• A fortress riddled with secrets. There were many strange happenings surrounding the castle to keep the servants gossiping between meals. The imposing monolithic structure housed some of the greatest anomalies to have ever made their way into the desert world.

    One of these anomalies was a beautiful young human woman. The human had been cooped up in his domain for half a year, unseen and unheard of. Some said that she was dead.

    But if any of these servants had ventured into his domain, they would have immediately learnt otherwise. They would have heard the high-pitched yells and the screams that echoed off the high vaulted ceilings, they would have felt the oppressive and infuriated wrath of the so-called emotionless man. The woman was all but dead; she was alive and kicking.

    It was the dawn of another day in the sunless world, and he was bringing the woman her breakfast personally. He had long-since found the servant’s role redundant, and wanted to be spared the embarrassment of having to publicly discipline his charge again every day. There was a gentle knock on the over-sized white door.

    Within her dark prison cell, the woman was curled into a ball on the floor, staring up at the moon. The looming crescent felt cold and harsh to her, but she accepted it as the closest she would ever again come to her love. Aside, of course, from her memories.

    In the last six months, she relied almost entirely on her memories of her friends and her world to live through each day of her torturous existence. She had come to venerate these memories, almost to the point of worship, in order to try to recapture some essence of her former being. Her past became her life; the memories were all-consuming. She spent most of her time reminiscing on her happy past, trying to relive every moment in as much detail as possible. For hours each day she would do this, sitting lifelessly in some corner of her abode.

    The monotony of this dismal life was broken at regular intervals three times a day: breakfast, lunch, and supper. These were the worst times, because this was when he would come. That green-eyed monster would come and pull her out of the numbing shield of her memory world. He would expose her, shatter her until even the memories of her beloved friends and the Sun could no longer mend her. For no other reason than for his own amusement, he would trip her into oblivion.

    The last few months had revealed things in her character that she never would have imagined. She was bitter and cold, her once-sunny and exuberant attitude entirely demolished. She was depressed, hysterical, suicidal, full of hate, regret and resentment. In short, the teenager’s sanity was slipping between her fingers like sand, and she didn’t see a damn good reason to hold on to it.

    The door opened, and artificial light poured into the prison cell like the light of heaven. The figure at the doorway, silted eyes glowing bean green, was all the more terrifying in the shadow of this radiance, this the brightest and only light she had seen in half a year. But still, she did not turn towards the light; she did not move for this monster. This time, she would surely hold up against him, this time, she would be the victor in their twisted little game.

    He would not dethrone her memories; he would not become her God.
    The ever-intimidating man made his way into the dark cell without a sound, closing the heavy door behind him. Darkness swallowed the room. For a long moment, the two stayed in utter silence, as if time itself had stopped.

    “You must eat your dinner, woman.” His detached monotone broke the silence. There was no response.

    “Master has ordered that you remain alive.” The man had long-since known that he could not bring her into line in a normal manner. The only way was to break her out of her shell and make her react in some way. At first it had been easy to shake her out of her apathy, but over time, he had stolen nearly all of her life. “I will not have you disobeying orders.”

    “I don’t want to obey master. I want him to die.” Although her voice was small, it was firm. She hated master, hated his unseen authority over every aspect of her life. She despised him with a hatred second only to her hatred of the green-eyed being before her. She refused to take her eyes off of the moon.

    “Do not say such things of your master. It is only by his grace that you are still alive.” The man advanced toward her, allowing her to hear his slow, steady footfall. The man stopped only a few inches behind her curbed back, his hard toxic eyes glaring down at the girl condescendingly, almost mockingly.

    “Who says that I want to live? I would rather die than be here.” She met his empty glare with empty eyes of her own. All her time with her captor had made the teenage girl become a model of him, right down to the cold, vacant eyes.

    “Have you given up already? Surely your friends are on their way right now to rescue you.” In the early weeks, he broke her by saying that her friends would never come for her. Now, he broke her by saying that they certainly would. The turning point was when she realized for herself that she was worthless trash.

    “Why would they come for me?” For the tenth time that day, she cursed herself for being so despicable. Of course her friends would never come for her. She got up off the ground and faced her stone-cold captor. “I was a burden, nothing but a burden. They’re better off now that I’m not around. I did them a great favor by coming here.”

    “Why would you say that?” He glared daggers at the woman before him. She was so weak and pathetic, so easily broken. He could see why no one had wanted her; he loathed her intensely. But there was a strange satisfaction in hearing the facts from her own mouth, in knowing that she realized how worthless a creature she was. Whatever the reason was, he just couldn’t let her go.

