Song: Kwesi Arthur - Anthem

I couldn't stop shivering.

The man had put the air conditioner on fifteen degrees Celsius and I wasn't used to artificial temperature. Or maybe the shock hadn't worn off. A few hours ago, I was on a date with Justus. My only problem was trying to keep my heart in one place. Something that seemed so inconsequential now.

The man with the curly hair threw all the blankets on the ground. It was a shame; they were so white that they were glowing.

"Wrap them around yourself. It'll help trap heat," he said. He must've noticed my shivering and that was the nicest he could do.

Bastard. He should've turned off the air conditioning.

"I'm sleeping on the floor, aren't I?"

I didn't really mind. I'd been sleeping on the floor most of my life and a few days of luxury at Michael's palace hadn't changed me.

"No, of course not. You'll sleep on the rug."

"The rug? It's on the floor isn't it?"

"Yes, but it's much more comfortable than the floor. More comfortable than the bed, if you know the finer things in life. You get to gaze at the stars from that angle," he said.

He was rolling his sleeves up and unbuttoning his shirt even further. I averted my eyes, feeling my cheeks heat up. The only other person I had seen shirtless was Michael.

"Do you want to take a shower?"

"N-no." I didn't fancy the getting naked with a stranger next door.

"Good. I guess you can go to bed then," he said.

I dared glance at him and he had a towel round his waist. I stared at his muscled back as he disappeared behind the door and closed it.

I let out a sigh and lay down. I had failed to notice the rug earlier, but it turned out that I was standing on it. I'd been barefoot when kidnapped so I didn't have any footwear on me.

The rug was unbelievably soft and comfortable. The hair-like substances tickled my face in a pleasant way. I could see the stars from that angle like he had predicted. The floor-to-ceiling windows weren't good for ventilation, but they provided a clear view.

I heard the sound the shower made when turned on and I decided to take a look at our surroundings. When I looked out, nature greeted me. It was beautiful. The most beautiful piece of scenery I had ever seen. I wished I could take a picture, but I didn't have a camera with me.

We were in the forest then, because everywhere I looked, there was a canopy of trees and a starry sky. This place wasn't polluted by light like other places so the stars in the sky were numerous.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my head. I clutched at it, alarmed. It was gone as soon as it came.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

I jumped away from the window, startled. I could only spare him a glance, because he was half-naked with only a towel to preserve some sort of modesty.

"Yes, it is," I replied.

There was a lull in conversation as he got dressed. I stared at him for a while though, wondering how he could've showered for five minutes flat. It seemed like all he had gone to do was cover his body with water.

I turned away before he unwrapped the towel around his waist. When I looked back at him, he was wearing pyjamas and on it were the words, 'I love to sleep'. I couldn't help giggling.

"What's so funny?" He asked, with something akin to a scowl.

I quickly wiped the smile off my face. "Nothing," I replied, ducking my head, and returning to my makeshift bed.

I shook the blankets out and pushed a part of them under my head. That'll have to do for a pillow. I was like a baby in those huge blankets, and they helped, except that they did their job too well and I began to feel hot after a short while. I loosened them to a point where I felt they'd be just fine.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked, swallowing the fear in my throat.

He was standing over me in a few seconds. He too had been looking at the scenery beneath us. "Go ahead."

He seemed like a pretty decent person, even though he couldn't have been one if he were running a prostitution buisness.

"Where are we?"

"Somewhere far from civilisation," he answered as vaguely as possible. "Can I ask you something?"

I nodded; a bit shocked.

"Who are you? And why did Wolfgang think it was a good idea to bring you here?"

"I'm nobody important," I began. He sat at the edge of his huge bed and I sat upright. "I was supposed to become princess of a small village in the Volta region next year."

"I think princess of anything is quite important," he said. He was brushing his curly hair. The curls straightened when he ran the brush through them but they just bounced back as soon as the brush was pulled out.

"I am not going to become a princess anymore. Wolfgang made sure of that."

"He told me that you'd be glad to be here. That where you were before was a literal hell."

I scoffed. This place was more hell-ish than back at the palace, but I didn't want to say that. This curly-haired man hadn't acted wickedly towards me, but you could actually never know the true character of a person unless they are provoked. "Well he lied, and I want to go back home."

"I'm sorry, really I am, but that isn't possible," he said, but it lacked emotion. Every word I had shared with this strange man, and he seemed nothing more than a robot. His eyes were unreadable, his tone cryptic.

"I will escape," I told him, matter-of-factly, finding my courage for a quick second.

"You're welcome to try. You won't get very far though," he warned good-naturedly. "Goodnight." Saying that, he lay back on the bed with no covers as far as I could tell.

Later on, in the evening, he turned off the air conditioning and pushed back one of the smaller window panes to allow air into the room.

