THREE

She tries to sleep, but not because she is tired.

Awake, it’s cold, despite the thick coat that he let her keep, and there is not so much as a pinhole of light. The tape is still tight around her mouth and having lost the battle to control her bladder, she is starting to feel sore. It had warmed her a little at first, but quickly became clammy and cold. The floor is rough and wet beneath her backside and the pipe that she is chained to is ridged with bolts that press against her spine, even through her coat. It’s been a long time since she was brought here. A day or two at least, she thinks. It’s hard to tell when it’s so dark, when there’s no sound save for the drip and trickle of the water that’s coming in. She knows she’s below ground, she’s certain about that much at least. He had given her enough of whatever was in that bottle to be sure that she would not fight back, but she hadn’t quite been unconscious. She remembers being taken down out of the rain into the quiet and the stink. She remembers the strangest feeling that this was a place she knew, that it was somewhere she’d been when she was younger.

Awake, she is weak with hunger and her throat burns when she tries to swallow and though she knows there are things moving in her hair when she’s asleep, running across her legs, anything is better than the pain that screams in her belly, the desperation for food that even the rank smell of the place cannot keep at bay for very long.

Awake, she suffers through every second of every minute alone and uncertain as to when the man who brought her here will be coming back. At first it was terror that he would come back, the thought of what he would do to her when he did. Now it is all about his absence. The thought of being abandoned in this place.

Awake, she tries to tell herself that it’s some kind of attempt to break her spirit or whatever. That there will be food, but it will probably be offered in return for those things she’s been so terrified about. But the offer won’t be made until she’s been sufficiently starved. Until she cannot possibly refuse it. Each time she hears something skitter and splash in the darkness, one of the rats she knows are down here with her, she wonders if the man is coming back. If somehow they can hear his footsteps far above them, feel them through the water up above, the damp, rotten fabric of the place. It never happens though. He never comes.

Awake, there is nothing to do but sit and listen and hum and weep and try to tell herself that there will be people trying desperately to find her. Nothing to do but imagine the hell her parents are going through. She moves, tries to get a little more comfortable. The chain is just long enough so that she can lie down. That’s me being nice, he’d said. Last thing he’d said. No, that’s not right, not quite the last thing. Apologies for the whiff, he’d said, climbing back up the steps.

The whiff . . .

Awake, she holds her breath and fights the constant urge to gag at the rank, meaty stench of it. She imagines that she can feel particles of it moving against her face, that she is breathing them in through her nose.

She lies down, one arm beneath her head to keep her face dry.

There is so much she doesn’t know or understand. So much she can only guess at and try to make sense of. But she knows she is not alone, not strictly speaking, anyway.

Awake, she knows there’s a body down here with her, in the wet and the dark.