Ascend

The room had no ventilation. Outside, the sun had set, taking its harsh heat down the horizon with it. The night would be cool, breezy. It would just get cooler the later it got.

Inside, in this single room that served as the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and closet, there was darkness and silence. The only sound was her own breathing, and she focused on keeping that steady and shallow. Any exaggerated movement would have the lights glaring down at her and exposing her. The owner of the apartment had taken precautions against her.

Smart man, she thought, and ached to roll her shoulders and ease the tension settling along her spine. He had no way of knowing how well she’d been trained. If he had, if any of them had, they’d all insist on running.

She really didn’t have the patience for that. She wasn’t a hunter.

The back of her neck felt wet with perspiration and she longed to wipe it away. Her entire body felt damp from the lack of air in the room, her hands clammy. There was a single bead of sweat leaving a trail down her neck, eager to join the others in the hollow of her throat, and another sliding down between her breasts, centimeters away from meeting the center panel of her bra. She hadn’t taken off the light jacket she wore, due as much to forgetfulness as it was for promptness. She’d needed the lights to turn back off as soon as possible.

Her legs wanted to cramp, to tremble from the strain of having crouched in the corner furthest from the entryway, but she’d long ago learned to ignore the demands of her own body. Back then it had been simply for her own self-preservation. Now it was mere instinct.

The key slid into the lock and she resisted the urge to straighten. The door pushed open, the lights turned on, and the man she’d been waiting for all night stepped inside. She could hear him clomping down the hall, knew he wouldn’t see her for at least another five seconds and got to her feet, her movements lithe and smooth. She was in front of him before he could step out of the entry hall and see her, smiling. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t bolt.

For a moment the man simply stared at her. She’d been made up—they always made her up—to suit his preferences. Her hair was straightened, extensions added to make it longer, her lips painted pink and her skin slightly bronzed. The padding in her bra and around her hips added the curves he’d desire. He’d find her beautiful. Then he stiffened and she tensed, readying to go after him.

“So he’s sent you.”

His voice was low, husky even when strained, and his gaze was direct. She wasn’t beautiful, she never believed she was. But he was. He wasn’t a runner, she realized, and wished for a single second that he was. She considered lying before dismissing the idea. “Yes.”

They stood in silence for a moment, as if mourning him. Respectful of it, she resisted the urge to ask him what he’d done.

“Any chance I could take you?” he asked once a full minute had passed, distracting her as she questioned if the silence was to say a prayer or just for reflection.

“No,” she answered honestly even as she wondered how he was able to joke with her, knowing what she’d been sent to do. They usually ran, cowered, begged, cried, negotiated. She froze. He couldn’t be another test, not when she’d proved herself for the last year without a single failure.

“You sure?” He gave her a cursory glance, pausing at all the right spots as if they were merely two people acting out a seduction. She smiled and touched his cheek, recognizing the negotiation, and felt him still at her touch.

“Would you whore yourself out to live?”

“It wouldn’t be a hardship.”

He amused her, and that made her pity him. “Could you really live with it, with what you’d done to keep breathing?”

“I’d have the option to figure it out.”

She reached into her pocket and grabbed the syringe, shoving it into his chest. “Because I like you,” she whispered when he fell into her, his eyes questioning. She dumped him on the floor to remind herself why she was there, and got the bag she’d left in the corner when she’d gone to greet him like a homely wife.

She set the bag beside him and pulled out the razor first. Traitors didn’t get the luxury of dignity. Only when she’d shaved his head completely bare did she sit back to study him. Without the thick chestnut hair, he seemed only slightly more menacing, still somehow a pretty boy. His narrow face had gone slack though his fingers twitched slightly.

Ignoring it, she pulled out the guillotine cutter and took his hand. She cooed and stroked until he went still then checked his pulse. Slow enough, she decided, and slid his pinky finger through the hole. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and held it as she squeezed the sides shut.

