#thath

The blade falls, cutting clean through cartilage and bone. You watch as blood pools and congeals on the metal workbench beneath the carcass. Watch as bare hands become stained a deep merlot.

Your arms fold defensively in front of your chest, attempting to look bigger than you feel, but mostly to hide the way your hands tremble at both the chill of the workshop air and the predatory nature of the man in front of you. You've not yet spoken a word since your outburst this morning, wary of an admonishment (or worse, a punishment) from the brute in front of you. If anything, his own silence is unnerving you more.

Like a lion laying in wait to lull its prey into a false sense of safety, Simon has been gentle- as gentle as a gruff creature such as himself can be. You will yourself to not take the bait, to not fall prey to him any more than you already have, but you fear there is no release from the drooling maw of a starving predator.

"Over 'ere, dove."

His gravelly words cut through the undisturbed air. A hot arrow through flesh.

Without his eyes straying from the flesh at his mercy, a crooked finger pointed in your direction and a subconscious chuck of his chin is the only sign Simon gives that he's remembered you're in the room with him.

Only hours before, he'd practically forced a blackened slice of toast and an overcooked egg down your throat before dragging you down a rickety flight of stairs you don't recall ever seeing, to the cutting room. All you'd gathered from the albeit short but terrifying journey was that the room must've been in some sort of basement, with the actual shop floor above your heads. The room is somehow both space-age modern with its sleek steel appliances and surfaces, and chillingly dated with its peeling tiled floor stained with fluids you're absolutely sure you never even want to think about.

You suppose the chill of the subterranean earth must make for better storing conditions for the many carcasses hung from steel hooks; their sharp points remind you of Simon, somewhat: you know they're dangerous yet a part of you can't help but be drawn to them. What it would feel like to just reach out and touch. What it would feel like to prick yourself, a small nick turning into a blistering white-hot pain. A permanent brand.

A tiny, pleading voice in the back of your head shouts of a fairytale; a princess mindlessly stumbling towards a whetted spindle and falling into a trance-like state.

It's that same warning you ignore as you shuffle meekly to where Simon stands over an open ribcage, cartilage and viscera splattered like a Pollock painting across every surface. Including the hands which now yank either side of your waist and manhandle you into standing in front of the carcass, Simon's body covering your own and his chin tucked into the fold of your neck.

Thick arms bracket your own, clamping you in place as your neck awkwardly twists to get away from Simon's face beside your own. Warm, almost panting, breaths flood the left side of your face and are soon replaced by cool, stagnant air as they retreat back to his lungs; he is simultaneously the tide bathing over you and the moon with its gravitational pull forcing you into its orbit.

Simon's hands come to cover your own, his right hand weilding a boning knife, small yet stomach-churning considering the owner of the hand it's wrapped in.

"Y'see those wee bones? These are featha' bones. No use to us, yeah?" He takes your right hand into his own, wrapping your significantly smaller hand around the knife handle and enclosing yours with his own, "Take the knife and go flush ta' the meat, just like that, bird. Yer just gonna cut along there 'till you feel it give."

You can feel the breakfast he force fed you this morning begin to churn in your stomach. The feeling of the flesh and bone coming apart under your hand, your hand weilding a knife. It makes your stomach toss even more at how comfortable you are doing it. How natural it feels.

How good it feels.

"Atta girl. Knew you'd be good at this, birdie." Simon's voice is almost…smoky. Sultry in the way only a hulking creature like him could be. You recognise it as the same tone he spoke to you in that first night on his couch where he had you melting into a puddle of sweat and slick on top of him.

A distinct, noticeable hardness begins to rub against the fabric of the sweatpants Simon gave you to wear.

You swallow the spit gathering in your mouth and force yourself to finally open your lips, voice cracking from disuse, "Wh-what next?"

Simon huffs a low chuckle, "Eager, huh? S'okay, pidge. We'll take it nice and slow for ya first time."

The feeling of his warm skin pressed to your own and the stiffness at the bottom of your spine causes your stomach to riot. He's too close, too much, too warm, too big. You need out. You're stuck and cornered and left with no other choice.