I didn't sleep much. My stomach was churning and my head was spinning, but I had nothing to vomit, seeing that I hadn't eaten anything, just the ice-cream I had on my date with Justus.

I woke up in the middle of the night to retch and scared that I might really end up vomiting, I rushed to the bathroom and knelt over the toilet.

When my body figured it was a useless effort trying to dispel my organs out my mouth, I made it to my feet again. My throat, oesophagus and stomach hurt so badly that I wanted to crumble to the ground.

I staggered to the door, resting my aching back against it and took a few breaths. This could be an effect of the shock, I told myself. I coughed, straightened up and pushed the door open. Keeping my hand on the handle, I supported my weight till I was out of the bathroom, then ended up crumbled on the ground.

"Are you pregnant?"

My heart jumped, as my eyes widened in shock. The man was standing in front of me, looking down with a scowl. Even when I was standing, he towered over me. I wasn't sure how he could be comfortable, looking down at me at that height. I must've been right, he crouched to my level.

"I said, are you pregnant?"

"N-no."

"STDs?"

I scowled. "I'm not a prostitute, and I thought we had the fact that I am a virgin established already."

"Don't use that tone with me," he said roughly.

I bit my tongue to keep from saying something that might get me killed.

"If you're sick..." he trailed off. It sounded like a threat, and I prayed to God that I wasn't sick. I didn't want to die so far away from my village. I didn't want to die whilst everyone back at my village thought I was a thief and a harlot.

"I'm not sick. Just shocked, that's all."

"Shocked?"

"Getting kidnapped was not one of my New Year's resolutions."

"It's still December," he argued, frowning.

I rolled my eyes, not deigning to respond. He clenched his fists, making me gulp. I shouldn't be so insolent with this man. I didn't know what he was capable of.

"Tomorrow, we'll have you checked."

"And if I'm sick?"

"If it's a cold or something mild like that, I guess you can stay."

"And if it's not?"

He stared at me pointedly. "Pray it's not."

I shivered again.

"Get back to bed," he ordered.

I tried. I honestly did, but my legs kept forgetting how to work. He sighed and advanced, throwing all my weight over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. Roughly too. I gasped in surprise and had the overwhelming urge to slap his back - or his bottom - but I refrained, reminding myself that I was completely at the mercy of this stranger.

He threw me onto the blankets and I might have gotten hurt, if those soft fluffy blankets and the comfortable rug weren't there to break my fall. I groaned, feeling my throat pulse.

"You had better not give me anything," he warned.

He threw himself back onto his bed, but not before grabbing one of the blankets which he shouldn't even have given to me anyway. The only downside was that he turned the air-conditioning back on, all the way back to fifteen degrees Celsius. I bristled with annoyance, wrapping myself in the blanket again.

When I woke up the next morning, my head was pounding. It felt like a migraine. The man was standing over me, blocking out the horrid, horrid sunlight.

"You look worse than an abandoned bride." He told me.

"Gee, thanks. Every girl wants to hear that."

He stared back at me, unamused. "I'm not going to touch you."

"I'm not exactly begging," I tried to glare at him but instead, felt a sharp pain in my head when I tried to look at him.

He swore at me. "Few hours and I already don't like you."

"The feeling is mutual." I replied, sure that he was either glaring or making a rude hand gesture.

"I'll be back," he muttered. I didn't see him leave - because I couldn't open my eyes without feeling jolting pains - but I heard the bathroom door open and close. Seconds later, I heard him arguing with someone and it must've been over a phone because I was certain no one was hiding in there.

Wolfgang. He must've been arguing with Wolfgang. I tried so hard to make it to my feet and succeeded, but not without excruciating repercussions. Everything swirled around me and my pulse shot straight up to my head. It was like someone was beating a drum in there. I steadied myself against the bed into a comfortable crouch and slowly made it to my feet.

Once I was on my feet, the rest with easy. Well, as easy as it could be with a head splitting headache, sore throat and stomach and wobbly feet. I staggered to the door, breathing heavily and rested my weight against.

"I'm telling you, she's an annoying little..." he said the 'b' word. "I don't care."

I pushed against the door, finding quite unsurprisingly that it didn't even budge. I needed to talk with that son of a bachelor. I latched onto the door's handle and pushed down, then shoved the door. It still didn't budge. That bastard had locked it from the inside.

"To top it all off, she's sick. She's," another bad word which I refuse to communicate. "Sick, Wolfgang."

He paused and I tried to shove the door, but I was delirious and barely conscious so that was a futile effort. I quietened to eavesdrop. "You had better haul your arse back here. What if she's contagious?"

When he paused, I glanced around the room hoping to see a key of any sort. Even though he had locked it from the inside, I could open it from the outside if only I had a key. It was laughable, thinking that I would be that lucky.

"I've seen her. She has a headache and keeps retching."

I retched only once.

"No, you can't take her back!"

