Keep Me Caged Pt 04

Hi everyone! Thanks again for your response to this story and all the others I've shared so far. Lately I've been facing some pretty serious health problems and am not sure how often I will be able to post updates. I'm still writing a lot but have limited time and energy. Thanks for understanding.

This story contains true accounts of sexsomnia and sexual abuse.

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, tampering with birth control, 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

SIXTEEN - Talia

"How foolish:

Whenever my heart

hears a knocking

it opens its doors." - Maram al-Masri, A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor

Two years earlier

"Did you see the new signs?"

One of my classmates approached me, breathless from his run.

I ignored his question and asked one of my own. "Did you just come all the way from the multimedia building to ask me that?" I gave him a teasing glare, then turned back to the lunchbox in front of me. Bright light shone up through the bottom of the table, illuminating the animation cels I'd slaved over for weeks trying to perfect them. My teacher's snappish advice returned to me as I flipped a new cel onto the light-table, then pressed the capture button on the lunchbox frame-grabber.

I hope the hair looks better,

I thought, as my classmate ranted behind me.

"The signs are the wrong color. Have you seen it or not?"

I nodded. Maybe to the untrained eye they weren't terrible, but to those of us who had just spent two years painting color wheels, studying color theory, and memorizing Pantone numbers, it was a glaring mistake.

"There's a protest at four, are you coming?"

I looked up at the clock on the wall and frowned. "It's after three and I still have to finish this--"

"We're not going to use retro animation anyway," he snapped, as if that mattered. "Do you know how many studios are using lunchboxes nowadays?"

I didn't bother to respond. I knew the answer was close to zero, but our teacher was old-school and thought we should have respect for where the technology, the art form we were studying, originated.

"Are you going to tell him that when it's finals week and you have no maquette, no cels, and no stop-motion final to turn in?" I thought about my own maquette locked away in a closet in my apartment where hopefully Ash couldn't chew the air-dry clay columns of my tiny Delphi, or eat, and then regurgitate, anymore of Mount Parnassus' plastic bushes.

"Who cares? Everyone knows Mr. Hsu is a quack. We'll never use any of this stuff on the job. Everyone's going to 3D now, 2D animation is dead. And lunchboxes?" He snorted, "give me a fuckin' break. Relics."

I bristled at his comments for more reasons than one. I personally really liked working with the lunchbox, animating something and bringing it to life with my own two hands, a pencil, and rudimentary tools. I also hated the way all my classmates called our teacher "Mister Hasoo."

Why can't Americans ever pronounce anyone's name right,

I wondered. He'd even told them they could call him Chen, which they also didn't pronounce correctly, or Mr. Shoe. They all defaulted to Hasoo like a bunch of lemmings.

"If you're going, I think I'll skip it, Enzo," I replied dryly.

Vincenzo sighed, then I heard his laptop bag slip into the chair behind me. "Alright, I need help with the lunchbox--"

"I knew it."

"It just looks like everything is flopping around--"

"You're not tracing your previous cel tight enough, then," I answered him shortly. If he'd ever bothered to pay attention in class he would have been one of the best. Instead, I was acing everything and he was failing, even with all the raw talent he possessed.

"If you help me I'll buy you dinner from that wretched place you like, what's it called? Fresh Farts?"

"Fresh and Easy," I corrected, grinning in the shadow cast over my face by the room's strange lighting.

"Watermelon juice, samosas, Caesar salad, right?"

I nodded. "And what will you eat? Burger King?" I teased, knowing the floor of his car was home to a small landfill of Whopper wrappers that I visited every time he gave me a ride around campus.

"I'll eat what you eat," he groaned. "I actually... fuck, I like that place, but don't tell the other guys."

Our classroom was a bubble of testosterone. When the program started I was one of three girls, but after two semesters I was the last one standing. Most of the time I was "one of the guys", but they all had a secret soft side they only showed around me. Enzo's preference for "girly", healthy food like watermelon juice and salad was a surprise, even to me. As a reward for showing me his soft underbelly, I relented.

"Alright," I sighed as I closed-out the looping animation I had been recording on the lunchbox. "I'll go to this stupid protest with you."

