The Room

1

As I attempted to hop over and skirt around the millions of puddles making my walk home my own personal hell, I cursed the day I ever decided to move to Texas. Sure, the university here has the best veterinary program in the U.S., but the constant raining and creepy bugs were bringing forth a misery equal to my passionate love for animals. Fortunately, graduation was just 6 months away, I had a great internship lined up for summer, and was already accepted to vet school for my graduate degree. All in all, I could ignore the constant wet socks and mosquito bites if I kept reminding myself that in less than a year I would be well on my way to living my dream life back in the beautiful state that is Colorado.

By the time I made it home Alice and Rosalie had already finished with dinner and were cleaning up. If my stupid organic chemistry lab didn't continually take 3 hours, I might one day be able to join them.

"Jesus Christ Bella! You look like someone tried to drown you!" For the life of me I could not understand why Alice was always surprised that I got wet when it rained. I mean, for heaven's fucking sake, I was NOT going to walk around carrying an umbrella all day at school just so that by the time I got home, I was presentable for my roommates. It's not like I cared about my hair as much as Rose did about hers. God, that girl does have great hair though…..

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, it's raining…again!" I was surprised at the harshness of my tone. I guess the humidity was getting to me even more than usual. My real life in Denver had practically made me abhor any type of humid weather for as long as I can remember.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just thought you would accept a ride from your cute lab partner one of these days"

"Ah, as much as I love preppy punk wannabes, the walk home isn't so bad. You should try it sometime."

"HA! I will not ruin my Jimmy Choo heels for the sake of a little fresh air"

"Whatever, Alice. I've got to finish my lab write up, so I'll just see you guys in the morning. And I'll be late again tomorrow—I won't get out of my exam until after 8."

As I made it to my room a wave of depression hit. I'm not normally a depressed kind of person, but I am quite moody and I rarely try to fight what I feel like doing. That said, I really did have every intention of finishing the lab, but quickly decided a hot shower was the only thing I really needed to do. After which, I reasoned there's no better follow up than two blissful hours of my favorite soap that I had my TiVo tape earlier in the day. Besides, I'd just get up early and finish the lab tomorrow. Why do today, what you can put off 'til tomorrow? That was my life motto, and I was sticking to it.

***

Despite the forecast for rain, Tuesday was a rather nice December day… apart from me totally failing my physiology exam. Yeah, that kind of sucked. Hard core. Which was why I decided to take the long way home, even though it was already half past 8 and the sun was long gone. I just needed some extra time to cool off and calm down. There was nothing I hated more than doing poorly on a test I actually studied for (which was pretty rare occasion). I am certainly not one to 'toot my own horn' as my grandmother would put it, but I actually am pretty damn smart. So when I study, I expect nothing less than an A. Unfortunately, my game appeared to be off.

The walk through the forest-like park was rather serene. I had to give it to the state, the trees here were beautiful. Old and tall and truly magnificent, they never ceased to amaze me. If tree houses had air conditioners and bathrooms, I could definitely live up there. Well, maybe. If only this big ass state had mountains. And dry air. And less rain. And fewer Texans. Yep, then it would be perfect. It would be home. Jesus! I had to stop thinking like this! There's nothing I can do about my current living situation; besides, I was the one who chose to go here.

I was so distracted by my never-ending geographic debacle, that I nearly missed the sound of something in the bushes to my right. As a normally nervous person, I would have continued walking. But for a brief second I thought I heard a whimper. Immediately my mind was filled with images of a poor, defenseless creature. Perhaps it was a cute dog or rabbit or even opossum. I had never seen an opossum until I moved down here. Either way, my conscious would never allow me to just walk on by without at least trying to help. And hey, if it happened to be a human, well, I suppose I could help too. It was no secret that I much preferred animals to humans. Animals don't lie, animals don't connive, and animals don't leave you. But I regress. The point is I was helpless to my own good intentions.

Later I would wonder if it was because I was so hopeful about the idea of caring for another furry friend that I completely missed any warning signs and didn't even react quickly enough to scream when a man suddenly appeared.

2

Once I regained consciousness I wisely kept my eyes shut. Hopefully the men in the room wouldn't notice the change in my breathing. I always hated the people in movies who just started screaming or talking when they woke up. Seriously! If you keep quiet and pretend to be asleep, then you might be able to find out some important information. At least, that's what I was hoping for. From the sounds of things, there were several men in the….room? With my eyes shut I obviously had no idea where I was. However, I could definitely hear at least 4 different men. But you know men; the assholes always travel in packs. So there were probably more. And considering my head was throbbing, I figured that at least one of them was the guy who had bashed my head in with something painfully heavy.

