Lessons
The room was dark, and so when Ruby woke she thought at first that she was home, safe in her own bed. The smell of the place quickly disabused her of that notion. It was sickeningly sweet, and Ruby had to fight back nausea. Instinct drove Ruby to try to sit up, but the thick ropes around her hands cut into her wrists. She gasped and she could taste the thick air. Ruby gagged and actually did throw up. Tied down, all she could do was turn her head, and when she was done there was trail of yellow liquid on her shoulder.
Gasping and sobbing, Ruby braced her self then twisted her hands and feet, testing her bonds, but the ropes only cut deeper into her flesh. She tried to stay quiet, but a whimper of pain escaped her. The echo was bounced off the farthest walls and they leant it a menacing tone. "Now that's what I like to hear," a soft voice chuckled from one of the corners, "you can keep at it all day, those ropes won't give out." Ruby struggled harder, but quickly wore her self out. The voice was right; the ropes were stronger than she was.
Panting, Ruby lay on the thin mattress, trying to gather her strength back. Everything was spinning, a great whirling blur. Ruby tried to remember how she had been brought here or who brought her. The last thing that she could remember was fighting with her boyfriend. When she had come home from work their tiny apartment had been a mess, and there had been cat puke on the kitchen floor. She had been so upset, that she had grabbed her purse and fled to the park, to her private sanctuary. It all seemed so far away now.
Now her entire world was this darkened, stinking room, this vomit-covered bed, and the bodiless gloating voice in the corner. Ruby sobbed harder. She hadn't done anything to deserve this; she didn't even understand what was happening to her except that she was sure she didn't want it to happen. All she wanted was to be back at home, with Mike and Ginger. It didn't matter anymore how messy it was, it seemed like heaven compared to this place.
It was a few minutes before her sobs subsided enough for her to try working at the ropes again. This time, instead to twisting Ruby tried to pull her hands through the loops, but only succeeded in cutting her hands as well as her wrists. Again she heard light chuckling from the corner. Ruby tipped her head up to see into the corner, but all she could make out in the gloom was a vague silhouette of a larger man sitting with his back to the wall. He started to shift, and she could hear the scraping of his clothing on the floor and wall. Panic seized something deep inside her, and Ruby screamed.
"There's nobody around to hear you, and even if there were, they wouldn't save you." He was slowly walking toward her, and every step that he took sent chills of fear down her spine. Ruby did not want to think about what he was going to do when he reached the bed. The instinct to run was all consuming. Every moment brought him closer and closer, and Ruby could see more of him as he came into the faint dirty light.
It didn't matter. Though some small voice in the deep recesses of her mind shouted for her to try and find a distinguishing mark on this man so that should she escape she could go to the police, Ruby could not seem to tear her eyes from his. Her body was flailing against the bonds that held it, but her mind was completely blindsided by the man's eyes. They were blue, the clearest blue Ruby had ever seen, and deep within them Ruby could sense the pleasure that he was getting out of her struggle. Ruby looked into those deep eyes and knew that nothing short of a miracle was going to get her out of the room alive.
He reached the bed, and stood to one side, watching her, for a few minutes. The July air was thick and oppressive, and the room had only one window. Its panes were smashed in places, but the remaining glass ensured that any airflow was practically non-existent. Ruby struggled on regardless and sweat began to snake tiny paths down her face and neck. The man stuffed one hand into his pocked, and for a spilt second Ruby was sure that he was going to kill her right then. Instead, he withdrew a crumpled square of cloth, folded it neatly, and bent over her to wipe the sweat away from her forehead.
Ruby shuddered and flinched away from the brush of his fingers on her flesh, her skin crawled and goose bumps appeared on her arms despite the weather. When he was done, he straightened up and replaced the cloth in his pocket and withdrawing a small timer. He set it gently on a small table beside the bed, and dragged the table into Ruby's line of sight. "I'm leaving for a while, but I'll be back when the timer goes off." He smiled down at her. "Make yourself comfortable while I'm gone."
