Addition By Subtraction — Mr. Bedtime

Heads up, stupid! We need to talk.

It’s time we accept reality. You’ve been here in the basement for eighteen months, and there’s no exit in sight. We both wanted things to go another way, but it’s time to move on. This is life for you, for as long as you have it. Life for me too, I guess.

That wasn’t the plan, obviously. You were supposed to be a short-term thing, a quick snatch-and-sell I could use to finance my dream of filling this basement with girls way prettier than you. Not that I didn’t intend to have a little fun before handing you along to my guy in Dubai; I mean, I’m not going to the trouble of taking you and not use you, right?

But then you were just so goddamned good, and I— I just couldn’t stop.

It’s like, you know, that thing you used to do with your eyes when I was inside you? Where you’d stop blinking and just kinda focus on the ceiling while I did my business? It’s like you were somewhere else; somewhere safe and separate and numb. The first time you did that, I swear to you, I instantly started to cum… no shit, I felt my soul leave my body. I’m not sure why; maybe it just wanted to see where you’d gone, so it could follow and rape you there, too.

Every couple days, every time I got on top of you, there was something like that. Some weird little— I don’t know, like, a coping mechanism or something? Some new thing that your brain came up with to help you escape without ever leaving the room. It was like watching a magician playing tricks on herself; you hated me and my dick so much, you were willing to abandon your own body like a stalled car on the side of the road. It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen.

So naturally, you ruined it. Screwed it all up in less than six months, when I realized that cute little half-snort, half-sob thing you did while I choke-fucked you was actually the sound of you getting off. You’d finally given up and given in; your pride was breaking your body, so you decided your pride had to die. You… changed.

It was understandable, I guess, but I was still like, “What the fuck, cunt?” The gall of you. You fucking robbed me.

One minute I had it all: a hot little piece of ass on a chain that I could hollow out with nothing but a hard-on. The next, I’ve got you grabbing on to me when we fuck, pulling me deeper. You don’t cry and go blank anymore; like, sure, okay, you still cry a little, but I think that’s just the shame leaking out. Because even you know how disgusting you are now; shit, at this rate, you’re just a few weeks away from missing me when I’m not around. You’ve gone from being a captive sex-puppet in a scary dungeon to a pathetic live-in girlfriend who never gets out of bed and always smells like sex.

Fuck. That.

I was pissed at first, but I just said, “Okay, fine. The honeymoon’s over. Love doesn’t last. Blah blah blah. What next?” You were too blown out by that point for my high-end customers —I don’t think that left ear is ever going to look right again— and whatever you had that made you special to me was gone. So I decided, fuck it, let’s just ransom her ass back to her family. They’re not rich or anything, but I figured I could at least get ten grand out of them; not much, I know, but it’s tough to make good money selling something worthless.

Turns out, it’s not just tough; sometimes it’s fucking impossible.

You have no idea how hard I tried. I was methodical as hell; I started surveilling your family’s home, and broke in every few days to go through their shit and learn their patterns. Went through their checkbooks and credit card statements to figure out what kind of cash they could come up with in a hurry. Cloned your sister’s phone and took photos of all your parents’ sticky-note password reminders.

I should have known right then. It was all there in front of me.

You remember that time you were telling me all about your family so I would stop burning you with a curling iron? Y’know that suspicion you’ve always had that they looked at you as, like, a disappointment or a burden? Yeah, well, I think you were on to something with that one, sweetpea. You disappeared from their world a year-and-a-half ago, and today… I mean, objectively, they’re happy.

Your parents are selling the house… can you believe that? They’re about to close on the sale, and have already picked out a place in Florida to buy with the proceeds. Your old man retired early, and your mom gave up her afternoon vodka hobby. Your little sister is graduating next month, and according to her diary, lost her virginity to a boy who kisses her nose when she’s scared. I suppose losing you taught them the importance of living in the now, or some similar horseshit. Whatever, man… all I know is that their Facebook photos are full of smiles, and they don’t post about you anymore.

Don’t believe me? I can tell you don’t believe me, but I’m serious. I taped the first ransom note to your bedroom mirror, in plain sight of the open door; it took them seven weeks to find it. Seven motherfucking weeks. There’s a big manila envelope taped up in there, holding a letter demanding money along with a few sample photos of their missing daughter chained to a wall, and they can’t be bothered to notice for almost two months!

I was blown away, but I figured, what do I know about grief— other than how to cause it? I thought putting it in your old room would be poetic or creepy or something, reminding them of when you were a kid; I didn’t consider that they might actually avoid looking in there. But they finally found it, and that was the important thing… so I settled in and waited for them to either call my burner or call the cops.

They did neither. They did nothing. Not a goddamned thing.

I know, right? Insane. But true.

At that point I’m thinking, “Is this really happening? Are they really fucking ignoring me?” That’s when we had our day trip. You remember that? Probably not… I fed you enough oxy to keep you manageable, so you were in and out. Their schedules all said they were going out to dinner to celebrate, so I took you home, used their iPad to record you getting fucked on your parents’ bed, and left it plugged in and looping on your mom’s damp, sticky pillow. Then I went back the next week.

They’d thrown out the sheets. The iPad, too.

But they kept on packing.

And now it’s days later, and I just can’t stop wondering.

…

What— what the hell did you do to those people?