Cold Revenge
Ashley Hansen opened her eyes to familiar surroundings, enshrouded in darkness. The private room in the back of her house was her sanctum of fetish, a place where no one was allowed inside without an invitation. It was a large, rectangular division dominated by a giant curved screen that had seen many commands of her come to life. However, the messages now displayed there in bright red came from someone else, a stranger whose intents remained unknown.
The thirty-four-year-old faux redhead sat in a silver chair that was freezing to the touch. Her clothes – a white tank top and a pair of rugged jeans – were shredded, needle marks visible on her right arm and left leg. The tissue around them was swollen, purple protuberances against a fair skin. The drugs in her system were still fresh, and so was the haziness clouding her amber-colored eyes. Struggling to move, she faced the screen and read,
“Welcome back, Ashley. Comfortable? Not too much, I hope.”
Ashley said nothing, eyes roving the room, looking for her assailant. A vague outline by the door caught her attention. It was of another woman, holding a tablet. She was petite in stature and had slightly Asian traits. It didn’t appear to be anyone she knew.
“Keep your eyes on the screen,” the mysterious figure said.
“Why, if I already know you’re there? What’s the point of this charade?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Isn’t this the way you love to fuck other people’s minds?”
“You must be confusing me with someone else.”
“I wish that were true.”
The stranger tapped the laptop and five pictures appeared on the main screen. An old man with an anchor-shaped birthmark on his left cheek; a violet-haired young woman with more piercings than flesh left in her right ear; another man, this one dressed in a gray suit and holding a real estate agency business card; a second woman, older than the first and with a fairly average face except for the fact she had a blue eye and a brown one; and finally, another woman, this one in her late twenties and dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform. She, too, had oriental features as well as a disarming smile.
“Do any of them look familiar to you, Ashley?” the screen asked.
“No. I’ve never seen any of them before.”
“Are you really just going to sit there and lie?”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I’m sure of it. You have no secrets from me. I know what you did to all of them, and I say: no more! Your realm of abuse ends tonight.”
The stranger touched the laptop again, and the pictures faded into a mesh of black and white interconnected spirals that filled the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a taste of your own medicine, of course! Was it fun to brainwash them all against their will? It must have been otherwise you wouldn’t have kept on doing it. I’m sure you’ll love what comes next.”
“Wait! We can talk about this, reach some sort of agreement…”
“No, we can’t. You lost any chance you had the moment you started kidnapping people to satisfy your lust… And you really shouldn’t have fucked with my sister.”
The dulling geometrical patterns exploded all around, slowly taking root inside Ashley’s thoughts. The indoctrination process was as quick or as slow as anyone wanted it to be. Hers would be the slowest and most painful of all.
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