Page 50 of Nefarious Betrayal

I still do my best to keep exercising, but with how little I’m fed or given water, I just don’t have enough energy to dedicate to it these days. How did I ever get myself into this situation? How was I ever so blind to trust... well, to trust so blindly. I never would’ve imagined I could have been betrayed so thoroughly by someone who claimed to love me.

I say claimed, because the hell I've been living in isn’t something you do to someone you love. It’s not something you do to someone you hate, either. It takes someone truly evil to do what’s been done to me. Over and over, day after day. Bled and sucked dry. Kept in a constant state of barely living... I've wished every single day I could be put out of my misery. The only thing that keeps me holding on is the fact that I don’t know what my death would mean for my mate.

I try to drag out the mundane tasks I need to accomplish while I’m in here, but the fact is there really isn’t much for me to do. I just enjoy having the brief reprieve from the bland scenery I've become accustomed to. With nothing left for me to do but fiddle my thumbs, I finally walk over to where my clothes are still dripping water.

Pulling on the cold moist garments one at a time, I wish I could put on clean dry clothes for once. It’s been way too long since I’ve had the pleasure. Once I’m clothed again, I walk the two steps it takes for me to reach the door and give a couple of knocks letting the guard know I’ve finished.

The door swings open, and I’m immediately grabbed by the arm and dragged back to my cell. When we get to it, I’m surprised to see someone standing there already. My eyes stay lowered, making sure I don’t look them in the face. “It’s about time you got back here. I’ve been waiting far too long. I need some more, you know what to do, boy! Don’t think about keeping me waiting.”

A sharp knife is thrusted handle-first in one hand of mine and a bowl in the other. I sit down and place the bowl between my knees to hold it in place, then bring my arm into position over the bowl. I hesitate for just a moment but my practiced movements carry on without my thoughts behind the action. I place the knife on my arm, next to the wound that's only several hours healed.

With a fast shaky jerk, the knife runs against my skin causing it to split apart and blood to well up on the surface. I tilt my arm and pump my fist to encourage the blood to fall into the bowl waiting beneath it. Once there’s enough for a solid swallow collected in the bowl, it’s snatched from my hold and the man brings it to his lips where I hear him slurping.

I cringe, never having been able to get used to the barbaric sound he makes when drinking my blood. At this point, I think it’s become more of an addiction than anything else for him. How was I never able to see how unhinged he was before I ended up here? I ask myself these kinds of questions about a hundred times a day.

The man swoops down to grab the knife and leaves my cell, shutting the door on his way out, never uttering another word.

The cell door clangs shut, causing a sharp bang to echo around the small space. I lurch up into a sitting position, breathing harder than I would after the most strenuous of workouts. My body’s covered in a sheen of sweat. Shit, that was one fucked-up nightmare… and I actually remember it. Somehow the nightmare feels like the bastard stepchild of the nightmares I can never recall. It always feels so incredibly real while having a film of falsities laid over it at the same time.

The worst part of it all... I felt like a backseat passenger in my own body.