One down. Nineteen more to go.

She’d left his body as per instructions. In her duffle, she carried the pieces of him in divided sandwich bags. No one spoke to her as she made her way down the hall to the room where she would find Erebus. She’d showered, but she could still smell the blood on her, feel the mushy wetness of his eyes on her fingertips. She wanted to cringe away from the memory of it and that made her straighten her shoulders as she walked. She slipped into the monitor room and immediately shut the door behind her, leaning against the wall as she watched Erebus. He had his back to her, focused on the screen before him. A pair of legs sprawled on the floor could be seen in the top corner of the monitor, still and unnaturally pale. The remaining three girls were arguing, their voices muted.

“One down,” he said suddenly, minutes after she’d entered.

She hated that his words echoed her earlier thoughts. Ignoring it, she went to stand beside him and upturned her bag so the clear Ziplocs fell onto the desk before him. Erebus lifted the bag containing the molars, studying them with such intensity she had to look away. Instead, her gaze landed on a single blue iris that seemed to stare at her. Swallowing thickly, hoping it would help the nausea pass, she looked up at the screen. One of the girls, the ringleader, raised her fist.

“Ashin,” Erebus said, claiming her attention again, “you felt for this one, didn’t you?”

Her hands curled. She knew better than to ask him why again, had learned to accept his claim of being a god. “Are we done? You said this was the last one.”

He sat back in his chair and looked at the monitor again, chuckling at the girl with the bloody nose. Ashin discretely glanced down at his lap and saw the effect the image had on him. “Gorgeous, isn’t she?” When Ashin didn’t reply, he sighed. “I’ve trained you since you were a girl.”

“Yes,” she said when he didn’t continue. While others had been reading and dating and falling in love, she’d been locked in cages she couldn’t even move in until her muscles could stay in position, crouching or standing, for hours. Then she’d simply been upgraded to rooms and watched to be sure that she was remaining still. She’d been tortured to be sure that she’d never speak against them. She’d been beaten for the times she’d moved or spoken until they’d ruined her so badly she’d needed skin grafts to be made pretty again.

“I’ve personally invested time and money into you.”

“Yes.”

“I paid to have your face made.”

“Yes.”

“To make you beautiful so no one could deny you.”

She would rip his nails off. She’d cut off his toes and fingers before sparing him of his hands and feet. She would pry out his teeth one by one. Maybe she’d scream while she tortured him, scream and scream and scream until his ears bled. She’d leave his eyes alone so he could watch her while she exacted her revenge and delivered the justice he felt exempt from. When he screamed about being a God, she’d twist his spine while it was still in him then pull it out, vertebra by vertebra, before yanking his trachea out. She’d like to see even a god somehow survive her. “Yes.”

“To train you to fight, to defend yourself so your victims couldn’t hurt you.”

“Yes.” Just harm her. They always harmed her.

“To train you to kill.”

The proof of it lay on the desk before him, but she knew he wanted to hear it. “Yes.”

“To successfully seduce, fuck, so your victims went with a good memory.”

She couldn’t speak now, her mouth unable to form words.

“If I let you go, release you from your debt, could you live out there with what you’ve done?”

Yes, she thought. But she couldn’t say the word. Her victim had had more courage than her.

“Here, under my orders, you can do what pleases you, Ashin. You don’t have to justify it.” He stood now and curved his hand around her chin. “There’s a darkness in you. The work you do for me controls it, keeps you from going feral.” He dropped his hand and picked up the bag with the victim’s hair. “Maybe I need to remind you not to run. We’d find you, and I know how much you hate being put under, how vulnerable it makes you feel.”

She heard the threat even as she remembered how she’d panicked each time when awoken after the cosmetic surgeries, certain they’d used her helplessness to their benefit.

Erebus sat again, looking at the screen. “Get out. And next time play with them a little first.”