    “All I ever did was drag them down. They always had to protect me… all of them…” She couldn’t bring herself to say her friends’ names out loud, she never could. It felt like she was dirtying them by passing their names through her lips. Abruptly shifting from her melancholy, she took on a smug tone. “Now that I’m here, I can’t get in the way. You did us all a great favor.”

    “Is that how you think?” He questioned again. He pulled some sick pleasure out of seeing her fall apart, although her drastic mood swings would, for a normal person, be highly disturbing. “But as their associate, don’t you think that you have shamed them by being captured? Even though your absence is a great relief to them, your weakness and your cowardice have already stained their names.”

    “N-No… That ca-can’t be…” Suddenly, she was crushed by a deep and penetrating sense of failure. Could it be that she was failing them, even now? Was she really such a wretched existence?

    “It is true.” His willowing frame loomed over her, his ominous aura pushing her farther into a corner. “With each breath you take, you are shaming your friends. Because each breath you take is the gift of master. Whether you like it or not, each moment you remain alive is another treason against your beloved ones.” The tears started rolling.

    “It’s… not true…” she gasped between sobs. She glared up at the man standing over her, encroaching on her personal space. Without thinking, she brought her hands to his chest and shoved as hard as she could. “This… This is all your fault!” The man didn’t react to the high-pitched shriek, or to her assaults. On the other hand, the weakened teenager stumbled backwards.

    “You brought me here! You made me into this!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, unspeakable rage burning past her tears. Raising her hand, she slapped him across the cheek with all her strength. He only continued to glare at her, unmoving, and it got her all the more angry. Balling her small hands into fists, she punched him in the face. In response, the man only glared.
    “You’re a heartless b*****d! A monster!” She punched him again and again, ignoring the ache of her knuckles and the pain of her nails firmly digging into her bloody palm. She shook with rage, and he just stood there.

    “I hate you! I hate you!” began her tearful chorus as she pounded her small fists against his chest with all her might. “I hate you and your precious ‘master’!” The redhead spat the word at him, knowing how little tolerance he had for disrespect against his master. His eyes got just a little bit darker; he glared just a little bit harder.

    “He’s just a conceited, self-absorbed b*****d.” She laughed humorlessly at his increasingly irritated face, her smug attitude resurfaced. How he adored his master. “But you just flock to him like he’s some sort of Messiah. And then he manipulates you and uses you and in the end, you just say ‘thank you,’ master!” And, you know, I’ll bet that he doesn’t even–“

    He cracked, and wrapped his hand around her neck, lifting her off the ground. Cutting off her breathing, he relished at the sight of her suffering. Her face, contorted in pain as she tried to gasp for air, was incredibly enticing. Just as she was about to turn blue, he tossed the orange-haired woman to the side, so that her back would impact painfully against the side of the large white couch.

    “Do not speak of master like that.” His deadly monotone was accentuated by his slow, deliberate approach to the panting girl. Still rubbing her bruising neck, she looked up into emerald eyes rebelliously, her sanity long since gone.

    “Why? Master’s little puppet is afraid of getting caught saying something naughty?” She rose on shaking legs, glaring at him through messy strands of orange. Mocking guttural chuckling, a grotesque distortion of her laugh of six months ago shook her shoulders. The disturbing sight was reminiscent of a horror movie. “You have nothing to worry about; he doesn’t know what goes on in here.” She abruptly raised her head to glare at him through her rustled hair. After a moment’s deliberation, she approached the man with a familiar glint in her eyes.

    “If your precious ‘master’ was as great as you say he is, he would have had you replaced a long time ago.” Just inches from him now, she lifted her still-bloodied hand to caress the man’s cheek in a deceptively soft manner, red staining almost white skin. She brought a bloodied finger to his lips, spreading the crimson on like lipstick.

    “Only a worthless idiot wouldn’t know what goes on in his own castle.” She laughed mockingly, a sadistic smirk twisting her lips. Smoothly, she pressed her body against his. “Especially with his own servant…”
    He had had enough of this meaningless woman insulting his master. He was no servant of master; he was simply a loyal subject and employee.
    He took hold yet again of the young maiden’s throat. She had lost her only real supply of air and was now suffocating. As she was suffocated by her captor, she didn’t struggle, this is what she wanted.

    She wanted to die, wanted to go to whatever afterlife there was, wanted to escape from this hellish place that had been her prison and home for the past several months. Above all things, she wanted to escape from the one person, the one man who took her sanity, that at this very moment stood only inches away from her, choking and taking the last of the life out of her.

    As the last of her life was slowly fading away, he smiled, and so did she.