Blackmailed by a Bully
28

She'd assumed he would just want sex. Sex with him, though it would feel wrong and traitorous, would not be horrific. He was a good-looking guy--pretty face, athletic body. And he smelled nice--good hygiene was always a plus.

Freida was confused when he ignored her.

She finally asked the only question burning in her mind. "So... what do you want from me?"

Ben swivelled in his computer chair, turning away from his computers.

The other side of the room had a queen-sized bed with a television fitted into the bottom frame and a table with a lamp on either side.

A pair of sofas took up the area in the centre and were positioned around a glass coffee table.

'Who has sofas in their bedroom?' Alice thought. His room was impressive but so weird.

'If you were a normal human being, Caleb and I would be hanging out here with you right now,' Alice thought. The image of Caleb in her mind stung so much that she thought she might shrivel and die.

"I have something I need to do. Just sit on the sofa until I'm ready for you," Dylan ordered. "Here, you can pet this."

Alice smiled a genuine smile for the first time since last night as Dylan dropped a cute little white mouse into her hands.

She petted the cute little guy and sat on the sofa as he'd ordered, listening to the tapping of keys and the bass of the music in his ears.

He started talking to someone on his microphone, but Alice couldn't follow the conversation, hearing only one side. It was all to do with some game he was playing and went over her head anyway.

The evening wasn't the torture she had imagined it would be. She'd even made a friend-even if it was a mouse.

Alice let him run over her hands and down her arms until he got tired and nestled into the warmth of her hands for a nap. Absentmindedly, she stroked at the little patch of softer fur at the nape of his neck, forgetting about her troubles for the briefest, most wonderful of moments.

"See you later, guys," Dylan said to whoever he was talking to it seemed to be more than one person-and slipped off his headset.

"Where were we?" Dylan smiled down at her.

"You were going to let me go home?" Alice tried. She smiled up at him, hoping he might like her if she acted like her adorable cheeky self.

"You wish," he uttered. "Come over here."

Alice stood carefully so as not to wake her new friend. She joined Dylan by his cabinet, watching as he pulled up a partition. Behind were heated tanks, inhabited by various creatures. Spiders and snakes. Thankfully, Alice was fearful of neither. 'Good luck using these guys to torture me,' she thought smugly.

He lifted the lid of the cage holding the larger of the three snakes.

"Okay, time to drop him in," Dylan urged.

It took a second for Alice to understand his meaning.

Then the penny dropped.

'He wouldn't. Surely, he wouldn't...'

"Oh no," Alice murmured, shaking her head, and grasping the little mouse in her hands. "No, Dylan... no."

"It's food, not a pet," Dylan told her, face blank. "Drop it in."

Alice backed away, holding the little mouse firmly but gently against her chest.

"Please, no, Dylan," Alice said. She looked down at the little ball of fluff in her hand.

'I have to protect you,' she thought.

"Do it, now," Dylan demanded.

Alice couldn't.

"Please let me keep him," she asked. "He can be my pet. I'll replace a little box for him or he can live in my pocket--"

"Are you going to obey, or do I have to do something drastic?" Dylan asked.

Alice began to sweat, wetting the fur of the little creature. She looked at the snake inside, coiling around a dried-up piece of bark, mouth open as though it knew and was ready to strike.

'I can't do it,' Alice realised. She was the girl who rescued flies from spiders' webs. The girl who'd once run into oncoming traffic to save a flapping, half-broken pigeon. The one time she'd accidentally trodden on a snail, she'd cried for an hour straight. Even thinking about it now made her well up.

She briefly considered running away with the little captive. Could she outrun Dylan? Probably not.

'Even if I do get away, I'll be putting Caleb at risk,' Alice sighed to herself.

Seeing no other viable options, Alice fell to her knees at his feet. What else could she do? Surely Dylan had to have the tiniest bit of mercy. Nobody was completely heartless.

"Please let me keep him," Alice begged, staring up at him with the biggest, most pleading eyes she could muster. "Have mercy, please, I can't do this. I just can't. If he had any voice or awareness he'd beg for his life, but he doesn't. He's innocent, and he doesn't deserve to die."

As Alice begged for the little life in her hands, she heard Dylan laughing softly.

"You have two minutes. It's Caleb's freedom versus the mouse's life. You get to decide," Dylan said.

"Please, Dylan, if you have any compassion at all I'm begging you to show it," Alice tried.

Dylan looked down at his watch.

"One minute forty," he said.

"Please, please, please have mercy, Dylan. Please show mercy. Please. I'll do anything you want but not this. Please. Please, not this," Alice begged.

"It's funny to me that you're begging harder for a little rodent than you did for Caleb," Dylan smirked. He didn't understand. It was the act of killing; abhorrent and final. Taking a life was the worst thing Alice could imagine.

The most soul-destroying thing was, she couldn't make him understand. He probably took life on a regular basis. It was nothing to him. Explaining mercy to Dylan would be like trying to describe colours to the blind. "Fifteen seconds," Dylan warned. "Tick tock."

Knowing there was no choice, Alice tried to disassociate herself from the mouse.

'It's just a handful of food,' she told herself as she stood.

"Urrrrrrrgh."

Face twisted into a grimace, making a guttural sound she'd not heard from her mouth before today, Alice opened her hand.

With a squeal she ran to the corner and sank to her bum, pressing her fists into her eye sockets and sobbing loudly so she wouldn't have to see or hear.

"No, no, no, no, no, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," Alice choked through sobs. She thrust her fingers into her scalp and pulled at her hair, trying to physicalize the pain inside her heart.

"Look on the bright side," Dylan said. "It only needs to eat every couple of weeks."

'He's going to make me do this again,' Alice realised with horror. 'I have to get out of this. I just have to.'