… solipsubmissive …

 If only the infernal clock would stop ticking.

She didn’t know how long she’d been there, or what day it was, or even the hour, but she knew time passed because the clock wouldn’t stop ticking.   She couldn’t find it, couldn’t pinpoint the noise anymore.  The sound surrounded and invaded, seemed to come from every part of the room.  Even her heartbeat had succumbed to the rhythm, and it wouldn’t fucking stop.

She slept, on and off, despite the ticking, or perhaps because of it.  She thought, once, to look for the source of the sound, but had learned there was nothing to find.  Her fingers brushed the wall as she walked, tentatively at first, in case she encountered an object in her path.  She’d counted the corners, wishing she’d thought to backtrack and begin in one, because she was no longer sure where she had started.  It became important to her that she go back to the spot in which she’d awakened.  She thought of it as her place, and she wandered back and forth along that first wall until she felt as though she’d found it again.  She slid down and closed then opened her eyes.  Dark and then … dark.  Open and close.  It was the same.  She stopped when she realized she was opening and closing her eyes in time to the ticking.

When she’d first awakened, she’d been frightened, but reasonably certain she was safe.  Some friends playing a joke, perhaps, and she’d called out to them.  “Ha ha, Tasha.  Very funny!”  Silence.  “Jeremy?”  Her roommates didn’t answer.  She opened her mouth to call out to them again, then closed it abruptly.  Tasha and Jeremy were at the beach.  She’d watched them leave when she’d arrived home from work, promising to walk their useless little dog, and had gone inside to contemplate her long, quiet weekend alone.  Seven emails and two glasses of a lovely Merlot later, she’d gone to bed early, blissfully nude with her bedroom door wide open.  Alone.

She woke to darkness.  And she panicked.  Not the terror filled, scratching at the walls screaming for help kind of panic, but the slow kind that begins with a tight knot in the middle of one’s stomach.  The knot grew and spread, her breathing quickened to short, shallow breaths.  Tears formed in her eyes.  She looked around in the darkness, drawing her knees up to her chest.  She realized she was still nude.  With a small strangled whimper, she turned into the wall and wrapped her arms around her head.  She began rocking back and forth.  As she did, she heard the ticking begin.  Unable to process anything else, her mind shut down and she went back to sleep.

This time, when she woke, she was calm.  She sat up and placed her back against the wall, her legs extended out in front of her.  She didn’t move for a while, just blinked and listened to the ticking.  It occurred to her that she might not be in a dark room.  She lifted a hand and waved it in front of her face, but could see nothing.  If she weren’t in a dark room, she thought, she might be blind.  Her mind disassociated, and she tilted her head to the side, considering.  The clock might be no louder than a clock might normally be, but, because she was blind, her other senses had sharpened.  She opened her eyes as wide as possible, trying to see something, anything.  She felt the darkness pressing in on them as though it were an object.  The ticking became louder, or, perhaps it only seemed so.  She closed her eyes and slept again, just like that. 

When she woke, she realized she wasn’t blind, after all.  There was a glow on the other side of the room, a single recessed bulb throwing a pool of white light on a small tray of food.   She blinked and sat up, then started to stand.  The light went off.

Startled, she stopped her movement and stayed where she was, crouched halfway between a sitting and standing position.  Nothing happened.  She lowered herself to her knees and the light came back on.  She began to stand again, intending to walk to the tray, and the light went off.  And then the blinding realization hit her.  Someone could see her.

The panic she hadn’t allowed herself earlier took over.  She scrambled backwards, away from the food, until her back hit the wall, then she turned and crawled into the corner.  She made herself as small as possible, drawing up into herself, trying to cover her nakedness.  The ticking sound seemed to speed up to match the racing of her heart and she covered her ears with both hands, shaking her head furiously in an effort to drown out the sound, the knowledge and the fear.  A new sound took over, the sound of someone screaming, on and on and on, and she thought, through the ticking, that if they would only scream louder then the clock would stop and leave her alone.  Her throat was raw before she realized the screams were her own, and then there was someone there and hands were holding her, then lifting and cradling her in a very strong set of arms.  She turned her face into the offered chest and sobbed and sobbed until she slept again.