She escaped the room before he could elaborate on what he meant by play, stopping just outside it to catch her breath. She saw Delia, the woman who ran the house, come around the corner, and felt her already tremulous rein over her emotions slip. Delia had seen her grow under Erebus’s rule, had seen her suffer and cry and beg until she allowed herself to become his puppet. And she’d done nothing. She smiled and laughed and went out with her friends. While Ashin lived on the lowest floor of the house, the floor below this one where Erebus had his fun and trained his pets, Delia laughed. She always laughed. She was laughing now as she typed something on her phone, oblivious to everything around her. And why shouldn’t she be? She was safe here. She may as well be as much a god as Erebus.

She started to pass Ashin, so close they almost touched, still laughing.

Feral, she heard Erebus say, as if he were standing there with her, invisible, whispering into her ear. Or standing on the other side of the door and, knowing she was there, speaking the word to her. Feral.

She reached out and grabbed Delia’s head and twisted it at an angle until she heard the snap before she released her. Delia gazed up at her, her eyes still amused and light. She was still laughing. Ashin could hear her still laughing. The sound of it followed her as she turned her back to Delia and walked away, up the stairs, the laughter tethered to her.

It reverberated around her as she went all the way to the top floor, and she reminded herself that the sound of it was only in her head. If Erebus decided she needed to be reprimanded for this, the punishment would—almost—be worth it.

She exited out onto the terrace overlooking the front yard, and looked up at the sky. The breeze carried away the laughter until it was only a faint echo in the night. The moon was full and seemed perfectly circular, nearly close enough to touch, and the stars out to flirt with the surrounding darkness.

Delia hadn’t been worth it, she thought as she found the North Star. He’d think she was rebelling and use it to teach her another lesson in behavior. Maybe, if she cried enough, he wouldn’t scar her again. Maybe, if she begged enough, he’d only physically harm her.

A cloud drifted over the moon and the night closed in around her, the darkness no longer a blanket of comfort for her to hide under but rather a blindfold that took her sight and left her fumbling.

She could always run, she reminded herself almost desperately. He’d trained her, just as he’d trained the others. She was his ace, raised solely to mindlessly do as he commanded, but the others would be as well equipped to deal with a runner. She’d know their training, their mindsets. She could escape.

Light bathed her as the moon reappeared and the pressure eased. She could breathe again, calmly.

Running would never work, not for long. Just as she knew their habits, they’d know hers, whoever it was he sent after her. Maybe she could stay. Maybe he’d be proud of her for killing on her own this time, instead of because he’d told her to. Maybe she’d stay and try to goad him into killing her. What would she do then, she wondered as she leaned over the edge of the balcony. Would she negotiate as the victim had done? Would she, willingly this time, allow her body to be used? She’d done as Erebus wanted since he’d began her training. If he wanted someone dead, she killed. If he wanted her to fuck information out of someone, she did. If he wanted her to torture someone for his own pleasure, because he told her to, she pulled out her tools. When had her body ever been hers?

She turned away from the moon, the stars, and went back inside. Restless, she found herself exiting the house instead of returning to the basement. Following instinct, she walked towards the city, stopping only when she saw a tattoo parlor. All the lights were on, the storefront outshining the surrounding ones.

She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The group sitting behind the reception desk didn’t notice her at first, too busy enjoying a joke one of the men was laughing his way through. By the time he got to the punch line, he was wheezing from laughter, but his coworkers only joined in, not even seeming to care that they hadn’t heard the actual joke. For a moment, she felt part of it, part of their little group, just by being in the same space as them.

Then one of the others noticed her and he shifted before her from a guy talking with his friends to a professional at work. “Hey,” he said easily, smiling. “What’s going on?”

She shrugged, looking around the room as she tucked her hands in her pockets.

“Are you here for a tattoo or piercing? We do removals too.”

She shook her head. “A tattoo, maybe.”

