My Life as a Rat

He was right, but I hadn't thought about it that clearly. Whoever this Tim guy was, he was used to analytical thinking. I decided to not interrupt him. While listening to him, I noticed that I enjoyed looking at him. Okay, that was natural as he was my first real human contact in an eternity, but it sure didn't hurt that he was damn easy on the eye.

"If he chooses options two or three, he needs to continue to provide food and water. He has to physically enter your cell to bring the food?"

"He sometimes did, but only while I was drugged and sleeping. Normally he uses a hatch."

"Could we grab his arms while he does it?"

"What? No, the hatch on the other side is closed when he opens my side."

"Okay." The bad news didn't seem to bother him, he was still in full analyst mode. "Whatever he does, we have two options. One, we can check the whole labyrinth for possible exits."

"I have done that."

"Yes, but you were alone and you didn't have a pry bar. We have more options now. One of us could give the other a leg-up. It is safer to search the labyrinth now because we can help each other in case one springs a trap. On the other hand, it is more dangerous now because he might want to seriously hurt us. He might feel threatened and lose all restraint."

"Right."

"Our second option is to outsmart him."

"What? How?"

"I don't know yet. I think we need to return to your cell. I'd like to see it and we can't stay here, anyway. What do you think?"

"Sure." I suddenly felt insecure. My cell was an ugly shithole and hardly a place to entertain a nice man I've just met. I tried to shake that ridiculous thought.

"How long have you been here, anyway?" he asked.

"I have no idea. What day is it?" I suddenly felt like an idiot for not asking this right away. It was a clear sign of how much I had lost contact with reality.

"February 3rd."

"Fuck. I've been here for eight months."

Instead of some nonsense reply, he had the good taste to just look at me empathetically. This is a nice guy, I decided, and immediately felt like a naive schoolgirl. He's the first nice person I've seen in months. Of course, I like him. This meant nothing, I decided. My belly had a completely different opinion, though.

"Can we block the red door somehow? We might want to return here at some point," I remarked, mainly to distract myself from developing ridiculous feelings for a stranger.

"Why? We won't be able to ambush him in here. He won't open the grey door until he can see us somewhere else in the labyrinth."

"True, but we might want to talk unsupervised again."

"Right. Let's take a look at that lock. Maybe we can block it somehow."

It turned out that there was no lock as such, but just no handle on the outside.

"Forget about it. It's not important anyway. Do you want to show me your cell?"

"Okay. Cautious. As soon as we pass this door, we will be watched. Keep behind me and I will show you how to spot traps."

"Okay."

He hid the pry bar under the back of his shirt before we slowly went along the main corridor. I started my "training Tim" project immediately. I pointed out the various openings in the walls, floor and ceilings that could be used to install traps.

"You endured this for eight months?" he asked in awe. It felt good to see him react that way. It felt so damn good to see some respect for what I had to do. I had suffered through this without having someone to talk to or to acknowledge what I had endured.

Instead of answering, my emotions overwhelmed me and I broke down, sobbing into his shoulder like a moron. He just held me awkwardly and stiffly, but patiently. After a while I calmed down a bit and realized that despite his obvious attractiveness, he was not used to being close to women. Teasing him was going to be fun, I thought, before remembering the situation we were in. I pushed him a bit onto my chest just to tease him a bit more. I felt his body stiffen and immediately felt better. Yes, having a good-looking, but deliciously shy guy around certainly beat being alone.

"Okay..." damn I had already forgotten his name. "Tim." My memory for names had always been terrible, but this was ridiculous. The first human in months and I almost managed to do it again. "Let's go."

"Hot steam valves. Absolute agony for a few days if you're not careful. He did give me burn ointment afterward."

"What? Seriously?"

I just shrugged my shoulders.

"Over there are the needles. See? On the floor. You have heavy winter shoes, not light sneakers like me, but I still doubt they would help much."

"Oh God. Did you...?"

"Just a bit. Not as bad as it could have been."

"Damn. I already hate the bastard."

"Remember, we are being monitored."

"Doesn't matter. What does he expect? Warm feelings? To be loved?"

