Master

Carrying a load of laundry, I paused beside a window. Master was outside tending business with a man in formal wear. They were speaking of something, though I did not know what of. Master always took care not to let me overhear his dealings, but I had happened to overhear that he would be going somewhere today.

As if sensing my gaze, Master’s eyes flicked up. I ducked away from the window and swallowed at the close call. If Master thought I was going to attempt something… I shuddered at the thought and glanced down at my feet.

A shiny black bracelet clung to my ankle. It was only an inch thick and made of plastic, but it was the reason I could not leave. The last time I had attempted to escape, Master has stuck this on me and had given a demonstration of what it would do if I cross the house boundaries.

Volts of fire-like electricity rushing through my veins hadn’t been pleasant.

It had been months since then and I bade my time, squirrelling away materials that would help me escape this hellhole. I had a pillowcase with non-perishables such as trail mix or crackers, a change or two of clothes, and most importantly, a stack of cash that I’d managed slip from Master’s hidden supplies.

Master was a very suspicious man, and a good number of his academic journals held cash between their pages. I’d been careful when taking that money as Master had cameras hidden all over the manor. I’d played clumsy, knocking things over so he wouldn’t suspect me knocking some books off the shelves while dusting was on purpose. Hundreds of bills were scattered around the house in books, but I had been careful in how much I’d taken. Master would notice if an envelope full of cash went missing.

Today seemed like a brilliant chance to escape.

I kept an eye on Master as I headed through the halls, peaking out the windows whenever possible. The man with Master clapped him on the shoulder and gestured toward an expensive-looking car. Master smiled politely and followed the man into the back of the car while a chauffeur, presumably, would drive them.

My hands shook as the car drove out of sight. Everything inside me screamed to run, to grab my stash of supplies and leave this God-forsaken hellhole. It wouldn’t be easy. I wasn’t the only worker here and numerous guards with large, aggressive dogs guarded the grounds, most likely to stop people from escaping. Still, I reined in the urge to leave and continued on as normal. I had to wait until Master was far enough away that I had time to leave after the alarm went off.

My most recent accessory, not only a devilish ankle bracelet version of a shock collar, also worked as the ankle monitor it looked like. Once I stepped foot outside the house, or if the wires were cut, Master and every other person with authority would hear the alarm. While I was worried about the number of guards roaming around, I was more worried about Master. He was extremely skilled, not in just business, but also in athletics. He worked out daily and often sparred against numerous partners to keep himself in shape. I would not be able to fight him and win, at least without a weapon.

An hour slowly ticked by before I decided it was time to leave. Master would be in the middle of dinner, surely, and he was in the center of a city. It would take him at least a half hour to reach the manor, and while he would be racing to catch his favored slave, I would be running for my life.

My duties completed for the moment, I swiftly retreated to my room. I nodded my head politely as I passed other workers and slid into my room. I was lucky to have my own bedroom for I never would have accomplished what I've been working towards in the shared workers’ quarters.

Making sure my door was locked, I crawled under my bed and pried a floorboard up. Beneath it, hidden between the slats of the flooring, was my pillowcase full of supplies. I rifled through it and made sure that I had everything I needed. My change of clothes, one to change into after I got out of my maid outfit and one to change into if I got dirty, my stack of money that counted to nearly a thousand dollars, and whatever dry foods I had packed were in the pillowcase.

I sighed in relief, only to freeze when someone knocked on the door. Thinking quick, I shoved the pillowcase in a pile of clothes in my laundry basket and dragged it to my door.

"Hello?" I said, pulling my door open. One of the other workers stood by my door and nodded towards a laundry cart.

"It's your turn to wash the laundry," the worker said before trotting off. Staring at the full cart, I mentally groaned. I'd forgotten it was my turn to wash our clothing, at least for the workers on this wing and floor. This would set me back since there would be other workers in the laundry room expecting me. I'll put the clothes in the wash, chat idly with the other workers to make nothing seem amiss, before taking my leave. All I had to do was figure out what to do with my pillowcase of supplies.

Sighing, I dropped my basket of laundry in the cart and began pushing it in the direction of the workers' elevators. They were made so we could move around large carts of laundry to the laundry room or to cart food to the meeting rooms.

There was another worker waiting by the elevator and I gritted my teeth in frustration. How the hell was I going to hide my pillowcase without her spotting me? I had planned to toss it in a janitor's closet near the laundry room, but there was no way I would be able to do so without gaining my co-worker's suspicion. I would have to come up with something.

I nodded politely to the other girl and stepped into the elevator when it opened. Our journey downstairs was awkward as neither of us spoke and I realized that this girl had only joined us recently. She had been sold to Master like me.

As the elevator descended, I took a chance. “Master’s gone,” I murmured. There were cameras and microphones in the elevator so I spoke quietly, but I knew that the girl had heard me by the way her head tilted in my direction. When the girl didn’t say anything, I continued to speak. “Do you want to leave?” I asked urgently.

My heart pounded in my chest as I awaited the girl’s response.

“Yes,” she breathed, eyes wide. She must’ve known that there were cameras in here, or she was just matching my volume, as she spoke just as softly as me.

“We need to get these off,” I told her, nodding to our ankles just as the elevator door opened. More workers face us, ones who were paid to work here and didn’t care what Master did, and I smiled politely and nudged the girl out the elevator. She trembled slightly in nerves, her eyes flickering to the gun and the electric baton on the one guard. She must’ve experienced the shocks before.

