Free I Am The Wind by Sarah Masters

 
     
    Dedication:
    For all those souls who have suffered but broken through the barrier of mistrust to find they can indeed love and trust again.
     
     
     
    CHAPTER ONE
    The Beginning of the End
    T here’s only so much cock you can take up the arse in one day before it feels like your rim’s going to rip right along with your soul. Wanted cock, but not quite so often, and as for the soul… I thought Ted loved me in his own way. Turns out he really didn’t give a flying fuck.
    For now, my arsehole’s all right, but I’m not so sure about my soul.
    I’m here now, with Alfie, and Ted’s in the past. Shame he doesn’t stay there. You know how it is—the past remains in your head, doesn’t it, churning out memories every so often to let you know it’s still there. And Ted…I’m sure he’s watching me, documenting my every move. So if that’s the case, he should know I’m here, yet it’s been four weeks and no one’s arrived on a trusty white steed to rescue me.
    That knight in shining armour lark is all a load of bollocks anyway.
    I shouldn’t be here at Alfie’s, yet I want to be. I shouldn’t have gone out that night, yet I did. Hindsight and all that. They say it’s a wonderful thing, but most of the time it isn’t. Not really. It gnaws at you, taunts you, and what the fuck’s wonderful about that? What the fuck’s wonderful about being incarcerated by a man some would call a freak? What’s wonderful about me wanting to stay here?
    I don’t know. I just don’t sodding know. But it is wonderful.
    What I do know is when Alfie comes in here, all broad shoulders and rippling muscles beneath his T-shirt, I want him to fill my arse again. And that isn’t right, is it? To want someone who’s kept me locked up like this. It’s consensual locking up, but not.
    Odd to explain, that.
    Maybe I’m the freak. Maybe I’m the one who has something wrong with him.
    The other week, veins buzzing with too much alcohol, the need for picking up a bloke—any bloke—driving me out to the clubs, I spotted him as he lounged against a wall in The Mason’s Arms. When I think about it now, if he’s one of those mental abductor types and has yet to show it, he’d probably spotted me first, chosen me. At the time, my mind on one thing and one thing only, I’d not been in any state to think too clearly. Four years of failed relationships behind me, I’d decided no-strings fucks were the only way to go, and that night was just one of too many to count where I got spruced up in order to attract a bloke and get some attention.
    And we all need that, don’t we? Maybe that’s why I’m still sitting on this dirty concrete floor in his cellar or whatever fucking room I’m in. Maybe my need for a relationship—any relationship that’s more than a quick shag, a brief connection that leaves me colder than I’d been before—keeps me from trying to get away.
    I mean, who the hell would remain here by choice?
    A bare lightbulb gives off a measly glow in the centre of the ceiling, highlighting the old wooden beams directly surrounding the cream-coloured electrical cord. Spider webs, they’re everywhere up there, complete with fat, eight-legged buggers no doubt waiting for flies or whatever to get caught. Eaten. And I can’t help but liken it to my situation. I’m caught, Alfie the spider waiting for me to make the wrong move so he can eat me whole.
    Jesus.
    A hacksaw sits in the corner, the red handle indistinct in the shadows. But the blade, the bit of the machine that can cut off a man’s leg in no time shines, the edges the same as dolphin’s teeth, except they’re pointed. I wonder if he plans to use it on me, to be the weirdo people would undoubtedly say he is and hack off my limbs one by one, him watching me bleed to death. Would he bury or burn me after…well, after I’m gone? Or would he be like those killers you read about, who freeze the bodies or mummify them and keep them forever?
    I don’t sodding