Page 18 of Retrograde

“You got very spicy with me last time,” he drones.

Pressure builds, and my hands shoot up, my fingers clawing at his, trying to pry them away.

“I did not,” I rasp.

“You called me some choice names. You threw rocks at me.”

“Oh, I did do that. I just wouldn’t call that very spicy,” I retort, gasping for breath when he squeezes even harder.

My heart is speeding up in instinctive panic even as my mind remains calm. He won’t choke me to death. That’d be too nice an end for me. But my body doesn’t know that, and adrenaline floods my veins.

Aron chuckles. “Fair enough, Hotshot. Be a bad girl if you want. But understand this: bad girls get punished.” He releases his grip on my throat, sliding his hand down towards my exposed breast.

I stumble backwards, and my foot lands on a jagged piece of rock.

“Oww, fuck!” I nearly crash to the ground, my eyes watering.

I want to tell Aron to go to hell. I want to tell him to stop talking to me like I’m his next meal. But I don’t say any of that. I’m in no position to. He can do whatever he wants to me. Arguing about that is pointless. Head-on resistance will get me nowhere. I need a smarter approach. But I’m drawing a blank, and so I just glare at him.

“Okay, here’s the deal. You’re not going to get your food, blanket and bathroom break unless you do as I say.”

“What do you want me to do?” I ask, not hiding my apprehension.

“Kneel in that gravel over there until I tell you that you can get up.”

I glance at the patch of particularly sharp-looking scree and gulp audibly.

“You wouldn’t let me starve or freeze to death,” I point out without any conviction.

“No,” he confirms. “But I can let you go without food and warmth for much longer than I have without killing you. I can make you suffer a lot more.”

I don’t doubt that for a second. If anything, I’m sure that the only reason he fed and warmed me up regularly until now was to have something more immediate to threaten me with, other than the pain he could inflict on Corrado. And it is not lost on me that he’s withheld that threat until he let me taste hunger and physical discomfort.

On my first day here, I would have told him to fuck off and gone without eating and respite from the cold.

But now, after those endless hours spent down here sleep-deprived, painfully hollow inside, cold cutting through me from all sides like sharpened knives, and with the walls closing in on me as my only company ... I’m so desperate for comfort that it’s making my eyes well up with bitter tears.

He has worn me down.

Don’t beg, don’t beg, don’t beg. It will only encourage him. Don’t beg.

“Please.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “Please, let me have my food. I won’t do that anymore. You know I’m smarter than that. Please.”

To my shock, his facial expression does soften, a flicker of compassion erasing some of its harsher lines. For a heartbeat, he looks tempted to relent. But it’s gone in the blink of an eye.

His voice is firm and uncompromising when he says, “Your pathetic begging won’t work. In here, you only ever get what you fucking deserve. Either do as I say and kneel, or you won’t get to eat for a very long time.”

I’ve spent long enough on the gravelly ground to know that either option is unbearable. If I do what he wants, at least he won’t leave until he feeds me and lets me warm up. He will keep the lights on.

Gingerly, I lower myself to my knees, wincing, the rocks cutting into my skin.

Fuck, it hurts.

I’m instantly transported back in time to when my father made me kneel on corn kernels as a punishment for bad grades. If there’s something I learnt from those days, it’s that the pain only gets worse with each passing minute. I don’t know how I’m going to last. Staying motionless is agony, but each subtle movement only makes it worse.

Aron settles himself in the narrow corridor outside the bars, leaning back against the wall with his legs sprawled in front of him.

I keep my eyes locked on his and he on mine, like we’re in a staring contest. A heartless smile flickers across his face each time I hiss when I shift my weight, achieving nothing but making my torment even worse, the jagged edges sinking through my skin and into my ligaments.