he’d left. No telling when she’d get more. Did she dare waste it to clean the wound?
She decided to use just a little bit, pouring a few drops onto the corner of her sheet. Carefully, she reached back to dab at the sore spot, not sure she was doing any good. Was this just the beginning? Was Eric going to plunge deeper and deeper into this terrifying game? How far would he go and where would it end?
As her mind drifted, she thought about the one class in high school she’d enjoyed. It was a history class taught by Mr. Ulmer, who was actually excited about his subject matter and explained things in a way that had made Jessie listen, for a change. He’d quoted some famous dude or other who’d said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
She thought about that now. She’d had plenty of clients who had dark, strange sexual fantasies, including the fervent desire to be roasted alive over a barbeque pit, or to be whipped until they were covered in blood, or to be someone’s personal toilet, crouched beneath a toilet throne, mouth open.
The operative word in all that, of course, was fantasy . While she could give them an approximation of what they thought they wanted in a controlled and safe environment, it wasn’t real . It never went so far as to be dangerous or life-threatening, not counting the freak accident with Frankie.
Jessie shuddered, thinking back on that terrifying day, the camera recording while Frankie seemed to be dying in front of her eyes. Eric knew about that, and had lorded it over her, which made his use of breath play with her all the more frightening. He seemed to take special sadistic delight in choking her—letting her know in no uncertain terms that her life was literally in his hands.
He had absolute power over her, and this was a terrifying realization. The Eric Chapman she’d thought she knew at the office was just a cover, a flimsy front for the evil man who lurked just beneath the civilized surface. With no limits and no witnesses, how far would he go? What would stop him from bringing every sick and twisted secret fantasy of his to life?
He couldn’t let her go. No way he could trust her silence. She was his prisoner until death did them part. Her death. She was thirty-three years old. Would she live to see thirty-four? Tears trickled down Jessie’s cheeks. She felt a bleak despair moving over her like black, thick ink, blotting out any hope.
You have to get out. You have to get out. You have to get out.
The voice was quiet but persistent.
You’re Jessie Ramos, the girl who kicks ass, the girl who got out of a dead end situation in El Fucking Paso and made yourself a good life without help from anybody. You got out of a bad marriage to the wrong man. You don’t give up and you don’t give in. You don’t have to just lie down and take whatever this asshole dishes out. You find a way, Jess. You figure out a plan. You get the fuck out, and you get revenge.
The words rose from a place deep inside her, from the secret place she rarely visited, where Carlos rested in peace. Her brother had been four years younger than she, but he’d always stuck up for her when their father, drunk and out of control, would come at her, screaming that the food wasn’t on the table, that she was a worthless piece of shit, that he ought to put her on the streets so she could earn a few bucks instead of just spending his hard-earned wages. His favorite rant when she was a teenager trying to keep the household together, go to school and work a job at the local supermarket was that she couldn’t hold a candle to his blessed wife, the wife he’d beaten and berated regularly until she’d died of ovarian cancer, at which time he’d consecrated her as a saint.
It was Carlos who had talked Jessie into getting out when she’d graduated high school, encouraging her to head to a big city as far away from El Paso as she could get and start fresh, even though it meant leaving
She decided to use just a little bit, pouring a few drops onto the corner of her sheet. Carefully, she reached back to dab at the sore spot, not sure she was doing any good. Was this just the beginning? Was Eric going to plunge deeper and deeper into this terrifying game? How far would he go and where would it end?
As her mind drifted, she thought about the one class in high school she’d enjoyed. It was a history class taught by Mr. Ulmer, who was actually excited about his subject matter and explained things in a way that had made Jessie listen, for a change. He’d quoted some famous dude or other who’d said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
She thought about that now. She’d had plenty of clients who had dark, strange sexual fantasies, including the fervent desire to be roasted alive over a barbeque pit, or to be whipped until they were covered in blood, or to be someone’s personal toilet, crouched beneath a toilet throne, mouth open.
The operative word in all that, of course, was fantasy . While she could give them an approximation of what they thought they wanted in a controlled and safe environment, it wasn’t real . It never went so far as to be dangerous or life-threatening, not counting the freak accident with Frankie.
Jessie shuddered, thinking back on that terrifying day, the camera recording while Frankie seemed to be dying in front of her eyes. Eric knew about that, and had lorded it over her, which made his use of breath play with her all the more frightening. He seemed to take special sadistic delight in choking her—letting her know in no uncertain terms that her life was literally in his hands.
He had absolute power over her, and this was a terrifying realization. The Eric Chapman she’d thought she knew at the office was just a cover, a flimsy front for the evil man who lurked just beneath the civilized surface. With no limits and no witnesses, how far would he go? What would stop him from bringing every sick and twisted secret fantasy of his to life?
He couldn’t let her go. No way he could trust her silence. She was his prisoner until death did them part. Her death. She was thirty-three years old. Would she live to see thirty-four? Tears trickled down Jessie’s cheeks. She felt a bleak despair moving over her like black, thick ink, blotting out any hope.
You have to get out. You have to get out. You have to get out.
The voice was quiet but persistent.
You’re Jessie Ramos, the girl who kicks ass, the girl who got out of a dead end situation in El Fucking Paso and made yourself a good life without help from anybody. You got out of a bad marriage to the wrong man. You don’t give up and you don’t give in. You don’t have to just lie down and take whatever this asshole dishes out. You find a way, Jess. You figure out a plan. You get the fuck out, and you get revenge.
The words rose from a place deep inside her, from the secret place she rarely visited, where Carlos rested in peace. Her brother had been four years younger than she, but he’d always stuck up for her when their father, drunk and out of control, would come at her, screaming that the food wasn’t on the table, that she was a worthless piece of shit, that he ought to put her on the streets so she could earn a few bucks instead of just spending his hard-earned wages. His favorite rant when she was a teenager trying to keep the household together, go to school and work a job at the local supermarket was that she couldn’t hold a candle to his blessed wife, the wife he’d beaten and berated regularly until she’d died of ovarian cancer, at which time he’d consecrated her as a saint.
It was Carlos who had talked Jessie into getting out when she’d graduated high school, encouraging her to head to a big city as far away from El Paso as she could get and start fresh, even though it meant leaving
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