The last day of Gen's freedom was completely unremarkable. It was a day like any other.

Waking up with a smile from a heavy, languid sleep filled with good dreams, she enjoyed some brief, sleepy banter with her husband before their lips had met and they'd enjoyed each other for a time, hands caressing, lips tasting skin that had been tasted before, but never tired of.
With shared smiles, they both dressed and shared a breakfast with each other, Gen cooking for Cade as she enjoyed doing.

It had become a regular thing, this. Cooking for him, and where many may have seen it as something archaic, out of the handbook of the Stepford Wives, for her it was simply something that bought her joy.
Which was why, that day, she was heading off on a week-long cooking course that was aimed at budding chef's. It was something she'd dreamed about doing for years.

And her boss at The Hathian Taphouse, the bar where she worked, only encouraged her, giving her free reign to work in the kitchen whenever she chose, even allowing her to come up with a fresh new menu for the place to attract more custom.

Life was going well for her, though it hadn't always been this way. Born in New York, in the Upper East Side, to extremely wealthy parents, she enjoyed the best of what life had to offer, from a very young age.
But being the child of a white, Christian mother, and a very traditional Japanese father, was not easy.
Despite having a disposable income that most could only dream of, her entire life was meticulously planned out for her and not a single decision was hers to make.

Ballet lessons, violin lessons, cheer-leading practice, the stress of never being allowed to get less than a 4.0 on her grades...

"Sit up properly..", "knees together..", "you're not going out, dressed like that, put this on..", "he's not a suitable match. Marcia's son very eligible, i'll set up a date with his mother. You can wear the red dress i bought for you.."

On and on it went, constant criticisms, of the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she ate, even the way she sat, spoke, her weight, her appearance, what makeup she wore, how she styled her hair, nothing was ever good enough for her mother.
And if anything, her father was even worse.

He had a temper, and was very traditional in his views, he regarded his daughter as nothing more than something he owned, something that reflected himself and the family that he saw them to be. The wrong clothes, too much makeup, consorting with the wrong type of people, even using words he didn't like...all of it would cause him to yell at her about how she kept bringing shame to her family. Nothing was ever good enough for him either.
He wanted her to be the good, faithful daughter, silent, obedient and delicate. A mind of her own, the ability to make her own choices was something that she was not allowed to have.

She felt trapped. Invited to the best parties, hanging out with the rich and famous on almost a weekly basis, eating at the best restaurants, partying at the most exclusive clubs, wearing the most select designer fashions, despite all this, she felt like she was suffocating.
Around her thirteenth birthday, she started having panic attacks, would find herself on the floor of the bathroom stall, in some luxury club, crying and shaking, feeling unable to breathe and having no idea why.
She'd wake up shaking in the night and she started restricting her diet without even realizing it and by the time it became a problem, she was entirely numb to everything going on around her.

Her parents, of course, treated her mental health issues in the same way that they handled everything that was 'disappointing' in her behavior. Her father yelled at her, telling her that she was selfish, that she only thought of herself, that she was bringing shame to her family.
Her mother simply gave her the silent treatment and shipped her off to an exclusive 'spa' that supposedly doubled as a rehab center for the worlds elite, and told anyone who asked that her daughter had gone on a luxury vacation to Baha.

For all the money that the spa cost, you'd have thought they would have had the best doctors to treat her Anorexia. But after spending a month there, attending group therapy, art classes, nature walks, meditation & yoga classes and one-on-one therapy sessions, she was released back into the world with the same problems she'd entered there with.

With only one difference. Meeting other people in the same situations as her, as well as those in different situations made her realize that there was more to life than just the 'bubble' she lived in. There was a wider world out there, with people who weren't like her, her family, who were really cool, and nice, who didn't only see you as a bank, or something to show off.

She made a friend in there, Sara. They bonded over their shared love of Tolkien and they spent many an hour talking about the worlds that man had created, fantasizing about what it would be like to actually live in Middle Earth.
By the time she left, they were fast friends.
They both promised to keep in contact but as is the way sometimes, they rarely did and they never saw each other again.

