Teetering Domino

In life, one action leads to another and another. A single domino can topple a thousand. A seemingly insignificant ripple can encourage and cajole her brothers and sisters to join her in a dance that brings colossal waves to crash upon the shore and cause fatal devastation.

The causality in life is due to connection. Connection cannot be avoided, for if it is, the destructive nature of isolation is even more vile. The dark ingenuity of an isolated mind is truly evil. The hateful intent that finds the button to press or the lever to pull, absolute in the knowledge that a sequence of events have been initiated that will end in ruin and pain.

Such a mind was in play and responsible for the situation that Dan and Juliet found themselves in. A situation that was an unfolding puzzle. An escape room with scant clues, only the need to escape and the growing fear that something dire would befall them both.

Dan was the first to awaken. Only he was nowhere near wakefulness in those first moments. He felt awful. His head ached and his eyes and mouth felt gummy. As a result, his vision was blurred and his mind was attuned with that lack of clarity. 

As his senses returned to him, his gut communicated a terrible sick feeling, both real to the point of vomiting and something far more complex and important. A spiritual warning. A quick assessment of his state and his plight. A signal of danger that shocked him to the core.

Blinking away some of the gumminess and the fog before his eyes, he saw before him a steel bed with a bare mattress. The frame was solid even as it sported a rusty hue. The rust was surface level. A patina that denoted age. Beneath it, the bed was industrial. It made Dan think of Victorian mental asylums. More so as he took in the blue and white stripes of the stained mattress. The nature of the stains inspired another wave of nausea and so he shut his eyes to compose and centre himself.

As he sat huddled, he became aware of the cold and damp stone floor beneath him and the equally chilly and wet wall he was leant against. His mind provided him that input as he examined the image he’d been provided with, for the bed was occupied. He couldn’t see much of the occupant, but he knew who it was. He’d know his wife anywhere. 

He kept his eyes firmly shut and hoped for a sign of life. Something. Anything. His sudden awakening to this alien environment was shocking and his mind stuttered and juddered as he tried to find some sense and meaning in this confined room. The simple bed and the cold and damp spoke to him, if not of death, then of the eventuality of death. He shuddered at that prospect and that was when another piece of the puzzle was presented to him.

The bindings on his wrists and ankles were tight. Too tight. They cut into his flesh. He groaned as the pain made itself known to him, but the groan was not to do with the pain, it was the additional ingredient to a recipe that reduced his agency all the more. He tried to move. Testing his bindings, only to discover that his wrists were tied to a metal ring inset in the wall. His arms positioned behind him, making escape all the more unlikely. 

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. Lifting himself and extending his neck so that he felt a comical resemblance to a meerkat. What he would have done for a group of chums right now. The safety of numbers as opposed to his splendid isolation. 

As he strained upwards, he could see enough of Juliet to assess her state. He remained unsure about whether she was alive or dead, or were she to be alive, how close to death’s door she was. And yet he did not speak out. Too afraid to confirm his worries of her demise and too afraid of being heard by whoever had brought them both to this place, imprisoning and binding them. The conclusion to such an act was not going to be pretty. That Juliet was on the bed and Dan was on the floor in a subjugated position added another dimension to the cruelty of the trap that had been set.

Dan took a deep breath. He needed to focus and not allow his imagination to run away with all the dark possibilities. He looked upwards for inspiration and his eyes found the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. The ceiling was bare concrete. In the corners of the ceiling were patches of faded pale green paint. The colour spoke of an institution, the peeled back skin of the ceiling spoke of age and neglect. This place was abandoned and Dan could imagine that it was both isolated and forgotten. He could scream until he obliterated his lungs and no one would hear him apart from Juliet and his captor. 

The screams, and indeed any sound would likely rouse and anger whoever was behind all of this. At best it would entertain them. Dan then had an awful thought. Not captor. Captors. A group of people doing this for sport and entertainment. He had to rein in his imagination again, but his curiosity fought him. Needed to know who it was that would do this to them both. Both of them. That should narrow the culprits down, but then it was just as likely to be someone they didn’t know. That was how it worked with serial killers. Those sick bastards didn’t shit in their own backyard. No, they were model citizens, they stroked cats, helped little old ladies across the road and put their neighbour’s bins out. 

Dan shook his head and instantly regretted it. His head hurt like a bitch, and now it was throbbing. He gently pressed it against the stone wall and rolled his scalp until he felt a shooting pain and almost cried out with the pain of it. He’d either been hit on the head or banged his head in a subsequent fall. He hoped the would-be serial killer had been gentler with his wife.

