For three weeks, maybe longer.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fill that hole in my memory between when we got abducted and when I arrived in this place.
I remember gulping a mouthful of oxygen. I had maybe a twenty-second window of opportunity to escape after I awoke and before they snapped that chain around my ankle.
More than enough time to make a break for it. More than enough time to dash through that open door and try to find someone.
But I’d just woken up like a hostage with the blindfold whipped off. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing there. I was dazed, confused, and sick to my stomach.
There was more than one man in the room. That was the first and only time it happened. I recalled a strange hat that bent back on itself and a bushy beard of white but I couldn’t recall a whole lot else about that other man.
“Are we square?” the mystery man had said.
“I suppose so,” Master grumbled.
Then they smacked their chests with their fists, and it sounded to me like an auctioneer’s gavel.
Then the man left and I fell unconscious again.
“You’d best not be defective,” Master said, clicking his fingers in front of my face and slapping me on the cheek.
He wandered off and left me after that.
I didn’t come around again for a few more hours and by then it was dark.
That’s when I got a good view of where I was.
It wasn’t the kind of place I wanted to be.
I was in a hellhole of a room, chained to a pipe at the foot of the bed. My imagination flailed at what a man might want with me so close to his bed. I vowed I would bite his thing off before he put it anywhere near me.
But I could only fight for so long. If he refused to let me go and I couldn’t get help…
I would be his sex slave.
I would be doomed.
But he never touched me. Not like that. He was strict and firm and I thought he enjoyed beating me when I broke the rules—rules he never shared until he decided I’d broken one.
It became so I didn’t dare do anything he might even consider breaking the rules.
No matter how many times I asked how I ended up there, why he wanted me, he wouldn’t answer. He only said, “For now, your job is to clean.”
For now.
Those two words gave me nightmares.
He never released me from my shackles. The chain was tough. No amount of filing was going to get through it. First, I didn’t have the right tools, and second, he checked it every day. If there was any damage I’d get beaten again. He’d only replace the chain with a thicker one.
Then I heard the heavy rumble of a truck pull up outside. It wasn’t really a truck. It was a flying contraption with anti-gravity thrusters underneath. As advanced as it was, the cab was still rusted to shit and a crack splintered like a spiderweb across the windshield.
It was still light outside. They must have kicked him out of the bar early today.
I dropped to my hands and knees and scrubbed at that stained floor like my life depended on it.
The car door slammed and Master stumbled onto the front porch, making the door rattle in its warped frame. He fingered the shutter as if he’d discovered the fountain of youth and pulled it open. He let it fall back into place as he stumbled into the room.
Stinky was up in an instant, licking and whining pathetically for affection. He really did remind me of a dog.
“I’ll start making dinner,” I said.
Communication was possible only due to the translator strip on our throats. And those weren’t necessary with the lack of conversation we usually had.
He grumbled something under his breath and fell on the sofa. They weren’t real words. Stinky jumped up beside him and licked him some more.
I bent over to lift the bucket of water and dragged it toward the lousy kitchen around back. The chain attached to my ankle caught on the doorframe and I pulled it aside with a well-practiced tug. I couldn’t reach outside, so I had to pour the water down the sink. It wasn’t the most sanitary of conditions but I had no other option.
I struggled to lift the bucket with both arms. I always did overfill it.
My hand slipped and the bucket dropped.
My eyes bulged at the approaching disaster.
And the impending beating I would get for it.
The water would wash over the floor in a flood. The bucket might crack. And I would be beaten so badly I couldn’t sit for a week.
A strong pair of hands caught the bucket before my nightmare could materialize, and then raised the bucket to the sink and poured it out.
Had someone slipped in through the back door and helped me? If they were that kind, maybe they would take pity on me and help me escape this place. Maybe—
I was surprised to find Master standing over me. He finished emptying the bucket and placed it on the floor at my feet.
Just because he averted the disaster didn’t mean he wouldn’t punish me for it. He wore a tight smile, slightly crooked from the alcohol he’d consumed.
“Careful,” he said.
Careful?
Careful?
Since when did he give a flying fig for me?
They must have kicked him out very early today.
Despite the fact he was out of shape, he was still stronger than most men back home. He wasn’t genetically gifted. It was because he was a member of the Titan race. They were physically powerful creatures otherwise similar to humans.
I always got the sense something bad had happened to Master years ago, something that knocked him off track in life and he could never recover from it.
Still, that gave him no right to treat me the way
