"Um, what shall I do?"
For an answer, Jason yanks on the short chain connecting Emily's wrists one to another, yanking her towards himself. It's been more than eight months since she last took a walk and she's unsteady on her feet, but see if that concerns him. The floorboards creak as she distributes her weight. Yes, she is finally being allowed to get out of bed, and on the warmest day of Spring yet, but not without supervision. The chain is off her ankle, but the stroll is going to be guided, and it's going to be confined to the house, with a terrifying man blasting hot and putrid air down her neck, his jacket brushing her back suddenly as if she needs a reminder that he's there, his arms hanging ready to snatch and grab and twist lest she attempt to run. Why he has decided that the waddling stage of pregnancy is when she should be allowed exercise, is not something she's been made privy t- actually, no, it makes perfect sense.
A silent tour of a house so loaded with combustive memories is extremely uncomfortable, like witnessing a class or workmate's humiliation. You can't leave, you can't say anything, you can't catch anyone's eye, you simply have to endure and hope it ends soon. Small, sock clad feet shuffle through a layer of desiccated leaves fallen through a hole in the roof, followed by the crunch of humongous boots. Emily doesn't dare touch any of the things that catch her attention, even looking too long makes the breathing behind her roughen and accelerate, but the urge to clean and tidy is extreme. If Jason bothered to maintain his domicile the way he maintains his weapons, it would be quite nice, but he doesn't, and another sliver of white paint peels off the sitting room window frame as they pass, fluttering away to land in the unrecognisable remains of a garden.
Grey dust puffs up from the exceptionally gross kitchen, costing Emily an attack of the sneezes. A floorboard snaps in two, making her jump, scream strangled halfway up her throat. A large hand rises, landing on her side, turning her towards the door. Like he can't help himself, Jason smooths that hand across and over her bulbous stomach. The baby is vigorous, and it responds to the slight pressure and change of temperature, kicking.
"Ooh." heat wars with cold for possession of Emily's body, her cheeks flushing red, before paling to white. The touch she's subjected to is vile, and most of her rebels, drawing its metaphysical self up and away, cringing, teeth bared, but some primitive, shame immune part of her stupidly says 'that's baby's daddy :)' This part she wants to cut, burn and kick till it stops moving.
"Mrm." from a neutral touch, the tips of Jason's fingers curl inwards, draining the skin underneath of blood and colour, applying just the slightest unnecessary pressure.
From his consistently interested behaviour Emily has decided that while he may not be reachable in the way most people are, Jason does indeed understand cause and effect. Very well. Extremely well. She is certain that his almost peaceable caressing of her bump means he knows that he is the father of her baby. It is not possible to imagine him treating another man's child or suspected child in any comparable way. Quite likely if he had suspected it came from someone other than him, Emily would not still be clinging onto her tenuous existence.
The frogs are singing, and the children's bed has become even narrower with the addition of a third person, who comes complete with their own squishy apartment. Lying on top of Jason no longer works, so the pair are confined to tight spooning, all of Jason's limbs except for one leg contrive to form a makeshift straitjacket around his captive, his arms crossing over her chest, meeting and then passing each other, rendering her own absolutely useless. They stay like that the entire night long. It is in this way that he ensures no hostile attempt is made on his softer bits while he's dreaming. Likewise, his monumental ankle loops around Emily's, his knee keeping both her legs pinned underneath his, while his chin pushes down on the top of her head…It's rather like sleeping inside the belly of an anaconda. Even here though, Emily contrives to dig out a less torturous situation for herself. She was never much hugged or touched as a child, ending up with a great hunger for it, so until she falls asleep she works on transforming the flesh cage she's trapped in, into a hug from someone she wishes had provided them. It's a tough job, her mind constantly trying to remind her of her disgusting reality, while her body, her clever body, mostly accepts her self applied con.
The night of the guided tour, Jason flips up his mask to demand his usual goodnight kiss, but this time he throws Emily's free arm over his neck and shoulders, so that she's forced to give him a hug in which she can't pretend he isn't himself. The more of her body touches his, the worse it is for her, but his hair, tickling her hand, doesn't have the same effect. It's softish, and not boiling with the heat of lust and rage. She noticed, without any sort of amusing emotion, that he's a strawberry blond, or very light ginger, a piece of nerdyish biology that doesn't lessen his intimidation factor one iota, and if anything, makes him look even more unearthly. If she had to, at gunpoint, point to something about him that she liked, it would be his hair, since it's never yet done anything to hurt her.
Every day and night after this includes mandated exercise, Jason prodding her along with the power of fear alone. Round and round they go, suffering no mishap until a small noise outside makes Jason hiss. Crushing hands constrict Emily's waist between them, the girl half shoved, half lifted towards a trapdoor.
