Chapter 65

NOT AGAIN PLEASE, NOT AGAIN … Alexi seems blank, robotic and unreachable and just hoists me up as I try to curl up in a ball, dropping my weight to the floor to deter him, but it is pointless. He just sweeps me up and forces me, pushing me against it with his body and knee and bracing me upright then yanking one of my hands up in a bid to strap me to the shackles. He hauls my body taught with the way I am stretched up, even though I try to fight it and pull it off, but he just flicks me away effortlessly.

Sheer brute strength and a lack of soul make him my complete controller. I have nothing in me.

‘‘Tears and begging don’t work on me. I know all your little wiles, London. As you keep telling me—I don’t have the heart to give a shit.’’ He’s so cold and I just give in, inevitable fate, no way to fight his strength, and I am all alone surrounded by people paid to look the other way. I know futile when I see it, and instead, I try to put what’s left of my fight and energy into self-protection mentally, rather than physically. There was a reason I used to revert to compliant silence; it’s the only way to mentally disconnect from the horror being done to you, and the only way to salvage any sort of sanity. It’s how I have lived through all I have and come out with some ounce of a functioning human.

Close down, recoil inside and protect what I have left of my sanity. I learned this when I endured so much. I try to go into that place deep inside my head as he continues to buckle me to this contraption and try like crazy to shut it all off, block it all out and numb myself away from what my body is going to endure. I can get through this. I have done so many times before when terrible awful things were done to my body.

I close my eyes and bite on my lip until I taste blood, turning silent in my own mental hell as tears pour down my face. I flinch as every leather cuff he wraps around my lifeless limbs and waist is pulled tight and bites into me. Until I am fully held to the wooden cross and just hang my head in complete defeat, unable to look his way or focus on anything in this room anymore, awaiting my fate.

I cannot bear to look into the face of my tormentor. It would just blur into the many faces of many dark memories and all would come pouring out together. Whatever he intends to do to me cannot damage an already destroyed soul. I just have to live through the pain and focus on anything else. Go to my silent place in my head where no one can hurt me; where they can’t ever find me.

There’s quiet while I await the start of what he intends to do; tense, silent crying and waiting. The agony of knowing that I’m about to go through hell once more as I disconnect my body from all that’s inside. I do what I used to. I close my eyes and hum that song in my head that takes me away from here, limp and accepting that I’m going to live through it like I always do. If I can just shut it all out until he’s done. I wait, and I wait, ready to feel the first strokes of a lash or any form of touch, silencing my manic singsong from under my breath when nothing happens.

Flickering my eyes open warily and staring at the floor where I can still see his feet. He hasn’t moved, and I don’t look up, not sure if this is part of the game. Nothing but silence and stillness surrounds me, and the lack of movement makes the lights shut off spookily. I jump and reignite the dim glow with my own sharp reaction which coaxes me to look up and blink my eyes through blurred and pouring makeup to see he’s just standing looking at me. A strange expression on his face and a furrowed brow as though he isn’t sure what to do now.

Alexi looks like he has lost all traces of the anger and sadistic urge to torture me. He just looks normal and eerily still. My nose is running, and I swallow hard as tears continue to pour silently down my face, my heart breaking in two. I can see the hesitation in his stance, if not his face and for a moment there’s hope that maybe he won’t do more. Courage coming back to me.

‘‘I’ll stop fighting you. Please don’t hurt me.’’ I beg him, I plead, my accent slipping so my more common dialect slurs through almost inaudibly. The hints of my trashy start to life in Hackney. I can barely get the words out, they’re stuck in my throat, so breathless and fear fuelled. I know I am a mere shadow of the woman he’s used to seeing in this state, and all my defences have shattered beyond recognition. He broke me so effortlessly, after all the years that I endured so much more, and he does it without even trying—twice now, and I know when I am defeated.

This is my idea of the worst kind of hell. Humiliated and raw, open for him to see how vulnerable I can be. The depths of fear and trauma I feel right now are ripping me inside out and I’m just stiff and poised, afraid of what I’m about to endure. If it was any other man, then I don’t think I would have fallen apart this way. It’s him and the knowledge that nothing I do will sway him from punishing me in heinous ways is a powerful weapon against me. Yet he still just stands looking at me silently, until something in him makes him snap out of it, it’s like he was in a weird trance. He looks away from me to the wall on his left and swallows hard. Like he’s suddenly doubting whether he should or shouldn’t and I see hesitation all over again.

In the great man of complete composure and cruelty—he flounders. He drops his gaze to the floor and walks towards me; my body trying to recoil as I inhale sharply and start to panic, tugging on my restraints to get away from him, my breath becoming raspy and on the verge of an all-out blackout.

I maybe imagined it, and this is what he was waiting for. Me to look, to see what he’s going to do. He’s sadistic enough to wait for that, to lull me into a false sense of hope first.

I don’t want him to touch me, I can’t take him hurting me this way and I won’t survive. It somehow seems so much worse that it’s him that is about to inflict this cruelty on me, and it’s unbearable.

He reaches up and unclips my wrist with a tug that renders me instantly mute with the shock. My arm falls down in front of me with the sudden weight of it, his eyes on task and avoiding mine as they focus fully on his face through a sodden mess. I pull my hand against my chest and grip the neckline of my dress, afraid to believe he is letting me loose in case this is a ploy to mess with my head some more and just watch and wait with bated breath.