Keep Me Caged Pt 01

This story is not like the other things I've shared so far. This story has no fantasy elements and probably falls in the "dark stalker romance" category of things. It's a gritty story and as such, has a lot of elements that some people may find triggering. BDSM, non-con, con non-con, violence, murder, kidnapping, submission, domination, alcohol, smoking, revenge porn, spanking, captivity, no safe words, suicide, sexsomnia, disability, eating disorders, Iraq war, and abuse are all part of this story. And again, there are no werewolves or faeries in this one - but you will see a lot of common themes across the stories I've shared so far, and this one. Stay sexy and don't get murdered - Ava

ONE - Talia

"Escoge una persona que te mire como si quizás fueras magia." - Frida Kahlo

"Choose a person who looks at you as if you were magic."

Returning home from college was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It required that I admit I had chosen something for myself that I didn't like, and I knew my mother would never let it go. If I had known how she would view me forever afterward, maybe I would have stayed and finished both of my degrees. But if I had, I would never have met the soldier that saved me from my stalker.

I sighed as I pulled up my grades. I was failing everything but English, again. "Maybe double-majoring was a bad idea," I muttered as I considered how I would salvage my semester. The stress had finally become too much for my system and my asthma and fibromyalgia were so flared-up nothing seemed to get them under control anymore.

My friend Savannah sat across from me, sipping her smoothie and petting her tiny dog at the wrought iron table of an outdoor cafe. She hadn't started college yet and had no idea what I was going through, but she told me all the time she was so proud of me. I really needed her, but even her sweetness couldn't soften what Matt was doing to me.

"Just dump him," she muttered. "He keeps calling you 'fat', and he hits you across the face during sex without even asking? Talia," she skewered me with a look of disappointment as I tapped away at my laptop keyboard. I tried to dodge it, but I knew she was right.

The employee making my smoothie finally called my name and I jumped up to escape her gaze. I spent an extra-long amount of time peeling the paper off the straw and tasting my smoothie before I returned to the table in hopes she'd forget the conversation. She hadn't.

"You can do better. You're pretty, smart, funny, talented--"

"Stop, Sav," I waved her compliments away. I knew she meant them, but they couldn't heal the damage Matt was doing to me. Besides, I knew I wasn't pretty. I was too heavy, with wild black hair and a long, Arabic nose that white men didn't seem to like. When it came to hips I was doubly-blessed -- Latina on one side and Middle Eastern on the other meant "childbearing hips" was an understatement. Yet I was pale-skinned and didn't really fit in with any of my people. White men inappropriately asked if I was Latina, usually paired with a comment about my fat ass, but at the carniceria I got the side-eye from everyone. Didn't men all want hot, tanned blondes with bangin' bods and plastic noses? My figure had become the sort that would still look curvy under an abaya, and I was certain by then that I was no one's type.

"I could ask around--"

I snorted. I didn't want to date one of her seventeen-year-old friends. I liked older men, not a lot older, but enough that I kept attracting the wrong ones. She sighed and pointedly avoided looking at me while she finished her smoothie.

"Let's go home, play World of Warcraft," I offered. "Home" was my apartment. She didn't really live there, but she may as well have. Sav spent so much time there my landlord once questioned me about my roommate not being on the lease. I could explain that she was my only friend, as sad as that sounded. I couldn't explain she was the only person I could trust - she knew about my dark dealings and was proud of what I did in secret.

"You play WoW, loser, I'm playing Final Fantasy XI," she teased me. She was such a snob about games, but I didn't really care. One of my majors was game animation and I would play anything once. We packed up and left, driving across Mesa back to my apartment. I turned on my PC to play and my screen filled with message notifications.

Matt, I realized. He begged me to come over for the weekend, but finals were coming up and I was already struggling enough. I couldn't miss more homework or study time, and even playing games with Sav was a bad idea. But I needed that. An e-mail notification popped up and I opened it. It was a long e-mail from Matt, explaining why he thought I was fat and what I should do to fix it. I realized, too late, Sav was standing behind me reading it.

"Dump. His. Ass."

I didn't.