It was easy to find. I'd assumed it might be a couple dozen nerds from the art or multimedia departments, but someone had posted about it on social media and the entire thing had turned into a giant debacle. Campus security wrangled people down out of the fountain in the center of the school's quad, where they were trying to "drown" the new flag someone had stolen from the flagpole.

"If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" Someone dramatically cried out, then tore the new flag into two jagged pieces. He flung half of it away, slopping water over the crowd, then screamed dramatically as a campus cop tackled him onto the grass.

"Rape, rape!" He screamed while people fought over the tattered flag halves, ripping it into smaller pieces before someone in a track hoodie got hold of the bulk of it and ran.

"The portrait of a blinking idiot," Enzo muttered under his breath, making me laugh in spite of myself. "I never thought this many normies would care about Pantone colors," I murmured to Enzo, "or that you were a Shakespeare fan."

"I might surprise you yet," he replied, then seized his opportunity to pocket a small square of the ruined flag. Someone with a megaphone screamed about injustice and misrepresentation while the crowd divided into two camps. Most of them formed a circle on the lawn, linking hands and singing "Kumbaya", and the rest pulled out their Blackberries to snap photos and take low-quality recordings of the mayhem.

"All of this over two little colors," I muttered, laughing and shaking my head as I chose the uncommon role of someone who spectates with their eyes rather than through their cell phone screen. Even Enzo had pulled out his phone, the newest one at the time. He had a lot of money and came from even more, though he chose to live like a pauper for reasons I never understood. "I'll take some good pictures for you," he teased, a dig at my shitty flip-phone. When a man in a black hoodie approached us I almost didn't take notice of him at all. Enzo greeted him and I assumed he was someone from one of Enzo's classes that I wasn't in. Enzo was more interested in user interface design, and I was more interested in art direction, so our class loads varied just a little each semester.

The man pressed a flyer into his hand, which Enzo pressed into mine.

"What's this?" I asked as I looked at the badly Xeroxed flyer. I recognized where it had come from - the computer science building had the worst Xerox machine on the entire campus, with a leaky yellow toner cartridge that sprayed yellow dots on everything. I'd only used it once, when I was in a rush to print out a project I'd done for my creative writing class. I then resolved never to put myself in that position again when I saw the quality of my "Subliminal Messages in Advertising" final.

"It's a club for people like us that care about the truth," the man in the black hoodie said with such seriousness I laughed out loud at him. He gave Enzo a dirty look. "I thought you said she was like us--"

"She is," Enzo interjected, "I'll talk to her." The man in the hoodie hesitated, then nodded at him and took off across the lawn on his mission to distribute the strange flyers.

"Truth Seekers," I read, letting my voice take on a tone of heavy sarcasm. "Is this a UFO club or something? Are we looking for God? No wait, don't tell me, ghosts?"

"Sex offenders," he growled at me. "Child abusers, people that don't get caught or suffer enough when they do."

I stared at him until he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the eastern parking lot. "Enzo," I murmured a couple times. "What have you gotten into?" But he ignored my questions, then opened the door of his Station Wagon and stuffed me into the passenger seat. I kicked aside a stack of empty Burger King cups, then gasped as he dove between my legs and gathered all the trash from the floor of the car.

"Jesus Christ, Enzo," I yanked my laptop bag into my lap, then tried to pull my flimsy portfolio out of his way before he bent it and all the art inside it with his big head. He balanced all of the trash precariously in one arm, then slammed the door and returned a short time later, empty-handed. "Is this a date?" I joked, "I've never seen you clean your car." He didn't answer me. I wondered if I'd done something to piss him off as he silently steered the car onto the busy surface street outside of the school. He still said nothing even as he merged onto the freeway. Finally, as he reached the junction that took us to my cheap apartment in Mesa, he spoke.

"It's serious shit, Tali. It's not funny."

"Alright, fuck. That guy is too intense, though. You have to admit that was corny as fuck."

He snorted. "Fair, he's a little much sometimes. But all the same, it's serious, and we could use your help."

