Chapter 133: You belong to him

One month later

Weeks?

Months?

Years?

Decades?

How long has it been?

She had now lost track of the time she had been here. The dead body that had been hung to

the ceiling had started to deteriorate. The insects, microorganisms had started decomposing

it, and the sight of her feet with insects crawling on it had become usual for her.

And the smell of it had become more and more unbearable for her. She had never raised her

eyes to look up at her face because once when she did, she fought a panic attack all alone in

the dark cell. The feet alone reminded her that she was once a living human and now

because of her, Khaleda had reached this state. Her dead body always reminded her of her

mistakes, the guilt, the regret. That she was the killer.

And when one day Shehryaar paid her a visit, she cried out and begged him to take

Khaleda's dead body away from her sight and give her a proper burial at least. He had

agreed, but since that day, her guilt had been increasing. Her will to live had diminished

drastically. The fire that was shot to kill Hannan would often bang in her ears. She would

often see blood on her hands and even though Khaleda was taken away, she would see her

dead body hanging from the ceiling, and she was unable to differentiate whether she was

hallucinating or if it was real.

Shehryaar visited her very rarely. Rather, she wasn't aware of his visits. The day Khaleda's

dead body was taken away, a black blindfold had covered her eyes, stealing her vision so

she wouldn't know who came and who went. The door of her cell would open very rarely.

Once a day, just to serve her food. And that would be the time when the blindfold would be

taken off and the chains would be loosened so she could eat. She would eat slowly on

purpose so at least she could see as much as she could and feel her hands moving as much

as she could.

And when she finished eating, the blindfold would be back on. Then after some time, some

men would come in and begin to tell her a single thing, every day for hours.

'You belong to Shehryaar Haider Syed, and belonging to him means....' As they would recite

the rules of what being his woman meant.

They would keep on repeating it, and by the end of the session, it would get imprinted in

her brain. She was going insane that even in dreams, she would just hear these words. Often

she would find herself repeating these words, mindlessly. Often she would repeat all those

etiquettes and rules of what a woman belonging to him meant. As if they were training her.

Training her to be his perfect woman. Designing her in the way he wanted her to be.

If she tried resisting, which she did in the starting days, they punished her by changing the

temperatures of the room, by evacuating her lungs of oxygen and filling them with water by

dipping her head in a drum of water until she would pass out, sometimes by not serving her

meals. Not just that, they mentally tortured her by reminding her of the incidents of

Hannan's death, implying that she killed him and Khaleda. At last, she would have to submit.

And when she would submit to them, they would reward her occasionally by letting her

walk around the cell.

Yes, walking alone became a blessing for her now. Being inhibited to that chair, she began to

think whether she had feet or not. She would get to move her hands for a few minutes a day.

The chains would grip them for the rest of the time, and now she began to feel the metal

tearing through her skin.

She had totally lost track of time because of the blindfold on her eyes.

The blindfold always played an effective role in settling their words in her mind. As all her

senses were inhibited but her hearing, they used that passage to take control over her mind.

She wasn't aware of the day or the month going on. Time had become so slow for her. She

felt as if she never had any relation in this world. She began to think that Amna never

existed, Hannan never existed, it was all her hallucination, and she had been locked in this

cell since her birth. Her brain had nothing to entertain but those words that would play in

her mind daily by those men whose faces she had never seen, yet their voices were so fresh

in her mind.

She was psychologically sabotaged.

She fought.

She fought this torture as much as her mental strength allowed, but slowly, she too was

losing control over her brain. Slowly, she had started believing all those words. Slowly and

instinctively, she had started growing more and more submissive around Shehryaar, and

her breath would hitch with his slight expression of disdain.

Slowly, she had started losing control over herself.

.....

She was currently going through one of her sessions as a bunch of men surrounded her.

"I would.... never deny him..." she was uttering.

"Very good. And?" One of them asked.

"I can't... make him... make him angry..." She was repeating those words, and her mind was

believing all those words.

She kept on reciting the rules, and her heart would escalate whenever she would forget one.

"I'm.... owned by him," she was saying when the door to the cell opened, and everyone

became quiet. She frowned. She couldn't see anything but hear their footsteps retreating as

they were leaving the cell.

Then she heard someone fondling with the blindfold, and suddenly it was taken off her eyes.

She couldn't move her eyes. It took her a minute to realize that the blindfold was gone. She

first moved her pupils and slowly her eyelids, which were glued together, moved. She

opened them, a pain radiating from her eyes.

Tears welled up in her eyes as they were already floating down. The liquid reduced the

glueness between her eyelids, and she successfully opened her eyes.

The grey orbs came in contact with the world after a long time.

But to her dismay, it was just the darkened cell. Yet she appreciated the vision. She moved

her eyes around, a smile playing on her lips, and suddenly they widened upon realizing who

stood in front of her.