File type: Text File (.txt) [Download]
-----------------------------------------
The first few months? It was a nightmare.


I couldn’t believe what my life had become.


Every day I would wake up, in my little prison, and lament at the fact that it was not over. I was not just having a bad dream. That it was my reality.


I had nearly forgotten my own name. My real name. It had been so long since I had heard it.


“Ian. My name is Ian.”


Jason kept me in this cage. Everything around me was unknown. The beams that surrounded me, I didn’t know what they were made of. They were the color of stone, but that was certainly not what this material was. They were cold, hard, and I could not break or even bend them, no matter how hard I tried.
The ground beneath me was some sort of synthetic soil. It’s hard to describe. It was clumpy, but these clumps were smooth, and soft.
My resting place was strange too. It was a thin sheet, and was the color of cotton. In fact, I thought it was made of cotton, but I was never certain.
I had a bowl, on the other side of my prison, that was also a new material I had not experienced. It too was the color of cotton, but it was hard, and very smooth. Though I noticed it was pretty light weight. Jason would fill this bowl with water every day. I had to scoop the water up in my hands to be able to drink it.


All of that, waking up there always hurt in the morning. It was just a painful reminder that I’m not home. That I was in a completely different world now.


I was dragged out of there daily, and made to do various, painstaking tasks.


One day, he left his clothing all over his dwelling and made me drag them into his room, lay them out, and fold them. It took me hours to gather them, and hours to fold them.
Another day, he provided me a rag, and some water and forced me to wash what he called “the kitchen” floor. It was a vast, hard, cotton colored, and cold landscape. That was the first time I fought with him, but his voice overpowered me and silenced me. It was as if the world went silent when he yelled, and he voice shook everything around me. My chest went cold and a looming sense of dread got me through washing what felt like miles of this surface. My body ached, my knees stung, and I lost feeling in my hands, but I couldn’t bare hearing his booming voice again.
There would also be times when he’d return, and his black, heavy, and thick footwear would be covered in wet soil. I would have to clean those too.
Sometimes he would leave them on while I cleaned them. I swore I caught a glimpse of a grin on his face when I was doing that once.


One day, he returned,
and he was angry.


I was thrown to the floor, and his paws crashed down on each side of me, once he had sat down. My world shook once again, as his voice subdued everything around us. It was like he was the only thing that existed at that moment. He told me his paws were sore from working hard that day and made me take off… no... PEEL off the fabric that was wrapped around his paws. My arms burned and I drowned in the waves of heat that came from them when I finally was able to remove the fabric.
Then he made me rub his toes, between his toes, and his pads, and his paws formed steamy walls on both sides of me. He kept demanding that I press harder because he couldn’t feel my hands that slid around on his sweat drenched paws, and inched his feet closer and closer around me. I…. I snapped.


I refused. Why…. why did I refuse…


I don’t even remember his hand coming down on me, when I found myself trapped in his fist. His fingers coiled around me firmly. More and more he yelled, louder and louder. My ears rang and I could do nothing to cover them. I just closed my eyes tightly and turned away. I couldn’t look at him. I was too afraid to.


That’s when the pain started.


All it took was for him to squeeze, to force me to exhale, to push the air from my lungs. Tighter and tighter. My head felt warm, I screamed when my body was compacted in his fist. He would come so close to the point of killing me, and then he would release, and I choked, and wheezed and gasped for air.


But he kept doing this.
Over and over and over.


I begged for mercy, I begged him to stop I begged for forgiveness. I said I was sorry. I promised to behave. I cried, and choked as he kept bringing my bones to the point of shattering, and then releasing. He had completely taken the control of my breathing away from me.


You know how some people say and event that is really only a few minutes, feels like hours?
I wish this only felt like hours.
This torture felt like days.
I screamed for so long, my ears began to hurt from the sound of my screams, more than his yelling. My throat became sore, and my eyes hurt from the many tears I shed.
Each scream, each plea, it was like I hadn’t made any noise at all. Nothing registered with him. My anguish was ignored.


When he finally stopped, he sat down again, and I was dropped between his drenched paws once more. He didn’t say a word. His eyes did all the talking, and I understood.


That’s all it would take. If he had clenched his fist just a little harder, or if he pressed his paws together… that’s it.  I’d be gone. No one would know. No one would remember.
I had never felt so low, so pathetic, so humiliated, so... dominated, and powerless.


But he did it…
he broke me.


I was completely at his mercy. I no longer had control of my life. In fact, it was no longer my life, it was his. Everything I was, belonged to him. I had accepted my fate, and there was nothing I could do.


He was my God.
And in time, I thought,








“What is my name again?”