[stylist] Releasing The Demons: Prologue

[Samara Raine]

Hey there, everyone. It's Samara again, back with a revamped prologue of Releasing The Demons. Naturally, as time goes by, I'll tweak it here and there, but for now, let me know what you guys think. I've tried to add a bit more to it, offering a tiny glimpse into her present while setting up the stage to explain why she shares her past.

So, without further adue!

Oh, all formatting has been stripped, as this copying and pasting thing only works well if I paste it into notepad before copying it here. Originally, the story is being written in MSWord, so there is formatting where their aught to be.


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Releasing The Demons
By
Samara Raine

Prologue

Saturday, October 16, 2021
7:54 PM

It was a coffin, with its solid gray exterior and heavy lock. Entombed inside were the secrets of my youth, the demons of my childhood. I’d locked them away the moment I’d been freed, desperate to keep a part of myself caged.

I’ve always been an intelligent person. When I was five, I was reading at a fourth grade level. My parents were given the option to let me skip sixth grade, one I didn’t allow them to take. I didn’t want to be different. It’s amusing how none of that matters now, amusing in a way that isn’t at all funny. I am different, have been different from the moment his arrow claimed my freedom.

As an intelligent person, I should be rejoicing at my release, comforted in the knowledge that I survived everything he put me through. But I’m not. Ever since I woke in the glaring brightness of Martin Memorial hospital, I have been floundering. My structured world of complete obedience has been torn from me. I no longer remember how to exist outside Camp. Where obedience and pleasure were my only goals, life was simple. Here, where every choice from what to eat to the clothing I wear is mine, I spend ninety-five percent of my time in a state of overwhelmed indecision.

My fingers trembled as I lifted the key toward the lock. It glinted in the light from the fire in the hearth behind me, reminding me of the flash of his knife. My heart beat wildly and my palms were slick with sweat.

The key slid into the lock far too easily, in my opinion. When it was fully seated, I hesitated, terrified to take the next step. By unlocking the safe, I would be unearthing a part of my past I’d vowed to keep hidden forever. There were too many emotions tied to the contents within; shame, fear, pleasure. There was acceptance, fury, confusion and hurt. They were my personal demons and here I was, about to share them with the world.

My name is Madeleine Tamlin. When I was sixteen-years-old, I was abducted by a stranger and forced into a world of debauchery that I could not understand. Life was simpler in Camp, the name of the large estate that was my prison. It was a place where only the pleasing survived.

Obedience was rewarded while any infractions were dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. It was a world in which I didn’t think I could thrive. But I did. Survival was my only option. Survival or death, and I could not give up.

It didn't take long before I learned what was expected of me. Even as I fell further and further into the emotional trap my captor had laid, I could never puzzle out his reasons for doing what he did. He was not a troubled man. By this, I mean he appeared mentally sound. In ten years, I never heard him attempt to explain away his actions. Whenever I asked him why he'd taken me, he'd answer quite plainly.

"Because you are mine," he would say.

He never offered any other explanation, and it wasn’t long before his declaration began to resonate in my very blood. I was his. I always would be.

Everything he did was premeditated, from abduction to training to discipline. He had a knack for taming the fighters (like me,) without crushing our spirits. He broke my will and shattered my resistance, but never once did he obliterate all that made me who I was.

I didn't see it like this at the time. In the last ten years, I've lost my dignity, feared for my life, had my innocence torn away and watched a dear friend die. but I've had many months to reflect on my captivity. During these reflections, I've come to some startling conclusions; the most disturbing of which is the realization that I still wish I were there.

After my release, my mind was a swirling mass of confusion and betrayal. The real world was too fast and too bright. I also found it to be too demanding, a funny notion since the real world, in fact, asked very little of me.

I was sent to a counselor, a kind woman named Tanna Farren. I could never bring myself to confide in her, despite her many efferts. She could never understand. No one could ever understand the world I’d left unless they’d been a part of it. If they had never felt the smooth restraint of a leather cuff about their wrist, the cool steel of a collar encircling their throat or the fiery bite of a whip against their flesh, their comprehension would be superficial at best. I refused to invalidate my experience by attempting to force an unconditioned mind to accept the existence I now preferred.

Two months after my visits with Tanna began, I stopped going. She could not help me, and I refused to waste my family’s hard-earned money on a hopeless cause.