With great flourish he bowed to her, and turned, heading for the door. "Please let me go, please." Ruby started pleading. "I've got a boyfriend, a life. Let me go, I won't say a word, I swear I wont go to the police, I'll forget I was ever here!" Still he continued, deaf to her pleas. As the door closed she began to sob, the tears making tracks on her cheeks. She begged him until long after the door clicked behind him, and for quite a while afterwards. When she finally realized that he was gone, her throat had gone sore and her voice had taken on a raspy harsh sound.
A short time after she stopped crying, shock set in and Ruby dissolved into a daze, staring blankly at the ceiling. Her previously adrenaline and panic fueled body began to feel heavy and awkward with exhaustion. Time seemed have slowed to a sluggish pace, and her movements had slowed with it. She no longer struggled furiously with the ropes, but only tugged half-heartedly at them every now and again. Disbelief clouded her thoughts, and Ruby found she could not think past wondering what she had done to deserve this. Eventually exhaustion forced her into a fitful sleep, sleeping for a short time and coming half-awake to look and the timer before dozing off again.
Hours passed; the sun sank and the moon rose. Finally the timer sounded, a shrill beep that jolted Ruby from sleep with a start. It took only a moment for Ruby's sleep-fogged mind to clear and remind her where she was, and she renewed her fight against her bonds. She stared wildly around the room, expecting to see the man back in the corner or next to the bed, but there was no one else in the room. The beeping alarm continued for a long, tense minutes, though Ruby didn't note how many, before it automatically turned off.
By now she knew that she would rub her wrists to the bone before the ropes gave out if she kept up the struggle. Still no sign of the man, and Ruby used to time to look for an escape route. She scoured the mattress, looking for anything with a sharp edge that she could saw at her restraints with but there was nothing. Ruby expanded her search to the floor by the bed, but there was nothing there either. Even as she searched the futility of it struck her. She would never be able to reach anything the way she had been tied up, each limb anchored tightly to a different corner of the bed.
The man wasn't back. He had said he'd be back when the alarm went off, but Ruby was sure it had been at least an hour since it went off and he wasn't back. Ruby felt her body kick into panic mode. She didn't want the man to come back, but if he never came back she would die chained to this bed. She wasn't sure which prospect was worse. Ruby screamed hoping someone would hear her, but if there was anyone around to hear they didn't come to her rescue. Ruby didn't know how long she screamed for, but after a while she found she had worn her voice down the same way she had worn the skin on her wrists. Eventually she fell into a stupor, staring across the darkened room into the shadows.
A very long time later, as the sun was finally beginning to rise, Ruby heard a soft scraping noise outside of the room. Hope surged through her, and though her voice was almost gone, Ruby screamed as loud as she could manage. Again came the scrapping noise this time accompanied by the creak of slowly rotting floorboards. Shuffling footsteps made their way across the floor outside the room then stopped. As hoarse as she was, Ruby kept screaming.
Finally, the doorknob rattled a bit and spun, and the door slowly eased open. Ruby didn't know where her optimism came from, but she prayed that someone had come to save her. Through the crack between the doorframe and the door, Ruby could see dark pants and a blue shirt, and long silvery hair. She could only see a sliver of the person, but she knew that it was her kidnapper. Ruby laughed, because she didn't know what else to do. No one could hear her screams, nor did she have the energy to scream or cry.
Her tormentor stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, then turned towards Ruby. The vivid blue eyes that had shocked her before were cold and hard as a glacier, yet his voice, when he spoke, was warm and lilting. "Your first lesson," he said, "is that you are at my convenience, I can do whatever I want to you. Your second lesson is that I operate on my schedule, regardless of what I might tell you. I don't have to tell you the truth." He turned and opened the door, and as he stepped through and pulled it behind him, Ruby knew he was going to kill her.