"I don't know what he's thinking." I realized that I had learned to guard my feelings most of the time. I just hoped I could return to a normal life someday and have normal feelings, be open, be trusting and spontaneous. The possibility that the asshole might have taken that away from me frightened me more than the Taser trap I just pointed out to Tim. That little beauty made me flop around the floor uncontrollably while soiling my pants, accompanied by asshole's laughter over the speakers. Even that wasn't as scary as the prospect of having been turned into a cold, wary bitch.

We finally reached my cell, and luckily, the motorized door stood open. I explained the mechanism to Tim.

"I could block or destroy that motor with my pry bar," he whispered into my ear.

"No, we need that advantage. He mustn't know that we have it," I said, stating the obvious.

He nodded as if he never really considered it anyway.

I led him into my cell and was deeply embarrassed. Rationally, I knew that I was not responsible for it, but here I was, inviting a nice guy into my home and it looked, well, like the rotten cell it was. Unconsciously, I ran my hand through my hair and smiled uncomfortably. He didn't seem bothered at all and just started to take in my small kingdom. We both looked at the narrow bed, the bucket of water and the toilet. I wondered how I would ever be able to use that again with him in the room.

His face turned red as if he had the same thought.

"This might be... well... difficult," he mumbled.

"We will get used to it," I answered, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

We both jumped a bit as the door started to close.

"Shit," he said. Despite the dangers of the corridors beyond, the closing door still got to me every time. For him, it must have been even worse.

"It seems I have another guest. Welcome to my game," the distorted speaker voice still startled me a bit, while Tim almost jumped out of his pants."We will have sooo much fun together."

After a few seconds of silence, it was clear that nothing else was going to happen this time.

"So, I think I'll sleep on the floor," he bravely proposed.

I realized that I didn't want that. Why? I had no idea, but I knew that I was looking forward to sleeping with him next to me. No sex, but just to have a warm, friendly human being next to me.

"Nonsense. I had to sleep on the floor once and I can tell you..."

"Wait, what?" he interrupted me. "Why did you do that?"

"Well, he soaked my mattress once just for fun and I had no alternative. Anyway, I almost froze to death on the floor. No way I'm going to let you sleep down there."

"Okay. We'll try to make it work somehow."

The speaker voice interrupted us."NO! You will get another mattress."

I was shocked and it seemed Tim noticed it.

"What?" he silently asked.

"Never. Never ever. Never has he talked to me like this. Never has he offered me anything to make life easier," I whispered back.

"Interesting."

"What?"

"He likes you."

"You're kidding..." We were still whispering, but I didn't know if it prevented Asshole from hearing what we were saying.

"No, seriously. You say that something like this has never happened."

"Right."

"He has just shown a weakness. The question is, why?"

I just looked at him, puzzled.

"He doesn't want us to sleep on that bed together, Dani."

"Obviously."

"This is not about comfort. This is about jealousy."

"What?" I looked at him like he had two heads. I couldn't even keep my voice down.

"He sees me as competition. Dani, this man loves you."

"Oh, shit." I guess I had known it all along, but hearing Tim say it out loud made me incredibly sad.

"He thinks that through all of this the two of you are in some kind of relationship."

I just nodded with a growing sense of desperation.

"I am an intruder into your happy marriage. He has to accept me as a guest, for now, but he's going to do try to get rid of me as soon as he can. I think I'm going to live dangerously from now on."

"We'll have to be smart."

"Dani, has he ever raped you?"

"No. He's never touched me inappropriately as far as I know."

"He's following his own strange logic. Rape is obviously a no-go for him. Dani, you know that you're incredibly beautiful, don't you?"

"What?" I asked, while unconsciously running my fingers through my hair. I was surprised, but I still liked hearing that. "Are you crazy? Have you looked at my complexion or my hair? I haven't been at a hair dresser in..."

"Doesn't matter," he interrupted me. "You just are. And he's worshipping you. He doesn't dare to approach you directly. He's probably even afraid of you. Still, he wants to keep you as some kind of possession. Believe me, he loves you in his own, very weird, way."

"Why is he torturing me then?"

"I'm not a psychologist, but I think it's the only means of contact with you he has. Of course, there's also the sense of power it gives him."

"Damn, this is so weird."

"What did you expect? Some sane rational guy?"

"I guess not."

"So, what can we do? Wait here until he has turned us into his sock puppets or killed me?"

