Waking myself up, my neck was painfully bowed down. My neck felt like it had been stuck in this position for hours. While raising it up, the muscles were too tight so I kept stretching it. Oscillating motions helped ease the tension and my neck felt so much better.
The environment smells like soil and grass. My eyes could barely pick up any color. They're still blurry and exhaustingly dry. I kept blinking hoping that my aching sockets would not fail me.
I was surrounded by doors. Glass and metal. Was I going to be some kind of human experiment? The setting looks like a laboratory.
I looked around but no soul was in sight. Thinking that I was going to leap to freedom, a few centimeters off the steel chair, I was pulled back. I looked down at my hands and feet. My hands were chained to the floor and so were my ankles.
It looked like I was going to be executed the medieval style.
In front of me, there was a metal door. It opens as a woman comes through strutting a catwalk.
"Please, help me," I beg to try to bring moisture back in my eyes. I glance at the figure once more. The woman was tall, lean, and out of focus.
She slid her hand down my chin and lifts up my head with her index finger.
"Did you miss me?" She asks. That tone sounds discreetly familiar it's almost annoying.
"What?" I ask lowly staring into her glowing half green-blue eyes. Nora smiles at me like she had an act of sweet revenge for me.
What? No way!
"I wanna talk," she said. "I got a few confessions I need to get off my chest." She keeps sliding her fingers on the corners of my face. It was like watching a surgeon analyze my structural features before my flaws were marked.
"Let me guess—"
"Shut up." She commands. "I've got your poor little girlfriend here in the audience."
There was a glass door behind her but I couldn't see what was on the other side because the glass was blurred out. Nora opened them.
There was Jaide, badly beaten and bleeding from her face. She was being hanged by the arms like a fallen body hanging from a cross. She could barely mouth her words. She sounded broken. She was desperately asking Nora for mercy and set us free.
"I wish things weren't like this but you don't listen to me." Nora vocalizes while smiling.
"Nora, let her go!"
"I would but—"
"Let her go!"
"Mmm, no."
Jaide's low whimpers and cries annoyed Nora so much that Nora headed towards her and slapped her.
"What is so special about you?" Nora turned to me. "Why is he so obsessed with you? I want what you have." Her head turned to Jaide.
I looked up at her wondering in what term she's socializing about.
"What?" I say.
Nora's hand was wrapped around Jaide's neck. Jaide tries to warn her not to harm her while begging for freedom, screaming for help with her eyes closed. Mascara flows down her cheeks like mud flowing down a hill. Nora latches on to Jaide's hair. She takes a pair of scissors and goes in for a fierce cut.
"Nooo." Jaide cries out in disbelief. Nora is chopping off all of her long curls.
"You fucking pig. You fat ugly slut, I hate you." Nora screams to the top of her lungs. She looks at the strands of hair in her palm and smiles like she's won a medal. She was proud of herself for operating something so foolish. This is not the woman I grew up with.
"NORA, GET AWAY FROM HER!" I yelled hearing the echo of my voice bellow through the atmosphere.
"Oh, someone's upset." She mocks.
"LET HER GO OR SO HELP ME GOD," I scream looking for an escape rout out these huge silver chains.
"Shut up punk. You're weak. You couldn't hurt me if you wanted to." She rolls her eyes and nudges Jaide's head back and proceeds to cut more of her hair off.
"All right that's it!" I yell over Nora's screeching moans of excitement. She takes her hand out of Jaide's hair and looks at me with her head slightly tilted to the side.
She strode's towards me then bends down leisurely and looks me devilishly in the eyes. I never looked at Nora for this long and hard and it's making feel uncomfortable. The way she was staring at me
felt unbelievably real. I had no grasp of my own freedom. She took everything, even my trust.
"Damon, Damon, Damon."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I love you, Damon. You're not just my cousin, you are everything to me. When will you ever realize that I'm the one for you and nobody else." I looked at Nora with wide eyes. She strokes a finger along my jawline.
"What are you talking about?"
"I love you...Damon." She pushes her head in for a kiss. Immediately, I push back disgusted with her actions. She grabs my face and implants a soft kiss again. She does it passionately as I watch her. I bit her lip.
"What in the fuck did you just do?" I say in disgust.
"You are too beautiful, Damon. You always let other people get in the way of us. Don't you see? We are meant for each other. Why do you always push me away?"
At this point I was confused. My own cousin is attracted..to me.
"You're so fucking fine. I'm always thinking about you, Day. I'm always here for you. But for some reason, other people matter more than I do." She preaches while digging in what looks like a toolbox and exposed a sharped edged knife.
"You let these selfish girls break your heart every time. Yet, here I am, always there for you and your stupid ass emotions."
She slowly walks towards Jaide, joyfully playing with the tip of the knife. Nora leisurely bends down to meet her eye to eye. She smiles creepily at Jaide. All Jaide could do was cry and beg for mercy.
Nora puts her finger on Jaide's chin and stares at her in the eyes with hate and anger.
"What do you have that I don't?" She says lowly trying to sound more threatening than she already is.
"Nora, please stop." I implored loudly before she walks back to me. She stares in my eyes disgustingly like she wanted to throw me away somewhere I cannot be found. She giggles like a fucking psycho and slaps me.
"You make me painfully sick!" She insults. I don't understand where all of this is coming from. This hit me in the worst way possible. Nora was breaking my heart, confusing me, I don't know. My fucking cousin has gone mentally deranged.
"What's wrong with you?"