“Oh, well, Ray? Why don’t you show her your designs?” He looked at Ashin. “Why don’t you follow Ray, and if you like something…”

Ashin nodded as a girl nearly as tall as her, her body as curvy as hers had been earlier that night, got to her feet and gestured for her to follow. In the tattoo room, she sat down even before Ray could pull out the drawings, determined. She wouldn’t leave here as she’d arrived, she knew. Since her surgeries, she hadn’t been marked once. Her skin was perfect, unblemished. This would change that. Some people didn’t like tattoos. If Erebus decided he wanted to take this from her, he would do it. But even then, she’d still know. She’d taken the control back, for however long she could, and made her body her own again.

She didn’t return for a month for a half. When she did, she refused to cower or hide and opted instead to come in through the front door. Though she could’ve returned the night before, she’d wanted the daylight, certain it would make more of statement.

The house was quiet when she entered, the curtains all pulled back and the windows all closed. She locked the door behind her, shutting out the chirps of the birds, the purrs and rumbles of passing cars, and the normal neighborhood sounds coming from the surrounding families.

She crossed the foyer to peer into the sitting room. It was as clean as always, the rug vacuumed, the corners of the pale, pale crème walls dusted, the windowpane spotless. The sunlight coming through the window caught the dust particles floating in the air.

Something hit her in the middle of her back, hands appearing on her shoulders and shoving her down on her knees with such force, the sound of her hitting the marble floor sounded around the room. She barely had a moment to wonder if they’d shattered her knee caps when she was forced onto her stomach before legs wrapped around hers, an arm wound around her throat and yanked her backwards, far enough that her spine protested, and a hand covered her mouth. Unable to breathe, it only took moments for her to close her eyes to the sunlit room and drift into the darkness.

When she awoke, she reached up to touch her eyes, trying to be certain she really was awake. When she was sure of it, she forced in a deep breath. She couldn’t see, but Erebus wouldn’t have blinded her. She was of no use to him blind. So she was just in the dark, she told herself even as she forced in another gasping breath. She patted the threadbare cot she was on frantically, patting until she hit the edges. Another few inches away from her body, and her hands hit the rough, unfinished floor. She immediately snatched her hands back up into her lap. The single cot was only three inches high. She was only three inches off the ground. If he had anything on the ground waiting for her, staying on the cot wouldn’t protect her. She reached above her and only moved to her knees when she couldn’t feel the ceiling. She crawled to all four edges of the cot, trying to find a wall before giving up. He didn’t have her in a cage this time, and that was all she knew.

Slowly, as if she’d aged since she’d lost consciousness, she got to her bare feet—they’d taken her shoes—and reached as high up as possible. She moved to the tips of her toes and continued to reach up. Still no ceiling.

With a deep breath, she stepped off the cot. She counted her steps until her fingers finally touched a wall. Thirty-three steps. A turn to the right and forty-one steps allowed her to find the toilet and the sink. A hundred and eighty degree turn and she started the steps back. On the seventeenth, she felt something skitter across her foot and clamped her hand over her mouth to muffle the scream. If she kept quiet, maybe he’d let her out sooner.

She had no sense of time. Her time here had stretched to what felt like a year or a lifetime, maybe two. She reminded herself constantly that wasn’t possible. They’d left bowls of water for her to find in the dark only twice, the first of which she’d spilled. She knew now to feel around the cot before standing every time she woke up, just in case they decided she’d earned water or food.

They’d only left her food once, some kind of meat, chicken maybe, and some kind of greens.

If they were trying to starve her, that meal would last her a few weeks. Or she’d only been in the dark for a few days maybe, and Erebus was just trying to make her think they were starving her. Whatever he was doing, it was working. Her stomach had stopped making noises, though she was certain it was sinking further and further in everyday, and part of her wondered if it was her own mind that had her losing the weight or an actual lack of food.