My ears pricked up. He had offered to take me back to Michael's palace. "Open this door!" I yelled, rattling the handle.

"Great. Now she's awake and she's trying to see me naked."

"What? I thought you were in there only to make a call. I didn't think that you were showering!"

"How can you even talk that loudly when you're the one with the headache?" Funny he should know that. I don't remember him feeling my forehead.

"Just open up, I want to talk to that jerk!" Just as I was done talking, pain shot up my head.

"Okay fine, no need to yell," I heard him mutter from the inside. I probably wouldn't have been able to hear if I hadn't been pressed up against the door. If my head was functioning properly, I would've been wise enough to move away from the door when he opened it. I felt myself falling, bracing myself for the impact that never came.

One moment, I was falling. The next, I was nestled in the stranger's arms, then I was falling again. The bastard dropped me. I hit the floor, hard. The pain shot up in tendrils, wrapping themselves around my brain and squeezing. I bit down on my tongue, hard enough to draw blood. I looked up at him, my eyes stinging with the overwhelming urge to cry and a sob stuck in my aching throat.

He was staring back at me with indifference. I was shocked for a second. Never had I met a human with a lack of emotion as this one. He held the phone out to me and I snatched it away, looking down before he could see my tears. I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes with a sufficient amount of pain to steady myself before holding the phone to my ear.

"You bastard," I croaked.

"Why hello to you too princess! It's such a pleasure to hear you sounding so pleasant!" I could practically hear the smirk in his voice.

"Get me out of here!"

"Aye, careful princess, your ears might be dandy, but mine are sensitive."

"You don't get it do you? Get me out of here or else-"

"Or else what?" He laughed. "You're powerless, and you know it. Don't you feel at home there? Now your beauty has a better environment to go along with it!" He chirped.

"This is not what I meant," I hissed. My head wouldn't allow me to shout any longer so I opted for the next best thing.

"Nonsense. You had better adapt to your surroundings beautiful, that's going to be your new home."

I shivered again.

"One problem. Two actually. I'm coming down with something and I'm a virgin. Don't you get that Wolfgang. No one's going to want to be with me."

He laughed. "You're crazy. I wonder who wouldn't want to be with you."

I had to admit that the flattery got to my head, but it didn't stop the bubbling pot of anger. "You have no right to make decisions for me."

"Except that you don't seem to be able to make them for yourself. I'm just being a good Samaritan here."

"I don't need you to be a good Samaritan," I all but growled. That robot human managed a smirk but it was gone before I could establish whether that was a figment of my imagination.

"You don't know what you need," he paused, then added almost shyly. Almost. "I'll be back in two days tops. If you, you know want to have a good time -"

"Don't you even dare," I warned, my voice dropping to a deadly low.

He laughed awkwardly. "It was worth a shot. Goodbye princess!"

"No, don't -" I began to shout, but it was too late too soon.

The light-skinned man snatched the phone away from me. "And what did you gain from that apart from giving me a headache with all that shouting?"

I glared at him. "Go screw yourself."

He scowled. "Get up."

I didn't want to give him the chance to drop me again so I pushed myself up. I was unsteady on my feet, so I leaned against the wall, pausing to catch my breath.

"I haven't all day. Start moving."

"You can't order me around like I work for you."

"Yes, I can and that's because you do work for me. At least for now, until I figure out what you have."

I pushed myself off the wall - literally - and managed to steady myself before I was on the floor again. Trusting that I wouldn't get any help from this rude unnamed stranger, I stared ahead like a stoic and struggled to keep everything but my feet above the ground.

"It would help if you told me where we were going."

"If you have to turn, I'll let you know. Now shut up and walk."

My fear of him was slowly fading to annoyance and disgust. No surprise that these were the kind of people Wolfgang was friends with.

We kept walking, much longer than I thought my nearly-splitting mind could take. We were downstairs and had just rounded a corner and walked into a room that looked suspiciously like a hospital.

I laughed. "Aye, you've gotten the contingencies taken care of."

"It's not the first time one of the prostitutes caught an STD."

"I've already told you, I don't have an STD," I hissed.

"They never want to admit it," he grabbed on to my shoulder and steered me into an office.

"So, what happens when they do contract an STD?" I asked him, just as he pushed me onto a seat. Someone should have been on the opposite side of the desk. A doctor, but he wasn't around. The curly-haired stranger was sat on a sofa at the corner of the office.

The office was too plush for a doctor, really. It was decorated with rich colours such as deep red and purple. The desk was made of mahogany, large enough to contain a mess of papers and an apple computer. The sofas were made of leather and they must've been comfortable enough to sleep in. Prostitution really is a profitable business if you knew the right people.

"They get treated, obviously," he said, fidgeting with a peculiar lump of stone.

"I mean, do you let them go home?"

He laughed. "Why can't you understand that once you're here, there's no leaving?"

