Better off Dead

"What the hell does he have to feel guilty about?" I asked.

"Are you forgetting that we kidnapped you?" she asked. "He's been talking a lot about letting you go. Of course, we'll have to leave the area and never come..."

"No!" I screamed. "He can't!" She looked at me suddenly then.

"You don't want to leave do you?" she asked. "What about Zeb and..."

"His name is Zeke," I said. "And he's my husband. He loves me. He married me. And I'm counting the days until we're together again."

"Who're you trying to convince?" she asked. "...Me or yourself? I think you're feeling guilty because you let Adam pop your coochie and you liked it too much so you chased him away. You made that rape comment because you felt guilty. Good little wives don't fuck other men. You felt like a slut and you wanted someone else to take the blame." I looked at the floor.

"And as far as your loving husband goes, just remember I saw the shiner that you had when Damon and I snatched you. Adam would die before he ever hit you. Too bad Zacharia or whatever the fuck his name is doesn't feel that way. Yep, we always get what we deserve. So keep counting those days and one day soon you'll be back with him."

* * * * * *

Zeke

"A thousand dollars," I repeated. The woman in front of me nodded her head and looked at something on her clipboard.

"Really it's five hundred for you and five hundred for Tammy, but if you're pooling finances, I guess it would be a thousand dollars."

"And all we have to do is to pretend...I mean share our feelings about our loss?" I said.

"Yes sir," she said.

"Can we do it now?" I asked. She motioned a camera man over and he started setting it up. I went over to Tammy.

"Hon, I need you ta do something for me," I told her. "I need you to talk to that camera and tell them how much you miss your sister."

"I don't miss her at all," spat Tammy. "Is that what you want me to say?"

"No, ya bird brained bitch. I want you to get all teary eyed and cry about her being gone. Think of it like we was play acting for a movie," I said. "Just watch me."

The man set the camera on me and I just started talking. The woman asked me if I missed Victoria. "Only every day," I said sadly. "Victoria was the light of my world. Without her in it, my world is a dark and lonely place. I can only remember that last thing I said to her before she went out to get me beer. I told her I loved her and..." I broke down crying, then I looked back at the camera. "Victoria, Honey, if you're out there...please come home." Then I started crying again. I figured the crying would go over well with the city folks. They always seemed to want their men to be sensitive.

"Let's see ya beat that," I whispered to Tammy.

Shit, Tammy was a natural born actress. She had to be the Lizabeth Taylor...make that Lizabeth Trailer of the family. "I just want my sister to come home," she said directly in the camera. "So much has changed since she left us almost nine months ago." She motioned to the camera to follow her and went up onto the porch. She picked up the baby and held her up to the camera. Victoria this is your niece. She was born while you've been gone. We named her Victoria after you." I got pissed then because Tammy used my trick and started crying and the baby started crying. So I jumped back in front of the camera and started crying too.

As soon as the woman yelled, "Cut!" We both stopped crying and Tammy walked away and dropped the baby back in the crib. I held out my hand and the woman gave me ten crisp one hundred dollar bills. I went over to Tammy as they packed up and started to leave.

"You lying bitch," I laughed. "You know we named the brat Tammi after you."

"Yeah but we spell hers with an "I," she said.

I peeled a crisp hundred off of the stack and handed it to her. "They gave us two hundred dollars for acting," I said. "You get half of it." Her eyes lit up and she snatched the money and stuck it down her blouse.

"You'd better find somewhere else to hide it," I said. "That's the first place I'd check." I pulled her blouse up and started sucking on one of her huge tits. She smiled and offered the other. The bill floated down and I snatched it while her eyes were closed and she was enjoying my tongue on her titties.

Two hours later, she came into the trailer and tearfully told me that I'd been right and she'd lost her money. "Don't worry Tammy," I said. "Easy come, Easy go. But I'll share mine with you." I held out a hundred and told her to spend fifty but bring my change back.

