My gaze lands on that mask. It’s in a glass box set on a stand and I go to it, open it. It’s not locked.

It’s ugly and beautiful at once, the mask. Made of metal with, if I peer close, skulls and roses carved into it, the letters of the society, I.V.I, the V slightly larger than the I’s on either side woven in with the skulls and roses. De La Rosa. Of the rose. It must be what’s on the back of my neck too.

I lift the thing out and remember how that weight felt on my head. My neck could almost not bear it. But that probably had something to do with the sex. With how he took me. There’s a flutter in my stomach at the memory, and I wonder how I can be turned on by something like that. By someone like him.

But I am. And I’m not going to lie to myself about it. I’ve not been with a man before him so I can’t judge, but all I know is I’ve never come so hard as when he made me come. And even given the rawness between my legs, I’m aroused thinking about it.

There’s another side to this too, though. He was just as turned on.

“Maybe I’m not the only weak one, Santiago.”

I put the mask back on its stand and run my fingers under the small chains that dangle from it, crosses hanging off them. I remember the Hail Marys he made me say as my punishment.

“Freak,” I say to the room and walk to the two windows on the far wall. I have to pull up a chair and stand on it to see outside, and I can’t open either of them because they’re actually bigger windows, but the wood all around the room has been carved to only let in this little bit of light. I wonder if he chose this room especially for me. I’m sure he did. Will he deprive me even of sunlight?

I step down off the chair carefully, holding onto the back when I feel myself wobble, then lower myself into the seat.

He could do that. Keep me prisoner in this room. It would be the same as holding me in a cell below ground.

I rub my face and get up. Walk around. Take in the carvings on the wooden walls. Skulls and roses. Like the posts on the bed. The one he bound me to. The whole thing is stifling.

It doesn’t take me long to look through everything and then I sit, and I wait.