chapter 4 excerpt (unfinished) 𖦹

And we're back! this scene is set a couple of days after the first; Iosif has been in the basement the entire time, and has been put through various atrocities, among which the oil burns you'll see mentioned here, leaving him blind in his left eye and severely scarred.

Also, I'd like to mention before anyone gets reasonably alarmed, this is NOT and never will take a booktok style "dark romance" turn. This is horror (or at least my attempt at it), and treated as such. It will not turn sweet, nothing here is sugary and forgiveness. It will, later, involve Stockhold Syndrome and so a very distorted perception of Alastair, but it will never take a romantic turn. ok thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, enjoy!

CW: mild violence, referenced/mentioned extreme violence, humiliation, loss of control, threats (it's not the worst of the bunch, but it's not sweet)

Iosif can't tell what time it is—late night, maybe around the crack of dawn? But it could just as well be the middle of the morning.

He stares at the monster who stands before the stairs, his face stiff, both with dried tears and the taut skin of his burns. If he tries to move, it feels like needles are being rammed into every part of him.

“...please let me go,” he begs weakly, for what must be the hundredth time. Perhaps he should keep count; maybe the monster would release him once he reached a million. He's been wondering if perhaps the monster doesn't have a voice; it must, though, he heard it talk a few nights ago. Or last night.

Tears spill from him again, exhaustion wearing deep into his bones, when the man walks closer to him. The man walks to the side, instead of towards him, and Iosif throws up in his mouth and has to swallow down the sick because the desk, the man's walking towards the desk, with the oil, the knives, and now the acrid taste of the vomit in his throat and he just can't—

There's the sound of a chair scraping. The monster had simply dragged a chair to the center of the room, two paces or so away from Iosif. Iosif sniffles, trying to stop crying, and trying not to be sick again at the way he can only feel tears flowing from one eye.

“Let me go,” he croaks again. “Please. I don't have anything useful to you. Nobody can pay a ransom for me.”

He'd said the words so many times. The monster didn't care that they weren't a lie.

He jolts when the other speaks in that monotone drone.

“Are you hungry?”

Iosif swallowed tightly at the memory of those skeleton fingers holding bread up to his mouth, as if they were gracious.

“No. Let me go.”

“Are you thirsty, then?”

Tired anger bubbled at the memory of the same skeleton hands guiding a bottle to his lips. At the fact that he'd accepted water from this thing.

“No,” he said more harshly. “Let me go.”

The other just… stares. With those dead eyes. A slight tilt of the head, making the long ink fall across his shoulders. Iosif represses the urge to cower under the gaze.

“...what do you want?” he tries again.

A second of silence.

“Nothing immediate.”

More anger flares at the cryptic answer.

“Monster,” Iosif hisses, feeling the strain on the burnt side of his face as he speaks.

The man hums, as if pensive.

Then abruptly, he's standing up and walking towards Iosif. Iosif jolts and tries to scramble back, but the tips of his shoes don't touch the floor properly, and he can't get the chair to move back, and suddenly there's a hand holding his head in place by the back of his hair.

He stares up at those dull eyes, his breath caught in his throat, claws constricting his lungs.

“Could you repeat that?” the man asks. Iosif feels like he’s going to be sick again. He can't stand the way that voice doesn't change. It isn't human; humans’ voices change with their emotions.

“I— I s…”

Iosif wants to get the words out. Wants to be defiant, spit in the man's gaunt face. But he can't. The words die in his throat. He feels like he's going to choke.

He stays silent, looking up with wide eyes. He can't quite tell whether he's quivering or not.

“I thought so.”

The other skeleton hand goes up, just below Iosif's jaw, and gives a small squeeze. Both of them can feel Iosif's pulse under those fingers, thrumming like a small, captive bird’s. Iosif's neck is released, immediately he takes a deep breath, filling his lungs again.

“How filthy you are,” the man muses. Humiliation pools hot in Iosif's gut.

The man stares for a few seconds longer, then simply turns and leaves, walking back up the stairs and out of Iosif's sight, with his mind reeling.

Was he being left alone? What’s happening? It seems so anticlimactic that Iosif is left restless, adrenaline and fear still coursing through him. He stares up at the top of the stairs for the millionth time, but they’re too far from him, and he can't see the top of them; the ceiling is in the way. His wrists and ankles are rubbed raw by the ropes, he winces when he gives the umpteenth futile attempt at slipping free.

Footsteps he'd begun to train himself to hear slowly become discernible, and soon enough the monster is descending into the room again. Something in his grip glints in the dim light, until Iosif realises it's a pair of metal scissors, and his stomach lurches.

“No…” he croaks out, panic beginning to rise again. “No no no please, please I'm sorry, don't hurt me, I beg you—”

The string of quiet, hopeless, desperate pleas continues as the man kneels beside him and extends a hand towards his left ankle, making the pleading all the more broken because he can't see well on the left side, and can't quite tell what the man's doing. Then his pleading slowly subsides, he tries to stop crying, as he feels the tension binding his ankle to the chair alleviate and then leave. And then the same, on the other.