* * * 

She woke, this time, in a bed, nestled deeply into a pile of pillows, covered with heavy warm blankets.  She felt more comfortable than she could ever remember feeling before, and she considered closing her eyes and simply going back to sleep, then realized that she could see.   The room was dark, but it was the normal darkness one associates with being in a dark bedroom at night.  Not her bed.  Not her room.  Those two facts reminded her of the terror and the ticking clock. 

She sat up and screamed.

“Is that really necessary?”

Startled into silence, she sat motionless for a moment, looking at the figure seated across the room, his features concealed by the gloom.  “Who–?”

“It isn’t important just now.  I trust you slept well.” 

It wasn’t a question.  It was a flatly stated observance, no discernible inflection or interest in the voice.  She didn’t know what to say, or even if a response was required, so she simply remained quiet.  After a time, she realized she needed to use the restroom.  She cleared her throat.  “Will you please excuse me for a few moments?”

That elicited a chuckle.  “So polite.  Certainly.”

She started to push back the covers, then remembered her nudity.  Her mind skipped over that fact all too easily to latch onto the next difficulty.  She didn’t know where the bathroom was located.  Somehow, she didn’t wish to ask him.  She hitched the blankets up under her arms and bit her lip.  Finally, she looked in his direction.

He remained impassive.

With a sigh, she looked around the dim room.  Muted light, she assumed from the moon, filtered in through the single window, casting some of the room in a blue-ish silver light.  There were three doors.  One, smaller than the other two, likely belonged to a closet.  She surmised the other two must lead to a bathroom and a corridor.  One was on her right, just a few steps away.  The other was near the seated figure.  She chewed on her lip then tugged at the blankets.

“Leave them.”

The two words pushed her over the edge.  Gone was the terror and the uncertainty, the wondering.  Cold fury claimed her.  With it disappeared the last vestiges of worry about her modesty or safety. 

“Who are you?” she bit out, finishing the question he’d earlier stopped her from asking.  “Why am I here?  What are you planning on doing with me?” 

When he didn’t answer, she resolutely pulled the sheet from the end of the bed and gathered it around herself.  She stepped out of bed onto legs that felt only a little unsteady, a fact that brought home the knowledge that she’d obviously been drugged.  The thought made her more angry.  Trailing the sheet behind her she walked to the closest door, grasping and turning the handle.  Locked.   Of course.

She turned and glared toward the shadowy corner, but he wasn’t there.  Too late, she realized he stood beside her.  When she tried to sidestep his taller figure, he reached out and grabbed the hair at the nape of her neck.  “You don’t listen,” he growled in her ear.

Stark terror gripped her.  He ripped the sheet from around her body and tossed it aside, then pushed her toward the other door by her hair.  “Open it.”  Hands shaking, she reached out and turned the handle, then almost fell into the bathroom.  Only his hand, cruelly twisting until her scalp was screaming, kept her from a headlong plunge to the ceramic tiles.  She half stumbled half walked into the dark room. 

When her shin made painful contact with the porcelain bowl of the toilet, he turned her and sat her down.  “Use it.”

“No,” she whispered, then gasped as his hand tightened.  “Please,” she amended.  “May I have some privacy?”

He slapped her, hard, across the face.  Her hand flew reflexively to her stinging cheek, and she let go, urinating into the toilet as tears began to fall from her eyes.  She fumbled around with her right hand until she found the roll of toilet paper, wiped and reached back to flush.  After that, she didn’t know what to do, so she simply sat, naked and crying, an unknown stranger’s hand entwined in the black curls at the back of her head.

He let go and took a small step away.  “Perhaps you’ll learn to listen.  I don’t have high hopes.”

She looked up from her humiliating position, her cheek still hot from his blow, her scalp throbbing.  The floor was cold against her feet, the seat of the toilet hard.  She looked up until she could almost discern the shadowy planes of his face, could nearly see the eyes glittering in that face.  She licked her dry lips.  “Bastard,” she hissed.

Part 2