I tried to think of anything that I could do that Vincenzo couldn't. "Why on Earth do you need me?"

He chewed on his lip, then tossed his head, flinging his black mop of thick hair out of his hazel eyes. "I'm switching majors, actually. We both know I don't have the discipline to work as hard as an artist and make no money."

His words were like a knife in the gut. "Vincenzo, you're so talented. That's an awful thing to say--"

"I'm switching to computer science, programming and shit, so I can make real money. You should think about it," he advised me, sticking the knife in even deeper. "Did you see another major game studio went under? The last paychecks didn't even cash and now people are finding out they haven't had health insurance coverage for a month. Only game dev gets fucked that hard, Tali."

I shook my head, unhappy and unwilling to face the reality he was highlighting for me. I knew it was true, but I wanted to do something artistic with my life and I thought game development would get me creativity and a regular paycheck. "You know, if you keep changing majors you will never graduate," I chided him. He'd told me about transferring from another school, but would never tell me where he came from. He was secretive and often kept me at arm's-length, but his roommates complained about the same things.

"Fine, don't switch with me, but I'll miss you," he admitted, ignoring my dig about switching majors again. "But, after we graduate, I'll make real money and you won't have to. You can chase your dreams."

I scowled as I tried to understand what he was saying to me. "What does your money have to do with my dreams?"

He sighed.

"You better stop," I snapped. "Matt will kill both of us--"

"Matt's a fucking asshole, and a liar," he blurted out, "and he withdrew from his program today, anyway. He got a job at some bank, data security or some shit, who cares? Where's the ring on your finger, Tali? Did he even tell you he was quitting school?"

"We're not a couple," I retorted, "he's just possessive."

"Yeah, and you're not even his."

"Vince..." I knew he was right, knew that Matt was bad news. Still, Matt was the only one who openly pursued me and it was only a matter of time before I would let him have what he wanted.

"Look, just think about it. Think about me in that way. Try it. If you hate it, fine. I'm a good-looking Italian boy from a nice family, my mom will set me up with someone else eventually. But come with me to the meeting tomorrow night and see what you think about our mission. We need someone that can communicate visually and soon that won't be me because I'll be on the other side of it."

"The other side of it?"

"The hacking side," he muttered as he pulled into the parking lot of Fresh and Easy. Inside he was different, as if the tense conversation in the car had never occurred. He was gentlemanly and kind, opening the door for me and getting a cart for an old woman. You would never guess he spent most of his time outside of class screaming profanities into an Xbox headset as he pressed his hand into the small of my back, then loaded a basket with pints of watermelon juice.

"How much are you going to drink?" I teased.

"It's for you. Let me guess the contents of Talia's fridge," he mused as he stacked plastic cases of samosas in the basket beside them. "Half a tub of hummus, some yogurt that you took one bite of and decided you didn't like, beer you're too young to buy, and half of a dried-out pizza in a cardboard box."

I glared at him.

"So who bought the beer this week?"

"Why does it matter to you who buys beer?"

"Last week Zack said he left a case of Stella at your house, and when I asked him why he would leave it, he said because you let him hit it raw."

I gasped. "I've never even let him dry-hump me," I hissed. "We've never even held hands. What the fuck?" The old woman Enzo had gotten a cart for shot me a dirty look.

"How many beers do I have to buy to hit it raw?" He shot one of his charming smiles over his shoulder at the old woman. Her eyes crinkled with delight, then turned cold again when I followed his gaze and met hers.

Seems right,

I thought.

I'm a slut for denying that I slept with someone, and he's a nice boy for asking over and over to come inside of me.

I flounced away from him, annoyed that he thought ten or twenty bucks worth of beer I didn't like was the going price. "I'm not helping you anymore," I called out over my shoulder, then disappeared into a disorganized aisle full of boxes on pallet jacks. Standing behind a stack of cereal boxes wrapped in plastic I tried to stifle my embarrassment. I'd left my car at school miles away, too far to walk in Arizona's spring heat. I didn't know any girls except my gaming buddy, Savannah, and she was too young to drive at the time. If Zack, Enzo, and the other guys in my program were telling each other things like this, I didn't want to know what they'd expect in exchange for a ride from the grocery store to my car - or what they'd claim to have gotten for such a favor.

