Luke Delaney - The Keeper

‘Don’t struggle,’ he warned her, ‘you could hurt yourself. I’m taking you to your safe place now, but you’ll still be a little woozy because of the chloroform. You’ll have to let me help you walk, but first we need to get you out of this boot.’

Her eyes betrayed the horror she felt, the sheer disbelief that this could be happening to her. She struggled to recall the last thing she could remember before the darkness came, her mind awash with tentative images of being in her bedroom, being annoyed by someone unexpected calling at the front door … Then the nightmare overtook her, the feeling of being unable to move, unable to run from danger, followed by darkness and suffocation, confinement and the sensation of being buried alive. As his long, insect-like fingers reached for her, Deborah knew this nightmare was real. She felt his clammy hands touching her, one sliding under the back of her neck as the other coiled around her upper arm, gripping it tightly.

‘Sit up,’ he instructed, tugging roughly on her arm and neck, gritting his teeth with the effort. Instead of cooperating, she pushed against him, burrowing as deep as she could into the boot. He tightened his grip and pulled her, his face flitting between a thin, forced smile and a grimace of anger and effort. ‘No, no,’ he told her, ‘don’t do that. We have to get you out of here. It’s not safe. They might be watching us. I can’t do this on my own. I need you to help me.’ He tugged her again, making her cry out with pain, but ignoring her muffled pleas he carried on pulling until he had forced her to bend at the waist into a sitting position. ‘That’s it. Almost there now,’ he panted.

Her eyes left him, frantically searching for help or an opportunity to run or, if she had to, to fight back. But her vision was swimming in and out of focus, her mind and body too weak with shock and the remaining effects of the chloroform. She knew any attempt to escape or attack would be pointless.

Keeping one hand on her back, he used the other to scoop her legs one at a time over the rim of the boot. Then he perched beside her, one arm snaking around her waist while the other cradled her bound forearms.

‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘OK, let’s do this together.’ He pushed with his legs, thrusting them both to their feet, relieved she could support most of her own weight. ‘Good,’ he said, propelling her forward. ‘Now we need to walk.’

Stumbling and staggering, they crossed the uneven courtyard. Sweat was pouring off him from the effort of supporting her, and his breathing was heavy and erratic. The smell of his sweet almond breath drifting into her face made her gag behind the tape that covered her mouth. Deborah tried to draw fresh air in through her nose to calm the nausea and clear her head of the drug-induced fog, instinct telling her that whatever she could learn now, whatever she could remember seeing as he dragged her across this cluttered wasteland, could yet prove to be the difference between living or dying.

Finally they reached a red-brick building, no bigger than an outside toilet, but as he led her through the door she realized it was merely the entrance to some type of underground shelter left over from the last war, or in readiness for the next. He steered her down the stairs and she watched him from the corners of her eyes, her hatred for him burning in her heart. The desire to attack him, to scratch at his eyes, knee him in his genitals was overwhelming, but she knew she wasn’t yet strong enough and her bindings gave him too much of an advantage. She reassured herself that the time would come when they would face each other on more equal terms, and the thought of inflicting pain on him, of taking revenge, helped to quell the fear that could so easily have incapacitated her.

‘Almost there,’ he reassured her, as they stepped off the last stair together.

Deborah could see the outline of the cage he was leading her to, the cage she knew would be her prison. She wanted to survive. On the most basic animal level she wanted to survive, and her instincts screamed at her not to go into the cage, warning her the cage was death.

She spun away from him and for a few confused seconds she was free, moving back towards the stairs. But her foot became entangled in an old screen and she toppled backwards, landing heavily on the unyielding stone floor, her hip bearing the brunt of the fall. Her eyes closed as she winced in pain, opening a second later as she remembered her perilous situation, searching frantically in the gloom for the madman she knew would come for her. It was then she saw it: another cage. Definitely not the one she was being led to but another cage, with someone inside it, cowering in the corner staring at her, eyes impossibly wide as they connected with hers in the twilight of the cellar.

She reached for the tape over her mouth and found its corner, ripping it away painfully, filling her lungs until they could expand no more in readiness to scream — not in pain, but in desperation, in fear that she would never awake from this nightmare. In the moment just before the scream was about to escape her mouth she was sure she could smell and taste perfume in the room, only for the unexpected pleasure to be replaced by the clinical smell of chloroform and the sensation of suffocating as damp material was pressed over her open mouth and nose. Her bound hands clutched at the unseen hands, clawing at them in an effort to pull them from her face so she could breathe air and not chemicals, but as the effects of the chloroform swept over her the kicking of her bare feet became nothing more than a slight twitching, her clawing fingers weakened, until finally she fell still, arms falling to her sides as her chest rose and fell gently.

When he felt her stillness he threw the chloroform-soaked pad to the far wall of the cellar. The effects of being so close to the escaping fumes had begun to make him feel a little dizzy and disorientated. He turned his face away from hers to avoid breathing the residual fumes coming from her skin and the inside of her mouth as she lay in his lap, mouth hanging wide open. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog, giving himself time to rest and regain his breath, readying himself for the tasks ahead. Her flawless, slightly olive skin, her short brown hair — shiny and straight, a few locks now fallen across her face — and her soft, wet red lips were enticing. He felt his groin tightening as the testicles swelled and twisted in his scrotum, telling him he needed to move her before the bad thoughts beat the real him away and took control of his actions.

Gently he cradled her head in his hands as he slipped her from his lap, positioning her head carefully on the hard floor, making sure it was pointing towards the cage before scuttling around so he could slide his hands under her armpits and drag her slowly across the room to the place where he knew she would be safe. Her body was now an uncooperative dead weight and he had difficulty manoeuvring her through the narrow entrance. Beads of sweat were forming under his hairline and down his spine, and once inside the cage it became even more difficult to move, but at last he managed to manoeuvre her into position on the mattress he’d prepared for her, arms by her side, legs together, slightly bent.

His unblinking eyes moved backward and forwards across her body, excitement and desire returning in waves that threatened to swamp his intentions to worship her tenderly until she decided it was right for them to be together in that way. He tried to fight the urge, clenching his fists tightly until he felt his nails cutting into his palms. He began to fumble at the small buttons that ran the full length of the front of her nurse’s uniform, each one taking an age to unfasten, his sweaty hands making his task increasingly difficult as the anger stirred in his guts, flooding his body with adrenalin and testosterone. As the uniform began to fall open he could see her soft, warm skin, her pretty small breasts held closely together by a simple white lace bra. He let out an involuntary moan of pleasure as his hands and eyes brushed her breasts. Forcing himself to move to the next button, he tried to shake the bewildering sensations of pleasure from his consciousness, but each button he released revealed a new glimpse of things so beautiful he could only have imagined them before he’d begun to search for her. He brushed her unfastened uniform aside with the back of his hand, unable to resist the temptation to see more of what lay beneath, but regretting it as soon as the smooth skin of her belly became visible, desire making him again close his eyes as he struggled to control it.