She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest and dropping her head. If, somehow, Erebus was watching, maybe he’d recognize the position of shame and let her out. She had no doubt he had some way of watching, of knowing everything she did. Even though she was generally a light sleeper, she slept through the visits when people came to give her food and water (from where she still didn’t understand—she’d traced all the walls and the floor looking for an entryway) or to move her cot in a different position to disorient her.

They succeeded every time. She awoke never knowing where to turn, where to go, and recounted her way around the space only to have to do it all over again the next time she woke up.

They’d fed her again. The same thing as last time.

She ran her hands down her sides, her stomach. Her muscles seemed to have given way to softness, weight she didn’t know she could lose already shed. Her clothes, the same ones she’d been wearing her entire stay, had loosened around her. She’d tried doing some sit-ups and push-ups and had given up before a single complete set.

She was tired all the time. As tired as she was hungry or thirsty. It didn’t matter how much she slept.

A circle in the ceiling appeared, letting light in, and her eyes watered at the slight stinging. A ladder was dropped down and someone told her she had a minute to get out. She knew they’d lock her there again if she didn’t get out so she scrambled to her feet and hauled herself up the ladder. When she found herself in her own living quarters, she blinked. Apparently she’d been wrong about living on the lowest floor of the house.

She looked around the living room, freezing when she saw Erebus.

“I’m sorry.”

The words were raspy and her voice croaked, her throat feeling scratchy and irritated at being used. It took her a moment to even realize what she said before she dropped her gaze to her bare, dirty feet and repeated herself. “I’m sorry. Thank you for letting me out.”

He inclined his head, a merciful god. Then hands grabbed and pushed her to her knees.

“You didn’t run,” Erebus said, casual, as though he weren’t the first person she’d spoken to in weeks.

“No.” She put her hands in her lap and frowned. Had her fingers always been so bony?

Erebus crouched in front of her, smiling when she looked at him again. “But you did think it was okay to go away. To mark yourself after all I’d done to fix you up.”

She didn’t respond.

“What did you think of your punishment?”

It had been tame compared to what he’d done to her before. She knew it, and knew he wanted to hear it. “Thank you for going easy on me.”

He tilted his head and the hands returned to her, pulling her shirt off. Erebus kept his eyes only on her face. “I appreciate your show of initiative with Delia. If not for that, I’d have kept you down there longer.” He ignored her shudder as he straightened and looked over her shoulder. “Clean cuts only. I won’t have her fixed again. Make sure the tattoo isn’t disfigured, but add some thorns to those pretty flowers.”

He turned and left the room and the man behind her handed her a rubber band and for a moment she didn’t understand. Then she took it and tied her hair up and out of the way. Always, always they had her participate. Now, she thought, dropping her hands to her sides, she could no longer think of it as something that had happened—was happening—to her. She would always remember her active role, remember tying her hair back so it were as though she were offering her back to the man who stood behind her.

He placed his large hand on the center of her back, towards the left, where the single, pale pink flower was in bloom and dragged her back to the moment, away from the future where this had already happened and she had already survived it. With a single finger, he traced the winding black and grey vines, the almost peach colored buds over her back.

When she felt the first slice of leather, she screamed.

She’d eventually lost consciousness, from the pain or lack of blood she didn’t know. She awoke on a bed, on her stomach, with her hair being stroked and Erebus seated beside her. Her hands clenched around the sheets, and she turned her face into the pillow. Each inhale pulled on her torn skin, and holding her breath had her so tense she could feel each and every pulse between the slices on her back.

“How are you feeling?”

She nodded, but kept as still as possible otherwise. Her throat felt raw from screaming.

His hand left her hair and touched a cut on her back, adding pressure when she flinched. “He did well. All of them are clean cuts, stapled together. This will look even better now once the skin is mended.”

She knew he spoke of her tattoo and could only nod.

“Thank me for letting you keep it.”

“Thank you.” Her voice sounded flat, the words hollow.

He patted her head. “When you’ve healed, I’ve got a job for you.”

She looked at him for a moment before closing her eyes. “Okay.”