"Shit."

"What?"

"I've been exactly that. His sock puppet. Shit."

He looked at me sympathetically. "Or we can be proactive."

"Damn, you are here for a few minutes and already are more rational about this than I've ever been."

"You've been fed drugs all this time. I haven't."

That consoled me a bit. "So, what do you propose?"

"We will get another mattress soon, I guess. We just won't use it."

"Haha, you'd like that, you horny bastard, wouldn't you?" I realized that I'd like that as well and felt my face get warm. I hoped it was dark enough to conceal my facial color change.

"No, seriously. He will get jealous. He won't have time to develop a good plan. We have to force him to act without thinking. This might be our best chance."

"What are you two talking about?"

"Ha! He can't hear us. He's already getting nervous."

"You might be right, Tim. Okay, so he might get jealous and act hasty. What then?"

"I guess we'll get a good meal soon."

"What?"

"Including a nice assortment of drugs, of course."

"Okay."

"Here's what we're going to do..."

The new mattress was waiting for us in the corridor after the door opened a while later. We just ignored it. After a few speaker messages demanding we move the thing inside the cell, sounding suspiciously like someone was losing his cool, the door was closed again. We heard a growling sound. We just looked at each other and shrugged.

As expected, our meal arrived shortly afterwards, and it was among the best I had ever gotten from him.

We dug in heartily and fooled around like teenagers, even playing with the food. We were mock-wrestling, kissing and struggling while eating. I hadn't had this much fun while having a meal since I was a small kid. I admit that I really got into kissing Tim. He overcame his natural shyness quickly and turned out to be a sensational kisser. He still stiffened as I touched him inappropriately, but the stiffening was now limited to the right body parts.

After our culinary wrestling match, we lay on the bed, cuddling and dozing contently. I realized that I easily could get used to this big guy spooning behind me. I realized that my eye wasn't twitching anymore. I thought about it and it seemed like it had stopped quite a while ago, probably when I had found Tim. I just hadn't noticed at the time.

We pretended to sleep, and sometimes probably really did, but nothing happened during that night. Of course, we hadn't really eaten the food. We hoped he would enter the cell while thinking we were fast asleep, but it hadn't happened.

"We'll have to up the ante," I whispered. It annoyed me that after months of having no one to talk to, whispering was all I could do.

"Already?"

"Yes, we can't give him more time to prepare shit."

"Agreed. What do you have in mind?"

"Sex."

"Wha..." Poor Tim. I was teasing him mercilessly, but it was for a good cause. The fact that I was enjoying it immensely was just an added bonus. I just wished that I had a camera to capture his look. Priceless.

"Just to provoke him, of course." I'm afraid that I grinned a bit, maybe not hiding my true intentions. Sure, this was the best way to get an ill-conceived reaction from Asshole, but it was also going to be so much fun. I hadn't been laid in months and had absolutely no sex drive. Tim had reawakened that in record time. I felt like some predator moving in for the kill. Despite his looking like a deer into the headlights, I was pleased to notice that he had quite a boner. Good. This plan was going to be fun, whether it worked or not.

I practically leaped upon him, not being able to hold myself back any longer. I realized that I really wanted Tim. Some force was driving me towards him mercilessly and I enjoyed it.

The poor guy stumbled backwards onto our small mattress, helpless to do anything about the kissing burr that had attached herself to him. After a while he seemed to relax and soon was participating enthusiastically.

We had just started to kiss and fondle at full force when the light went out and was replaced by the old but still annoying strobe light effect. It was dizzying as hell, but he had used it too often and it got old after a while, so he eventually stopped doing it. I already knew what would come next.

"I was all right for a while."

Wow. The music was really loud this time. That couldn't be healthy.

"I could smile for a while."

Tim looked at me, obviously totally shocked. I remembered that the loud music combined with the damn strobe light had this effect on me as well in the beginning.

"But I saw you last night."

Some calming words might have been welcome, but the music was way too loud.

"You held my hand so tight."

All of this wasn't new to me, although it had never been that loud. This time, though, something new happened. It was difficult to see due to the damn strobe light. The door of the cell definitely opened and a man rushed into my cell, his face contorted with rage. Shit. I felt like I was about to faint. I knew that man. I was too stunned for words or action. My only movement was the return of the damn eye twitching.