Instead, I turned to a method of release that had never before failed me. I began writing. At first, the tales were full of bitter resentment and dark themes. But I found that once I purged myself of the negative emotions, I could focus on other genres that didn’t cause me so much pain.

Quite unintentionally, I began a story meant for children. I thought back to before, when I was still possessed of my innocence; back to the days of fairies and princes, castles and kings. I thought I had found my outlet, my release from the darkness that plagued me.

The innocence never lasted. Before long, my fairies were stripped of their virtue, castles became cages and kings turned into Masters of a sort no child should ever know. My demons were back to haunt my new haven. My agent, Sarah, cringed at the twisted tales I sent her, though she always remained supportive.

After my last manuscript flopped, Sarah showed up at my apartment with a bottle of Pepsi and some sound advice.

“Madeleine, you need to write something real.”

I glanced up from the bottle in my hands. Master had never permitted me to drink such beverages and I felt wrong doing it now.

“I don’t understand,” I said, though I had an idea where she was going with this.

Sarah leant forward, her long, red nails tapping out a rhythm on the leather arm of the sofa.

“You’ve just been through something unthinkable. I’m not going to pretend to understand, nor am I asking you to confide in me. But you need to stop trying to hide behind what you feel is acceptable. A writer’s job, Madeleine is to shock her readers. So shock them. Write what’s real, raw and close to your heart.”

I glanced toward the window, breaking her fierce gaze. The intensity and conviction in her eyes made me uncomfortable. The things that were real to me were also so private, I wasn’t certain if I could ever make them known. Even in a fictional setting, they would resonate with truth and experience, thus giving me away.

“You could always use a pseudonym,” Sarah said gently.

I smiled wistfully. I had. For ten years, I had been someone other than Madeleine Elise Tamlin. In fact, my given name still felt foreign to me, a title bestowed upon another girl, long, long ago.

“Will you at least think about it?”

I looked back at Sarah and smiled.

“I’ll think about it,” I conceded.

That was how I ended up here, kneeling before the gray safe that held the memories of nearly half my life. My entire body flashed hot, then cold as I reached toward it.

The key was cool against my fingers, the click of the lock loud in the silence of the room. As the door sprang open, a flood of emotion I’d been unprepared for swept through me.

Through a sudden haze of tears, I saw them. Each marble-bound notebook stood, ordered from oldest to newest, black spines facing me like an army of silent soldiers.

Resting atop them was the single pink diary of my youth. The flimsy locks and lacey frills were almost painful to behold. This small book had been before the truck, before the collar, before the brand that had seared away my freedom forever. They had been before him and the life he’d taught me to crave.

Reaching out, I removed the pink journal from the safe. I turned it over in my hands, gazing fondly at the childish scrawl of my name along the spine.

READ THIS AND DIE.

The bold inscription on the cover made me smile with longing. This Madeleine was like a lost little sister, a spector of the child I had once been.

I shivered in fear as I recalled the terrifying hallucinations that had haunted me after my deflowering. A little girl, covered in blood and burning with vengence. She had been my innocence and I had failed her.

I shook my head at the diary in my hand. This Madeleine wasn’t lost. She was dead.

A single tear streaked fast and hot down my cheek as I turned toward the fire. It was time to let the soul of my innocence rest, and it could never do so while entombed with my darkest demons.

Something inside me seized up as I tossed the book toward the hearth. It landed in the coals, distressingly pink against the dangerous hues of the fire. I felt, somehow, that I was betraying my inner child all over again. Part of me wanted to reach out and rescue the journal before it could be harmed.

It felt like hours for the first spark to lick the edge of the tiny book. I’d even half risen, ready to grab the poker and knock the diary out of harm’s way. I was, of course, too late.

As if sensing my intentions, a tongue of flame shot forward. I watched as, in a matter of moments, the last vestiges of my innocence was ignited. I could do nothing but watch it burn, as I had watched so much of my purity burn.

When nothing but ashes remained, I turned back to the safe, ignoring the tears on my cheeks. Extending my hand, I touched the notebook on the far left. It was the one I’d found in my slave box, the first of many such books into which I had poured my soul.

Lightheaded and weeping softly, I withdrew the book from its spot. It seemed to burn in my hands, much as my pink diary had mere moments before. Tilting the book slightly to the left, I allowed the well-worn cover to fall open, exposing my demons to the air once more.