This Is War, Baby - K Webster Page 0,12
away. He’s smiling now and I’m once again afraid.
“No.”
He frowns but doesn’t probe me any further. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
I climb out of the shower and follow after him. He hasn’t told me to drop the towel and I hold on to it as if it will shield my weak body from his expert touch. We make our way back into the bedroom. The bed has now been made with clean new sheets. A folded blanket sits at the end.
“Sit,” he says and points to the bed.
I walk over and drop down to the soft bed. He strides over to a closet and yanks out a box. After he sets it on the floor, he rifles through what looks like photographs and pulls out a few. Once he’s done, he makes his way over to me and sits close enough that our thighs touch.
“This is Sandy.”
I gape in horror. A woman, probably in her early twenties, stares back at the camera devoid of emotion. She’s naked and sprawled out on the bed like I was not even an hour ago. Panic ripples through me but I can’t look away. Her hair is dark, a stark contrast to my long blonde locks, and her eyes are green unlike my blue ones. But she’s dirty—as if she spent three days in a hole. Like me.
“This is sick, Gabe. You’re sick.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, I know.” The next picture he shows me causes my breath to catch. Her mouth is on his erection. Empty eyes look up at him. It hurts to see this pic. She’s gone. Whoever she was before is gone. Is this his plan for me?
“What happened to her?”
He wraps an arm around me and despite the fact that he’s the monster, I lean into his comforting hug. “She belongs to another man now to do as he pleases. I sold her.”
The world freezes at his words. I sold her. I sold her. I sold her.
“I-I-I don’t understand.”
He chuckles and I squirm away from him. His fingers bite into my bicep while he keeps me against him. “Of course not, sweetheart. Unlike these women, you’re innocent.”
“Are you going to sell me?”
He sighs and my heart crushes. “Yes, I am.”
The reality hits me hard, knocking the air out of me. A wave of nausea clenches the pit of my stomach and pushes bile into my throat. The threat of vomiting is imminent. “B-B-But what about Mom and Dad? Gabe, you can’t do this to me!”
The pictures flutter to the floor and he grabs my jaw in a brutal grip. He drags my face to meet his. “You don’t have a choice in the matter. We only have two weeks. So if you want to be prepared for that world, I need you to pay attention to your training.”
“No, I can’t—”
“You’d sell for more being a virgin and all. And believe me, I have thought about it. But I’m greedy, and if anyone takes that from you, it will be me. Besides, I love you too much to send you to the wolves with no armor. I’m going to teach you, Baylee. I’ll do fucking awful things to you so that when those monsters get their greedy hands on you, you’ll be prepared. When they fuck you and hurt you, you can stare at them like Sandy did. With emotionless eyes. In all honesty here, I’m your savior. You should be thanking me.”
Rage explodes from me. His matter of fact stare makes me want to claw his eyeballs out.
“Fuck you, Gabe!”
He shoves me back onto the bed and pins me before I can even think about moving. “Why thank you, sweetheart,” he snarls, “I certainly will. I’ll fuck every hole in your body until you bleed. And then I’ll make you beg me for more. Is that what you want?”
Tears roll down the side of my face and I shake my head.
“Well, too bad. That part, I’m afraid, must occur because if I don’t do it, they will. Can you imagine what it would feel like to get raped in the ass by some fat, bastard when you’ve never even been touched there? He would rip you apart. You would bleed out, baby. I’m going to teach you to enjoy sex—all the dark and dirty parts of it. So when they do take you, you’ll like it. Your body will respond and you’ll survive.”
His words slide over me like oil and I gag. I can’t do this. Images of