Once we were far enough away from them, I began to speak once more. “The monitors will shock us once we cut them off but we’ll have to shake it off quickly. An alarm will alert everyone that we’re escaping.”

The girl swallowed. I murmured some details of my previous plan as we continued to the laundry room. “We’re going to put our loads in to not appear suspicious but I’ll drip off this pillowcase of supplies in a janitor’s closet while you continue ahead,” I said, my fingers lightly brushing against a black pillowcase. The girl nodded.

It didn’t take long to pass by a janitor’s closet and I pushed my cart close to it, acting as if I was just picking up the dirty wash rags and towels stored here after cleaning. I nudged my pillowcase between two buckets before we continued to the laundry room. As expected, a few other workers doing their own laundry were there. I chose a set of washing machines next to the girl and we spoke idly to one another as we started the machines.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes, I need to use the bathroom,” I said after a few moments, just loud enough for the other workers to hear.

The girl perked up slightly, though her hands continued to tremble. “I’ll go with you, I need to change my tampon,” she said, making the two male workers a few machines down cringe. They wouldn’t be worrying about us anytime soon.

The girl, as I had told her to, wandered towards the janitor’s closet. She walked in, shoved the supplies under her dress, before saying, “Oops, I thought that was the washroom,” in embarrassment.

I shrugged. “Everything here looks the same, I made the same mistake when I first came here. You’ll figure it out eventually,” I told her, smiling slightly.

I walked ahead to the bathroom and the girl tossed the pillowcase to me. I swiftly rifled through it for a pair of heavy-duty scissors while she cracked open the window. It was just large enough for us to weasel through and I, for once, was relieved of my short stature. The other workers wouldn’t have been able to squeeze out the window.

“I’ll do you first,” I said. The girl’s face turned white as I approached her with the scissors. She wasn’t looking forward to getting electrocuted—she must’ve been shown what it felt like when she first came here—and I wasn’t looking forward to it, either.

She reluctantly lifted her ankle, and without giving her warning to pull away, I cut as hard as I could. Immediately, her muscles stilled and jerked, twitching as her mouth opened in a silent scream. I kicked the bracelet away from her to stop the current and sat down before cutting my own.

It felt as if everything blacked out for a moment as my muscled tensed and jerked, pain lacing through my veins. It felt as if someone had taken my heart and lungs in their hand and squeeze, and once I managed to shake the bracelet away to stop the shock, I gasped in a lungful of air. Distantly, I heard a ringing sound.

My limbs were weak and trembling as I struggled to stand, my hand weakly grasping at the pillowcase. As I looked at the tall window, I belatedly realized that I should have waited until we were outside to cut the ankle monitors off. They would have shocked us, yes, but it was a smaller shock meant for pain, not to completely cripple us.

The girl was trembling and twitching on the ground and I stumbled over to her, tugging at her arm. “Gotta go,” I said, my numb tongue making the words come out slurred. The girl grimaced but managed to pull herself to her feet. I pulled her over to the window and braced myself on my knees so I could lift her out.

I held my breath as feet raced by the door and was relieved that I’d had the foresight to lock the door. We’d gone to a bathroom that was farther away than the laundry room just to give us a little bit of time if they spoke to the workers there. The girl weakly pulled on the windowsill in an attempt to pull herself through and I gritted my teeth, pushing her up. She slid through the window with a thump and I stumbled at the loss of weight.

Looking at the window, I realized something else. How was I going to manage getting out the window on my own? My limbs were trembling, weak and numb, and the window was high enough that I’d have to jump and pull myself up to leave. Gritting my teeth, I stuffed the pillowcase in my shirt and jumped, clawing at the windowsill. My fingers slipped and I fell to the ground.

“Take my hands!” the girl called through the window. Two dainty hands reached through the window and I realized that the ground was much higher up on the other side, meaning that the girl would have enough leverage to pull me through.

I looked around wildly and spotted a metal trashcan beneath the one sink. I lugged it over and set it upside down, just as the doorknob began to rattle.

“They’re in here!” a man called before yelling, “Open the door!”

I snorted. Did he seriously accept me to say, “Oh, you caught me! Let me walk to my punishment now!”?

The girl stared down at me and I grabbed her hands, pulling myself up. She grunted as she pulled me and I grabbed the windowsill with one hand while she grabbed my arm with hers. Together, I managed to get through the window. We both stumbled to the ground under my weight and I swiftly stood, tugging at the girl.

Glancing around, we raced into the woods. I heard voices calling distantly before the sound of dogs howling.

They had caught our scent.

My lungs and throat burned as we raced through the woods, branches lashing at our skin, drawing blood and making purple splotches appear on our skin. Footsteps echoed ahead and the girl and I sprinted to the side. It was then that the wall around the grounds came in view.

It was as tall as myself but there were trees nearby to climb. I swiftly clambered up a nearby tree, having done so numerous times in my childhood, and turned to help the girl. She was struggling to climb the tree and I saw three figures in the distance, all with dogs. The large dogs barked and pulled at their leashes towards up.

“Help me!” the girl cried. I grabbed at her hands and tugged. The girl stumbled but a dog caught her skirt. She shrieked in my ear and my grip loosened.

“Come on!” I hissed at her. “Just kick it!” The girl kicked wildly, managing to hit the dog’s nose, and it let go. I pulled her up and pushed her over the wall.

With a single glance at the guards racing us, I leapt over the wall.