But armed with a new outlook on life, a stronger attitude, she began to live her life again, in a whole new way, acting exactly how her parents desired, while basically doing whatever the fuck she wanted behind the scenes.
Her eating got better, she'd vowed to Sara that she wouldn't let these issues kill her and determined to keep her promise, she pulled herself through her eating disorder, actually finding a love for her own body, a comfort in her own skin within a couple of years.

By the time she was seventeen, she was a whole new girl. Confident, sassy, flirty and yet, kind, she managed to skim through the difficult life her parents kept her locked in, with the ease of a fish, while living a separate life, all of her own, in the background.

Sneaking out of parties she was sent to, getting her socialite friends to lie for her, she would spend hours just walking the city streets at night, taking in the atmosphere and the people, which could have been dangerous, but never was for her. She began to make friends outside of her penthouse bubble.

The old guy on the corner who always bought a six-pack on Friday nights, who let her indulge in his cigarette every time she came around, the bum that she always bought a coffee for whenever she passed his alleyway, the bunch of school-kids who popped gum and played skipping games on the sidewalk.

Eventually, she got in with a group of older teens who liked hanging out at the skate-park, girls who taught her how to street-dance, boys who taught her how to shoot hoops. She was a fascination for them at first, a source of ridicule, them coming from an entirely different world to her, but one-by-one, she won them over with her wit and charm and in the six months that she spent with them, she learned the true worth of freedom.

They were a wild bunch, though, and she began to adopt a similar attitude, becoming wild herself, which led to underage drinking, pill-popping, sexual experimentation, shoplifting, stealing for kicks, and general rabble-rousing.
Her parents began to despair of her wild ways, disapproving of the change in her attitude, her clothes, her hair, the nose piercing she got, the people she openly began to hang out with.

More than once, they threatened to cut her off, though she didn't care, and she started using the money they did give her for random acts of kindness, giving much of her allowance to charities, or to the homeless that she found on the streets.
Helping people, making someone else's day a little bit better became important to her, and she started to see how fake and abhorrent the rich world she lived in really was.
Many a time, she'd give away food left to rot at exclusive events, to those who needed it, she'd trade in her clothes for cash and buy the homeless she'd befriended, new clothes, or food and blankets to sustain them through the cold New York winters.

Then the day came that everything changed. She'd had an argument with her father that day, after finding out that he'd promised her in marriage to a business associate for a large share in their company stocks.
Running off and getting drunk in a gay bar seemed like the best idea at the time. Hooking up with a girl that night, she took the girl home to introduce her to her parents.
She had no idea what she was hoping for, but her parents didn't disappoint and they finally cut her off, throwing her out and declaring that they didn't want to see her again until she'd 'seen the light' or until she agreed to marry the businessman her father had promised her to.

Crashing on their couch, the crew taught her everything, from how to pay bills, to how to get a job, to how to jiggle the door just right so that it wouldn't jam, and how to get the AC to work in the summer (just give it a bang). She spent a year living with them, her one-night-stand with the girl she took home fading into nothing but mutual friendship and the day came when she decided that it was time to forge a life of her own.

Which she did. She set out, taking jobs wherever she could, moving from place to place, making friends, having the time of her life, and finding her niche in bar-tending, a job she came to love with a passion.
And that's how she came to be in Hathian.

She hadn't expected to meet the love of her life here. She'd never really let anyone get close to her, romantically. Being a bartender, she'd seen the fallout when shit went wrong and there was no way she wanted that for herself. So she kept everyone at arms length. Great sex was enough for her.

But after almost puking on some random guys feet in Lou's, one night when she was completely drunk as a skunk, she found herself with a growing friendship, and a really sweet, funny, romantic, warm, generous guy who went out of his way to protect her and make her feel good about herself. She hadn't wanted to fall for him, and in fact she told him not to fall for her. She resisted his every attempt to kiss her, to tie her down and yet...one night of flirty banter changed the whole scope of their friendship and banter soon became heated passion on a grubby old couch in a tiny apartment.

That didn't mean things were perfect from that day on, not at all. They had their fights. They bitched and argued and yelled at each other. He cried, and she cried and slammed doors and ran from him whenever things got too intense. And yet he was always there when she came back, wrapping her up in those arms of his, kissing and soothing away her fears and her tears.