* * * * * *

Victoria

Sleeping worked wonders for me when I finally got some. I had a series of dreams that made me get my head out of my ass. I dreamed about what had happened in Adam's room the night before. It wasn't just the fact that we had sex. It was the way he'd treated me the entire time that I'd been here. Even the way that his people had taken me told me everything I needed to know. They'd used ether or chloroform. They hadn't left a mark on me. I woke up woozy but unharmed. While I was out, apparently they'd implanted one of those tiny RF Chips somewhere on me, but I guess that was far better than being drugged, chained or beaten. When I thought about Adam, all I felt was love. He had never once hit me or even raised his voice to me.

I also dreamed of Zeke and what my life would have been like if I'd stayed home. I couldn't figure out why at twenty three years old I was feeling guilty about leaving a man who at 40 years old had married an 18 year old girl and treated her pretty much like a slave. Tela had been right. Zeke forced me to have sex with him whenever he wanted it. Whether I wanted it or not didn't matter. If I said anything he didn't agree with, I got punched or slapped and we barely ever left the trailer. I'd married Zeke to get away from my parents and that was all I got. I moved three trailers over and into virtual slavery. Why the hell would I ever want to go back to that?

My last dream of the early morning was a strange one. I dreamed that the police raided the house and rescued me. They took me back to Zeke. I saw years pass. I became as big as a house. I looked just like all of the other older trailer park women. I had 6 kids and we all still lived in that trailer. My whole life I never went more than a mile from that trailer and Zeke and I argued constantly. It was a nightmare. Adam was captured in the raid and went to Federal prison for kidnapping me. I tried to explain to them that I'd been treated well and I didn't want to press any charges. But Zeke told them that I'd been brainwashed so as my husband he could make the decisions for me. He wanted Adam to go to the electric chair. But in the dream he called it the 'lectric chair. We even named one of our kids Lectric.

When I woke up that next morning, I knew what I had to do. I showered and dressed and walked calmly over to the intercom. I spoke to Tela and asked for Damon. She was pissed but put him on. I asked him to come down to my room immediately.

When he got down there Tela came with him.

"You look beautiful this morning Victoria," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"The question is what can you do for yourself?" I asked. They both looked at me strangely.

"In ten minutes, I'm going to walk out of this house and go and find Adam. You two already know how guilt caused me to fuck up one of the most beautiful experiences of my life last night. Well, today I'm going to fix it. I'm going to walk out of this house and find Adam. I will probably not make it out of this room because my implant will cause me a lot of pain. If I survive that the front door will probably hurt me like it did last night and I'm sure there are other barriers too. I also don't have a car and I don't know where he is, but I'm going to keep going until I find him. Even if I have to ask every person on every street that I run into until I find him."

Damon gulped loudly and Tela smirked.

"Tela, I know you don't give a half a fuck about what happens to me, but it's your job to protect me, so when I die, won't that mean that you don't have a job."

"Victoria, wait," said Damon. "Let me call him."

"I've already told you that you have 10 minutes," I said. Damon pulled out his cell phone and started talking. He wasn't talking to Adam so he had to wait to be put through.

"Why the hell don't you have your phone, Adam," he said finally. He looked at me to let me know that he had him on the phone. I heard him telling Adam what I'd threatened to do.

After a few moments he looked over to me. "He said that he'll be home tonight and the two of you can talk then. He also says that he apologizes and he's trying to sell the company quickly. He has a couple of buyers lined up and you may be home by tomorrow night. If he can arrange it, it will be sooner than that."

"So he's at work?" I asked. Damon nodded his head.

"Good take me there," I said.

"But he said..." began Damon.

"Damon, Things are different now," I said. "I'm in charge. I guess I always have been. I just didn't know it. I'm not going to try to get away. You can even handcuff me if you want to. But you're taking me to see Adam."

"But he's at work!" said Damon.

"Okay, here I go," I said. I stood up and started walking towards the door. Tela jumped in front of me.

"You're going to get hurt," she snapped.

"And it will be your fault," I said. "Does Adam know that I almost fried myself last night trying to catch him? Or that you didn't even try to stop me?" She quickly paled and then flicked out her remote as I walked towards the door. When I got upstairs she pushed another button and I stepped onto the porch for the first time ever.

"You know that I can still just fry you, right?" she asked. I nodded.

"Take me to see Adam," I said. "I've already told you that I'm not going anywhere."

