Page 2 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions (Till Death Do Us Part #7)

The average twenty-one year old celebrates their birthday with partying and alcohol.

The more alcohol, the better the party. At least, that’s what I’m told.

I never got to celebrate my twenty-first birthday other than a single cupcake Jason brought for me with a single candle while I was bound to a chair.

If I could get out of the chair and my bindings before the flame went out, I got to eat my cupcake.

Part of my continued training was working through my fear of bondage.

Any bondage, any restraint was too much.

I couldn’t handle it. Habitually, I had two reactions: the first was a violent one.

I would thrash uncontrollably and injure myself fighting against my binds like a rabid dog.

The second reaction was much more dangerous if it happened where Jason wasn’t around to monitor me.

I would freeze. Utterly and completely freeze.

My mind would black out until I was released and I wouldn’t remember the experience at all.

In that state, anything could happen to me.

Slowly, Jason had started working bondage into my training.

I needed to know I could get out of any situation, any prison.

He taught me to pick locks and where to hide pins on my body so I could always have one accessible.

He even hired a street thief from Canada to teach me how to pickpocket.

I wore a mask the entire time and nondescript clothing just in case.

Jason started off with handcuffs. He taught me how to twist my wrists when they are being applied so the cuff didn’t tighten too much and then how to use a lock pick to undo the latch.

Even police cuffs that had pick-proofing measures, I learned how to eventually slip off.

I knew how to get out of cuffs whether they were in front of me or behind my back.

Thanks to my gymnastics lessons, I could also get my cuffed hands easily from behind me, under my butt and legs, and to my front.

It took a long time for me to be in a mental state where I could calm myself long enough to concentrate on getting out of the cuffs by thinking rather than sheer panic.

Once I could get out of the cuffs, Jason moved on to zip ties.

That was harder to learn, as I knew it was a step before ropes, but eventually I learned how to move the tooth to get out of my bindings or to apply enough heat with friction to snap my way out.

I cut myself a lot during those lessons, but I never complained.

As much as I hated it, I knew I needed to learn this. I could not, would not , be held against my will again.

Unfortunately, I also learned that magicians are not as talented in escapism as they lead you to believe. With them, there’s always a trick. I could not rely on sleight of hand or fake locks to get myself free. I had to learn the true art.

This also meant learning mechanics and engineering. If I know how something is built, I can unbuild it. But that was a lesson for another day.

My goal for today was to get my cupcake.

I didn’t get treats like that often. We lived in a bunker with a garden hose rigged as our shower and a hot plate as our kitchen.

Canned and dehydrated foods were how we survived.

A piped hole in the ground served as our toilet.

I had never asked where the pipe led to, because I truly didn’t want to know.

I had a dreadful feeling I would learn when Jason started teaching me structural engineering.

Bound to a chair by ropes, I had to work my hands free.

This was not the sort of chair I could break to get out of my ropes by default.

We’d scavenged the local dump for wooden and plastic chairs for that lesson.

I even learned how to use handcuffs as leverage to break loose the nails holding a wooden chair together.

Now, though, I was bound to a metal chair by my wrists and ankles.

For good measure, he’d even put a gag in my mouth.

I didn’t ask him where he went. He kept telling me he was leaving the bunker, and I had even heard the hatch open and close, but I had my doubts.

I didn’t think Jason would actually leave me in case I had a panic attack.

But, then again, he wasn’t one to bluff.

When Jason said he was going to do something, he did it.

Regardless of consequences, morals, or laws.

The feel of the ropes no longer drew me back to my childhood bedroom and the utter despair that had once led me to create a noose. Jason had cured me of that by rubbing the coarse ropes on my skin over and over again.

The act of being restrained was never fun or easy. I did not get any enjoyment out of this training. Bondage for me would always be a negative experience, no matter how much exposure therapy I received.

Flashbacks of my attack still assaulted me, though muted to the point that I could ignore them.

Bile still rose each time I was restrained, but I was usually able to hold back vomiting until after I was released.

I had yet to be able to break the need to throw up immediately after achieving freedom.

Jason wasn’t happy about that, thought the action wasted precious time, but he did not punish me for the uncontrollable response.

Jason was hard on me. I knew he cared about me, though I wasn’t sure if he was capable of loving me like a daughter.

He did not think of me in a sexual way. He’d long ago assured me of that.

I’d looked up the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath years ago when Jason had first taken me in.

He was extremely smart, but I could tell there was something antisocial about him from the start.

I barely knew him when he was the janitor at my high school.

Something about my situation had triggered a need for him to help me.

To make me strong enough to seek out my revenge.

But Jason did not love me. Though he claimed he was straight, I knew he sought out sex with men.

There was something inside him that needed to dominate other men.

He liked forcing straight men to have oral or anal sex with him through coercion or blackmail.

I still don’t understand how at the very least he did not consider himself to be bisexual, but I had enough issues in my own life to dive into his.

Jason was a high-functioning sociopath with antisocial personality disorder. He did not fit into society well and preferred a nomadic lifestyle.

He believed in tough love over the gentle touch. It was how he trained me so effectively. He did not allow my fears and my past to win. He was my champion and my savior.

I would not let him down.

Dislocating my thumb with the aid of the edge of the chair arm, I was able to rotate my hand enough to slip my wrist under the tight bindings of the ropes.

Once my fingers were beneath the rope, I was able to slide effortlessly out.

Grabbing my other thumb with my hand this time, I repeated the process.

Though I still had my lock pins hidden on my person, they would be ineffective against rope. A good captor would remove any weapons from my person. I could never rely on having my knives on me or accessible to me at all times.

Once free of my leg bindings, I removed the gag from my mouth. I walked over to the hole in the floor we used as our toilet and promptly threw up. Wiping my mouth, I grabbed for the hose we used as our shower to rinse out the bile from my mouth.

After that, I wandered over to the card table where my birthday cupcake sat waiting for me. The candle had very little wax left, but the flame was still burning.

I smiled triumphantly. Happy Birthday to me …