When she was stalked by a woman she'd met in the bar where she worked, he was there. When the same woman tried to come between them, spinning lies about him, he was there. When she kidnapped Gen and held her for two days, repeatedly forcing herself on her, and beating her when she wouldn't give in to her, he was there to nurse her back to health, both mentally and physically.
When she became suicidal and tried to take her own life, he was there.
When she was attacked at the diner where she worked, being beaten and locked in the walk-in freezer, he was there.
When she was attacked by some random woman near the beach, who cut her open and stole a kidney, who then sliced her throat when she started to become conscious again, he was there.
When her teen Anorexia developed into a very real problem again, becoming so bad that it put her in hospital after a seizure, with her weighing less than she had as a teenager, he was there.

And she did the same for him.

When he had no place to go, was practically homeless, sleeping on the streets, she was there, giving him somewhere to lay his head.
When he was attacked and belittled for being trans, by another cop, she was there to reassure and comfort him.
When he was kidnapped by a gang, held for days, abused and injected with drugs, almost developing a drug addiction from the trauma from that event, she was there to help him through it.
For every promotion he received, moving up through the ranks of the HPD, she was there to give encouragement and praise.
For every nightmare he had, every-time the gangs hit back, targeting him for whatever they perceived he'd done to them that warranted revenge, she was there.
To soothe his aches and pains, to comfort and reassure, to coax and rebuild him, help him to stand when he couldn't raise his own head.

He encouraged her to pursue her dreams, and she did the same. They spent two years, laughing and loving, arguing and making up again, each taking turns to support the other when it was needed, being there for each other in the bad times and the good, and realizing that neither of them ever wanted to be apart from the other, they got married, a mere four months after they'd met, in a courtroom, just them and an old couple they'd pulled off the street.

Later on, they threw a giant party, complete with all they should have had before, the white dress, the food, the flowers, choosing a friend to be the one to marry them. It was the best day, and she could never remember a time when she was happier.
Their life, it wasn't perfect, but it was damn near close.

She fell in love. Hopelessly, desperately, passionately in love. She'd never felt anything like it before. The connection between them was strong, and passion was never something they lacked at all, the sex they had being the best she'd ever experienced.

It was enough for her, he was enough for her. She never wanted anyone else.
But he did. And a brief tete-a-tete with another woman almost broke up their marriage about a year ago. It was a really hard time for her. And for him too. And for a while, it looked like their story might end.
In the end she did the only thing she could do, she told him that he had to make a choice. If he wanted the other woman, then he could have her, and she would bow out gracefully and let him be happy with her, if that's what he wanted. Or he could choose her, and the marriage vows they'd made to each other, the life they'd talked of, of growing old together, having kids, forging a life together.

He chose the latter, and after making him understand that she couldn't, wouldn't, be able to move on from what he'd done with the other woman continuing to be in his life, he cut her off. It wasn't easy to rebuild the trust again, it took work from both of them, but after a while things returned to the easy, fun banter that had always existed between them. They found their happiness again, and began to plan having children together.

And then the day came that changed everything.

Packing a small luggage case, after enjoying a sexy session with Cade, as well as breakfast, she kissed him for the last time and headed out, walking the short way to the bus stop.
She never made it there.
No one knows what happened to her. She simply vanished, no sign or sight of her anywhere to be found. Calls and texts to her phone went unanswered, then would have failed to connect after two months of her being missing.

I cannot say how her disappearance affected her husband, that is his story to tell.

This is hers.

The first day of her new life, it was the sound of a dripping tap that woke her up. Groggily opening her eyes, the first thing that came to her was confusion. She had no idea where she was, or who had taken her, but having been kidnapped before, and having experienced Cade being taken before thanks to his work as a police officer, she knew the signs and was instantly afraid.

At this point in her life, at the age of twenty-three, she was a confident, independent, happily married woman. Strong-willed, even stubborn and hard-headed, she wasn't afraid to fight her own corner or stand up for herself or for what she believed in. She still had a kind heart though, even if she could be petty, selfish and even preachy at times. But she was only human. And the prospect of what might happen to her in this...wait, where even was she?

