I couldn’t recall the last time I saw a light permeating at the left side of this room. I lost count of the days ever since he immured me in this dilapidated place. The scenario of how he lured me into this doom because of my desperation for money is still fresh. As days passed by, the only thing I’m looking forward isn’t how to abscond from this hell, but when will my agony cease.

Every single day, my captor, a geriatric devoid of moral faculties, comes and visits me. He always brings gifts–as what he likes to discuss it–for me, that he is fond of using for my suffering.

“I always enjoy seeing you crying, begging, and antagonizing such agony.” He said during that time he was sodomizing me with a pipette while garroting me as I begged for mercy. I can see the devilish smirk his face makes while he is executing inhumane acts on my body, even when I close my eyes.

I somehow suffocated to death and my body could no longer take it, odd since deep inside me. I was exulting because I can finally die, I thought. But I didn’t, and he won’t let that happen not unless he’ll realize I am becoming tedious.

“W-Why? Why are y-you doing this?” I asked him, disregarding the suffering he had caused me for his depravity somewhat piques my curiosity.

But as an answer, it was 10 lashes to my back I had received. My body didn’t react. It was as though I belonged to immune to his torment. He was not pleased seeing me not begging nor weeping.

His grin faded and his visage became dimmer. He grabbed my hair and smote me in the face multiple times. I was pleading, for him to just kill me and get this ended. But his response stunned me.

“That is boring. I love doing this. It gratifies me.” The exact words he gave me and since then it never subsided from my head.

You won’t suspect him as a pernicious individual being who has a propensity for mutilating an innocent individual. He was, from the exterior look, a decent man, but lies beneath is a malevolent psychopath who craves for mortal misery. He inflicts harm to gratify his sexual urges and I satisfy him.

He is a sadistic beast who lacks conscience and had served me so many debasing unspeakable things to me such as assaulting and torturing me but none of it constantly offered him qualms. I dreamt of escaping, but how can you do such an action if I was bound by chains and locked inside a den of a house in the outskirts? Unfortunately, I grew hopeless and so I embraced this plight of mine with open arms.

I stood by and waited for him to come back and let him do things to my people. For him, I am some kind of a cadaver. Yes, this is now my horrendous fate I cannot obviously evade so I am accepting my defeat. But as I heard his car’s engine was starting, it somehow relieved me. I guessed he was driving back to town which is a few hours’ drive from here. I closed my eyes and hummed my favorite song my mother used to lull me to sleep when I was a kid. It eases me up and right now, I have to devour each remaining moment of my life.

And without further noticing, I fell asleep and let my body collapsed into the cold, callous floor.

“Does she have any family dwelling near?”

“No, sir. Not even friends. I supposed she isn’t really from this town.”

“I checked her background a while ago, sir. She’s from Pennsylvania. I got her phone from the house during the search and I have managed to contact one of her friends.”

“No family?”

“No, sir. There was only one number saved—”

“W-Where am I?” I mumbled beneath my breath as I try to move my body.

Everything was blurry. I couldn’t vividly see who were right in front me having that conversation but I noticed I was in a hospital bed.

My body was in so much pain that I could barely move a muscle. I tried to but the three men in front of me seized me.

None of what I saw right before me would sink in, the last thing I remember was myself inside a hellish-like dominion.

“Everything will be okay, please take some rest. Nobody’s going to hurt you now.”

A cold tear poured from my eyes as I heard one of them said that. And it finally hit me, I was saved.

I shut my eyes again, not saying a word as I submerge myself into the bed I was lying in.

It has been a few months since the incident I thought will be the end of me, I decided to leave the kind of work I used to do and started to stick on menial jobs.

But the ghosts of the past still relentlessly haunt me. Whenever I’m idling, everything flashes back and I, then, would scream like a person whose sanity had strayed since then.

I experience occasional hallucinations and my perpetrator’s façade still lingers inside my head.

I tried to consult a psychiatrist but it was no use. The remnants are buried deep within me and no matter how hard I try to excavate them all, I always end up putting myself six feet under with them.

Although he was long gone, he had managed to make his shadow live forever in me.

I alienated myself from the world for I feel unsafe even when I’m surrounded with familiar faces. I cannot restrain myself from flinching even though no one is actually trying to hurt me.

It is indeed driving me crazy to the core.

It’s 7 o’clock in the evening, while trying to take a rest after a long day from work on a local fast food restaurant, I heard a loud knock from downstairs. Usually, it’s just an old lady next door checking up on me time to time or Kaye, my best friend who lives few blocks from here. I let out a deep sigh, shut my eyes real tight hoping for whoever it is behind the door to fade into obscurity and never comes back but it was persistent. I had a bad feeling this isn’t the old lady nor Kaye since they would usually shout before knocking.

“Regina? Are you there?”

A familiar voice called my name.

“M-Mom?”

I dashed downstairs and unhesitatingly opened the door. Without saying a thing, I hugged her tight and sobbed.

“Hush now, let’s go inside, shall we?”

I missed her. It’s been a year since I ran away from home because I was rebelling against her.

“Not a single day that I haven’t thought about you. I kept searching and searching and thankfully, a local detective from this town was a friend of the one I hired.” She ecstatically told me while wiping tears from her eyes.

“I heard what happened a—”

Before she could continue I cut her off.

“..please, mom, I don’t want to talk about it.” I indignantly resumed.

I avoided her gaze because every time someone ought to mention the atrocities done to me by that monster, I can’t contain all the grief and pain teeming inside me.

“..you have t-to know something,”

It was the intriguing part – I have to know something. So I let her speak,

“That serial killer,” she began,

“What about him?”

“..was your father,”

Have you ever felt the world has put too much weight on your shoulders and the next thing you want to happen is to finally terminate it from continuing by taking your own life?

I was a few meters away from the pistol that was placed beside the sink. I want to grab it and pull the trigger right on my head but I was frozen.

The data failed to process as quickly as possible.

“Regina, I’m s-sorry. I thought he was dead, I swear, I never had an idea he is actually lurking in this town continuing his atrocities,” she cried.

“Get out.”

“Regina, p-plea—”

“I said get out!!”

I pushed her outside the door. It breaks my heart seeing her crying but she has no idea what I have been through. She lied. She never gave me, not even a picture or an idea what my father was like.

And now, out of the blue, she’d show up telling me it was my own father who gave me something I’ll clench for a lifetime?

No, this isn’t right.

This is too much, sickening and dreadfully impossible to live with.

“the serial killer.. was your father,”

“the serial killer.. was your father,”

“the serial killer.. was your father,”

“the serial killer.. was your father,”

“the serial killer.. was your father,”

“the serial killer.. was your father,”

“Regina! Please open the door!”

“Good bye, mom,”

“Regina! Please! N—”