~~Welcome to my dark little corner of the universe. As many of my readers know, almost all the things I write consist of many dark, Non-consensual themes, a little DV, some violence/abuse in general, imprisonment, kidnapping, and occasionally even a little bit of torture. I do my best to put in disclaimers for each chapter. If any of this or my terrible grammar offends you, then these are probably not the stories for you! And that's okay! All characters involved in sexual acts are 18 and over! ~~
*****
It was a beautiful summer morning when a thunderstorm of knocking woke us. Hank began whining at the door as Sam threw the blankets off and practically jumped out of bed with a cat-that-ate-the-canary type of grin.
"Be right down!" He shouted out his bedroom window as he shuffled through the pile of dirty laundry and sniffed checked the top few shirts to find one presentable enough. He fetched his keys from a hook across the room that lay just out of reach. He unlocked the chain around my ankles and pulled me downstairs behind him. When he opened the front door, he greeted the first woman with open arms.
"Aunt Em! I am so glad to see you, all of you, on this special day. Please, come in!" He opened the door in further invitation, and I counted a total of six women.
"Ladies, allow me to introduce you to my wife-to-be, KitKat." Aunt Ems cornflower blue eyes lit up and she wasted no time as she threw her arms around me, squeezing tightly. She was a few inches taller than I, her black hair equally as dark as Sam's so I knew that she was related to Sam by blood and not marriage.
"Welcome to the family!" She greeted, a little
too
enthusiastically. When Sam glared at me, I awkwardly hugged her back. I knew instantly she was the one who had helped me get well. I wasn't quite sure if I was grateful or angry about it yet.
"Sweetheart meet a few of my aunts. This is Emily, Mary, Abigail, Lillian and Bethany. They are Uncle Dale's wives." I nodded at the rest as they made their way inside, arms full of groceries.
Mary was the tallest of the bunch, nearly towering over Sam herself. She was hefty but carried it like a professional lifter. Her long black hair had streaks of gray in it and deep wrinkles had begun to set in the creases of her eyes and lips. It became quickly apparent she had earned them from too much scowling. Her coffee brown eyes darted around the room and she tsked in disapproval.
"Your house is worse than a pigsty." She didn't smile or bother to shake my hand, she headed straight for the kitchen table where she unloaded her burden of food. There was going to be BBQ chicken, burgers, hot dogs and ribs along with potato salad, corn on the cob, macaroni salad, plus a multitude of dishes brought by his other family members. They all wore similar dresses, each one plainer than the last; they kept their hair up and pinned to their head in a conservative fashion, hardly a strand out of place. Did Sam expect me to wear mine the same way? The women must have had years of practice because not a single face betrayed anything other than utter complacency. The morbid scene almost reminded me of my grandmother's house around the holidays, minus the free will issue.
I remembered the kitchen having always been full of cooking women, gossiping and sipping wine while the men watched their football game and my cousins ran amuck. I could almost taste the secret eggnog that I used to sneak when no one was looking. After my grandmother died, the family sort of fell apart arguing over their inheritances. It seemed with Nana gone, everyone became selfish, thinking about what they were getting instead of thinking about their loss. She had been the glue that kept the family together. As the wives brought in more groceries, I stood by watching, nausea rolling through my stomach. Was this what my future looked like? How many other wives would Sam 'choose'? Mary must have been over to Sam's house before because she seemed to know where everything was and helped herself to what she needed.
"When is the last time you cleaned this place, Samson?" Mary demanded. Samson? Had I heard her, right? Arioch called him Sammy, his name tag read Sam; so not only did he have two personalities but an identity crisis. Sam turned a deep red as he looked around sheepishly. I resisted the urge to smile, it felt good to see someone make
him
feel shameful.
"Good thing I picked myself another wife then," he replied as he peeled back some foil and helped himself to one of the brownies. Picked. Like I was some goddamn flower in a garden he just happened to come across.
"Get out of that!" Mary smacked his hand with a spatula and shooed him towards the back door. He only chuckled and shook his hand.
"Alright!" He motioned for me to come closer and once I was within reach, he bent down, wrapped a chain around my ankle and that's when I noticed the small metal loops that were screwed in near the baseboards of the walls. That must have been what I had heard a while back.
They were spaced almost evenly apart as my eyes swept the room and the chain had just enough slack that I could move around most of the kitchen if I wanted to.
"It is good to finally see you up and about." Emily announced. Sam placed the key to the lock into Emily's palm.
"Keep close eye on this one, Ladies. Best not to give her anything sharp and she'll always need to be escorted, probably by at least two of you." Mary raised her spatula again, pointing towards the backyard where multiple men could be seen moving hay barrels into the barn. He lifted his hands defensively, backing out the screen door and I breathed a sigh of relief once he was out of sight.
"How are you feeling?" asked Emily, as she began looking me over. She looked into both my eyes and asked me to open my mouth. I amused her, after all I was curious to see how my health was doing. My nerves felt frayed and my legs ached from being stuck in bed, but I could breathe without pain, so that was a plus.
"You mean besides being held against my will and forced to marry and breed with a psychopath? I'm feeling super!" Mary turned around faster than I ever thought a woman her size could move, she grabbed my lower chin in her giant hands.
"Do not think you can badmouth your husband-to-be just because he is no longer in the room, child. You will show him some respect, is that understood?" Her grip was crushing, and I nodded, jerking myself free from her grip.
"This is the only life we are given, child, and we must make the most of it. Now, idle hands are the devil's playthings Ladies. Why don't you keep busy with some of those dishes?" Mary pointed to the sink where dishes had already started to pile up and Emily gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder. The morning was only a small reprieve from my captor, we spent most of the time working in silence, occasionally Mary would snap at one of the other wives and it became immediately clear she was the wife in charge. If things weren't done correctly, she had no qualms telling them so. As Sam's first wife, second if I wanted to get technical, would that be my responsibility?
"We need to double that recipe."
"Don't you lick that spoon Bethany, you are no longer a child, do
not