Pushed down roughly into the mouth of the tunnel, Emily looks up, discovering Jason's ominous 'face' looking down at her from an inch away, a clear warning in his pale eyes, a clear promise of hitherto unimagined torment to come should she cause him inconvenience. Because that's all an escape attempt or any other such thing would be to Jason, mere inconvenience. To emphasize the point, a lake blue iris rolls downwards, falling on Emily's stomach, a look that lands as a punch, so much so that her knees tremble and drop her to the dirt. Gulping audibly, she nods, little, sharp nods. It's another moment before Jason climbs back out, his stealthy footsteps fading away across the floor above.
It's very difficult for untrained ears to distinguish normal night-time rustling and woodland ambiance from an incursion by intelligent intruders, and although she was given no directions, Emily moves into a corner so she's still where she was left, but not directly below where booted feet will come down, crouching amongst dirty hay and tattered rags, using a pallet as a bit of a shield, hoping Jason will not take her initiative amiss. Run, run, she can run, waddle away in her socks, yes, and die, and have her baby slowly cut out of her while she's still alive, have it be decapitated in front of her eyes, yes, she can have all of that, and worse, because Jason's creative, far more creative than she, and cruelties lurk in his black heart which have not been seen since the darkest days of the Middle Ages, and which could not be thought up except by someone who gorges on the agony of other creatures. Crouching in her corner, Emily hugs her tummy and tries to think herself somewhere very far away.
It could be hours, it could be minutes before he returns, but when he does, machete at the ready, he does so looking like a wrestler who has recently lost a fight with a pond, and he smells like it too, being soaked from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. As always, he doesn't appear discomforted by his mangy state, but he does seem surprised to see Emily where he left her, his eyes widening ever, so, slightly.
Like a wealthy guest ringing a fancy hotel, the baby sends word that the time has come for its arrival, but its mother does not notify its father, not even when the contractions begin arriving closer and closer together. The dawn chorus start up their joyful greeting of the new day, and Emily times her deep breaths with the rhythm of the birds, focusing her attention on the ebb and flow of pain and peace. Behind her, Jason slumbers on, his grip limiting her ability to take as big gulps of air as she would like.
A thin slice of peachy light disrupts the distant navy blue horizon, far beyond the maze of trees, and with it comes a change in a serial killer's breathing. The still shiny buckle of a belt clatters to the floor as a huge foot accidentally kicks a pair of trousers off their precarious perch on the end of the bed. Jason huffs, like a lion after a good meal, licking his teeth like one too as he leaves the dreamlands and the good hunting he's been enjoying there. He should sleep in his bed underground, but that's not normal behaviour that normal people engage in. Normal happy boys sleep in their normal pretty houses, in their normal above ground beds, with their normal little wives, that their normal loving mothers approve of. And Jason is normal, very normal.
The soft warmth in front of him calls out to be pawed, travelled over the way a wealthy landowner travels over his fertile acres, admiring the hard work, his work, which has resulted in so much bounty. A constricting arm untangles itself from its lock across Emily's chest, its hand touching the swells and dips of her face and neck first, before moving on. She's a pretty girl, pretty in an innocent, fresh faced way, unlike the majority of the females he comes across. He can tell, or see for himself that those are not innocent. Not worthy, simply by the way they react to him, the way they act like they're better, unattainable by the likes of him. Well, he shows them, doesn't he? Even the untainted ones fight him or run away, when they should stay still. No, he's an innocent, sweet boy, and Mother is proud of his choice.
Only when that hand makes it to the bulge below Emily's ribs, does the perfectly normal landowner realise that his property is about to increase by one. A man as sensitive to every little tremor of his prey as he, can feel the powerful muscles spasming with military precision. Sitting up, he reaches over her head towards the bedside table, not to turn on an old lamp that hasn't featured a workable bulb for ten years, but to slap a switch for the lights present in his room but very rarely used and mostly broken, since the room looks out on the world beyond. Pretty light completely incongruous with the master of the house sweeps across the rather well kept bedroom, but still Emily doesn't react beyond blinking, although now and then the minutest groan escapes her lips.
After he's put his clothes on Jason slips his arms under her chest and legs in order to lift her, causing her to level a horrified expression on him, looking him directly in the eyes when usually she looks slightly to the side of them. It's a frightened but distant look, one he's used to, commonly appearing on the faces of the soon-to-be deceased. It's annoying, dismissive, and he likes to uh, 'play with his food' in order to make those displaying it focus on him as the one responsible for ending their lives.
Faithful old body comes to Emily's rescue again, preventing the thought in her head from taking effect, preventing her from trying to fight him off, sure as she is that he's going to butcher her and the child. Instead it makes her loop her arms around his neck, something shifting in her gaze so that it's clear that she knows who it is who has her in their grip. Jason breaks eye contact, standing up with her quickly and easily, striding away towards a trapdoor.
Downstairs reveals its secrets gradually, the sounds Emily heard for weeks taking concrete shape as a cell, a room set back from the others in the mine, approached by a complicated series of switchbacks and false paths in the form of lightless tunnels made to retard escape, or invasion. Very quickly Emily loses her bearings, but Jason stamps on without the smallest hesitation.
