I opened the doorway to the little poppet's room, my eyes taking a split second to adjust to the dimmer light. I always kept things dark in here, so in case one of my "guests" wandered off and found this room, they wouldn't immediately find –and free– the aggravating little human I had bound here. I softly flicked on a light, which occasioned no response from the figure on the bed –which meant she was ignoring me, or she was asleep.

Either way, my advantage.

As I approached the bed, humming softly under my breath, I noticed with approval that, to a casual observer from any distance, it would seem like the human was merely sleeping, her face turned away from the door and the room, her face hidden by her flowing locks, and everything below the shoulders hidden by a thick, fluffy blanket, her arms arching up under the pillow in one of those amusing sleep-poses people would so often take. The casual observer would be quite, quite wrong, however; underneath that warm blanket, her ankles were bound tightly to the bedframe, and the pillow hid steel cuffs, chained around the bedstead. As I dragged the stool I had left in here closer and sat by the bedside, I gently brushed some of her long blonde hair out of her face –revealing the gag wrapped around her mouth.

She was quite obviously asleep, and it gave me some time to study this intriguing little adversary –this Aryana Thompson. Her soft brown eyes which could flare in a moment into deadly anger were closed, and her face, normally screwed up with hatred or pain, was peaceful and relaxed. Well, mostly; there were some traces of tears around her eyelids, and I could see raw, red skin around the edges of her mouth. The silly bean had probably tried to scream and warn my latest teatime guest, who was currently resting in my icebox –in five or six pieces. She always tried, and always failed; I knew how to tie a gag, and even if she had managed more than a few muffled calls, the walls of this room were thick and I had put a powerful silencing spell there, just in case.

With Aryana, you could never have too many "just in case"s.

I untied the gag –there was no need to keep her quiet now, and if she woke up, I would relish the conversation. As I had suspected, the corners of her mouth were raw and red from her efforts, and as I gently brushed a manicured nail over the right corner of her lips, the skin broke and bled. Perhaps it was from the pain, and perhaps because she was becoming attuned to the presence of her tormentor; Aryana's eyes flew open, and she immediately jerked her head away the scant few inches her bindings would allow it. I smiled greedily at her as those honey-brown eyes met mine, and I saw a horrified flicker in them, briefly, as she realized I was no longer entertaining my "guest". She immediately closed her eyes as she saw the answer in my face, sickened.

"You're a monster." she croaked, her voice hoarse and sore from disuse as she turned her face away, refusing to even look at me. I chuckled giddily, crossing my legs and leaning back, my eyes gleaming as I beheld her bound form. I could never look at her like this without feeling a distinct sense of triumph; I had finally bested this infuriating little human, and I had her safe in my clutches, to do with what I willed.

I liked parading her bespelled self in front of her allies whenever they visited, watching her torment as they looked right through her suffering and left, taunting her with the fact that rescue was right there, but still so hopelessly out of reach.

I enjoyed making her suffer day by day, bringing home all those random men and women from the streets and butchering them every evening, making sure she could hear each and every anguished cry, and occasionally making her watch as I did it.

I loved forcing her to taste-test my grisly cooking projects, watching her look at them with hollow eyes, trying and failing to comprehend which body part they were made of this time.

And I absolutely adored forcing her to realize just how helpless she really was, compared to me.

"You do realize," I began warmly, leaning forward and stroking her cheek with gentle fingers as she twitched and leaned away again. "That it'll all soon be over, yes?"

I knew it and she knew it; as soon as I could make her disappearance plausible, she would die. Already as "England", I had a stock-in-trade answer –she would learn the spell to go home, and be so eager to do so that she would cast it without a second thought. I, her responsible, caring mentor would come home and find her, and all her personal affects, gone. Of course, "England" would be distraught, and immediately demand confirmation that it wasn't wicked me, or one of my allies. I was confident enough in my abilities that I could lay a false trail; Arya would be gone, yes, but it would be another few days before she died. I had promised faithfully that every one of us that had a grudge could have exactly one hour with her before her death, to do with what they willed, as long as they left her alive. I would heal her and reattach any lost body parts at the end of that hour, then pass her onto the next person, and so on and so forth, until everyone had taken a turn in beating this annoying little human into the dust.

