Page 67 of The Way We Rot
“This is the last one,” he told me, whispered so harsh, shadows and evil crossing over his face, twisting up his handsome features. “This one, meant for me, now yours.”
His fingers drifted to the trigger, shifted between us, grinding the metal in harder, crushing bone and muscle.
“Do it,” I urged again, voice strained, so ready for this to be all over. I wanted to see what was on the other side; I wanted him to win.
If he’d done something to Lacey, if he’d lied, I didn’t want to know. If I could just blinker out of existence, if he could take the fear and concern and lack of knowing… one small bullet, into my skull, and I’d never have to think again.
I braced for it.
He roared, ripped the gun from between us and fired it off into the room with a loud, crashing bang. The bullet launched from the chamber and slammed into the full-length mirror by the bathroom door, shattering the glass with an almighty shriek of noise.
He glared at me, so much hatred and confusion surging through him. Through me, too. We were both breathing heavy, angry. Panting and scowling, fiery.
With the gun making his knuckles white in his grasp, he stood and stormed away, the door slamming shut behind him.
My heart continued to pound for what felt like hours, and he didn’t come back.
I must have drifted to sleep for a bit, my body and mind too overwhelmed, crashing down hard. I needed another shower to clean his cum and spit from between my legs, but my brain switched off, sent me into a beautiful, dreamless sleep.
When I woke, it was clear hours had passed because the light coming through the gaps between the heavy black curtains had shifted, lightened. Was it morning? I had no idea what time of day it was, what day of the week it was. Even the month was foggy.
Another thing I noticed right away was how slack my bindings were. The tie around my wrist had loosened from the pressure of my weight on it. It was easy to slip my hand free — shocking, almost.
For the first time since I’d been here, I was alone and not tied up in any way. I sat up, rubbing the raw marks on my wrist, and looked over the room with fresh eyes.
This was his sex room, maybe not his actual bedroom. But how many rooms could a small place like this have? Maybe it was both. I was suddenly ragefulat the idea of him bringing any other person here. It was too intimate, too showy.
This bed had metal bars along the frame, high up on the headboard with hooks every few rows. The walls were painted black, the curtains and other furnishings just as dark. Even the other furniture, a dresser and a small armchair, all black, old looking.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, wobbling. I would pee, maybe run a soapy flannel through my undercarriage, then hunt the man down. Wherever he was, I was unsure if I had long. He had plans, that was so obvious it was painful, but where was he?
After sorting myself out in the bathroom, I dressed in one of his t-shirts and searched for something to use as a weapon. It was back in the bathroom that I found his razor, and it didn’t take much to free the blade from the plastic.
It would do. The gun we’d used in our sex game was gone.
I could benefit from some ingenuity if I wanted to— not get out alive, but…
Opening the door, I half-expected him to be waiting there with a refilled gun and a scowl meant just for me, but there was only emptiness. He wasn’t in the narrow, wood-paneled hall, and he wasn’t in the first room I came across, a small kitchen.
He was nowhere at all in this small apartment, so I left it, yanking open the front door and finding myself in another hall.
This one led me into the theater, a meandering, confusing maze of halls with many doors leading from it. Stock rooms, customer toilets, a work room, it was all along this hall. And still no Adrian.
Maybe he’d left me here to rot.
Maybe he was done.
But that didn’t feel right.
No, of course we weren’t done. I found him.
And it was easy. He was right there. As I stepped into the theater itself, I found him sitting in the front row; a dusty television wheeled onto the stage, what looked to be a family video playing.
Retro. A few decades old, at least.
The razor grew heavy in my palm as I walked down the middle aisle, closer to him. He knew I was here; Icould tell from the fresh tension in his shoulders, but he made no moves to subdue me or turn me away.
He didn’t say a word as I sat down next to him, the old, faded velvet scratching my bare thighs.