We drove into town and along streets I'd never seen before. What astounded me was that I'd lived in this city all of my life and I'd never seen the downtown section. Our city had a central hub with suburbs radiating outwards around it. We lived in one of the richer suburbs. The trailer park I grew up in was in one of the poorer suburbs. Surprisingly, I'd only been about a twenty minute drive away from Zeke's trailer for all of this time.

We pulled up to a beautiful steel and glass building with a guarded parking lot. The guard stopped checking the badge of a car that was leaving and waved us right through. I waved at him although I didn't know him.

We got out of the car and walked in a back entrance that had yet another guard posted there. He stiffened immediately when he saw Damon and Tela. I half expected him to salute them. I waved at him too. And he smiled at me.

We walked around the edges of a manufacturing floor that had literally hundreds of people working on different machines. Tela made sure I stayed outside of lines that were painted on the floor.

"Inside of those lines you have to wear safety glasses," she explained. We took an elevator up to the third floor. This floor had nothing but offices and conference rooms on it.

We stepped into one room where a slightly older but very serious looking woman looked up at us from her desk.

"He's busy, Tela," she said. I just smiled at her and walked right past her before she could get up. I turned the door knob and it opened. The woman tried to grab me but I was already inside. With surprising strength the woman snatched me back out of the room, but it was too late. "Adam!" I shouted. Almost immediately he looked up and told the woman to let me go. Compared to this woman, Tela was nothing. This bitch was obviously, despite the tailored suit and professional manner, another ex-military woman. But this one was part guard dog. She looked at me like she wanted to rip my head off and shit down the hole. It took her a while to get her composure back. As she stood there glaring at me while smoothing out her business suit, I smiled at her. I stepped back over to her and extended my hand.

"No hard feelings," I said. "You're doing your job, I can understand that. And I hope you can understand that I'm desperate. In my shoes, I don't doubt that you'd have done the same thing. I'm Victoria by the way."

She took my hand and shook it, but by the way her mouth dropped open, I knew that she knew about me. I closed the door behind me and walked slowly across the room. Adam sat behind a massive desk that looked like it had to be the size of a bed.

"Victoria, I'm s..." he began.

"What are you apologizing for, Adam?" I asked. I started walking around the desk because I just needed to put my hands on him. He was backing up away from me. I giggled at it. Everything in the office was meant to show one thing. It was all meant to show power. It told you that the man behind that desk ran things. And now that man was backing away from a girl he got from a trailer park.

I let him back away and stalked him like a lioness. When he got to the wall, I just followed him into a corner where he couldn't get away.

"I..." he began.

"You love me Adam," I said.

"No I don't," he said softly. "I kidnapped you."

"You may as well admit it, it's written all over your face," I said. "Adam, I'm sorry. I should never have said what I said. But I've never felt that way before in my life. I was afraid. I was also struggling with a lot of guilt about the way I feel about you. You have to understand my upbringing. Shit, the few times I went to that little church in the trailer park I saw a picture of Tammy fucking Wynette next to Jesus. I was brought up to always stand by my man. And I guess last night I was trying to stand by the wrong one. Can I have a do over?"

"Huh?" he said.

"I want you to say what you said last night again and let me say what I wanted to say," I told him.

He looked at me curiously. "Victoria," he started. I stuck my hand over his mouth.

"Wait we have to do this right," I said. "Sit down at your giant desk and let me come in all over again." He looked at me as if I'd lost it. I jogged quickly over to the door and opened it. Then I went out into the outer office where Damon, Tela and the other woman were all staring at the door. I counted to three with all of them gaping at me and then went back inside.

Adam sat at his desk smiling at me. I walked around the desk and sat down on his lap. "Victoria, I love you," he said. Something in me just changed. I got tingles from him saying it. Inside of my shoes my toes curled up. I was sure that I had ruined the panties I was wearing too. It just didn't make any sense. We'd just had sex the night before but I was craving him. Maybe this was what some of those women in the park, including my sister went through. The man was turning me into some kind of whore.

"I love you too, Adam," I said. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. And I kept kissing him. In a matter of minutes things began to escalate and I was rubbing my silk blouse covered chest against his. I switched positions until I was straddling him in his chair and started rubbing my crotch against him."