He looked up towards Juliet again, ignoring the aches and throbs of pain as he did. She was in a partial state of undress. Her skirt ridden up to expose stocking tops and her blouse partially opened exposing her bra. Dan tried to cast his mind back to what she had been wearing the previous night, before awakening to this nightmare, but he could not reconcile her current outfit to the last memory he had of her.

Then he realised that he was making an assumption of time elapsed here, when he couldn’t quite cast his mind back to the point that preceded his being in this room. The initial fuzziness of his mind remained in this respect. All he had was a certainty of a time before now, but he had no way of knowing when or how that had ended, how long he’d been unconscious and how long he’d been here.

He closed his eyes and slumped in what he hoped was only temporary resignation. Unconsciousness silently slithered up towards him and took him unawares.

Juliet yawned silently. Stretching, she stopped short, eyes flicking wide in an instant. She pulled her arms several times as she tried to dispel the reality of her bonds. Squirming on the bed as she tried to free her legs. Then she stopped and looked towards the ceiling, her eyes drawn to the bare bulb, a yellow firefly seared upon her retina as she looked away again. She looked around her, seeing only the bed and the stone walls beyond.

“Where am I?” she asked the empty room. The absence of an answer was as chilling as the room itself.

She lay there worrying at her predicament. Wondering whether this was some sort of joke. If it was, then it was sick and she couldn’t think of anyone who would subject her to something like this in the name of humour. This certainly wasn’t something Dan would do. Only in her wildest fantasies would such a thing be happening to her. 

Her eyes went wide for a second time as she recalled the strange dreams she’d been having of late. Sporadic nocturnal visitations at first, but the frequency of them had increased to a point where they became the fabric of her day-to-day routine. A blemish on her skin that gave cause for concern initially, but was then rendered the norm. 

Juliet lay there and tried to summon those dreams now, but they were elusive to her, just as they always had been. It were as though she was drunk in the dreams themselves and her sober state in wakefulness divorced her from that world. Past recollections had been a series of feelings and those feelings had lingered. Her senses were heightened and she noticed more around her. Sex with Dan had improved, she quickly became aroused, responsive in a way she thought she might once have enjoyed, but that in itself may have been a myth. A fictional time before a wall of drab responsibility came crashing down upon her. Only, it didn’t crash. It was more like being suffocated under a pile of odd socks. That was where the odd socks went. They found you when you were distracted and smothered the life out of you.

Her thoughts of arousal dialled into something within her. She looked up at her wrists and something about her being tied to the bed resonated. A helpless state. Powerlessness. A mouse under a cat’s claw. There was danger here, but also the space for play. An intricate and pleasurable dalliance between sex and death.

She sighed and closed her eyes, giving herself over to feelings that mirrored those in her dreams. Unaware that this was exactly what she’d done when she was with Dan. Giving herself over to the pleasure in an attempt to recapture something that was occurring whilst she slept. Compelled to pursue something that tempted and teased her. The urge to do so increasing as she failed again and again to reach her quarry.

Her arousal was maddening, reaching a level that demanded a conclusion, but she was powerless to do anything to reach that ending.

“Fuck!” she gasped, then she smiled at the seemingly random expletive’s aptness.

“Juliet?”

She turned her head towards the source of the voice, but could not see her husband, “Dan?”

“Oh thank God!” said Dan, “are you OK?”

“Yes,” she replied, “yes I think so.”

“Can you move?” asked Dan.

Juliet frowned at the odd quality of the question, “I can, but I’m tied up.”

“Arms and legs?” asked Dan.

And Juliet had a sinking feeling, “yes,” she said with some resignation, “you too?”

Dan sighed, “I think they call it hog tied. To a metal ring.”

They fell into a silence as they considered their woeful reality.

Eventually Dan spoke again, “did he hurt you?”

Juliet took a moment to think about this.

Dan, desperate to know, asked again, more urgently, “did he hurt you, Jules?!”

“No! I’m OK,” she quickly fired back, “you said he?”

“Did I?” asked Dan.

Juliet didn’t answer.

“I suppose I did,” Dan supplied, “I just assumed. I mean, it’s got to be a him, hasn’t it? The person who did this.” He nearly added or them, but he didn’t want to panic Juliet with that prospect.

There was another silence within which two minds wandered to useless places as they explored the futility of their situation and the pending outcomes. Then Juliet laughed. A sound that did not belong in this room. Not here. Not like this.