They appeared to be arguing on whether or not to wake me up. One guy, who had a freakishly deep and terrorizing voice, wanted to get the party started. He wasn't going to wait around for me and my "beauty sleep". Like I said: asshole. Another man, who spoke with an air of authority, wanted to wait a little longer. He was arguing that this would be the last time I ever slept without nightmares; he stated it as if it were the most boring fact on earth. The others seemed to get a kick out of it. Okay…that was not a good sign.

As the men chuckled and began discussing random shit, I tried to get a bearing on what I was laying on. It felt like a hard….metal table? It was cold, that was for sure. The thing that was much more upsetting though, was the fact that my hands were tied above my head and my legs spread apart—as if they were tied to bed posts. This was getting scarier by the minute. I had a massive headache, but I was confident that I had no other injuries.

I guess the man who sounded like he was in charge noticed me squirming minimally and decided I was awake. Damn. And I was trying awfully damned hard to be sneaky. Oh well. I opened my eyes.

"Well, look who's ready to play, gentleman" said a somewhat tall, white, thin man with glasses. He had brownish hair and plain jeans with a button up dress shirt. He was completely unremarkable.

If only I could say the same about the rest of the men in the room. My estimate of 4 assholes was way off. From a quick scan around the room, I figured there to be about 10 guys. Most looked like the turkey for their Thanksgiving meal had just arrived at the table. I decided then and there that I was royally fucked. Some of the guys were just as boring as their leader. Some weren't. One guy looked like a freaking building. He was thick and highly muscular and really quite evil looking. He had short, dirty blonde hair, insanely dark brown eyes, and tattoos up and down his arms. I immediately pegged him as the meanest one in the bunch. One redneck with a mullet also looked terrifying, but he wasn't quite as built and just the fact that he had a mullet made him lose credibility with me. There was another guy standing behind everyone else who looked…different. He was pretty cute, tall, lighter colored hair, and he looked quite worried. I didn't exactly have time to ponder his worries though.

"So, Bella, why don't you tell us something about yourself? My name is James." So leader guy was James. An unremarkable name for an unremarkable guy; fit well enough. And apparently he knew my name. Although tempted to tell him he could go suck his cock, I figured I should just plead the fifth. There was no sense in saying something they already knew or even worse, something they didn't.

"Awww, come on sugar pie, a little conversation never hurt nobody." Mullet man was trying to entice me to speak, but it took all my self-control not to laugh at his hick accent. He was the poster boy for white trash.

"Phil, shut your redneck mouth motherfucker" said the giant with tattoos. "I'm not so interested in what comes out of her mouth…more like what goes in it." His sneer was so disgustingly ferocious, I had to turn away. I was beginning to feel more and more helpless by the minute.

"All of you just be quiet for a minute." James appeared to have easy control over his men, though the big guy didn't actually look like the obedient type. "Bella, if you don't feel like talking, well, I'll just have to start the ball rolling. As you can see, you now belong to us." He went around the room introducing the men. Most of the names I quickly forgot, but a few seemed to stick: worried guy was Edward and huge guy was Mike. Oops, looks like I only remembered two. All things considered, I say that's not too bad. "You are now the main attraction for our little group. Basically, these men want to…learn. Or just have a good time. Or gain experience. It doesn't matter much to me, or even you. All you need to know is that you can scream as much as you want because no one can hear you. You can try to escape but no one has ever managed to even make it out of their room. Speaking of which, this is our living room and behind you is a hallway that leads us to your room. You will spend pretty much every hour in there, unless you misbehave, in which case you will come back out here and be punished." As James spoke, the men in the room appeared to grow more and more excited. I, on the other hand, had no idea how to feel. Terrified, disgusted, helpless, distraught, doomed. The list went on and I was at an utter loss to my emotions.

"This won't make much sense to you right now, but here's the schedule: there are ten guys, including myself. We each are allotted two hours a day with you until your time here is up. If one man finishes early, another may start early. Sometimes our other lives take precedent and we don't show up, but I'm sure you won't mind. We will bring you three meals a day and provide everything you need. Aro here is even a doctor and is at your disposal, shall you ever need him." James nodded his head to a shorter, black haired man with a creeper mustache. "In your room, you have any amenities you'll want. I really do hope you come to enjoy your time with us and I will try to make you as comfortable as possible." Despite his sincerity, I didn't believe him for one minute. Perhaps he really did think he was acting gracious, but crazy was a more befitting adjective.

"So, with no further ado, we will lead you to your room. See you soon." James gave me a smile that sent shivers down my spine. For such a boring guy, his words and expressions would probably haunt me forever.