Your fingers twist on the knife so suddenly you barely comprehend it yourself- as if your body sought to protect you before your brain could craft an escape- and form a death grip on the hilt, twisting so as to aim for any part of Simon. Anywhere. You just need one good hit.

Your efforts are in vain, though, as he clamps his own paw over your fingers before you can even point the blade in his direction, "Ah, ah. Here I though' we were gettin' along," He jolts your body against his own, scarred lips smushed violently against your cheek. Your teeth ache from the force, "S'fine. You'll come around. 'll make sure of it, birdie."

—

The room you're locked in has no windows.

Or, it used to, but Simon covered them with thick plywood and even thicker curtains whilst you watched from the corner of the room.

The mattress under you is stained immeasurably, the only saving grace being the stack of blankets he presented you with, the small smile on his face seeming almost genuine, as if he thought you'd be overjoyed at the premise of a hole-ridden blanket whilst shackled to the radiator next to the mattress, in the home of a man you've met once.

The room's covered windows leave the comings and goings of Simon to be your only indicator of time passing. The flickering floor lamp next to your "bed" ensures you won't go completely stir-crazy in the dark, but the footsteps which appear under the crack of the locked door are your only way to determine another 24 hours passing.

Simon presents you with the same breakfast each morning, a slop you can only assume to be porridge and a slab of bacon, before kissing you roughly and turning to once again lock the door. You hear him downstairs each day, conversing with customers and delivery drivers. Hear his footsteps ascending and descending the stairs connecting the flat to the shop floor and the cutting room below. Hear his pottering around the kitchen. Hear the voices and laughter of his customers, oblivious to the rattling of your cuffs and silent tears only a floorboard's width from their heads.

He returns after each shift, once again presenting you with a slab of meat he'd cut and prepared himself. Under any other circumstance you'd take him to be a caring suitor, nervously trying to impress and court you with his handmade offerings. Instead, he is your captor. Keeping you to himself until he deems you ready to return to the outside world without acting up. As if you are an unruly, undisciplined toddler. A not-yet housebroken dog, reactive and misbehaved.

Still, you eagerly lap up his offerings. You learned on the first day that refusal results in complete isolation; you'd turned your nose up at his mere presence, refused to even look at the plate he tried to give you. The lamp was promptly unplugged, the blankets snatched from under you.

He didn't visit you until the next evening, "'ve you learned to behave yet?"

Your eager, deprived nod made him smile. That almost preternatural smile, teeth missing and crooked and eyes lined with age and something wolfish you couldn't quite place.

From his bidiurnal visits, you can estimate you've been in this room for a little over six days.

You wonder if you friend from the pub ever returned. Wonder if she noted your absence, asked the bartender and phoned the police. Or if she simply shrugged her shoulders and stumbled home. Wonder if anyone is yet to notice the empty seat you'd ordinarily take up in your lectures.

Stupid girl. No one notices you. No one remembers you. No one cares.

But he does. Simon. Your captor.

He noticed. He remembered. He cared enough that he had to have you.

Does that not count for something?

His visit on the (estimated) sixth night is unlike the others. He does not come bearing a meal, instead his hands are clasped behind the expanse of his back, shoulders stretching his ichor-stained white t-shirt and feet bare on the creaking floorboards.

You've been awaiting his arrival- are forced to. He is your only source for human interaction anymore. His face has become the epicentre of your space-time continuum.

He squats slightly at the edge of the mattress, denim-clad thighs parting and stretching to rest an elbow on each, " 've got somethin' for you, pidge. Since y've been so good lately. Listenin' to me. Doin' as y're told."

An arm reaches out to grasp the one wrist not shackled in a metal cuff, slowly, as though any sudden movement could startle you. As though he were a hunter lining up his shot, one wrong movement sending his doe running. You can almost feel the brand of his target circle burning into your skin.

"Y'look so good in these cuffs. Knowin' it's me who put y'in them," His thumb tenderly sweeps across the thin skin of your inner wrist and the hand still behind his back emerges with a small box tucked in the meaty thick of his palm. It looks comically small compared to the prodigious stature of the man currently on his haunches in front of you, "But I know you'll look even better in this."

A single finger flicks the lid of the box. You know what it is before it opens fully.

A silver ring.

A ring with a jewel big enough to cause bodily harm.