"I got the mocha creme sandwich cookies you like," Enzo offered when he finally found me. "I'm not trying to be an asshole, I just wish you looked at me like you look at them."

I let him take me back to my apartment, though I stewed silently for the rest of the trip. I was still mad when I led him up the stairs and unlocked the door of my second-floor apartment. Ash greeted me, then rubbed all over Enzo's legs while he inspected my fridge.

"The Stella is still in here?"

"Well yeah, I don't like beer."

"I bet that's why he left it here, so none of us would drink it," he muttered as he reached into the box and pulled two out. He, Zack, and four other guys from the program shared a one-bedroom apartment. I couldn't figure out how they made it work, and I didn't want to know. The smell that hit me every time I knocked on their apartment door was bad enough.

"Now you know, no one is 'hitting it raw' in exchange for beer," I cracked open a watermelon juice, then cracked open the sliding glass door for Ash and sat on a bar stool beside it, supervising him on the balcony.

"Can I hit it for watermelon juice?" He wagged his eyebrows, then scuffed the edge of the countertop prying the lids from both of the beers.

"Tell me about this club," I changed the subject. "Why do you want to be part of it so badly that you would change majors?"

He chugged the first beer, then sipped from the second before he answered. "I told you I'm changing majors for money, mostly. How much do I have to make for you to let me hit it?"

"Answer my question or get out of my house."

"Fine," he sighed. "It's just a big problem, and it seems like no one is really doing anything about it. Don't you think?"

I sucked on my teeth, but didn't answer.

"I always wanted to be a hero, but let's face it, I'm not cut out for the military or anything like that. And with this body?" He gestured at his lanky frame, "I'm hardly intimidating enough to even cosplay a hero."

I grinned at him, but I didn't find his opinion of himself that amusing. His loose, silk button-down shirts flowed over a body that seemed devoid of muscle, true, but he was just a touch over six foot two with a wide frame. If he'd joined a gym or done anything with his time other than play Halo, he would cut an imposing figure. He was handsome, too, with classic Mediterranean good looks and style to match. If he'd had a decent personality I would have done anything he told me to and forgot all about Matt. I watched him rake his bony, long-fingered hand through his dark hair, then frowned as the cuff of his loose-fitting button-down shirt slid on his forearm revealing a macabre tattoo I'd never noticed before.

"When did you get that?" I asked. He glanced down at his forearm, shrugged, then fastened the cuff around his wrist. "Don't worry about it."

"No, what is it?" I got up from my seat and tugged on his sleeve, but he tore his arm out of my grasp.

"I've had it for a long time--"

"You're only twenty-two," I teased. "How long can you possibly have had it?"

"Long enough. You let me hit it raw, you'll get to see all of them."

I rolled my eyes, lifted up my portfolio and headed down the hallway to the second bedroom I used as a studio. He was right behind me, still flirting and avoiding giving me any serious answers.

"This is why you'll never hit it," I told him as I flicked on the lights and spread out the portfolio on one of my desks. "You're hot, then cold, insincere and untrustworthy. I never know where I stand with you. One minute you're begging to hit it raw, the next you're pretending you don't even know me."

"It's just an act," he argued, "so the others don't think I'm into you."

"Why? That's fucking stupid and I don't play games."

"Because then they'd all want you, too."

"So your solution is to pretend you don't want me, so convincingly I don't even know the truth?" I snorted as I lifted out a watercolor painting I'd done in class, but that I thought I might be able to sell online for rent money. "I think you're just horny today and tired of Rosie Righthand. Use the other one," I suggested.

He sighed, then paced around in the limited floor space of the room. "You should let me move in. We'd be good roommates."

"Maybe, but I need the space to work."

"You have a queen-size bed, I don't need my own room."

I scowled at him.

"Fine, I'll sleep on the couch. Come on, I'm too old to sleep in a bunk bed with a bunch of sweaty gamers."

"Get your own apartment, you can afford it. Tell me about the club."