True.
Though he was here, somewhere. The verandah where I sat extended beyond the entry to the garage. There were no doors on that garage, and through the slats of the floor, I glimpsed the red of the Porsche. It would make a great getaway car. If I could get myself to leave.
I hadn’t dreamed of freedom since forever…
Yet even if I left him, he would not be gone. It was the curse of being owned by a mesmer.
Go, or stay and be abused until I was dead? One would think that a simple choice, and one would be dead fucking wrong. I sighed and unwound myself a little, straightened, pulled my hands from my hair.
Tensioned wire supported the decking and allowed it to cantilever beyond normal limits so that the surrounding forest could be best appreciated. I sat in the middle of an amazing place of natural beauty, of birds, other wildlife, and that sweet chaos of swaying branches. So peaceful. There was irony in this.
To my right a winding, elevated timber trail led deeper into the forest.
Below it was a sandy track and a sign: To the Beach.
A lazy lizard clung to the top of the sign, tongue flicking.
Butterflies wafted by in search of pollen, and yet here I sat, still doomed.
How to escape him?
I massaged my neck and squinted at the treetops where they framed a flare of sunlight and blue sky. The muscles felt strong under my hand. The wriggly hem of a soft material lay on my thighs. I wore a flirtatious, blue-and-white dress with string straps.
I am me. I told myself this.
And he was behind me in the living room, lying down. I felt him there – as if I’d acquired mesmer radar.
My heart freaked out, again. Shush. Calmness needed.
I bit my lip, to let the sharp pain center me and recalled the layout. An open kitchen and living room, sofas, bright-painted walls, the bronze vases with steel-stemmed enamel flowers. And there were seaside portraits on the walls.
The Petalwork Rainforest Resort.
That was this place.
A bigger, more urgent question occurred to me. Why was I awake and aware?
I searched for and found more memories:
Of being trapped when I arrived to kill him.
Of sex with his friends and being fucked on a table covered in glass splinters.
Of being cut and bleeding.
He had stapled my lacerations without anesthesia. I shuddered, recalling the ker-thunk of the device and the pain.
There had been a drowning of women. The wash of the waves had brushed their hands against my legs.
He’d told me that was my fault.
Belated tears crawled down my cheeks, and I swiped them away.
Something had let me waken now, and perhaps that meant he was less powerful?
There had been more recent events. They came to me like a list of ingredients in a recipe: sex in an alleyway, a beating of Isak, abducted to a house, where I had been bent over a sofa by two men.
They’d taken me so roughly I should be sore – which only proved that must have happened days ago.
A man called Ted.
Yes. Such a plain name.
I swiveled in the cane-backed chair, crossing one leg over the other to twist myself enough, daring to see if he truly was where I thought he was. Isak, my boogie man.
For once, someone had hurt him. He couldn’t control men as he could women, then I realized he had left his coterie of followers in another country – those men would have done anything for him, because he’d supplied them with women and, indirectly, with power.
Which made the here and now unique. Isak was weaker.
I untangled my legs and stood. The sliding doors leading inward were rolled back, opening up the front of this resort house. There were twenty of these small houses. Information I could not remember being given to me arrived in my head. I let my gaze flit to the sides of the deck and beyond, looking outward, searching. The other elevated houses were camouflaged and only visible as lines of timber, reflections on glass, or leaf-scattered plains of roofing tiles. This was five-star accommodation in…
Where were we? This was not the USA or Brazil or anywhere near there. Out of all my fractured memories, none were of traveling by plane or ship to another country, and that was scarier than anything else. How much of me was missing?
A green-and-red parrot screeched and glided by, barely flapping.
A different bird chose then to cackle maniacally – a sound that was unique to one country. It had to be a kookaburra. I’m in Australia.
How the fuck?
Somehow, Isak had brought us to the country of kangaroos, raucous bird life, big spiders, and apparently, criminals who knew how to take him down a peg.
I approached the opening and wrapped my hand over the edge of the glass door.
My heart raced, again. Was I a mouse? Or had I acquired an arrythmia on top of whatever STDs I might have been infected with due to being handed around like a box of tissues?
A fucktoy. He had often called me that. I grimaced then swept aside the bangs that fell over my eyes.
There he was. Isak.
This most evil man lay on his back on one of the paired dark-blue sofas, staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t seen me. His body dominated the length of the sofa, from one armrest to the next. His hands were tucked under his head, elbows crooked and flopped out to either side, as if he slept. His dark T-shirt had rucked
