The sliver of light that peeked through the open space above the blacked out window began to fade.  Darkness was coming and soon I expected my captor would be visiting my cell again.  There was no clock in the room I was being held in, but my guess was she came to me around midnight every night.  In fact, on the occasional evening, the faint light would re-appear when the moon was out and the sky was clear.  Those seemed to be the nights that she was most eager to see me.

I hadn’t been outside for several weeks, but I still often pictured what the sun and the night’s sky looked like this time of the year.  It was true that it rained a lot in Portland, but the summers were an exception, providing plenty of warm, beautiful days.  I had only just started enjoying the season’s turn when I was abducted that late night in June at some club downtown.

There were plenty of beautiful women I ran into that evening, so one of them could have easily been my captor or “Angel” as she liked me to refer to her as.  I’ve never actually seen Angel’s face as she always has it hidden behind a white mask, but perhaps if she took it off I’d recognize her…or not.  That night is still such a blur in my mind, mostly due to the amount of alcohol I had consumed as well as whatever drug Angel had slipped into my drink.

Tears started welling up in my eyes as I began to acknowledge, once again, that I would most likely never make it out of this basement alive.  I was only 22 years old.  My life hadn’t amounted to much, but I had really turned things around this last year.  I was now attending Portland State University after finally finishing up a long stint in community college, and I had even gotten an externship working at one of the local advertising agencies.  For the first time that I can ever remember in my life, my parents had told me they were proud of me.

Thank God my parents couldn’t see me right now; naked and chained to a metal support beam in the middle of a basement.  There was a toilet in one corner and a shower in the other.  I had been given very little to eat or drink, but at least there was enough slack in my chains to move around some.  Occasionally I would talk to myself since I had basically no human interaction.  Angel rarely came down during the day, and when she did it was just to feed or shave me.  I’m pretty sure she had only spoken about a dozen words since my time there.  Of course, she visited me every night too, but that was for a much different purpose; no talking was allowed or I would be punished.

Dinner time was here as I could hear Angel unlocking the door.  She walked into the room wearing the usual white mask, gloves and black cloak that covered her entire body.  Angel had a candle in her right hand and a paper plate in her left.  On the plate were a few strawberries, carrots and what appeared to be a small serving of chicken.  I was only fed twice a day so it was no wonder that I had probably lost a good 15 pounds since becoming her slave.

“Hi” I said to her, desperate for any kind of acknowledgement.  She said nothing back and left me in the darkness as soon as she had placed the food down on the cement.  I ate slowly, trying to savor every morsel.  I had barely finished my meal when suddenly the room began to spin and I passed out on the floor.

I could hear whispering as I began to regain consciousness from my unexpected slumber.  I recognized the feeling of my throbbing headache and intense muscle weakness as the same one I had the first night that I was abducted.  Angel had obviously drugged me again.  My vision was somewhat blurred after I opened my eyes, but I could still make out the shadows of several forms.  They were all covered in black cloaks and wore white masks, just like Angel.  I counted twelve of them as they stood in a large circle around me, each one holding a candle.

I realized now I was standing against the metal beam in the middle of the room thanks to several chains that had been used to keep my body upright while I was passed out.  The temperature in the room was unusually warm, almost like a sauna.  I tried to raise my arms enough that I could wipe the sweat from my forehead, but the chains had no slack in them.  I continued to look around in my dazed state, when I noticed Angel walk in.  More whispering from the others in the room ensued.

“My fellow sisters,” Angel addressed the group.  “The seed of our fellow brother that stands before you has fulfilled its purpose.  I have a new soul now growing within my body.”  Angel paused as the rest of the group seemed quite pleased with the news.  The incense from the candles was beginning to fill the room with a burnt flower type smell.  “Tonight,” she continued, “we shall celebrate the spirit of our Mother Goddess as one life is sacrificed so that a new one may flourish.”

As Angel spoke I could feel myself becoming scared.  Not the kind of sheer terror that one would experience if some guy wearing a hockey mask were chasing them with a chainsaw.  Rather, it was more like a calm, sickening combination of helplessness and inevitable doom.  Angel walked towards me, removing her gloves as she approached, and stared into my eyes through her white mask.  Just as when she had come to my room every night, I felt a coldness radiating from her that sent shivers down my spine.  You would think that being forced to have sex with a woman whose body was pretty much perfect would be every young man’s fantasy.  However, there was never any warmth or love present in our “sessions”.  Instead, it was mechanical and left me feeling empty inside every time.

“Please…”  I began to say, but Angel lifted her right index finger and placed it on my lips to silence me.  She then looked around the room and nodded her head.  At that moment, every figure in the room placed their candles on the floor in a tight circle around me.  The smoke from the candles lifted up around me, their scent creeping into my nostrils and making my dizziness even worse.  Each of the cloaked figures then returned to their previous spot and removed their clothing and masks.  They were all women.  I began searching each of their faces, but only received a cold, impersonal look when my eyes met theirs.

My eyes had only made it about half way around their circle when Angel, still standing in front of me, proceeded to remove her cloak and, for the first time, her mask.  The breath from my lungs escaped me in my shock.  It was Angela, my sister’s best friend that stood before me.  Angela was gorgeous, with long blonde hair, green, cat-like eyes and full, pouty lips.  I had always had a crush on her during my adolescent years, though given the current circumstances, I was more inclined to hate her and wish her dead at this particular moment.

I now knew exactly where I was.  Angela owned a home in the suburbs of Portland where I had once attended a birthday party at.  I didn’t remember seeing Angela at the club on the night I was abducted, but I suppose it could have been any of the other women in the room that had actually drugged me.  I swung my head to the left to finish my scan of the other women’s faces in the circle and I couldn’t believe what I saw.  In the far left corner of the room was my sister, Veronica!

Thoughts rushed into my head faster than I could process and I began to feel extremely nauseous, though I was too weak to vomit.  Not only had I been molested and essentially raped by Angela, but my own sister was also apparently involved as well.  I continued to stretch my neck over my left shoulder and tried to make eye contact with my sister.  “Veronica, what the fuck are you doing?”  I yelled at her.  Given recent events, I probably should have shown better judgment with the choice of tone in my voice, but I was beyond pissed off and terrified.  What was my sister doing in some sadistic cult that practiced man-hating “bitchcraft”.

Veronica showed no emotion as she looked back at me.  Angela then touched my face with her hand and brought my eyes back in line with hers.  “It is time, brother, for you to give your light to a higher cause.”  I had no idea what she was referring to as she grabbed a large, gray ceramic bowl and placed it at my feet.  “My sisters, we shall now drink the life force of this soul so that our circle might gain its power and pass it on to the new spirit that grows within me.”  With that Angela revealed a sizeable dagger with weird symbols on it and placed the blade on a region of my body that I’d always felt should never have anything sharp next to it.

“No Angela No!”  I half screamed, half cried, but it was too late.  She removed from my body what she had used so frequently during my imprisonment, and now blood streamed down my legs and into the bowl.  It only took a couple of minutes before she removed the bowl from below my feet and drank the blood from it.  Angela then handed it off to the other women in the circle as they drank from it too.  My will to live vanished.

Veronica and I had such a normal life growing up.  My parents had always been so good to “V” and me.  What happened to her?  I tried to make some kind of sense of what was going on, but the loss of blood was too great for me to overcome.  As the bowl made its way around the room I realized I did not want to see my own sister drink from it.  I closed my eyes and after only a few seconds longer, I felt my soul drift away.