aching badly. He felt like every part of his body was locking up. "Almost there..." the man muttered again to himself. Scott could hear cars rushing by through a sudden clarity in his audio perception, which was slowly slipping him into a pool of muffled silence.

He was dying, he knew he was. It was terrifying, but he knew that his whole body was already giving up. His heart pounding, trying to push sluggish, thick blood through tightening veins. His muscles began to succumb to the choking, oxygen-lacking goop that pulsed through them. His brain was in full panic as his mouth went completely dry, his saliva choking him as it seemed to drain from his body. His vision was so blurred that he couldn't make out anything through his flipped view out the window. His tongue felt too big for his mouth and his organs felt like they were rotting within his still twitching body.

Scott was dying.