Her hole away from home is small ('cosy') but very luxurious, as abyssal holding pens go. It's lit with more of the fairy lights Jason seems partial to, which give a deceptively soft and magical vibe to a man-made cave. The ceiling is reinforced with poles and beams, and one of the empty picture frames from upstairs decorates a wall, the nail driven directly into rock. The bed, located behind a row of the kind of bars commonly found in a police jail, is set against the back wall of the hollowed out room, and is twice the size of her bed upstairs, with a thicker, newer, cleaner mattress sitting on a homemade iron bed frame the reddish brown colour of soil. The frame comes pre-equipped with loops for holding chains. Apart from a bed and blankets there's also a choice of buckets, a heater, a pile of books, and a two litre bottle of cloudy water on the ground beside the bed. Very homely.
Jason puts his captive down on the bed, swiftly feeding a thick chain through the loops, a chain long enough to allow her to walk around the room in a wide semicircle, but not long enough to allow her to reach the bars of her cell. Once he's done making sure the wrist manacle is locked in place properly, he steps back, and stares. Emily sits up and stares back, stares at his throat. That neck of his is absurdly thick, sending shivers down her spine when she thinks about the genes her baby may have inherited. Can his evil be passed on? No. It's about how you're raised, but what chance down here has the child to be raised to be kind and good when its father has never heard of those words? Murder is his religion, his love, his joy, his reason for being.
Neither person says anything, and after several minutes of staring, Jason turns, exits the cell, and locks it. Too busy with her labour to pay much attention to him once there's bars between them, Emily gets up and walks around, pushing her hands into the small of her back. That helps a bit.
A couple hours pass and contractions begin arriving sixty seconds apart. Following what she read, Emily gets down on all fours on the bare earth, arching her back to relieve the pain and pressure, before changing to sit with her legs underneath her. The sound of metallic grinding drifts over from elsewhere in the mine, Jason sharpening his machete. Not even that scary noise can distract the struggling mother sufficiently enough to put her off what she's doing, but she does glance around, searching for something sharp of her own. Nothing. There's nothing. Not even a toothbrush. Jason is too meticulous. Wetting the hem of her dress with some of the water he left for her, she uses it to cool her forehead, like one's midwife or husband is supposed to do. Labour hurts, but it's not as bad as she thought it would be, not nearly as bad as what she's already been put through. Nothing feels wrong, not that she knows what wrong would feel like in this scenario, and there's no energy to spare for seething over this further piece of dreadful injustice, this hateful infliction, this monstrous idea that Jason could take what he wants from her, five minutes of fun, and then leave her with an implanted bomb with a nine month long lit fuse, that could very well result in her death. Rape leads to death, rape is death, and it's implications are soul searing.
Slow and deliberate footsteps approach just after her waters break, a deeply shadowed silhouette with black holes for eyes, disrupting the orderly row of iron bars. The ceiling is high enough for normal men, too low for a giant, his body taking up more than its fair share of attention. Jason leans against the bars, his hands gripping them lightly, like he's a child at the zoo, waiting for some strange animal to do something vaguely interesting. A tiny movement of his massive head causes the light to catch his eyes, which glitter, still depraved but not hostile, dispassionate. Dispassionate is good, Emily thinks, and what is even better is that no bow or knife is present, and his machete is stowed away in its holster. He gives no indication of intending to approach or assist.
The book said that a midwife would, um, look and see if she was ready to push, but there's no one to do that job for her, and Jason, thankfully, stays where he is, so she relies wholly on the urge to bear down, which grows by the second. Deep breathes, Emily, deep breathes. Push like it's a business. Euuurggh. Drops of sweat darken the soil beside her scraped hands. Oh, she's so tired. Her body shakes and she's almost too exhausted to move, but she manages to crawl and climb and heave her way back onto the bed, hands changed into claws, forearms stark with tendon and muscle. The man-shape behind her shifts his weight slightly, the pale strands of his hair glowing in the whimsical light.
Her massive effort to provide a soft landing for her firstborn, is rewarded. Emily lies down, concentrates all her remaining energy into one bright and shinning point, and pushes her baby out into the world.
….a baby's cries ring around the rock walls, absorbed by the compacted soil, and a man makes a strange sound deep in his throat.
Weakened by the conditions she's kept in, it takes Emily a minute or two to lever herself upright. Her hands reach her child before her eyes, sliding over his slimy skin, skin all covered with mucous and blood. They reach his head, and find it normal. Her bleary eyes focus, and find him beautiful. Just like that, Emily bursts into tears, wrapping her child in a blanket, holding him close, her body curling over so that he's protected by it. After a few minutes of cathartic weeping, she turns her red and sweaty face towards the bars.
"Jason, he needs clothes, and his own blanky, and a wash." she gasps, the longest sentence she's ever addressed to her captor. At first he doesn't react, and she thinks that maybe she's misjudged his level of intellect and understanding, when he peels away from the bars, and stalks away into the dark.