It was the clinking of metal against metal that first alerted her to the fact that she was chained up. Lifting her hands, she tugged at the thick, metal collar that had been placed around her neck, the collar bolted to a chain, and following the chain with her hands, she found that it, in turn, was bolted to the foot of a bed. "H...hello?"

Her voice sounded loud in the dark. And it was dark. The kind of dark where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. And the smell. There was such an over-powering smell of...was that potpourri? Or rose petals or something? But there was another smell, something faint. She couldn't place it, but the overwhelming scents made her feel instantly nauseous.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

Her voice was brittle as she spoke, the fear in her voice as clear as day, and she steeled herself against her own imagination. She realized, in that moment, that she did not like the dark. Anything could be lurking in it, hell...something could be right next to her and she wouldn't know it.

She froze at that thought, ice flooding her veins and she began to shake, her chest rising and falling with fast breaths as she tried to calm herself down. It was fine, she was fine. She had all her limbs, she wasn't buried alive...was she? She didn't feel injured, though her head hurt a little.
Wait, why did her head hurt?

The last thing she remembered she was walking along the side of the road, heading to the bus stop and then a car had pulled up alongside her. Had it been following her? She had no idea, but she'd glanced towards the driver, assuming he wanted directions or something.
Next thing she knew, someone had gotten out and had come at her fast. Way too fast. Screaming out, struggling for her life, a black hood had been pulled over her head and she'd been restrained and bundled into the car, before everything suddenly went black.

Now she was here.
But where even was that?

It felt like forever until someone finally came, a trapdoor opening above her, in the roof of the room she was in, and after what was only a few hours but to her felt like an eternity, she blinked in the harsh light, lifting a hand to shield her eyes. A ladder was dropped down and a dark figure came into the room, the only light in the room, a single, uncovered bulb in the ceiling glaring brightly, hurting her brown eyes.

It took a second or two for her eyes to adjust and then she blinked rapidly at a man with grey hair standing in front of her, just staring at her, seeming to study her. "What's your name?" he'd asked her.
She'd taken a moment to look round the room, leaving his question unanswered, which was a 15x15ft square space. Now she understood what that faint smell was, that she couldn't place. Dead body after dead body, too many of them to count lined the walls like cord-wood. All in various stages of decay. Horror flooded her at the sight, and her heart began to pound in her chest as she realized that whoever's basement she was in...they were well versed in killing people.

"If you don't want to end up like them, then you'll tell me what your name is, girl..." the man had said and she'd looked back at him, her eyes widening. "I...I'm..." she trailed off, blinking, her mind trying to restart itself and rid itself of the shock that was currently affecting it. It didn't take long.
That feisty side of her reared it's head after a moment and she frowned, chin lifting defiantly as she muttered "I'm not telling you shit. But you'll tell me why I've been bought here!"
She wasn't really in a position to be demanding anything but when had that ever stopped her?

She'd earned a back-hander for her troubles, one so hard that it had made her ears ring and spitting "fuck you!" at her captor, she'd received the first of many savage beatings that night. By the time he was done, she lay on the cold, concrete floor, bleeding and battered, hurting in so many places that she couldn't pick which hurt the most, a 1ft layer of potpourri ringing the 90's style bed that sat in the center of the room, the bed to which the chain and collar around her neck was bolted to.

"You will learn to keep a respectful tongue in your mouth, bitch. Or i will cut it out.." he'd snarled at her. And with that he'd left her, climbing back out of the trapdoor, the light clicking off, plunging her back into darkness again.
She didn't see him for another two days, though it felt like longer for her. She'd stayed on that floor for most of it, until she felt like she could actually move, pretty sure as she did that she had at least one broken rib.

Crying herself to sleep that night, she prayed. Not to any God, but to her husband, with hopes that he would find her and bring her back home to him.
That was how much faith she had in him. He was her hero, which was how he'd earned himself the nickname 'Superman'.
He would search for her, she knew. He wouldn't rest until she'd been found and soon, one day soon, he would come tearing through that door, with a team of officers, and he'd sweep her up into his arms, and hold her close, and take her back to their beautiful house, to that bed that they'd made love in, so many times before. He would soothe and nurse her back to health, and she'd be fine. Life would go on as normal.