“What is it?” asked Dan as calmly as he could, there was something disturbing about that laugh, as though Juliet was coming unstuck.

“I always wanted to be tied to the bed,” Juliet replied.

Dan’s face was a question, not just to the words, but the breathy way Juliet had said them. There was a familiarity to that voice of hers, but under that was an edge that Dan had dismissed of late. He’d welcomed her renewed appetite for sex, for him and the physicality of their relationship, but something about the nature of it, or rather Juliet, worried him. He hadn’t wanted to pick at it and he certainly didn’t want to put a dampener upon this development. It could only be good that intimacy had returned to their relationship. It just seemed that it wasn’t quite as intimate as it could have been. There was something lacking even as the shortfall of intimacy was addressed. Dan knew where his worries lay, but he would not go there, maybe could not.

“You’d like that would you?” Dan asked, the words catching in his throat. He realised that he’d like it too. He’d like it a lot. His imagination was already racing away to places far, far better than where he was now. A welcome escape, but then wasn’t it always a welcome escape? Another reason not to question it. Another reason to embrace it despite any misgivings. He’d worried about their sex life. The diminishment of it. Didn’t want to come home one day to discover that Juliet had gone looking elsewhere for what she wasn’t getting from him. Had even worried that he might not be capable of getting it up anymore. On that score he needn’t have worried. Right now, any cause of worry was being dispelled.

“I would,” her breath was heavy with lust now, and Dan craned his neck to see more of her. His desire building in accord with her want, “I’d prefer you to be tied up though. I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

Her words inflamed him. In his mind’s eye, he was there. On his back. Looking up at her and wanting her as much as he ever had. But she was holding back. Taking her time. Driving him wild. He was deprived of input. Even words eluded him. All he could do was look up at her imploringly and groan at the injustice of having to wait.

“I’d blindfold you,” Juliet added, “then I’d take my time with you. Make you squirm with anticipation. You wouldn’t know what was going to happen next. Or where.”

“Fuck,” gasped Dan, “I want you so much right now.”

And he did, everything in this room had changed. Overlaid with his desire for Juliet. The effect she was having on him was overwhelming.

On the bed, Juliet writhed and squirmed, almost losing herself to an urge that had been stalking her for some time now. Gritting her teeth, she fought it, there was something wrong here. Something so very off. And yet the way her body was moving. There was something almost hypnotic about it. A snake entwining with her and drawing her away to a place she had dreamt of but also feared.

No! She’d wanted to cry this out aloud. She’d wanted to break the building momentum of the dark spell. She’d wanted to warn Dan that something was happening to her. Something dark, taking over. The dreams. She had this awful feeling that they weren’t just dreams. Then she felt the prelude to those nocturnal wanderings. A part of the dream that she had never recalled. There was always pain before the pleasure. There was always…

She remembered running.

She remembered breaking free from a powerful embrace.

There was a recollection of her struggling…

…struggling always made it all the sweeter. The resistance against a power that threatened to consume.

And then she was looking at her hand. Her hand was above her face. No longer tied to the bed. She tugged at her other restraint and it snapped easily. Sitting up quickly, she pulled the bonds from her ankles as though they were candyfloss. 

“You’re free!” gasped Dan.

She was. She turned on the bed and looked down upon him, smiling a smile that was all hunger. The urge was too strong now. She was free. Free to do as she pleased.

Maybe she could have turned the tide. There might have been a chance for them, but as she untied Dan and helped him up, he gazed into her eyes and spoke, “I want you so much right now. Is that wrong?”

She shook her head, she wanted him too. She wanted him in a way she’d never wanted anyone. Then she smelt it and it was all over bar the shouting. Dan’s shouting.

“You’re hurt,” she said as she slipped fingers gently along his scalp and felt the blood upon them, “here, lay down and let me see.”

Dan did as he was bade, lying on his back on the filthy mattress.

“Let’s get you more comfortable first,” she breathed into his ear as she began undressing him. 

He looked up at her and smiled as she tended to him. His lust increasing as she climbed onto him, straddled him. Leaning over she turned his head, “here, let me see,” she breathed this into his ear, then her lips were brushing his neck where the blood had trickled. The taste of it taking Juliet to a place beyond reason.

Dan’s cries subsided soon enough. Then there was only pleasure. He was Juliet’s first. She hadn’t thought she’d ever succumb to the dark urge. It had only ever been a fancy and a thrill. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. There was no such thing as vampires. 

Later, she would think and feel the very same way, and continue in that denial of her dark nature until the overwhelming urge overcame her yet again.