I had to find someone. Had to get out of this room and figure out what the hell was going on.
But the door was locked. Of course it was.
I tugged on the handle like an idiot, panic flaring in me. This couldn’t be real. I couldn’t be locked in a room in a castle I had no memory of entering, feeling like I’d been manhandled by several large, muscular men, and not in the fun way.
‘The fun way?’ Where had that thought even come from? There wasn’t a fun way to be manhandled. Not unless—fuck, was I gay?
How could I not remember that, either?
With another quickly regretted groan, I shook the thought from my mind and twisted the knob again. Whatever my sexuality was, and whatever depraved fantasies lurked in the back of my brain, I doubted they’d help very much in getting me out of my current predicament.
Not unless I was being held hostage by some gay mafia hitman who told me that a blowjob was the price of my freedom. I tried to ignore the way my cock stirred at that thought.
I banged my fist on the door, then froze when it occurred to me that I might not want to do that. I was still filled with dread, and while I wasn’t sure where it had come from, wasn’t it possible that it was related to whatever—or whoever—was on the other side of that door?
After all, there weren’t that many non-evil reasons to lock a person in a room.
As much as I didn’t like being trapped, the thought of running for the nearest police station felt scary too, somehow. I had this strange feeling that I was being chased. That as much as I wanted to get away from here, I wanted equally badly to curl up and hide and never face the outside world again.
I turned and regarded the rest of the room, my eyes alighting on the window. Maybe I couldn’t get out of here, but I could at least try to get the lay of the land. And who knew—maybe the window would open where the door wouldn’t.
I hobbled towards it, but I only needed to take two steps before I realized that last part wasn’t going to be true. The window was one of those old-fashioned kinds with multiple rectangular panes, and once I looked at it closely, I could see that there was no hinge, no latch—nothing to suggest that it could be opened at all.
Not unless I threw something at it, anyway, and the only thing heavy enough to break the glass, that I could see, was the cat. I might not know where I was, or even who I was, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t the kind of person who threw cats out of second-story windows.
I managed one more step before I heard it—footsteps outside the door. Coming down a hall, it sounded like, and my paralysis about escaping versus hiding flew out that stubbornly locked window. I careened across the room to the corner farthest from the door, almost stepping on the cat in the process, who yowled loudly and jumped up onto the bed, glaring at me.
I was so clumsy that I banged into the bookcase and jostled Madame Bovary down onto the floor. Gritting my teeth in pain, I bent down and picked the book up, brandishing it like a weapon. It wouldn’t do much good if the person on the other side of the door wanted to murder or maim me, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
Out in the hall, I heard a deep voice. “What the hell? I left this open.”
Funny thing for a mafia hitman to say, maybe, but I wasn’t letting my guard down that easily. The doorknob twisted, and then the whole door rattled as the guy on the other side tugged on it. The cat meowed loudly in response.
“Dammit, Frog. Is this your doing? I told you to stay outside.”
I looked at the bed in confusion. Who named their cat Frog? Unless the guy on the other side of the door was yelling at me. Was I the one who was supposed to stay out of here?
Didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And it also meant my name was Frog, which somehow, I doubted. It didn’t feel right in my head, but then again, neither did any other name I could think of right then. Michael, Jorge, Ahmed,