Except that it didn't. He didn't come for her. And she didn't get to go home.

And as the days progressed, her captor visited her regularly. The second time he came, he had more questions. And she had more rebuttals, more insults for him at the ready. She was a cops wife, she knew the value in that, and she wasn't about to betray her husband, nor their life together, or give away any kind of information that could have been used against him or the HPD, to save her own skin. She was tougher than that, she could take anything he threw at her.
Or so she thought.

She took beating, after beating, after beating. Always, she cried herself to sleep afterwards, in the darkness, praying to all that was holy, to bring her husband to her, help him to find her.
But God gave up on Hathian a long time ago, and her prayers fell on deaf ears.
For the next two months, she spent day after day, being beaten savagely, refusing to give up a thing. But then she was stripped naked, her clothing torn from her body, her jewelry and piercings taken from her, including her beautiful engagement and wedding rings.
And sometimes, he'd go a step further, and actually torture her, with bamboo spikes pushed under her fingernails, a baseball bat to the soles of her feet, cigarette burns on her smooth skin, the tip of a knife to the face, which left her with a permanent scar, along with other 'fun' torture sessions. And slowly, she began to break.

It was too much. The pain was too much. The worry and fear was too much. The slowly dwindling loss of hope was too much. And there were times she'd scream for him to stop, sobbing as she told him what he wanted to know. He seemed especially interested when he found out who she was and though she fought not to divulge any state secrets, through torture, he learned who she was married to, where she worked, even where she lived, which was a secret her and Cade had guarded closely for a long time.

She hated herself for that little slip-up.
Knowing she might have put him in danger filled her with guilt and the man seemed to delight in it, playing on it as he forced her to talk more about her life, about things she knew, about desires she had, about everything and nothing, the threat of hurting her husband, if she didn't comply, now used against her.
And she told him all he wanted to know. God, forgive her but she did. To save him. To keep him safe. The man she loved.
She would have taken a bullet to the heart for him, if the situation had called for it. There was nothing she wouldn't do, no law she wouldn't break, no person she wouldn't murder in cold blood for him. That was the depth of her feeling for him.

And yet, why was he not coming for her? Why had he not found her? These thoughts plagued her as she lay in the dark, on that bed in the center of 'the dead room' as she took to calling it.

The torture sessions took a slightly different turn after he found out her name, who she was married to. Now, after he tortured or beat her, sometimes even before, he'd force himself on her sexually, violating her roughly, regularly making her bleed from the savagery of his attentions.
She hated every minute of it. The feel of another mans hands on her body, touching, pinching, squeezing, the feel of his hot breath on her neck, his tongue in her ear, his cock inside her..it made her skin crawl.
Her body belonged to one person, and it wasn't her captor.
And yet, he continued to rape her, in every orifice she had, seeming to find pleasure in the taking of Cade Morgans wife, seeming to find pleasure in her discomfort and her disgust.
Even the blood seemed to excite him and every time he saw her he would make her bleed in some way or another, most of the time to the tune of Foreigners 'I Wanna Know What Love Is', which he played nearly every time he visited her, in the background.

By the time he gave her three new captives as room-mates, a month in, she was pregnant. She'd been on the contraceptive pill, but having been without it now, her fertility window becoming spotty again, she easily fell pregnant, but neither captor nor victim realized until much later.

The three new captives that shared her room were much older than her. In their forties, the two men, and one woman were chained and bolted to the walls and floor, with metal collars round their necks, same as her, and left to rot.
They looked like they'd seen better days.
Left alone in the darkness together, they seemed to take an interest in her over the next few weeks, coaxing her to tell them who she was, why she was here, as she lay in her listless misery on the bed.
At first, she didn't speak to them, even when they told her that their names were Bill, Barbara and Joseph Harper. Bill & Barb were married, Joseph being Bill's brother. They didn't tell her any more than that, and she found herself unable to rise out of her own depression and unhappiness to ask them more about themselves.

