BPOV
And at once, I am aware.
I know how to wake up in a dangerous situation. Carefully, and never all at once. I send my mind down to the tips of my toes, shifting my bones and making sure everything below the waist can be accounted for without injury. My knees feel bruised, and my feet have likely bled through my socks again, but nothing feels new. Okay, up. My consciousness moves along my hips (very sore- new) up through my gut. I feel incredibly nauseous. My chest feels fine. Carefully, and still blind, I feel along my neck. There is a pinprick of soreness, and as I remember my last moments, I know he must have given me something.
My eyes are opened by a sense of being watched.
Abuse makes you an animal of prey. It causes a certain sort of behavior, a wariness, a constant not-quite-at-ease sense of threat. I know when I am being watched.
I take in my surroundings quickly to find a hiding place. My heart has taken up a pounding sprint by now. I am not safe. Not at all.
The room I am in is like nothing I've ever seen before. A four walled square, with three mirrored glass walls and one transparent. I am in a cage.
I am curled in a fetal position, with the bars biting into my back and hips. It seems to be… a dog cage? I shift myself upwards into a sitting position, though it's very uncomfortable. I push against the sides, but there is no door that I can see. My cage sits at the base of a greying mattress atop a box spring, with no sheets to speak of or pillow.
The new position of my head crammed under the top of the cage makes my collar bite into my skin.
Wait.
I trace it with my fingers. It's smooth and cold, and made of something chillingly hard. At five or six places there is an uncomfortable sort of spike. Not so much a spike, but rather a rounded protruding piece that digs and hurts me.
Fear. Overwhelming. I must close my eyes, for I can feel the panic carrying me away.
"Welcome, Isabella."
I would have jumped about four feet in the air if I were able. Instead, my skin pressed impossibly harder against the walls of the cage and my trembling increased ten fold.
"I think it's time we explain our first rule."
The voice comes from a small speaker that shines in the upper corner of the room, adjacent to a security camera. They both look the way stainless steel appliances do, and are that much more terrifying because of it.
FIRE.
Electricity jumps through my body, ripping and burning and OH PLEASE GOD MAKE IT-
It stops. I sag deep into the cage, shivering and crying. My cries are involuntary, so great the pain. The collar was the origin of the shock. But it didn't feel small, like I assume electric dog collars feel. This was true pain. Worse than when Charlie-
"Isabella, this is what will happen when you do not do what is asked of you. Do you understand?"
I nod through my tears. This is something I can understand. Pain, because I did a bad thing. I burrow my nails deep into my thighs, something I did when I lived with Charlie to help ground me in the moment. Fear could carry me away, and when it swept me along it caused me to do other bad things.
Bad, bad girl. I brought this upon myself.
The pokey things in the collar were warm on my neck. I feel it humming along my throat like a living thing.
"Isabella, look and see why you've been brought here."
I fight through tears to lift my head. On the other side of the transparent wall is a nearly identical room. Three mirrored walls. One common wall with me. But no cage, and the bed has sheets. There is a knife lying on the ground next to the man's feet.
My eyes find him and I cry out in terror.
He looks demonic, wild as sin and frighteningly handsome.
He stands at the ready, close to the wall we share. But it's not his proximity that terrifies me, it's his eyes. They are the most startling shade of green and they burn right through me and I feel as though I shall be ash. I can physically feel the anger boiling off of him, and I shrink back as much as I can. This man could kill me. This man will kill me. Does he know how bad I have been?
He's much taller than Charlie. Probably six and a half feet, he makes me quake just with the sheer size of him. And oh.
He's naked.
So am I!
It escapes me how I could have not noticed until this moment. I blush deeply and try to shift to cover the important bits, but there's really not much room and I bend my wrist the wrong way trying. I bite my lip and cry out, and the strength my tears have me quivering more than my fear does.
He suddenly slams his open hand to the glass wall, searching my eyes with his. He says something, but it's soundless.
"Edward wants to say hi."
The glass wall, incredibly, begins to rise. It slips away into the ceiling with a sickening slowness, and I know this is it. I have been so bad, and the voice is punishing me, and this man must be here to do the same. He is so muscular. His body has been chiseled, absolutely horrifying in its size. He moves quickly under the wall, and with a liquid grace even in his anger. He stoops down to my cage and grasps the bars at the top.