He looks up at the monster in bewilderment with glassy eyes when it stands and moves behind him. As he feels the tension around his wrists disappear the same way, he tentatively moves his feet, shuffling them to a more comfortable position. Then a few moments after, he can move his wrists as well, and brings them back to the front of his body, rubbing the raw circles around them gently.

The man is back in front of him, watching raptly as he tests his body out, feeling the stiff, aching joints of his shoulders, the sticky skin of his wrists and ankles where they'd been abraded. His neck, the front of his left shoulder, his forearm, they all feel like sandpaper is rubbing on them when he moves. So much is burnt, but it's under his clothes, and he can't see properly.

He looks back up at the man with the same lost expression. He… wasn't being released, was he?

The man approaches Iosif, making his breath catch in his throat. A horrible, skeleton hand is extended down to him. The man is almost entirely shrouded by dark clothes, Iosif can't even see his wrists, but the skin on his long, slim hands practically looks like it's stretched straight over bones, Iosif can't even quite imagine how thin the man's body is.

“...what are you doing?” Iosif croaks, looking from the hand to the dull eyes.

“Holding my hand out for you to hold.”

Iosif could've screamed in exhaustion.

“...why?” he tries.

“Because, as I said, you are filthy. You should hardly be staying like this, should you?” comes the easy reply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if it isn't the man's own fault Iosif is putrid.

It doesn't stop the shame and humiliation from burning hotter in his gut.

Iosif takes the skeletal hand and stands, biting back a small noise as his entire body complains, some parts out of stiffness, others out of excruciating pain. He takes a small step and almost falls, to which another hand comes to his shoulder to steady him. Iosif briefly glances up, and blanches when he's met with the first scrap of an expression on that face.

Disgust; eyes that look infinitely harsher, thin lips slightly downturned in a cold grimace.

Iosif can't help the heat that flares up on his cheeks as he looks back to the ground, wishing he could bury himself alive.

“Come along, then,” comes the cold voice. Iosif is glad it doesn't reflect the disgust on that expression.

The man takes a step towards the stairs, prompting Iosif to follow. Iosif tries, Christ, he really does; the last thing he wants to do is fall onto the other. But his body has other plans, and he'd been tied for much too long, and he simply gives out, staggering against the skeletal body beside him. The monster struggles a moment to hold him up, before putting an arm under Iosif's underarms.

Iosif bites back a scream and keels over as the hard hand brushes over his burns, trying to stay upright. He grabs at the man's shirt, trying to hold himself up.

The man stays still, silent, waiting for Iosif to steady himself.

Anything but steady, Iosif manages to follow the man up the stairs, shards of burning pain shooting up his body every time he’s jolted by his own footsteps. It’s only exacerbated by the feeling of grime, the smell of himself, he wishes he could crawl out of his own skin.

The light from the house sears into his eyes the moment they make it up the last few steps, he tries to blink it away but to no avail; the lights feel like a throbbing neon, though he’s not sure whether that’s because he’s been in penumbra for the last four whole days. He finds himself unable to pull himself out of his own thoughts, swirling and wallowing in a constant thrum of discomfort and dread and indignation and—

“Come. The bathroom is this way.”

The dull monotone snaps Iosif out of his thoughts, he glances up at the man holding him up. The expression has returned to cold nothing, the disgust faded. Iosif isn’t sure which the best of the two evils was.

As he’s led to the bathroom with unsteady footsteps, he has trouble properly taking in his surroundings. All that really registers is how sterile the rooms feel.

He manages to pull himself from his reveries when he feels the cold of the bathtub pressed to the back of his legs. His stomach lurches a little, he looks up at the man before him with widened, searching eyes.

“...Wh— what are you doing?” he croaks, his voice so much more feeble than he would’ve liked.

The man barely deigns him with a response, kneeling to start slipping Iosif’s shoes and socks off. Iosif’s heart spikes further in his chest, he braces himself on the edge of the bathtub with clammy hands.

“As I said, various times now, you are putrid,” the man replies, as if it were natural. As if the situation wasn’t the hellscape it was.

“I— but— wait, wait stop it,” Iosif says hurriedly as the man begins to reach for Iosif’s belt. He inadvertently jolts when their hands touch. “I don’t—”

The man sighs, as though dealing with an unruly child.

“You can hardly wash yourself, in this state,” he explains calmly, Iosif hates the way it sounds like he’s being indulged. Then the dull eyes meet his directly, making him recoil before the voice continues. “Or can you?”

Iosif tries to act angry, defensive—of course he can wash himself, not that he should be in a situation where he’s even called to do so like this regardless—but the words wither in his throat. He isn’t sure what it is about those dead eyes.

“I can do it myself,” he mutters. “You don’t need to watch me.” I don’t want to be watched.

“I will watch.”

The reply is so blunt that Iosif is left dumbfounded for a moment.

“I…” 

Iosif is at a loss for words as he holds the other’s gaze for a few seconds, before reluctantly looking down. His hands hover over his own belt for a moment. That he’s filthy, it’s true. It feels horrible. And maybe being clean would shake the haze he feels like he’s in. 