"So, what, you take care of them for free?"

He laughed again. "Of course not."

I waited for him to elaborate. He didn't.

"So?" I egged on.

He ignored me for a good five minutes. "If it's something they can live with, like HIV, they keep working."

"What?" I asked, my mouth hanging open in shock.

"And if it's something that will make them weak and undesirable, then we just put them out of their misery."

My eyes were wide with shock. "You kill them?"

"No. We let them die." He stated disinterestedly.

I shook my head, sighing in shock. "You're despicable."

He spared me a glance. "Like I give a shit what you think about me."

I shook my head again, my hands squeezing the armrests of my chair. "And people sign up for this?"

"What they have on the streets cannot compare to what they have here," he spared me another glance. "Besides, it's rare for one of them to come down with something."

"They use condoms?" I asked, like the naïve stupid person that I am.

"Why on earth would people sleep with prostitutes if they cared about protection? There are thousands of whores who'd sleep with anything roaming the streets of the world. People only get with prostitutes because they don't want safe sex."

He said the 'w' word. I really disliked slut shamers, but what surprised me was that he kept saying 'people' instead of men. "People?"

At this he smirked, but again it was gone in a flash. "Yes, women need to have sex too, don't they?"

"You have male prostitutes?" If there was something in my mouth, I would've spat it out in shock. Then again, I was this close to choking on my saliva.

"Yes. They're on the other side of the mansion. Erotic relationships at work places are highly unethical, don't you think?"

"This just keeps getting better and better," I muttered. A thought occurred to me. "Wolfgang?"

He made a face like he was sucking on a sour lemon. "What about him?"

"Is he a male prostitute?" I asked, almost dreading his answer.

"Not exactly. Though he doesn't mind servicing any of the 'hot' customers."

I nodded, not knowing how exactly to respond to that. "You?"

He eyed me sharply. "No, of course not."

I smiled a little. Not that I was glad this bastard was making the pleasing life choices - to me - no, I don't give a horse's arse about him; just that I was glad that at least some men out there think with the organ between their eyes, not the one between their legs.

"You juveniles don't seem to understand the purpose of sex. You women especially ought to have more respect for yourselves. How do you part your legs for anyone and happily accept his bodily fluids? What, all to prove your 'love'?" At that point, it was more like he was ranting to himself than talking to me. "For men, it is to be expected. They're all scum. Beings controlled by primitive pleasures."

"They? What are you then? A camel?"

He actually glared me. For two microseconds. That was an improvement. "I'm not like the rest of them."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I glared back.

He bore his dark green eyes into my coffee brown ones. "A pretty face and a good amount of arse won't sway me."

I held his gaze for a while, and unable to withstand that withering glare, I turned away. As if on cue, a man in a white lab coat strode in like he owned the place. He probably did, he was the doctor.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said, gathering some papers, looking busy like doctors did. His stethoscope hung around his wrinkled neck. The veins in his hands were quite visible, and his greying hair was a dead giveaway to his old age. He must've been in his early fifties. I expected someone with a villainous look, but his smile was off-putting.

He settled in his swivel chair, pulled it closer to the desk, clasped his hands on the desk and smiled even brighter. The room seemed to increase in intensity. It was difficult to be uncomfortable or distrustful in his presence.

"What can I do for you?" The doctor asked. I stared at the name plate on his table. Doctor Eric Obeng.

"This is the employee I told you about," the curly-haired stranger paused, staring at me. "Funny, I don't know her name."

The doctor looked at me expectantly for a few seconds before I caught on. "Oh, Elorm."

"Good morning Elorm. Kofi here tells me that you've been a little under the weather. If it's not too much trouble, can you tell me a little of what you've been going through?"

I squirmed, feeling a little bit uncomfortable under his intense stare. His smile had dimmed to a simple grin. I assumed it was too much trouble keeping one's lips spread that wide. "Umm, I've been retching a lot."

"Not vomiting?" The doctor asked.

"No, erh, I haven't... had anything to eat in while," I averted my eyes, embarrassed.

Dr. Eric looked at the man I now know to be Kofi. "She slept through breakfast and arrived too late for supper."

"First thing you should do right after here is get something to eat. Alright?"

I nodded, even though that was out of my control. Maybe I'd have to hunt a rabbit or something. "I have a headache, general body weakness," I paused trying to remember. "When I bend over, my eyes feel like they're going to fall out. The same thing happens when I keep them closed for long."

The doctor wrote somethings in a long book. It must've been my medical record. "We going to have to run a few tests."

I nodded.

"The results will be out later in the day," he said. Kofi coughed so that Dr. Obeng would look at him and he nodded. I rolled my eyes.

* * *

Kofi

It's been a while since my chapters didn't end on cliff-hangers. Perhaps this is a cliff-hanger of some sort ;)

I created another character I don't like! 😊

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