That weekend I caved, and as soon as my last class was over on Thursday afternoon I got in my car with my laptop and my homework and drove all the way down to Tucson to see my shitty boyfriend.

"Let me take you out to dinner, make it up to you for how I acted last time," he offered. I doubted he would behave better, but I said yes. He took me to a Mexican restaurant he swore was his favorite, then ordered something ridiculous. The food was obviously authentic, but he couldn't handle authentic Mexican food. I'd grown up with it, eating the "real deal" many times when I visited my great-grandmother in Ciudad Victoria, and frowned while I listened to him instruct the waiter on how to make him burritos that sounded as bland and disgusting as a burrito could sound.

I ordered my chile rellenos and tried to ignore his frown.

"I don't like to eat that," he complained as soon as the waiter left. I shrugged.

"Why does it matter if you don't like to eat it?"

"Because, you should only eat half of what they bring you, and I hate to waste food."

I tried not to let what he said bother me, and when my meal came, I made a point of eating every last bite while he glared at me. I was so relieved when the experience was over. I could tell the waiter hated him, and me by association. Then Matt left $2 on the table for a tip.

I waited until he was on his way out, then tossed a $10 bill on top of it. I'd worked in food service before and I knew it was late at night and the waiter wanted us to leave so he could go home. Working late just to get $2 was offensive. But Matt saw me and came back to the table, then tried to snatch up the money I'd thrown down and put it in his own wallet.

"What are you doing?" I hissed at him.

"He doesn't need that," he argued, apparently not seeing that he was stealing from me

and

the waiter.

"Put it back or I'll make a scene," I snarled at him under my breath. He finally, angrily, threw the money back on the table and stormed out to his car. I wondered when he would get over it, or if he would punish me for upstaging him with my tip.

By Saturday morning I was done. What was I doing letting him mistreat me when I spent my spare time ruining men like him? I threw my belongings into my bag and bolted to my car while he watched from the window above the driveway. I was halfway home when I had to pull over and call someone. My grandmother wasn't exactly a safe person for me, but she was the only person in my family I could express real emotion around.

"I want to come home," I told her as soon as she answered the phone.

"What happened, honey?"

I couldn't answer.

"Was it a man?"

I cried louder, but still couldn't answer.

Leo

"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

When the realtor hands me the keys I almost can't believe I'm here. It's been a rough year and I'm still adjusting to being a civilian, but I think it's finally getting better. Maybe I'm just kidding myself. I still do stupid shit, like when I got drunk, wrecked my bike, and broke my wrist, but now I'm a homeowner. I've always wanted to have my own place and now I do. It's nothing too special, but I have a couple extra bedrooms I can rent out to cover the mortgage if all else fails.

In a few weeks I'll be leaving behind my low-paying job and entering trucking school, too, and everything ahead of me looks like freedom. I have casual arrangements with a few different women, one of whom teaches me everything I need to know to keep the others happy with me. It's a delicate balance of responsibility and chaos, but it keeps life exciting.

I wouldn't say that something is missing. I never expected more out of life. I'm surprised I'm even still alive, to be honest. But it doesn't escape my notice that all of the people around me, including some of the women I fuck around with, have a lot more. I'm not sure I'm that kind of man, that I could settle down and be content with one woman, or that one woman could handle me.

It's almost as though I live two lives. On one hand my friends are married, some of them fine with me fucking their wives, oddly enough, then there's the other side. I find a roommate, a wild-land firefighter in the summer and undertaker the rest of the time. We come and go as we please, living in our own little bubbles of chaos, occasionally commiserating over something. We've both seen a lot and not everyone can tolerate the way he lives. He either smells like smoke or too much cologne, and he's either gone for the day or gone for a month. None of it bothers me. I was in the Special Forces too long, maybe, and as long as he pays his rent and eventually comes back it barely even blips on my radar. I don't get attached to other people. I'm definitely not going to start by getting attached to Grant.

I feel fine in my life, but some of the women in it see darkness from the outside. If it's there, I don't feel it, but maybe you can't when you live with it all the time. I have friends that I miss, the same as any other soldier, friends I'll never see again. I've done and seen things that have changed me forever. Perhaps I'm in denial, but I don't live under a dark cloud the way people would think. I just feel like a tool without a purpose. I was made for something that I don't do anymore. What do you even do about that?