And then, only then, would I kill her.

But there was a small snag in this otherwise flawless plan –she wasn't, or wouldn't if she had been studying magic, be competent enough for me, "England", to allow her access to the books that held the particular spell she needed. It would take a several days, maybe weeks, for her to "reach" that level; so I needed to keep her alive for that amount of time.

Arya knew this as well as I did, and the look she turned upon me was dead and dull. "Why do you care? Your illusionary skills are good enough; you can make a fake Arya for long enough to fool them. Just kill me now, and have done with it." she said tonelessly, and I grinned. "So eager for death, poppet?" I crooned, caressing her face gently. "Perhaps I've done my job a bit too well."

She snorted and turned her face away again; I turned it back with an admonishing forefinger. "Now now, it's rude to look away when someone is talking to you." I chided, and she sneered at me. "Fuck you." she spat defiantly, putting emphasis on that naughty, naughty word, because she knew how much I hated it when people swore, and my mouth tightened.

SMACK!

Arya cried out in pain as I slapped her, a red handprint marking itself on her cheek as the corners of her mouth tore further, a tiny trickle of blood threading down her chin. "Watch your mouth." I hissed back, grabbing her by the chin and forcing her eyes back towards me, knowing that the rage fueling my actions would leave traces of magenta in my normally blue irises, and knowing that it always intimidated people. She glared right back though, didn't back down an inch –there was a reason she was quite an excellent opponent, after all. My eyes involuntarily darted downward as her snarl of distaste widened the cuts in her mouth further, leaving slightly thicker trails of the crimson, sticky-sweet fluid, and my tongue slowly ran along my lips. Her blood looked so sweet; and she surely wouldn't like it if I tried to taste some.

I came to an instant decision and stood up from my seat, letting go of her chin as her eyes closed in retreat. Then I hopped onto the bed and slung my legs over her waist as her eyes snapped open again and darted up to my face, terror flickering in their depths. She tried to squirm backwards, to somehow remove my weight from her hips, but I had tied her down well enough so that she couldn't move more than a couple inches, and was helpless. I grinned wickedly and let her simmer for a few more moments, feeling pleasantly gratified by her fear, before cutting off her squirms by placing my hands on her shoulders, lightly curling my fingers around her outstretched arms. She stopped squirming instantly and looked up at me as if I had run mad, or she feared I had come up with something even worse than my usual slash-and-bruise games.

In a way, I suppose she was right on both ends.

As I smashed my mouth on hers, I grinned as I felt her entire body jerk away, instantly twisting and bucking under me as she tried to get me off, her revulsion and hatred and fear practically palpable. My tongue curled wickedly into her mouth, and I purred happily to myself as I caught a trace of her blood and lapped it up. She tasted even better than I had thought, and I made a mental note to start collecting her blood to use in some of my favorite cupcake recipes. Maybe I would force her to eat some of them; self-cannibalism would be another wonderful little mental torture I could enact on her in the weeks to come.

Besides this, of course.

Now, I knew she had no attraction to me. The fact that she was probably twisting her ankles and wrists bloody in her desperate struggles to break off our "kiss" made it rather obvious. I had no attraction to her; honestly, I didn't give a flying fudge about her appearance, unless she somehow managed to dismiss my illusions and show her little friends how bruised and battered she really was, and the only thing I wanted from her insides was the same thing I wanted from everyone's insides; baking ingredients. She could go to Hell for all I cared; in fact, I would enjoy giving her a nice hard kick to help her on the way down.

This was just one more form of mental warfare.

I knew she had never been kissed before, and while this medley of teeth, tongue, and blood could hardly be called as such, it was close enough for me, and –by her desperate thrashing– close enough for her too. My teeth bit down on her lower lip as she wailed in pain, bringing more of that delicious blood welling to the surface, and I dove my tongue inside her mouth, eagerly lapping up every last trace of the sweet crimson fluid. But now she had had enough and she bit me, a brief spark of pain before my tongue healed, and I shuddered all over at the sickly sweet taste of our combined blood; it was marvelous, perfect, exquisite…

Aryana was screaming into my mouth now, and I realized in a hazy fashion that in my excitement my grip on her arms had tightened and my nails were digging viciously into her shoulders, cutting the smooth skin there and bringing more blood to the surface, and far from easing up, I tightened my grip, my nails eagerly questing for her very bones as the pain gave birth to renewed screams and struggling from the human under me. Did I care? No, I didn't; I kept right on biting and sucking, bloodying her lips and tongue until she was sobbing under me, no longer even trying to struggle, her body arching and twitching for every shift of my fingers, now buried deeply in her shoulders as blood ran down her arms and pooled on the mattress below us.