They'd been unable to do anything but watch as her captor continued to savagely beat her regularly, taking full possession of her body on an almost every-other-day basis, in fact the two men seemed to enjoy the show, though Gen barely noticed, her head pushed forcefully into the bed most of the time, or shoved under a pillow to stifle her cries, which bounced off the walls of the cold room.
But slowly, they'd managed to rouse her after a few weeks, giving her something else to focus on besides pain, fear and worry, and she'd begun talking to them, telling tales of her life on 'The Outside', talking about her husband, and their life together, her work, and her dream of owning her own bar or restaurant one day. They seemed receptive. They'd seemed nice, though the woman was a little quieter than the men.

Honestly, the farts, snoring and toilet behaviors should have killed her alone, but somehow they managed to reach something uneasily akin to friendship, their experience of living in this dark hole becoming something of a warped bonding experience.
Until her desperation for escape ruined it all.

They'd been talking to her for weeks now, trying to hatch a plan, all together, to escape this blasted dungeon. Gen had begun to realize that this might be the only way she'd find freedom again.
She had no idea why it was taking so long for Cade to find her, but she couldn't rely on him anymore to save her, she had to fight for her own life and save herself. He probably didn't know where she was. No one had seen her get taken, or she didn't think so at least, so there might be nothing to find of her. And if that was the case...fuck.

In desperation, she'd slid off the bed, her chain longer than the other captives, and she'd crawled over to Bill, trying to use her own fingers to work the bolt that kept the chain tethered to his collar, out of the floor. It had to be screwed in right? So if she could just manage to unscrew it..then he could help do the same with Joseph and his wife. Bent on all fours, in the pitch black, focused solely on getting out of that black pit, she hadn't noticed him shuffling around beside her, only his hands on her body tearing her attention away from the bolt that refused to be unscrewed.
She'd asked him what the hell he was doing, had yelled at him as he'd grabbed at her breasts and she'd kicked out at him only to find another pair of hands grabbing her hair and one of her arms.
Held down by Joseph, she'd been viciously raped by Bill, the man ignoring her screams, her protests and her tears. And when he was done, it had been Joseph's turn. She lost count of how many hours the two had raped her, Bill forcing his flaccid cum-covered cock into her mouth as she was being raped by his brother, only to get hard again, and take another turn when his brother was done, the two switching positions, before finally, they both took her at the same time.

This was something she'd always fantasized about over the years, enjoying two men at once, but it didn't live up to the hype. Not with Bill and Joseph anyway, the two older, fat men, who stank of body odor and piss grossly violating her until finally they were sated, flopping back to their places on the floor, leaving her in a sweaty heap.
Somehow, hours later, she'd found her way back to the bed again, and there she'd stayed, refusing to talk to the others anymore, refusing to venture off the bed lest they take her again.
That didn't mean they left her alone though, and she had to endure hours upon hours, days upon days, months of the two whispering disgusting things to her, catcalling and recounting what they wanted to do to her, before Barbara would eventually snap at them both to shut the fuck up and let her sleep.

Now, she really did begin to lose hope, and with no more tears left to cry, she'd lie in the darkness on the bed for an eternity, eyes open, just staring into the abyss.
And the abyss began to stare back into her.
Her captor continued to visit her, continued to bring food and water for them to eat and drink every couple of days, just enough to sustain their lives, but never enough to give them strength enough to fight him.

With nothing left to give him in the way of information, his visits began to take on a slightly different turn. The beatings, torture and violations continued, but now he started to drug her sometimes. With drugs that made her physically horny and sensitive, with hallucinogenics, and when he fucked her now, he started to call her Kristina or Kris.

"You know i love you, Kristina.."
"i'm the only one that cares about you.."
"no one loves you like i do.."
"tell me you love me, Kristina.."
"i'm only trying to look after you, guide you and teach you, Kristina, why do you make it so hard for me..why do you make me hurt you..."

Whenever she would tell him that her name was Gen, not Kristina, he would beat her.

