Make Me Scream by Sansa Rayne

Prologue

When Master finishes, he reaches through the bars of Pet’s cell and brushes her hair back. She almost manages to suppress her shudder. I turn away, filled with relief and guilt. He’ll leave me alone this time. He got what he wanted from her.

Master sets his charcoal sketch aside, folds up a wooden easel and rests it against the dungeon’s cement wall.

“What do you think?” he asks, showing me and Pet his drawing.

It’s Pet, naked, on her knees, mouth open, looking up at the observer: Master’s perspective. He’s presented her features accurately, but infused them with desire. Lips slightly upturned, eyes focused. That’s not how she really looks. Maybe he can’t perceive her veiled disgust, her swallowed fury and misery — maybe he’s hoping to manifest adoration, rather than obedience. We don’t dare ask.

“It’s perfect,” Pet says, her voice raw with thirst.

She said the same thing the last two times he drew this particular piece.

“Do you agree, Toy?” Master asks me.

I force myself to look again.

“Yes. It’s perfect.”

Seated on the cell floor, knees tucked to my chest, I clutch my arms around my legs tighter. Long ago, he told me to always be honest about his art, no matter how bad it was, but we learned the hard way he doesn’t take criticism well.

He nods, staring at the drawing.

“Thank you, both. I’m very happy with it. I’ll put it in the gallery, and we’ll start a new one next week. I’ll be back then. What would you like for this week’s gift? Your usual, Pet?”

“Yes, master.”

Magazines, gum and cookies.

“Toy, what would you like?”

A big, sharp knife and a pair of boots.

I imagine myself driving the blade deep into his gut and twisting it. I hear his screams, his face contorting in fear. Then I’d kick him until his blood pools under my feet.

I’m dreaming, obviously. He won’t get me anything I could use to hurt him or escape. If it’s not edible or made of paper, I can forget it. No electronics, no clothes. Nothing I can keep — only temporary distractions.

“Nothing,” I say at last.

Fuck him. If he feels any guilt over what he’s done to us, I won’t let him assuage it with little kindnesses. As if a few sweets could erase his sins.

“That’s not healthy,” Master sighs. “There must be something you would enjoy.”

Watching the life leave your eyes as I crush your windpipe.

“No, master.”

He can punish me if he wants. I won’t accept any shitty gift from him.

“Suit yourself, Toy.”

He beckons for Pet. She rises to her feet, then sidles over to the bars of her cell, moving as fast as her restrained ankles and wrists will allow. Once she stands with her back turned to Master, he reaches into her cell and unlocks the thick, black leather cuffs and hangs them up on their pegs. As soon as he’s done, Master steps back and Pet lurches forward, following the rules without making trouble, as always.

Before leaving, he jostles the door of Pet’s cell, making sure it’s locked. He tests mine too. Neither open.

“Have a good week, you two,” he says, then goes.

For an hour, we wait. Pet counts the seconds. I add up the minutes. After each one, she nods or taps her foot. Clears her throat. Hums. Sometimes she signals after fifty-two seconds, then again after sixty-eight. Forty-five and seventy-five. Thirty and ninety.

We can’t be too obvious, in case he’s still watching. The cameras above pick up everything.

We let an hour pass, then another.

When Pet rises to her feet, my stomach clenches.

Moment of truth.

She kicks the locking mechanism of her cell door, but nothing happens. With her feet bare, it can’t feel good. Pet takes a deep breath, then tries again. Her heel bangs against the steel.

“It’s not going to work!” I hiss.

“Shut up.”

I cover my ears, but I can’t look away.

Pet tries again, and again. She kicks the door so hard she loses her balance and falls over. Growling, furious, she keeps going. It took her weeks to sneak little bits of chewed gum into the lock while the door was open and Master was focused on me. Only a little at a time — she couldn’t jam it up all at once or he’d notice. The door had to close, the lock had to slide — but not all the way.

There was no way to test the plan, or know when we should go. Sometime today, Pet decided.

Another kick, and this time it sounds different. Not just a thud, a scrape too.

Pet takes one more shot, and this time the door busts open.

A wave of dizziness spins the world around me. I barely comprehend as Pet races over to the dungeon control panel and unlocks my cell.

“Come on,” she says, opening the door for me.