While Grant's bedroom is a mess of funeral suits and firefighting equipment, mine is sparse. I'm still wearing what the Army gave me most days, and it all fits in a single dresser. On top I've laid out all my guns, knives, and hung a couple of swords on the wall above it. Sometimes I just sit and look at all of it. Why did I learn to use all of this just to walk away?

And that's my little bubble of chaos - my normal life with married friends parading around the boundaries, inside it a whirling dervish of unresolved violent fantasies, casual sex, and insatiable appetites. I drown it all with alcohol and hope for the best.

I don't think it's working.

TWO - Talia

"If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station; the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be." - Japanese Proverb

Savannah sat on the floor of my apartment watching me pack my games into cardboard boxes. "I wish you would stay. I'll be eighteen next month and could move in with you. It would be fun," she offered.

"I can't, Sav. I can't explain it, but, I can't stay here anymore."

She didn't understand. Her life wasn't a whole lot better than mine and being in my apartment was the only reprieve she got from reality. I loved her so much, but what Matt had done to me had finally overwhelmed my nervous system and shut me down. I've never been able to tell when I've had enough, and all the ways my body was trying to clue me in hadn't worked. My worsening asthma, the fibromyalgia flares, insomnia, and everything else had failed to get my attention. Then Matt struck and it all came crumbling apart.

"We'll stay in touch," I promised her, "you can come visit me in Washington. When you turn eighteen, maybe you can move in with me there," I counter-offered. She would never leave her mom in Arizona, but it was worth a try.

At the end of May I turned in my keys and said goodbye to my colorful apartment. I'd been through a lot there, and it was hard to leave. But I had to go. The mountains were calling me home, but Matt was calling, too.

"I'm sorry, I should have treated you better," the e-mail began. I sat in my new home, an old hay barn my grandfather's construction company had renovated into a spartan tiny house. Matt had no idea where I'd gone, or that I'd even left. He could never be bothered to drive all the way to Mesa to see me. He always complained that his banking job would never give him the time off, but I knew he'd been laid off months before and had been hiding it.

He just didn't love me enough to make the trip. Or he didn't love me at all.

"You're such a good person and you deserve to feel good. I should have asked and stopped when you said 'no'. I've learned my lesson now and want a second chance."

More like a tenth chance,

I thought, then deleted it.

I leaned back with my coffee cup in hand and looked out the giant picture-glass window at the end of the barn. I felt lucky. I'd gone from Hell to a barn at the edge of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, where my window overlooked a meadow. I watched birds fly through, stopping to peck at the bird seed I tossed out every morning. Sometimes deer grazed just outside my window. It was peace and quiet, a true salve for my shattered nervous system. After a month my asthma had finally abated and my fibromyalgia no longer kept me awake at night or fogged my brain as badly as it had in Arizona.

I was already recovering.

I settled onto my drafting stool and went to work on a commissioned drawing. I'd given up on both of my majors - creative writing and game animation - and started trying to build an illustration business. I didn't know what I was doing running a business, and the hours were long and mostly thankless. But I forged ahead in my tiny home and tried to put Matt and his little dick out of my mind.

Over the months my main problem became loneliness. Most of my friends had moved away, gone to college like I had, and stayed where they were going to school or where they found jobs. Once a week I'd make the drive into town to get food and supplies, then I'd make the long drive back into the Okanogan wilderness to my tiny forest home. It was six months before I ran into anyone I knew in the grocery store.

"Talia?" I recognized him immediately, even though I hadn't seen him since tenth grade, when I'd graduated early.

"Pete," I greeted him with a smile.

"I had no idea you were around," he looked good, a little taller, and less mean than he'd been when we were teens.

"Yeah, I came home from college about six months ago. What about you?"

He ignored my question. "Oh, really? I heard you were mentally ill or something and living in your grandmother's attic."

I quirked an eyebrow up at him and frowned. "I moved to Phoenix and went to college. Like everyone does?"

