The girl behind the counter smiles and bends down to collect a shopping bag from the ground. It’s white-and-black striped with the stores’ logo across the front and black tissue paper popping out.
I thank her and take it back to the car. Inside the bag I find a black leather corset with pale blue ribbons criss-crossing at the back. And a pink Faberge-style egg. This one looks to be painted ceramic and has a hinge that can be opened.
Inside is another short note, leading me to the next location. This asshole sends me to a separate department store or lingeriestore, making me ask for a package for bunny. Each package has a piece of an outfit and another egg.
They are all high end stores, and I can’t help but be disgusted by how Matsumoto flaunts his wealth while gloating about what he thinks will be his triumphant recapture of me. I’ve given up on the idea that he has henchmen waiting around to take me.
Over the course of the day I collect a garter belt and a light green egg, stockings with seams and a pale yellow egg, black lace panties with a purple egg, and finally black high-heels with an orange egg. Aside from the luxury lingerie and that first bakery egg—which set my expectations for this fiasco way too high—this has been the most boring Easter egg hunt of my life.
Inside the final egg with the shoes, I’m instructed to meet him at his temporary home, in the basement, wearing only the contents I picked up on the hunt. I make a pit stop at a craft and fabric store for some supplies.
I park in an empty parking lot on my way outside of the city proper to make some alterations and change clothes. It occurs to me that maybe he didn’t give me real clues or a real hunt beyond that first egg because he thinks I’m super afraid. Maybe he didn’t think I’d come on the hunt at all and he’d have toextractme.
I think he must get some satisfaction out of the possibility that I might wring my hands and cry and pace and have a panic attack or three before finally deciding to spare the house and offering myself as tribute.
He obviously doesn’t believe I have the constitution to handle all the lady-brain taxing riddles and clues he could have given me. Or maybe this is just the extent of his cleverness. Either way, I don’t think Matsumoto is prepared to deal with the new and improved me. But I’m excited to introduce myself.
FIVE
brian
I’ve been here maybea week now. I can’t remember. I lose track of the days. Most of the time I’ve been free inside the cell. Matsumoto releases a gas from tubes in the ceiling that knocks me out long enough that he can chain or unchain me as he wills. I guess he knows I’m in here for a while and he doesn’t want me stinking up the place. This guy is all about personal hygiene.
There’s a shower, sink, and toilet over to one side so I can stay reasonably clean. And I get two meals a day. It’s not the Ritz, but I’m not complaining. Unlike me, Matsumoto Junior doesn’t seem to have a taste for torture. At least not of men. Unless he just wants to keep a clean canvas for the main event.
He does seem to like psychological torture though, because when I’m chained, he enjoys telling me in minute detail the evil horrifying shit he plans to do to Mina when she arrives. And he leaves the cell door open to taunt me with the freedom I can’t have.
Right now is one of those moments. I’m chained, Matsumoto stands here like the smug motherfucker he is. I’ve had my daily shower and first meal. My captor looks more on edge thannormal, as though he’s anticipating something. I can guess what he’s anticipating.
“She won’t come,” I say. “In the first place, she can’t get out of the house. How would she get keys to a car? She has a security bracelet that won’t allow her off the property… and even if she could get out, she wouldn’t, she’s smart. She knows you’d never let me go. You let me go and you’re a dead man, do you hear me, motherfucker?”
Matsumoto just smiles. But he isn’t looking at me. “And yet… here she is.”
No. No. No. No. No!
I can’t bring myself to look at the door because I know what I’ll find. All I can do is screamNoover and over in my mind. I can’t even get my vocal cords to work right now.
Finally I manage to choke out the words. “Mina, why? Why would you come for me?”
“You know why.”
She’s wearing a Black corset that pushes her tits up high. The corset has pale blue ribbons. Black lace panties. Garter belt, stockings, high heels. If she were to turn around, I know there would be those perfect seams down the back of her perfect legs.
“Turn, and let me see you,” Matsumoto says as if wishing to confirm this thought for himself. He rotates his finger in the air. He is so fucking smug, and I want to rip his throat out with my teeth. I want to drink his blood down like a vampire or wild animal. I want to hold his beating heart in my hand, and watch it stop. I wanthimto watch it stop.
Every violent fantasy I’ve ever held, crystallizes in this one moment and flashes through my mind like the highlight reel of one’s life at the moment of death.
I see the shock in her face. She thought what I thought, that she’d be dealing with the man who held her captive and tortured her. And yet still, she came.
“Not what you were expecting, Mina?” he says, so proud of himself for pulling off this lie.
She turns slowly in a circle, giving Matsumoto The Sequel a good look at her. But she doesn’t look afraid. She looks… angry.
“Is this what you want, you piece of shit? Me, for Brian?”
He laughs. “Well, you are quite beautiful. My father always had excellent taste when it came to that, but you are also quite stupid if you think I would ever be foolish enough to release a rabid animal who’d rip me apart the second he got free. Do you really imagine he’d ever leave you here with me? He’d never accept such a trade. The poor fool loves you.”
I don’t even bother to contradict this, I just look at her, like the greedy asshole I am because whatever is about to happen next, I can’t let my mind go there. I struggle again in the shackles, but it doesn’t matter.
