Oh, God.

The urge to vomit came strong again, bringing with it a chariot of memories, all screeching to be noticed, pounding fists at the barricaded door in my mind.

I fell to my knees the moment I bolted from her cell.

My head ached as if any second now, my skull would splinter, and my past would devour me alive.

I can’t breathe.

Memories swirled faster, blacker, thicker. No longer content to stay in my dreams, they scratched at me until I bled.

No, please.

Digging my nails into the concrete, I fell forward onto all fours, gasping and fighting, doing my best to cling to the present and not tumble back to my past.

Don’t.

A flicker of Fables when the corridors were full of evil laughter.

No.

A scent of white sage from the incense Mrs. Colta burned in her room.

Don’t!

A shard of pain as—

“See, Kas. See how good it feels?”

I gritted my teeth as Mrs. Willby curled her hand around mine, forcing my fingers to wrap around my flaccid cock. Her third husband stood behind me, naked and hard, stroking the crack of my ass.

He was new to Fables, but he’d embraced the lifestyle of his deviant wife with a lot more enthusiasm than her prior husbands. Each time they visited, they always requested me.

Just me.

To be shared by both of them.

Their favorite position was me fucking Mrs. Willby while her husband fucked me. The first time Mr. Willby took me, I’d screamed. I’d taken my pain out on his wife. Driving into her as hard as he drove into me.

They’d praised me.

They’d destroyed me.

Each time since, they chipped away at my strength, pouring me full of unhappiness and agony. My family of Fable slaves didn’t have the power to stick me back together again at night. Quell was the closest to me, and even she couldn’t stop the nightmares that’d started and never stopped.

Jareth had to gag me a week ago because they couldn’t get any sleep with my screaming.

“I don’t think you’re paying attention to me,” Mrs. Willby cooed, her pink painted lips pouting. Her face had aged in the few years she’d been visiting, and her new husband was at least a decade younger. At least he was an adult while I’d been denied such a thing.

“Suck him, Patricia,” Mr. Willby snapped. “This is taking too long.”

“Is that what you want, my darling Kassen?” Mrs. Willby dragged her hand over mine, forcing me to masturbate. “My mouth?”

I swallowed back bile. I bit back pain. I did my best to disassociate with whatever was about to happen.

A hand swatted me around the ear from behind as Mr. Willby growled, “Answer her. Tell her what you need to get hard so we can have our fun with you.”

I knew what the punishment was if I didn’t obey and satisfy our Fable guests, but today I was empty. Today, I had nothing left, and my body swayed as Mrs. Willby dragged my hand up and down on a cock that no longer rose to attention.

Wes had been the same last year. I’d seen the scars our master had given him for not performing. The others thought he’d been taken away and disposed of.

Only I knew different.

Only I had found poor Wes chained in the cabin in the woods. He was fed drugs to do his duty. He lived alone in the dark, waiting to pleasure guests with nastier appetites.

That will happen to me if I don’t snap out of this.

I would be sent to the cabin where I’d never return alive. I’d be used like Wes. I would no longer have the protection of House Rules that kept all Fable slaves bruised, bleeding, and well-fucked but never broken or dead.

Mr. Willby stepped forward and pushed his wife away. Our combined grip fell apart, and my cock was free.

Free for a single breath before Mr. Willby grabbed it and once again forced my hand to squeeze.

“I’m going teach you how to beat off, my boy. Show you how to get yourself hard so you never come to us in this pathetic state again.” His eyes glinted as he pushed my thumb against my sensitive tip before grabbing my other hand and using it to cup my balls.

I wanted to kill him.

I wanted to die.

But slowly, sickly, my body reacted under his instruction.

He did what he promised and showed me that if I was touched in the right way, desire had nothing to do with it. Instinct kicked in. Nature took over and condemned me.

I grew hard all while I cursed the very feeling of my fingers working beneath his.

Of my skin on my skin.

Of my body betraying me.

Of my hand making me hard when all I wanted to do was run.

Of myself hurting myself.

I was the seducer.

The defiler, the traitor, the villain.

I was my own worst enemy.

“Good boy.” Mr. Willby smiled as he removed his hand from mine. “Keep going. Get that thing stiff as a stick, and then...we’re all going to have some fun.”

“STOP!” I punched the wall.

I shoved knuckles into stone and rolled onto my back at the onslaught of agony. One of my knuckles cracked, and excruciation blazed through my hand.

However, instead of groaning in pain, I groaned in gratefulness. I kissed fresh blood trickling from a cut. I cradled the rapidly swelling appendage and sucked in untainted air.

With practice born from self-preservation, I snatched up all the memories and hurled them back into the blackness where they belonged.

They should never have escaped.

I’m getting worse.

With shaky legs, I climbed to my feet, stumbled up the steps, and ran through the kitchen to outside.

I didn’t stop.

I ran, and I ran.

I ran until splinters and stitches hurt my lungs.

And then, I ran some more.

I circled the valley twice, I skirted the cave, I followed the river, and by the time the sun slipped from morning to afternoon, I fell to my ass in the wild grass meadow and flopped onto my back, breathless, wrung out, and more wretched than I’d been since that first year of living on my own.

Why now?

Why had my chosen amnesia faltered?

Her.

That’s why.

I didn’t move as the sun cast me in heat, drying my sweat and burning my exposed skin. I wanted to forget the past few days. I wished I could erase any and all moments where a girl had trespassed, offered herself to me, and then successfully ripped open my carefully patched-up wounds.

Damn her.

Screw every person who ever existed.

I didn’t need anyone.

I didn’t want anyone.

And I definitely don’t want her.

Forgetfulness was the only way I could survive. I fucking refused to live in fear of what was inside my head. Not for anyone.

Releasing a tattered breath, I sat up and picked a piece of long grass. Chewing the sweet tartness from the stem, I scowled at the mansion before me. At the ivy dripping from the roof, at the flowers growing in the gutters, at the stonework that had once housed sex and screams and now echoed with its crimes.

She’s still in there.

I dropped my stare to the ground, trying to see through soil and concrete to the prisoner who’d made me touch myself.

I thought I could do this. That I could give in to sex after hiding from it for so long and not stir up the hornet’s nest inside my fragmented mind.

Fucking stupid really.

I should know better.

And you know what you need to do then, right?