"As you stopped to say hello."

He rushed towards us with something in his right hand. The damn strobe light made it difficult to tell, but it suspiciously looked like a kitchen knife. This is not a planned thing, I thought. He just grabbed whatever weapon was at hand. He obviously didn't have a plan, but to my shame, neither did I.

"Oh, you wished me well."

He had used the music and the light to mask his impromptu attack as well as possible.

"You, you couldn't tell."

I looked at Tim and to my horror, he wasn't reacting at all. Didn't he see what was happening? Asshole was about to kill us and Tim was as frozen as I was? Shit.

"That I'd been crying over you."

"Tim!" I screamed, but even I couldn't hear me over the shitty music.

"Crying over you."

In horror I watched Asshole rushing towards us. Please! I've just met Tim and now I'm about to lose him again? He lets himself be paralyzed by this stupid old light and music trick? I again remembered how I reacted the first time and I had to admit I couldn't blame him.

"When you said, so long."

The knife with the attached madman had almost reached the totally stunned man at my side. I was about to jump the armed man and defend Tim with my bare hands when he suddenly went into an elegant motion. In one fluid move, he swung the pry bar in a smooth roundhouse arc, totally ignoring the knife.

"Left me standing all alone."

Right at that second the sound and light show stopped and I was able to hear the dull thud Walter's skull made upon connecting with the metal bar. It was followed by an "ooomph" sound escaping from his mouth.

Yes, Walter, as in my ex, Walter. We had never been married, we never even really lived together. None of this stopped him from fantasizing about how we'd grow old together. He told me how much he loved me all the time, but it didn't stop him from being the most controlling and pedantic asshole known to humankind.

In the beginning, I was endeared to the shy and quirky nerd. He wasn't bad looking and I was flattered about the lengths he was willing to go just to please me. I got flowers and small lovey messages all the time. He always seemed to be around whenever I needed help. I didn't love him, but he was good for my ego and I enjoyed spending time with him. That changed quickly after the first sock drawer crisis. I stayed away from any clothes in his apartment from then on, but he quickly found other ways to "optimize" my life.

He turned out to be a natural wonder in being able to combine every psychosis known to man into one body. Suddenly, everything made sense. I wondered why I never suspected him before. I guess I had booked him under "weird, but utterly harmless." It seems he hadn't taken my dumping him as well as I'd thought. He waited patiently for three years before kidnapping me. He probably needed the time to plan and execute his revenge down to the last minute detail.

I thought about all of this while I watched Walter sinking towards the floor gracefully and unconsciously.

"Tim," I screamed idiotically and threw myself into my hero's arms like some cliché maiden from an old movie. Damn, that could easily have gone wrong.

"It's all right. Calm down." He tried to sound manly and calm, but he was shaking with excitement as well.

After a while we did exactly that and I turned towards my sadistic kidnapper. Strangely, I felt none of the hate that I had imagined I would feel at this moment. I didn't even feel relief or a sense of freedom. I just felt tired and empty.

"Have you killed him?"

"I have no idea. Wait, I'll check." Like an idiot, he bent down to check Walter's pulse. He was way too unsuspecting, clearly lacking the training in distrust I'd had recently.

"Wait!" I tried to stop him.

Too late. Walter turned instantly, grabbed the pry bar from Tim, kicked him in the nuts, jumped up and started to beat his back while Tim tried to shield his head.

In panic, I looked around, saw the knife Walter had dropped, took it and plunged it into his neck without thinking.

Shocked, I stepped back. The knife was still sticking out of his neck. He dropped the pry bar, looked at me and said "Dani," while the blood was spurting from the wound in alarming amounts. He looked at me accusingly, like I had just committed the most atrocious crime for no apparent reason.

Tim just stood behind him. There was nothing left to do. Walter was clearly beyond help; all we could do was watch him slowly die. For all the hate I had, for all my fantasies of slowly killing him, this was not what I wanted. Fantasizing about it and actually seeing it were two completely different things. It was definitely the most horrifying moment of my whole life, including my kidnapping and captivity. I had killed someone. Gentle, caring Dani had been turned into a monster. Self-defense or not, I felt like this act had permanently soiled me.