"No, Damon, what the fuck is wrong with you?" She pulls herself a chair and proceeds to take a seat in front of me. She's awkwardly close to my face that she's able to kiss me again if she wanted to. "Why her?"
I didn't have an answer. Is she seriously trying to make me explain to her why I'd rather not date my own family? What? At this point I'm mad.
She unbuttons her cardigan and strips herself until she's in her undergarments. She was fully clothed in lingerie this whole time. I turned my head the second she began to reveal herself in the first place. She forces me to look at her phone. I wanted to choke the shit out of Nora. She violated my privacy! She filmed Jaide and I getting aggressively intimate in my bedroom.
"Ohh," I said angrily. "You filmed that? You watched us the whole time?"
"Duh. Who else?" She turns her head with her hands on her hips. "Do you see how crazy you make her in bed?" she points at frail Jaide desperately praying to be set free. "I want to feel that. I want that here." She slowly points at her genitalia. She unbuttons her lingerie suit from the crotch area and sits on my lap.
I force myself to push her off but the way I was chained made it impossible for me to defend myself. I was fidgeting. I can't fucking get out!
Nora...
She kisses my neck as if she was truly my lover. In fact, she's doing it the way Jaide does. For the love of fucking God!
I wanted to push her so hard across the room with force. This is not what I want and she's going against my will.
"Get the fuck off!" I fidget again. Jaide's recorded moans playing in the background was infuriating so much to the point where I felt myself lose it emotionally. She points the knife at my throat and demands that I enjoy it or else she's going pick off my fingernails one by one with a plier. I dared her to. She did and held the plier in her hand.
She grinds her genitalia on my groin and starts role-playing as if we're actually together or something.
"Anything but that," Jaide discloses. "please, anything but that. I'll do what you want, please! Not this. Not in front of me."
"Please! Shut up," said Nora.
"Stop!" I bellow.
"You're one big kinky freak, Damon. You love aggressive sex. It gets you all hard and dominant. You say what you want and you get it in return. It's so sexy it turns—" I shut her ass up right away.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU'RE MY FUCKING COUSIN! IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! WE WILL NEVER HAPPEN OKAY SO LET ME GO!" I yell at the top of my lungs furiously. Nora slaps me again and stabs the knife in my thigh.
My eyes flooded with water and out came my tears I was desperately trying to hold back. The pressure of my blood coming out like a volcano was unbearable.
"You're one big bitch," she said. "You're ugly when you cry. SUCK IT UPPP!" She yells madly. "I didn't want to do that but you made me. You wouldn't cooperate."
"Go to hell!"
She frowned like a sad child. She pulled the knife out of my thigh with aggressive force.
She licked my blood in some kind of sacrificial way and smiled excitedly. I had known, at this moment, Nora was gone. Seriously gone! Spiritually gone. It shocked me, traumatized me. What the fuck was that?
Out of the blue, she collapsed to the ground screaming in pain. Jaide's head rises up, surprisingly, in a long time. Her Bambi's eyes look tired and lifeless, almost dead with no part of her humanity left to spare.
Nora got shot in the ankle which had her immobile for a moment before she started fighting the pain while trying to get back on her feet. I don't know where the shot came from. That shot just saved my life.
The shadow walks again, this time in front of me. A walking flesh appears and its Naza. She was badly beaten in the face. Her heel broke off and her clothes looked distressed and dirty. She looked like a zombie.
"What? No!" Nora pleaded. It seems she thought she had defeated Naz but Naz proved her otherwise. She held the gun to Nora's head, making sure the print of the barrel stayed there.
"Fuck you, you crazy bitch." She fired but the gun jammed. Nora's eyes went from wide to relieved.
I felt no sympathy for her injury. None. I was glad she shot her but I wish the gun didn't jam.
To my surprise, it wasn't Naza. It was from Audrey. My mouth widened. I thought she was Naza.
"Dré?" My voice was cracking badly.
She fired at me. I thought I was dead but it seems she had other plans. My chains loosened. She shot at the ground where the chains connected and helped set Jaide and I free.
"You two, go, " she said while balancing Jaide into my arms.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
"Don't worry about me. The exit is right there. Nazanin is there, hurry." While trying to help Jaide and my injured self, Audrey mumbled something.
"Damon, I'm sorry." She said.
"For what?" I ask.
"For everything. For this." She pointed her gun at Nora, who was fully up and was about to stab Audrey in the neck. Before Nora got a chance, I turned my head before the gun went off. I paused. Jaide screamed while hugging me for comfort.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
"I got you." she said. I don't know why I was so thankful to hear Audrey's voice.
Audrey starts to lead us out to safety. On our way out I spotted Nazanin telling us to quickly make it to the exit.
"We can make it, come on," said Audrey.
We huddled up the stairs like military men looking for shelter. By then it was already dark outside.
What just happened didn't even feel real. It felt like I had just come out of Saw film. Jaide kept crying in my arms wondering why someone would hurt her over me. Audrey and Nazanin were trying to hold Jaide and I on our feet while exiting the warehouse.
I don't even know how Audrey had the strength to walk. She looks disturbingly mistreated it was starting to scare me.
A car arrived on the road and came to a screeching halt. Kade pulled out his gun and walked his way towards us.
"I said to wait for me."
"Any longer we'd probably be dead." Nazanin said sarcastically. "I called the ambulance, they should be on their way."
"Okay, stay here." He said. He headed back to the warehouse to check on any suspicious behavior.
It was right then and there that I had remembered my best friend, my cousin, is deceased.