“What do you do Maya? Can you walk me through it?”

All I needed to know was how she discovered his whereabouts. If I took her too far past that memory we’d meet the next box, where she saw her father at the whorehouse, and all the memories I’d locked away would shatter with that trigger, they were fragile already, too fragile.

“My mom doesn’t care, and if I don’t leave soon I’ll be late… Father always refuses to let me into his office, it’s always locked anyway, but I pick the lock… the men are gone and so is he. He’s always been paranoid about technology and my mom gets him an old school planner every year for Christmas. Maybe it’s in his office.”

“Good, Maya, what happens after you pick the lock?”

“It’s easy. Too easy.” Maya moved a bit on the bed, her arms coming up off the mattress as if she was walking. “His office is very bare, no computer, just file cabinets and a desk. His desk has a lock on the middle drawer. I pick that lock too. When the drawer opens, I see his planner.”

“Do you pick it up?”

“Yes.” Maya started trembling. “I pick it up and quickly find the date… it says he has an appointment at three in the afternoon.”

“Where Maya?” Unbelievable, her mental stability was astounding.

Maya didn’t answer.

“Maya? Where is he?”

“He’s…” Her eyes squeezed as if she was trying to repel the memory. “He’s…” Shit maybe I had locked the memory away too deep. “Seattle.” She shook her head back and forth. “No wait… there’s numbers… and underneath it, it says new construction… I remember him talking about office buildings he was putting up in Everett, down by the docks.”

“Well done Maya, is there an address with the numbers?”

“It’s…” Her breathing was starting to accelerate. “So, dark.”

“Not so fast Maya, remember you’re safe, you don’t need to visit that place... just tell me where it is.”

“So dark!” She writhed on the bed. “I go in, I shouldn’t go in, but I go in. What am I walking into? It looks abandoned, but I try the door anyway. It’s dark around me, I try the first door, the second, the third building and see my father’s Lexus, then the door opens. It smells funny.”

“Maya, let’s focus on your surroundings, do you notice anything different?”

“Fish.” Her teeth chattered. “It smells like fish, and there are docks behind us, construction, but nothing’s being built or maybe it’s just too late at night. I walk in the door—”

“Maya why don’t you take a step backward… don’t go in the door.”

“I have to!” She shouted. “I have to go in!”

“No.” I sat back down on the bed and gripped her arm, pressing firmly against the scars, hoping mentally her body will remember the physical pain that manifested last time she was under, and pull back, instead she tries to jerk away from me. “Please! Please let me go in. Something’s in there, someone’s hurt.”

My gut clenched.

“I need to help her! She’s screaming!”

Maya was too far gone. I quickly released my hand and tried to talk over her. “I’m going to snap my fingers twice, when I snap my fingers you’re going to wake up feeling rested and—”

Maya let out a blood curdling scream as her eyes flashed open.

“Shit!” I yelled, pinning her hands down. “Maya, focus, focus on my voice, I’m going to help you okay. I know it’s scary.”

“They’re children!” She yelled. “Children! I babysat them once, I—” Her body trembled as her eyes rolled in the back of her head.

“Maya!” I yelled sternly in her ear. “Two snaps of my fingers, and you’re safe, two snaps, ready?” I snapped my fingers twice to bring her out of the trance.

She immediately fell against me.

But didn’t wake up.

Fear crept down my spine. Had I broken her? Was it too much? Had I failed in trying to save her? Save us?

“Damn it.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re safe Maya, wake up.”

She blinked open her eyes. “Thirsty.”

“I’ll get you water. Just stay here.”

I rushed into the kitchen and filled a glass of water then hurried back. She was just sitting up, I handed her the glass

With shaking hands she sipped then handed the glass back to me. I went to put it on the dresser and accidently knocked over one of the white masks. Without thinking, I picked it up then locked eyes with Maya just as she let out a scream straight from the pit of hell.

One reserved for villains and monsters.

For people like me.

Who deserved it.

Love cannot be compelled—Russian Proverb

I COULDN’T STOP SCREAMING. THE SOUND coming from my mouth didn’t sound normal, I was losing my mind, because suddenly I had visions of Nikolai hurting me, of him… taking off his mask.

“Pleasure,” he whispered.

Nikolai held out his hands. “I can explain.”

“Explain?” My teeth chattered as I pulled the blanket around my body. “Explain what, you bastard? That you tortured me when I was sixteen! The masks…” I pointed at the masks lining the dresser. “You kept trophies of it? Are you going to kill me?”

Terrified and nauseated, I tried to scramble off the bed, but my feet tangled up in the blanket causing me to fall to my knees on the floor. My entire chest hurt with the effort to breathe. I had told him I loved him! My captor! The person who’d… made me… forget.

Everything.

It was too much, the memories, as if someone had unlocked Pandora’s Box, the pain in my skull so intense I was seeing double.

“Shh.” Nikolai held up his hands in surrender and kneeled next to me on the floor. “It’s normal to feel pain after the repressed memories come forward.”

“Don’t touch me!” I shrieked.

The scars on my forearms throbbed. How was that possible?

I scratched at them.

“No, no, Maya.” Nikolai gripped my hands. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you do that. Your brain is re-living the memories… and trying to manifest something in the present so that the pain makes sense. It won’t, and… you’ll end up killing yourself.”

He pinned my hands behind my back.

I squirmed against him and screamed as hot tears ran down my face. Escape. I had to escape. I had to get out.

The apartment was white, it had always been white. Everywhere was white.

The masks.

The couch.

Bile rose up in my throat.

Before I could react any more Nikolai reached into the top of the dresser and pulled out a syringe. I flailed against him harder, but he was too strong.

“Don’t! Please!” I sobbed uncontrollably. “Please! Nikolai if you love me at all you won’t hurt me!”

His dark eyes closed very briefly as he looked away and stabbed me with a needle directly in my arm and pushed the plunger.

My vision blurred. And it was weird, in that moment, I wasn’t afraid of what he would do to me. No, instead, my heart broke, because it meant he didn’t love me.

I was tied to the chair. He had cut me six times on each arm. I counted. The pain was horrible. He said pain was one of the only ways to quickly brainwash someone because mentally you didn’t think you could handle it, even though physically you could.

I asked him lots of questions.

He answered every single one.

“Why are you doing this?” I gasped as Nik made his final cut in my arm.

“You were in a tragic car accident” he said in a low voice. “Lucky to be alive, do you feel these cuts? They’re deep, from the glass in the windshield.”

“No.” I shook my head. “No, you did this! I didn’t mean to see it, okay? I’ll tell my father, if I just explain to him that I didn’t mean to.”