53

Rufus woke to his blindness, and had never been more thankful for the dark. The shadow girl had plagued him for hours, her presence so close to his face, like the regret that had crowded around his heart.

“Gotta piss,” he said.

He waited for the sounds of the men shuffling out of their room. They never complained, never grumbled. They came silently as ghosts and untied him without fuss. But not this time. This time, there were no footsteps creaking, no doors swinging open. He was alone.

Rufus pulled against his restraints until he felt like he might pop a blood vessel in his forehead. He stopped, breathing deeply, trying to think. His hands and feet were bound, so his options were pretty limited.

He rocked the chair back in frustration. The wooden legs creaked, and an idea came to him. His feet were tied to the legs of the chair. If he could somehow break the chair, he might be able to disentangle himself from the ropes. But how could he break it when he could barely move? He leaned forward, placing all of his weight onto his feet. Nudging himself forward with a great effort, he managed to get the chair legs off the ground. He was standing on his own two feet now. Well, standing wasn’t the right way to put it. He was still sitting, but the chair legs were in the air behind him and he had some limited mobility now. Very limited mobility. He moved one foot forward about half an inch, all the ropes would allow, and then slid the other foot up, closing the small gap. His legs ached from the pain of holding his body in such a contorted position, and he let the chair legs touch the floor again. He relaxed.

The problem was knowing where he was going. He needed to move toward something solid enough to break the chair. If he could get close enough, he thought he might be able to generate enough force to slingshot himself forward and crack the chair apart.

When his eyes had been opened during the visit from the shadow girl, he’d seen a stone fireplace to the right of the bookshelf. It was a good ten feet away from where he sat. If he could work his way over, get his chair turned around properly, he might be able to crack the chair against the stone hearth.

He took several deep breaths and leaned forward again, feeling the ache in both of his legs. This time, he managed to move his feet only an almost imperceptible amount before he shifted his weight back to the chair legs. He groaned as every muscle in his thighs and calves caught fire. He’d have to rest.

Rufus did really need to piss. He called out again. “I gotta go, assholes! Somebody going to untie me or not?”

But there was no response. He settled in, leaning his head back, and thought about the shadow girl, and how she had begun and how he had stopped her at least for a little while.

*   *   *

As the torture of the shadow girl had begun to take over his life so many years ago, the pleasure with Savanna intensified. Though, looking back on it now, Rufus had a hard time seeing it as pleasure. There was the thrill of anticipation, sure, and there were the lost moments of head-exploding orgasms, but afterward there was always the inversion of the orgasm, a lingering meaninglessness, a kind of fervent disappointment that haunted him. It was as if he’d finally discovered the secret of human relations, and at its core was a hollowness so profound he could hardly bear it.

Worse still, he had found himself craving more of her as soon as the hollow feelings subsided. In that way, Savanna became a kind of drug for him. After weeks of nightly sex with her in her family’s barn, he began to feel guilty, to think he was somehow flawed, that he could only connect to a woman sexually instead of on a deeper, healthier level.

At work, he was doing better, at least on the surface. He wasn’t sure how, but both Harden and Deloach knew about his encounters with Savanna. Deloach claimed he “had the look of a new man.” Harden said he had a “sixth sense about these things.”

They both started patting his back again, and to his surprise, both men asked him for details of the encounters, pressing him to push her to do wilder and wilder things. He never felt comfortable doing that, thank God, but eventually Savanna seemed to grow bored with their sex and told him she wanted to “spice things up a bit.”

Rufus, having no previous experience, thought this might be fairly normal and went along with some of the violence she introduced, but he drew the line when she said she wanted him to harass Harriet.

“It turns me on,” she told him. “To see that bitch suffer.”

He shook his head, more than determined not to give in. He’d realized by this point that there was something deeply wrong with Savanna. Maybe there was something wrong with him, too. He wasn’t sure about anything except that Savanna was, in some fundamental way, broken.

“I’ll make you hurt her,” she said. “I can make you do anything.”

“No,” Rufus said. He realized he wanted her to leave him alone.

“Oh, you’ll see,” she said. “I’m not like other girls, Rufus. I eat men. Or I control them. Which kind do you want to be?”

“Neither.”

“Neither is not a choice.” She reached for him and leaned in to kiss his face.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Not a choice either,” she said as she grabbed his balls, squeezing just hard enough.

And to Rufus’s disappointment, she was right again. He didn’t seem to have a choice. Once again, he found himself in bonds, tied down by chains he couldn’t even see.