He glances up at the man’s unwavering stare one last time before unbuckling his belt. When he tries reaching to pull his trousers down, he bites his lip to suppress the pained cry he would've liked to give.

The man raises an eyebrow, expression remaining flat as Iosif attempts to brave the piercing feeling of the burns being abraded by his clothes, the mangled skin stretching.

The cold of the ceramic is both grounding and uncomfortable, as droplets of water drip down Iosif's body. He's mostly given up on moving his upper body, other than his right arm; the rest makes him want to weep if he tries.

He glances up at the man as the latter picks up a towel and gauze from the cabinet and moves back to Iosif, setting the gauze down beside him. Iosif can't help the dull thrum of dread every time the man moves close to him again, making him duck his head a bit and keep his eyes locked on the man's movements.

Iosif watches as the man dries him, first his legs, avoiding the gash on his thigh, then up to his hips—Iosif looks away, he can't ignore the burning shame—then his torso. 

Here he stops, dries Iosif's right arm, the intact part of his chest, and briefly his hair.

He reaches for the gauze, Iosif's heart thrums faster; he's being pieced back together, now. The thought makes him uncomfortable.

The man dips two fingers into a tub of ointment, reaching for Iosif's face. Iosif instinctively shies away, closes his eyes at the man's fingers coming so close to his left eye— only to realize they can freely touch, there isn't anything there. The thought makes Iosif's stomach churn coldly. He winces at the thin, cold fingers prodding carefully at his skin to rub the ointment on it. While the cold is a wonderful sweet reprieve, the man's finger's aren't quite gentle, and having him so close keeps Iosif painfully alert.

Gauze covers the left side of his face, around his head and secured firmly. He almost wants to cry at the way his vision doesn't change, between when the bandages cover his left eye and when they don't.

The man's hands leave Iosif's face, and he lets out a relieved breath. He watches quietly as the man covers the wound on his thigh, then holds said cover in place with medical tape.

Iosif can't help but watch—properly this time. Observing the man. His features are sharp, distinct; a hooked nose, gaunt cheeks, dark, deep-set eyes, thin lips. And he’s so pale. Not to mention how there seems to be no meat on his brittle bones. His hands look like they could easily be snapped even by Iosif's less-than-average strength, and in the few moments when his wrists peek out of his shirt, they look equally fragile. His hair is like ink, long and straight, just as dark. It falls heavy on his shoulders and back, curtaining him as he moves.

The man pauses, hands halfway done bandaging Iosif's arms, feeling Iosif's gaze on him. He looks up.

“Is anything the matter?” he asks dully.

Of course something's the matter, Iosif would like to say.

“No, ah… nothing.” There's a moment of silence. “Who are you?”

The man sits back on his haunches for a moment, staring at Iosif.

“I dislike that question,” he hums idly. “I have always found it irritatingly vague; am I being asked for my name, my perception of myself, a general, objective presentation?”

Iosif swallows.

“Your… your name.”

The man stares at Iosif for a few moments, gaze raking over his face.

“Alastair.”

Iosif stares for a few moments, unsure of how to respond. He doesn't like the way he's started humanising the man… Alastair. He liked it better when there was a monster in front of him.

The man's voice continues.

“Your name is Iosif Kļaviņš, yes?”

It might as well have not even been a question. At least, to the man's credit, he said the name correctly. Nevertheless, Iosif swallows.

“No, you've got it wrong,” he tries, a slight waver to his voice. “My name's—”

Iosif hadn't even seen Alastair pick up the shower head but before he realised it had hit him across the side of the face, pulling a yelp from him and making him fall inside the empty bathtub. He isn't able to stop himself from crying, body folded unnaturally, as his still-unbandaged shoulder presses against the cold surface.

“I'm sorry—” he gasps, grasping at the edge of the bathtub and awkwardly pulling himself back up. “I don't know why I lied, yes, that's my name.”

He doesn't know why he lied—he just hadn't wanted Alastair owning that about him.

Alastair stares.

“You would do best to not lie,” he says dully. 

Iosif nods while wiping at his eyes and biting his lips, trying to stop crying. The earlier rush of humiliation comes over him again, Christ, he wants to dress himself.

“It hurts,” he croaks again. He bites his fingertip, trying to stop his uneven breaths.

Alastair takes Iosif's arm and turns him, back facing Alastair. He wordlessly continues bandaging him, now his shoulder, then part of his torso. It's methodical, Iosif absently notes; to some extent, the man must know what he's doing. Iosif wonders why. It would be horrible if the man were a doctor.

Eventually the torture of being touched kindly is over, Iosif is properly patched up, and feels for the life of him like a rag doll. He can feel his thoughts struggle to catch up with the situation, almost tangibly.

He lifts his head a little to watch, as Alastair reaches for a basket with towels under the sink, where evidently he'd rested clothes. Both so silent that the loudest thing in the room is the rhythmic dripping of water from the faucet, Alastair kneels again and eases fresh clothes onto Iosif's body.

Iosif bites his lip to stop the sick keening noise from escaping his mouth as he feels the man's cold, hard hands slide up his legs to put boxers on him. It feels hideously slimy, despite the touch itself being anything but. He stays silent.