My legs don’t want to move. If I stay here, maybe Master won’t punish me. Maybe he’ll believe I had nothing to do with this, that I only went along this far because I was scared.

“Chloe. We have to go.”

I look up at Pet. Sweat collects on my forehead. I haven’t heard that name in two years.

My name.

Master once withheld our dinners for a week to punish me for saying it.

You’re Toy, now. Don’t forget that.

“What if there’s no way out?” I say.

“Don’t think of what could go wrong. Think of what could go right. We escape, we make him suffer. We burn this place to the ground. Every single one of those fucking paintings, gone. He’ll never see them again. He’ll never see us, Chloe. Not ever.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She has no idea what waits for us outside the dungeon. We know we’re on Master’s estate, but where is that? What if it’s secluded by hundreds of acres? How will we find help? We have literally nothing — not even clothes.

“I know, but we have to try,” she says. “I’d rather die than stay here another day. What about you?”

“Fine.”

I agree, dying would be better than staying — but the consequences of failure will be worse than death. Pet should know that.

“And if we see him, you know what to do?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

If possible, knock him out and drag him to my jail cell. Otherwise, beat him senseless. Hurt him until he stops breathing.

“Good. Let’s go.”

She leads the way out of the dungeon, moving slowly. She stops and listens every few steps. How she hears anything, I don’t understand; my heart pounds loud enough to drown out all else.

The first failure point of the plan was getting out of our cells; the next is leaving the dungeon. But, to our luck, the stairwell doors are unlocked. We believed Master left them open when we were in our cells, and we were right. If we fail now, though, he won’t make that mistake again.

We make our way upstairs and into the lounge. It’s pitch dark, save for the moonlight coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Exiting the lounge, we bypass the theater room and reach the main entryway. This isn’t Master’s home. That’s somewhere else, supposedly on the property. This building, the gallery, is just for entertainment.

Pet opens a closet and grabs us two coats. They hang down to our knees, but at least we have something to wear.

The front door looms in front of us.

“Ready?”

I take a deep breath. I nod.

Pet turns the deadbolt, cutting the silence with its heavy tumbling, then opens the door.

An alarm shrieks so loud it hurts. I cover my ears but it barely blunts the high-pitched howling.

“Go!” Pet shouts, grabbing my hand.

Outside, a second-floor window in Master’s mansion lights up. A dark figure stares at us for a second, then disappears.

“Move!”

We run, feet squelching in the dewy grass. Nocturnal chirps surround us as soft winds drag clouds across the moon. My throat goes dry, and I sweat hard under my stolen coat. I don’t look back.

“Where are we going?” I ask, barely able to expel the words, I’m inhaling so deeply.

“I don’t… know!”

Anywhere but here.

The further we get from the mansion, the harder the terrain: we reach tall grass, which hides the uneven ground below. Pet slips; I help her up. Rocks scrape our heels and catch our toes. When we reach the line of trees, we have to cover our eyes or they’ll be hit by branches and leaves.

Then I hear a motor; it’s not far.

“Road!” I gasp, pushing myself to go faster. “Find the road!”

Even if we can’t flag down a car to help us, at least we’ll be going somewhere.

Shielding our faces, we thread our way through the thickening woods until we reach a chain-link fence. It extends out in both directions as far as I can see in the dark, but the road is there, on the other side.

“Come on!” Pet growls, climbing up.

I freeze.

The fence is only a few feet taller than us, but that’s too high. Woozy, I have to close my eyes so I won’t see it.

“Chloe, what’s wrong?”

I shake my head.

“I’m not good… with heights.”

“Now’s not the time,” she says.

“I fucking know!”

“You’d rather go back?”

No, of course not.

“You climb this fence, you’ll never have to do that ever again. Just this one time.”

She won’t leave without me. I’m holding her back. She should go. Master’s looking for us. If we don’t make it, this will be my fault.

I climb. Staring straight upward, I don’t think about the ground. I focus on the pain of my toes pinching against the metal. Pet’s movements travel through the fence to me; I can feel it when she reaches the top and eases herself over.

“You’re almost there,” she says. “You’re doing great.”

“Shut up, shut up! You’re not helping!”

My hand passes through the air; I’m at the top.

The car’s getting closer; its engine’s roar rises over the chorus of crickets.