I finally pulled away with a satisfied pop, several strands of bloodied saliva dripping from my mouth onto hers as I grinned headily at her defeated expression. Tears were leaking from the corners of her tightly shut eyes, and her whole face was screwed up and tense, waiting for the next bout of pain, her lips torn and bloody. I bent my head downwards and fastidiously licked them clean, feeling her tremble for each swiping motion of my tongue, and grinned once more. This really was marvelous; I couldn't think of the last time one of my little games got her so traumatized, so quickly. I definitely needed to do this again, sometime in the very near future.

I pulled my fingers out of her shoulders with a wet squilsh, making her whimper as thicker streams of blood began pouring onto the bedsheets. Cooing like a concerned parent, I stroked her porcelain-pale face with the bloodied digits, leaving smears of red on her cheek. "Poppet…open your eyes now poppet, look at me." I crooned, and she flinched, her whole body pressing away from mine. I smiled as one of my fingers lightly rested on her eyelid. "Open, poppet. Unless you want me to open them for you~" I sang, starting to apply pressure on her eyeball as she instantly snapped her other eyelid open, pleading up at me with the honey-brown orb to please, please not render her half-blind, her eyes were open, she was looking at me now…

I took the finger off, and felt her relax, barely, in relief as her other eye opened. I couldn't help it; I grinned again, making her flinch. It felt marvelous to have this much control over her, to be this omnipotent. I daresay I'd almost miss it when I killed her…but letting her live would be ridiculous. Absolute rubbish. It wasn't as if I could keep her any longer than I needed to. She had proven to be quite the little escape artist; if I kept her here for longer than a few weeks, she would find a way to break my hold on her, and then all my plans would be blown to hell in a teapot. It was absolutely necessary to kill her as fast as I could.

But then again…if I kept her in our world, completely severed all her ties to this one, she could stay with me for quite some time before it became needful to dispose of her…

I quickly shook my head and stopped my woolgathering. She would die, and she would die soon, in pain, because that was what she deserved. Returning my attention to the object of my musings, I smiled at her grimly, still gently stroking her cheek with my bloodied fingers. "Do you hate me, Aryana?" I cooed, and she furrowed her brow slightly, unsure as how to answer. But, slowly, the submissive fear was extinguished –I would miss it– and her natural fire returned; she nodded firmly, her mouth possibly in too much pain for her to speak, her eyes glinting at me and showing the dislike that she had tried to tamp down. I smiled wickedly and leaned down, so that our faces were less than an inch apart. My mouth parted slightly, practically tasting the fresh, warm blood that was smeared on her cheek. "Good." I purred, feeling her shiver as my breath ghosted across her skin.

"Because I-"

Lick.

"-hate-"

Lick.

"-you."

Sluuurp.

Giggling to myself, as she shuddered and made a face, I pulled away and swung my legs over her again, hopping off the bed and tripping lightly to the door. I paused as I flicked the switch, looking back over my shoulder at her huddled form on the bed. She began to sob, and I grinned widely, my eyes glittering in the semidarkness. With one last chuckle, I closed the door and skipped down the hallway, heading for the kitchen.

I would have to do research on Stockholm Syndrome later; for now, I needed to do something with my surplus of baking supplies.

Kitty-Cat: Hol-ly sheet. O.O

ME: You like it? :)

Kitty-Cat: From an artist's point of view, yeah, you did great. -.-

ME: And from your point of view? ;3

Kitty-Cat: You are a sick, twisted person, and I immediately retract your rights to write my characters. -.-'

ME: Seriously?! :0

Kitty-Cat: Nah, this is great. He's even more psycho than when I write him. X)