"Ahem..." I heard from behind us. But I didn't care. "Hey!" shouted Tela sharply. "Do you realize that the door is open and people can see what you're doing? Adam, Nate Johnson is on the phone..."

"Tell him we're not selling yet," he said. She rolled her eyes and walked out of the office.

"We'll finish this up when you get home," I smiled. I got off of him and stood next to his desk. I bent down and skinned my damp panties from under my skirt and left them on his desk.

"This is to remind you of what you have waiting for you at home. Don't be late," I smiled and kissed him again.

"Come on Damon," I said. "Let's get home. I'm starving."

That evening, Adam actually got home early. I had spent most of the afternoon in the main kitchen. I cooked him all of the best meals that I knew how to make. For some reason, I wanted to cook for him even though we had a cook. He ate everything I set in front of him including my blueberry pie and then we dashed up to his room. We were in bed by six o'clock and we didn't emerge until morning.

I felt really stupid because as good as the sex was what happened after we were sated was even better. I woke up from my sex-fueled slumber at about one a.m. I felt better than I ever had in my life. I realized that I wasn't in my bed. I was in Adam's and he was lying next to me with both arms wrapped protectively around me. I felt warm and safe and I never wanted to be anywhere else.

I snuggled even closer into him and went back to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I remembered him gently freeing himself of me and kissing me goodbye before he left. I showered and got Damon and a couple of the guys busy.

"What do you want us to do?" they asked.

"I need all of my clothes moved into this closet and I'll show you what else needs to be moved," I said.

"It's not going to happen," said Tela snidely.

"Call him," I said. "I'll bet he'll let me do it."

"Victoria, that's not what I meant," she said. "You have a lot more clothes than Adam does. Your room was built to be like a large apartment inside of and under the house. Your closet is bigger than the trailer you used to live in. Adam has a standard sized closet. Even if you took all of his clothes out of there, yours still wouldn't fit. Have you ever even tried to count how many pairs of shoes you have?"

"So what's the answer?" I asked her.

"We get someone to go to Home depot and add a second clothing rod to the opposite side of Adam's closet. You just keep your twenty or thirty favorite outfits in here and maybe ten or twelve pairs of shoes. The rest you can leave where they are or put in one or two of the other closets on this floor."

"What about my TV?" I asked.

"Adam does have a nice flat screen right there," she said.

"Yeah but mine is way bigger," I said.

"Who cares?" she said. "Besides from the way you were yowling all night, I doubt that you guys are going to be watching much TV anyway."

I was twenty three years old and I was in love. And this time it was real. This time I wasn't just looking to get away from my parents. It was the best two years of my life. Adam and I were always together. We took trips. We went out. We stayed in. After two years together I felt like we were only scratching the surface of what we could become.

The following winter Adam got sick. It was no big deal, it was only the flu but he was weak and cranky and miserable. When I'd had it, he'd stayed home and took care of me himself. He never left my bedside. I wanted to do the same thing for him. It was when he started to get better that it all went to hell.

I'd just come out of the shower and he was trying to get up. "Adam, lay your ass back down," I told him.

"I need to get my iPad," he said.

"I'll get it," I said. "Where is it?"

"In the office on my desk," he said.

For more than six months, all of the security devices had been turned off. I had freedom to go anywhere I wanted. I even had a car. I had a brand new Cadillac XLR hardtop convertible. I kissed Adam on his forehead and pulled the blankets around him.

I wondered what he wanted his iPad for because he was going back to sleep anyway. But I loved him so I went and got it.

I looked around inside of the office trying to find it. I'd played with his iPad a lot while we were on vacation, so I knew what it looked like. I just didn't know where it was in the office. The case he had for it made it look just like any other notebook.

I hadn't spent much time in the office so I looked around. I noticed that just like at work Adam never turned his computer off. As I turned to leave, Adam got a new E-mail. Hearing the chirping alert, curiosity got me to look to see who it was from. It was from Tela. It started out by telling him that she was coming back early. She was supposed to be on vacation but her family was getting on her nerves. I smiled. Tela and I got along pretty well by then. But Tela was so aggressive and by the book, that relaxing and doing things with her aging parents was probably driving her up the wall.