Gritting his teeth- oh! He is like an animal, and tears the top bars of the cage apart. His shoulders fan out into the wingspan of his arms, muscles churning and veins popping.
I have never been so frightened.
Snatching me roughly by the shoulders and pinning my arms to my sides, he pulls me from the ruined cage. Once he sets me on the bed, I scoot away from him, pulling up my knees and crying harder.
In a situation like this, so confusing, so unknown, I must hide. Yet the room offers no sanctuary. Edward reaches his hand towards me, and I flinch and half raise mine in defense. It is of no use of course. He can do anything he wants to me.
EPOV
When I first noticed my new neighbor, I was filled with a profound sadness. After what happened to the last girl (the pain of which is still so fresh for me) I knew that I would be unable to bear the same.
I would make sure this one got to live.
Although it's not much of a life, it is a life. I hold hope still that someone, anyone is searching…
The cages piss me off. What a way for her to become accustomed to this life. He knows that it sets the tone, and helps them understand how things will be. Hence the collar. And the water dish on the floor. And the lack of sheets on the bed. All to degrade, and make them more compliant…
But this one was already destroyed.
I could tell even while she slept. I saw the scars and knew. Cigarette burns. Small crescent moons that I now know are self-inflicted on her thighs. Other irregular scars, all over her, that spoke to years of abuse. But when she woke, oh, when she woke.
It was the shaking and the little cries that gave it away. And those big old brown eyes that melt like a victim's. That's what she is. A victim. I don't know how he found her, but he found a girl who has already been conditioned for him to be perfectly obedient. I bet she would follow orders even without the collar. Well, some. But we'll see.
Her size concerns me also. Not only is she too short, but she also weighed probably one hundred pounds soaking wet. He loves to starve them here. He whispers to me sometimes, over the speaker, that I should be grateful to have such pretty little things to play with. He whispers that he hopes I enjoy the feel of their bones as much as he will when they're dead.
Not this one, though. I will make sure.
I know she's afraid of me, but I can't hold myself back when the wall goes up. I can't stand to see them in the cages. I have to be a brute with it too, because I've learned that he won't let them out.
I know I have to be careful. But the anger, for me, is a living thing. A dragon that sleeps very lightly in my belly, and is woken by the slightest thing. That fire in me is what landed me in prison to begin with.
I can't think of the past here. All focus needs to be away from the outside world, unless concerned with how to return to it.
She shies away from me after I've lifted her (and I can feel when I do that my weight estimate was too generous). I can tell by the heat of her blush that she feels uncomfortable with the exposure in our situation. Modesty will do her no good here (it did none of them any good).
I can tell that I've scared her. "Fuck." I pull my hand roughly through my hair to ground myself. The murmur in my body begins to quiet. I can relax my muscles, just so, and then a bit more. Breathe, Edward.
When I reach out to her, I intend to comfort. Take her hand and explain our situation, and the role that she must (must!) play if she wants to remain alive. But when she flinches and raises her hand to shield the blow she's expecting, I nearly lose it.
Someone hurt this little girl.
She is a girl. We're naked and her body begs to differ, but I can see in her pleading eyes that there is no maturity, no independence, no strength.
Only fear.
I drop to my knees. I want to seem the least threatening I possibly can. I need to make her understand that I mean her no harm (he does) and that I am in the same situation as she (not quite).
"Look," I begin, trying to make my voice as soft as I can. She still winces and the tears continue. I touch the collar at my own neck. "We're in this together."
She quickly wipes at her eyes, looking for all the world a child.
"Where are we?" her voice falls softly on my ears. She is so weak.
"I don't know. But you're safe, for now. He hasn't told me to do anything yet. I won't touch you."
Her visible relief at this is momentary. She startles when a laugh comes over the speaker. Fuck. He's not done for today just yet.
"Edward, you're being too kind to her. She's been a very, very bad girl, and I think you need to teach her a lesson."
"Please, you twisted fuck, don't make me fucking do this yet. She just got here!" I put my head between my hands. As if any amount of pleading will change what he wants. None of it ever has. This detached voice, this sick son of a bitch, has been the bane of my existence for God knows how long. The shock comes, but it's expected and subtle, just a tap to remind me what is at stake. I'm not in too much trouble just yet.
"Punish her."
Defeat slumps my shoulders. I stand heavily, and stride over to my bed to retrieve the knife.