Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Twink,” I heard Daddy say, and squinting, I turned to see him approaching.
Even knowing what he’d done to me, he was still hot as hell.
Seriously? I couldn’t even become less attracted to him when I knew he was going to kill me?
“What’s happening? What are you doing to me?” I spit out.
“I’m so sorry.” He glanced over his shoulder, and judging by the worry in his expression, I was tempted to believe him, but between what happened in the alley and me being tied to a damn table, that would have been foolish.
I could imagine, when they found my body, Eric would attend my funeral, an X-Men comic folded under his arm. He’d stand before my headstone, shaking his head and whispering to Roger, “Told him so.”
Now, though, I had bigger concerns than stressing about my inevitable funeral because seeing Daddy brought back the rest of what happened in the alley.
But no.
What I believe had transpired after I’d sprayed him, I must’ve made up. I’d watched enough true crime TikTok vids to know the brain can do some wild things when traumatized. I thought Daddy grabbed my leg, but when I looked, it wasn’t a hand holding it. It was like a pink snake coiled around me. Only the snake was attached to Daddy, and then another snake wrapped around my waist. No…they weren’t snakes. They were…it feels so stupid to even think it… Tentacles. Like octopus, sci-fi monster tentacles.
That couldn’t be right, and I immediately scanned Daddy over, hoping to assure myself this was all some wild story my brain had concocted to make sense of the quick series of events, but there was something like a tail coming out from his back. It reached over to a nook with panels and screens, the tip tracing shapes in the air, a blue holographic light illuminating wherever it touched.
“What—what?” was all I could manage as I stared at the tail in horror.
“Huh?” Daddy seemed to catch on, and the tentacle-tail pulled close to him until I couldn’t see it anymore.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he lied, his eyes bulging.
As panicked as I was, I was more than a little offended. “Okay, I’m not an idiot. I know that wasn’t nothing.”
“Twink, I’m sorry. I had to do this for your own good.”
He said that in the alley too. It didn’t make sense then, and it didn’t make any more sense now.
“Then why do you need to tie me up?” I asked, stating the obvious.
“I don’t know how much of this is you and not her.”
“Her?”
“I’ve seen how she controls you, how the technology of your community has taken control. I brought you in here to perform a few scans to see if I could find any component in you she might be using to control your behavior. There was synthetic material in your teeth…”
Synthetic material?
“My fillings?” I inquired. “That’s because I had cavities.”
“Okay, okay, so then that’s not it for sure… See, I’m trying to determine if Chelsea’s controlling your species.”
What the hell was he talking about? Chelsea?
“My goddamn phone?”
“Yes, that. The device she controls you with.”
“Are you having a psychotic episode?” I asked, for a moment entertaining the thought that Daddy was still a conspiracy theorist, ignoring the things I’d seen with my own eyes, which prompted me to ask, “Am I having a psychotic episode?”
Daddy moved closer, and I tried to jerk away, but I was flush with the table, with no room to maneuver.
“You need to tell me more about your world. I can take you somewhere safe. It’s a tiny planet, but there must be a rebellion or maybe another country where the technology hasn’t seized control yet. Please, I want to help you, Twink.”
His gaze was pleading, sincere. This wasn’t the menacing psychopath I’d expected to encounter. If anything, he seemed to genuinely want to help me, but this shit about my phone was unhinged.
Also, at some point, we’d have to get back to the tail.
I struggled in my restraints, panic setting in. “Please, please untie me. You’re scaring me.”
He nodded. “If I let you go, will you give me a chance to explain and not try to escape right away?”
“Yes,” I said because I would’ve said anything to get free.
Daddy seemed reluctant, inspecting me before his tail pushed back out and hit a spot in the air that lit up green. The restraints around me pulled away, retracting into the table.
I sat up quickly, eyeing Daddy but inspecting the room in my periphery, trying to decide on the best escape route. The room was sparse, the ceiling arched, with white and blue oval panels all across it. Where the hell was I? Why had he abducted me and put me in some weird-ass room? And what the fuck was he on about with my phone?
I’d have to sort out what any of that meant once I was free. For now, the only objective was to get the fuck away from him. Behind Daddy, I spotted an open doorway that appeared to lead into a hallway. The exit!