"Yeah, I guess that makes more sense. But you can't blame people, with your dad and everything."

I can't blame people? For what? Totally making shit up about me?

"Yeah, I guess," I replied. Did they really think I'd "caught" my dad's schizophrenia or something? I barely even knew him.

"I'll have to let the guys know you're back. We can get together, like high school, go mudding or something."

I nodded. I hated mudding, but the guys loved it. I didn't mind the part where I got to be closer to nature, and if the truck got stuck, six or seven burly farmer's sons would deal with it. We waved and parted ways, and I made the drive home a little excited that I'd finally have some company.

The phone calls started the next day.

Each of the guys asked me to come out for something - a cup of coffee, maybe a hike. Each encounter resulted in them pestering me for sex until I gave up and went home. I'd always been a tomboy with few female friends, and as my male friends turned into sex-pests one after the other, my hopes of friendship began to fade.

I tried convincing Sav to move in with me, but her mom needed her more.

I didn't really want to be with another man after what happened with Matt. I couldn't stand the idea of letting any of them touch me. Matt still e-mailed his regrets from time to time, though not as often, thankfully. But the boys I had grown up with called all the time now, begging for another chance to "just be friends."

After Matt, I couldn't trust any of them. After what I saw every day, my twisted side job, I don't know how I ever gave Matt a chance in the first place.

When Richie reached out to me I was hesitant. I figured he'd turn out to be just like all the others, but instead of calling me right away he sent me instant messages.

"I'm on TV," he messaged me one day. "Do you watch the History Channel?"

I couldn't imagine what Richie would be on the History Channel for, so I bit.

"No, why are you on TV?"

"My dad and I own a company and the camera crew follows us while we work."

A TV show that follows men working? That sounds stupid,

I thought, but when he insisted he wanted me to see him at work, I made a point to catch it while it was on.

It was hard to watch.

His dad had always been a drunken lout when we were kids, abusive, mean, the textbook bad father. He was the same as he ever was, and Richie fought not to react while the cameras rolled. We'd lived across the hall from each other in the projects, him with his single dad and me with my single mom, and watching the show triggered all sorts of uncomfortable memories and feelings for me. I waited for Richie to lash-out like he always had, to take a swing at his dad, to watch Richard Sr. throw him against a tree and beat him like he'd thrown him against the walls of their apartment. But now I couldn't do anything to help. I couldn't knock on the door and ask if Richie could come play.

I couldn't save him.

Leo

"The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I kick my bike into gear. It's late, but I'm only home for a few hours. It's a lucky thing that rarely happens when you're a truck driver, as I'm discovering. Normally I'm gone for three weeks at a time, then home for one, but by chance I'm picking up a load in the small town I live in at eight in the morning. I have a list of things that I need to do, but at the top of them is to find Bonnie.

I've had a casual arrangement with her for a while, but she knows I want to break it off and now she won't answer my phone calls. Last month we had a pregnancy scare and she called me, shit-faced, crying into her phone. "You think you're pregnant and you're drunk?" I hoped my tone set her straight, but once I found out she wasn't pregnant, that was it for me. I couldn't risk putting a baby into some girl that would just poison my kid.

To make matters worse, one of the other women I meet up with for sex has heard that Bonnie is going around telling people we're exclusive. I can't have that. I

won't

have it.

I try her house first and she's not there. No surprise, she's probably in a bar. I try a couple of her favorites - no dice. I have to move on to my next task. It's stupid, but I don't care. The woman who has taught me everything, the wife of a polyamorous friend, is being harassed by one of her ex-boyfriends and he won't let it go. She needs someone to send him a message, and her older, paper-pushing husband isn't the type to do what a bored soldier will do.

I wonder how he lives with himself, letting other men pork his wife, then stand up for her in his stead. I shake my head, then avoid a bored-looking cop by weaving around a dumpster-filled alleyway. Blue lights flash behind me briefly, then he gives up and I continue on my way. I've had plenty of time to think about what I'm going to do when I get there. Renee had called me at the end of the previous week complaining about him. Now it's the beginning of the next and I've had time to do nothing but think while I drove the truck from Texas to Oregon.