I have to look down.

Quieting my mind, I swallow a rising heave. My throat burns, but I keep my grip.

One hand over, then the other. Leg up. One more, then I’m over.

Pet drops down to the ground, and my balance goes. I lose purchase with my toes; I dangle a moment before falling.

Even with Pet reaching out to catch me, I still land pretty hard. A spasm races up my leg. It’d probably hurt if not for all the adrenaline.

“Are you okay?” she asks, still holding me up.

I take a test step, and my ankle nearly buckles. Warm tears drip down my cheek. I’m not stopping now.

“Look!” I say, pointing at the pair of headlights cresting a hill.

Pet sees the car too, and pulls us into the road.

“Hey!” she shouts, waving her free arm at the car. “Hey, stop!”

What if it’s him? It’s too dark to see inside.

What kind of car did Master drive? That was so long ago now; I haven’t thought about it since he…

But the car doesn’t slow down. It swerves right past us, narrowly missing us.

Yeah, if I encountered two strangers in the middle of nowhere, I might keep going too.

As we turn to see, it screeches to a stop. The driver gets out.

It’s him.

“Make this easy and I won’t punish you,” Master says, approaching fast. He takes out two pairs of handcuffs. “I won’t give you another chance.”

“Fuck you!” Pet screams.

She lets me go and marches toward him, fists balled.

I try to warn her as he draws a gun from his windbreaker, but he doesn’t give me time. He fires immediately.

“Anne!” I scream. She collapses, clutching her stomach. “Anne!”

“Go, Chloe!” she grunts. “Run!”

I try.

My leg wants to crumble into dust. All I can do is hobble. Maybe that’s what saves me, because Master doesn’t shoot. His footsteps just get closer and closer until he’s right behind me. Then my body explodes in pain, and I disappear.

—

I wake with the sun warming my face. A muffled crunching sound stirs from somewhere nearby. The light stings my eyes. It’s too bright. Too much time in the dungeon accustomed me to darkness.

But I’m not there now — where am I?

We were escaping. Then Master-

Forcing myself to look, I recognize the lawn behind Master’s Haven. A few feet in front of me, Master stands knee-deep in a hole, shoveling out dirt. Behind him rests a wooden coffin.

A gunshot echoes from my memory.

Oh no.

“Anne!” I gasp.

“You know you’re not supposed to use that name,” Master says, his tone soft but humorless.

“You killed her! You fucking asshole!”

“She didn’t give me a choice. You might have gotten away.”

I thrash against the bars of my cage, wanting to rip them apart, take that shovel and bash his head open like a melon. We tried so hard to escape and didn’t even get close. If I hadn’t wasted so much time at the fence… She should have gone without me. I slowed her down.

I should be the one in that coffin.

“Are you blaming yourself, Toy?” he asks when I don’t say anything.

Creepy as fuck, how he does that.

“Don’t. I chose to shoot her, instead of you. This escape attempt was her plan, wasn’t it?”

“Fuck you.”

“I could see it in her art,” he continues, ignoring me. “For months, her drawings had a newfound essence of hope and anticipation. It made everything she’d created before feel lifeless. Rote. I couldn’t believe the difference. So I knew she was planning something.”

Unbelievable.

We’d been so careful. We worked so hard to keep our secret.

“Still, I’d be lying if I pretended that was the only reason,” Master says. “She’d been here for so many years. She didn’t activate my muse anymore. Not like she used to. It was time for her to go.”

I kick at my cage as he shoves the coffin forward, tipping it into the hole. No words, no ceremony. Not even a proper burial.

He’s an absolute psychopath.

“You’re going to pay, you fucking piece of shit.”

Master pulls off his work gloves and wipes his brow.

“I understand you’re in an emotional state right now, Toy, so I’ll forgive your outbursts. But mind yourself, or you’ll be disciplined. You’re my pet now. I expect you to comport yourself properly, and when I bring home my new toy, you will teach her how to behave.”

Not a fucking chance. I’m not going to do this to anyone else.

“Yes, master,” I mutter as he begins dumping dirt over the grave.

I’m sorry, Anne. I wish I’d been braver. But I’ll do better next time. I won’t fail you again. He won’t expect a thing. He won’t know until it’s too late. He’ll regret not killing us both last night.

I promise.