He'd also tell her, when she was in that drugged-up haze, that her husband, Cade, had told him where to find her. He'd tell her, over and over again, that Cade had a new girl now, that he'd forgotten all about her, that he wasn't even looking for her, that he'd given her to Camden, as a trade for his own life.
She hadn't wanted to believe it, and she'd spent many a night crying and stewing over the things he was telling her but she was so weak now, in mind, body and spirit, and after god knows how long in captivity, seeing no sign of Cade coming to rescue her, she began to wonder.
He kept telling her these things, day after day after day, and slowly, she began to hate her former husband

After a few more weeks, he began to whisper stories in her ear as he fucked her, when he filled her bloodstream with hallucinogenic drugs, stories about how her name was Kris, about how she was a blond whore that was born and raised in Hathian, a girl who's mother had sold her for a six-pack and a fix.
He'd tell her that he'd taken her in out of the kindness of his own heart, that he'd taken care of her for all 'these years', that she should be grateful for all he gave her.
Didn't he love her like she wanted? Didn't he feed her, give her a bed of her own, a roof over her own head. Didn't he make her feel good? Didn't he?

Using drugs and manipulation, he forced her body to respond to him, even when she didn't want it to, and over the next five months of savage beatings, violations, torture, and carefully considered brainwashing, she slowly began to believe the things he told her, her old life fading into nothing, inside her own mind.

Cade, her husband, was forgotten.
Her beautiful home, where Cade's younger brother lived, and the dog, Chester, they'd gotten together...forgotten.
Her job at the Taphouse, he charming boss, Jimmy and the dream she'd had of having her own business...forgotten.
Her friends, her coworkers, even her parents, became a distant memory, and her world became that 15x15 pitch black silent box, with three pissing and shitting room-mates, and her regular visitor, known only to her as 'The Sculptor'.

As he laid the groundwork of brain-washing down, she slowly began to lose her personality, as is common with the practice. Not just parts of it, but all of it. She became nothing more than a blank canvas for him to write on, an inhuman 'thing' that existed for his pleasure and nothing else.
She moved when he told her to, she sat or stood when he commanded, she ate like a dog from the metal bowl he threw on the floor, when he snapped his fingers, she spoke only when spoken to.

If he didn't decree it, she didn't do it.
As such, her muscles began to atrophy and she developed bed sores and stiff joints from laying in one position for so long.
Thanks to the meager amounts of food and water he gave her, she began to lose weight again, her lips becoming dry and cracked. Her breasts became a little saggy too as her weight plumeted, her bones starting to protrude at various points on her body and only the growing baby bump seemed to have any life in it at all.

She'd worked so hard to put back on all her weight after she'd recovered from Anorexia and now, her weight was fast approaching her teen weight again.
Covered in a thin layer of grime, sweat and dirt, her body became weaker.
He didn't seem to care that his behavior might endanger the pregnancy, instead he seemed to take delight in gloating that he'd managed to put a baby in her, her first child. "We'll always have that, Kristina.." a statement that might have made sense to Gen but for the girl she'd become, she had no idea what he meant by it.
Being in an almost zombie-like, listless state for most of the time now, she barely even registered the pregnancy, the only times she did being whenever the fetus kicked. And that grew less and less often by the day.

But her captivity had other effects too. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, so much so that any light that hit them now made stabbing pains echo through her skull, the light blinding her, and any loud sounds deafened and frightened her, making her head hurt within seconds.
She began to find it easier to crawl around, rather than stand up straight and walk, and where once she'd been a very vocal person, often having a war of words with people during an argument, now she became a complete specter of silence.

And there were darker forces at play too.
One day in the 'death room', she'd encountered something furry nuzzling up against her breast and freaked out at first she'd smacked it away. It came back a few nights later and she'd realised that it was a mouse. Or a rat. She couldn't tell in the dark, but it was pretty big for a mouse.
Aww, how cute! A friend to play with. She began to play with it when it came calling, stroking it and whispering soft words to it that made utterly no sense at all, the presence of the rodent bringing her at least some pleasure in the lonely hell that had become her home.
Until the day it had caught the scent of blood on her face after a pretty bad beating, and had attempted to take a chunk right out of her eyebrow.
Without even thinking about it, she'd ripped that fetid little rat off her face, which caused some of her skin to come off with it, and she'd snapped it's spine before the things could even squeak for help. With a look of hatred on her face, she had torn the rodent apart with her bare hands, a silent, cold rage building up within her that exploded and faded back into nothing, just as quick as it had erupted.
Dropping the rats mutilated body into the darkness, she'd sucked her fingers free of blood, falling asleep with a tiny smile on her face.
The rat may have given her another scar, a line running through her eyebrow. But she had taken it's life. She didn't give it another thought.

