Sick Heart: A Dark MMA Fighter Romance

Stupid Sick Heart couldn’t even wake up once to control his flying beasts. And they wouldn’t let me get close enough to shake him awake.

I didn’t sleep. Not a wink all night.

And when I figured out that he wasn’t gonna feed me breakfast, well—it was a breaking point for me.

Call me naïve. Fine. I guess my expectations for being one of Sick Heart’s concubines were unrealistic. Because I thought that position would come with an actual place to live. A place with a bed, and a roof, and food.

That dinner last night was pathetic. Barely a cup of rice. Probably more like half a cup, if I’m being honest. And a few meager scraps of rehydrated meat? Are you fucking kidding me? After I burned… what, two thousand, three thousand calories jumping rope yesterday?

And then no breakfast? Just, Here’s your rope, Anya. Get busy.

Well. Fuck you.

I rattle the chain-link gate. But he’s gone. Cort van Breda is already skipping his stupid rope. I can hear it on the concrete above my head. Snick, snick, snick.

It has been a long time since I had the urge to scream, but I have that urge right now. I want to open up my throat and wail. But I can’t.

Because I’m silent. And I will stay silent, goddammit.

My voice is the only thing on this body that is mine and mine alone. Even my baby toe has been claimed with this monster’s mark.

He will not get my voice. Ever.

I look around the platform and realize it’s a lot like the one above. Except there are a lot more containers. In fact, there are so many containers, they form a steel-box perimeter around the entire level. Front-facing and locked up tight, with no space between them at all. So I have no view of the ocean. But I don’t need a view to understand that it is very close.

The stairs go down another level at least, but from the sound of the ocean, I decide it’s probably not a level. More than likely, it’s the base of the topside.

The wind is strong today. Even with the containers forming a makeshift seawall, it finds a way into the space, whistling and whipping my hair around my face. And every once in a while, the waves are big enough to splash against the containers and a puddle of seawater seeps underneath them and stains the space around them with dark wetness.

I try to open the containers, but they are all padlocked. Then I go back over to see if there is a way to climb over the gate. I’m not at that stage yet, but it’s good information to have.

The gate is not scalable. It fits snugly to the top of the frame. Not even room for a finger to squeeze through.

So I slide down a steel beam in the center of the space and wait.

I sit. Quietly. Straining to hear the workout going on above my head.

I am good. I am calm. I am silent. I am compliant.

But Cort van Breda doesn’t come back.

It’s times like this that I wish I did speak. Because I could call up—Hello? I’m sorry for overreacting. But I’m hungry and your birds didn’t let me sleep last night. I can’t breathe through my nose, my lip is split, my entire body aches, and I don’t understand what’s happening. And a reasonable person would at least listen to me.

But I can’t say any of that and Cort isn’t acting very reasonable today.

So I sit. And I wait.

There is water down here. A steel spigot that sticks up from the floor, connected to dubious-looking rusty pipes which lead up top. Is this water potable? I have no idea. But by late afternoon, I no longer care. I turn it on, stick my mouth underneath the spigot, and gulp it down. It’s not salty, so that’s something.

Then I wait some more.

Surely, once his workout is over, he will feed me. I get it now. One meal a day. I can deal. It’s fine.

But he doesn’t feed me. The sun sets and I sit. And he never comes.

The sound of his workout faded a long time ago. And the curious gulls who kept me company for most of the afternoon disappear.

I know where they are. Up top, begging for food or trying to steal it out of his bowl.

My stomach cries. It twists, and gurgles, and whines for something to take the edge off. But Cort never comes.

He doesn’t come at sundown. He doesn’t come at dinnertime, he doesn’t come in the morning.

He leaves me here to rot.

At least, I don’t see him come. At some point in the night I drift off, defeated by utter exhaustion. And when I wake up—no, Cort isn’t here. But he was here. Because in a little pile on the first step outside of the gate is a jump rope.