Time echoed on and on, her captivity being almost eight months by now, though to her it felt like years that she'd been in that black pit. It felt to her, like she'd always been in the dark, like she'd been born in it, and would die in it. The outside world didn't exist to her anymore and she forgot all of what was outside the room she lived in.

The day the baby came, prematurely, at just over seven months, was the day she felt like she might actually die down here. The pain was nothing but a little backache at first, which was barely registered under all the other pains she had now. But then the pain began to get worse. In her belly. In her back. And she'd screamed holy murder as the labor pains increased to the point of excruciating, which only made her room-mates curse and spit at her to shut up, before her captor arrived.
Hearing her howls, he quickly climbed down and together they delivered a child within eight hours of labor, which her captor whisked away, the moment the cord was cut.
She never got to see or hold the child, didn't get told what sex the baby was, or even if it had survived.
She was simply left alone after the birth, and this time, her captor didn't come to her for four days.
She was lucky. There were no complications for her, which was a miracle considering the circumstances she lived in, and she delivered the placenta by herself, the thing shoved off the bed onto the floor when she was done.

He never spoke of the child to her, and she didn't have the energy or the mental capacity to ask and she had to suffer the pain of her milk drying up alone and without support.
The beatings and torture continued, when she was deemed to have misbehaved in some way, as did the druggings, the forced orgasms, the whispered confessions of love and the violations. Though now, he mostly took her anally or orally, seeming not to want a repeat of the pregnancy, just yet at least, whispering in her ear as he fucked her that she 'deserved a rest' after her hard work.

Lying on the filth infested blanket on the bed, her withered body appearing the same as it had while in the deepest throes of her Anorexia, her ribcage, hip and shoulder bones and spine protruding out of her skin, her lifeless brown eyes ringed by dark purple shadows, cheekbones jutting, her once smooth, flawless skin marred by filth, scars, sores and bruising, lips dry and cracked, she stared into the abyss.
And the abyss swallowed her whole.

She could barely even move anymore. And he seemed to come to her less and less. But then, an attractive figure she was not, anymore. Honestly, picture a female Gollum and you might have the right idea of what kind of creature she'd become.

And then came a day that was completely unremarkable. It was a day like any other, just as the day she'd disappeared had been.
He came to her, yanking her upright and dragging her to the head of the bed, bending her over it, he proceeded to dye her hair. She didn't know why he was doing this. She didn't ask. She didn't speak at all any more. Once her hair was rinsed and dried, brushed straight, he laid out a long, white dress for her on the bed "look at that, isn't it beautiful?" he'd asked her.
Gen would have thought that it was tacky. It certainly wasn't the most classy of wedding dresses, but she didn't question it, and he didn't wait for an answer from her. He simply sat her up and manhandled her into the dress, clipping a pair of gaudy heavy earrings onto her ears, an equally gaudy ring shoved onto her ring finger, and a pair of satin white heels fastened onto her feet.

This would be the first day that she'd left the 'death room' in almost nine months. Unlocking the collar around her neck, he lifted her in his arms, making his way carefully up the ladder with her, which wasn't difficult as she weighed almost nothing. She gave no reaction, said nothing and did nothing beyond turning her face into his neck to shield her eyes from the light. She no longer cared if she lived or died, she no longer cared what happened to her anymore. It couldn't be worse than what she'd already endured.
Laying her down in a large green box that had already been opened by him, folding her legs up since the box was smaller than her, he stared down at her, smirking coldly.

"Today is going to be the best day of your life. I'm going to give you everything that you've ever wanted.." he said, and he'd bend, picking something up, shoving a bouqet of plastic, white roses into her hand. "Don't move, and don't fucking make a sound. Or i'll slit your throat and put you on the wall.." he threatened.
He didn't have to. She didn't have the energy to move, even if she wanted to. Watching him close the lid of the box, she closed her eyes and waited to die.