I read an article about the various methods of psychological torture once. Tactics that were employed on American soldiers captured behind enemy lines. There was an interview with one ex-Marine who said that, as a prisoner of war, the psychological torture was far worse than the physical abuse he’d endured. At the time, I found that hard to believe.
But not now.
I was beginning to understand.
My thirst was becoming almost unbearable, but it wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the dark. The absence of light was more disturbing than I ever would’ve guessed it could be. It made no difference if my eyes were open or closed. The blackness was absolute.
I found myself blinking repeatedly, like my vision was just foggy or delayed, but it never cleared. I never saw anything. It was like the whole world had disappeared and had taken every speck of light with it.
The lack of interaction with another human was getting to me pretty badly, too. I felt desperate for somebody. Anybody. Another voice, another body, just another person. I didn’t even care who.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t want my kidnapper to come and visit me. I didn’t want interaction enough to endure rape for it. I hoped it would never get to that point. I found myself whispering or quietly singing, just so I could hear something. Something that didn’t sound creepy, like the drag of my chains on the concrete or the peel of my damp skin when I moved. I didn’t know how long a person could survive this way without going completely insane. I hoped I didn’t have to find out either.
The heat and lack of sleep on top of everything else only aggravated my situation. I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d passed out from dislocating my shoulders, but my mind was starting to play tricks on me, so I assumed it had been at least two days. And that meant I was coming up on probably my third or maybe even fourth day without water. But I’d be damned if I’d let myself go to sleep and miss someone coming or going from my little hellhole. No, if there was even a ten million-to-one chance of me being able to escape, I was going to take it.
Once I was able to stand without puking or passing out, I tested the limits of my chains four additional times. Not one detail changed. I kept hoping I’d go a slightly different direction and find something, anything that could help me. Something I could use as a weapon, a water dish I’d missed. A latch or switch, something I could trigger. Like a concealed lever on the wall, an indented button on the floor. I scoured every inch of my prison that I could reach, but I didn’t find anything. Not one damn thing.
When I sat, it was harder not to doze off, so I busied myself with mental games. I ran through every outlandish scenario I could think of for why someone would kidnap me and keep me in a room like this. Psychological experiment. Revenge. Some sort of bizarre fetish. I went through why I was taken, too. Why me—a nobody from nowhere. I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t married to anyone rich. Didn’t even know anyone with kidnap-worthy wealth or importance. I led a boring life. Happily married. Event planner. Mother of one son. Driver of a minivan. Fun blonde. Baker of too many mediocre meals. I could see no reason that I should be targeted for something like this. I never arrived at a conclusion, but the endless loops of thought kept me busy, kept me awake. I suppose frustration and futility have their purposes.
What I knew for sure was that I wanted to go home. So much that I couldn’t even think about my family or my house or even my hairbrush without crying. Eventually, though, my sobs were dry. Tearless. In my hazy, drowsy, semi-lucid state, I knew that was bad. Bad, bad, bad.
At some point, I started to wonder if I was dead. If I’d made some exceedingly poor choices in life and this was my eternity.
What if this was all there was? Forever. Darkness. Aloneness. Heat.
Maybe this was hell.
It sure felt like it.
Then I began to think that if I were dead, maybe I could leave. I thought about how a spirit could get out, where I’d go. Maybe I could go back in time, back to before. Before this, before mistakes, before many things. Just… before.
My mind sifted through memories. Some I recognized as my own—my high school prom with Dave Jenkins; the pianist at my wedding with the really bad hair; the first time I heard Dalton laugh; the pretty sundress I bought for our beach trip this year. But some felt slightly contrived. Or maybe foreign. Like they belonged to someone else. Franken-memories—a bizarre blend of fact and possibly fiction. Pieces from different people and different lives, all woven into the same quilt.
QuiltQuiltQuilt.
My quilts were stored in the hope chest Mom and Dad got me for my sixteen birthday. They probably smelled like grass clippings and gasoline, like everything else in the garage. That’s where my hope chest was—buried in the garage somewhere, waiting to be refinished.
Refinished or refurbished?
Was refurbished a word?
Or was it part of that Disney show, Phineas and Ferb?
Was it spelled the same? Or spelled like fur plus verb?
Verb is action.
But what was a dangling participle, again?
I drifted.
I lolled.
And some time later, I jolted awake. Seconds, minutes, hours later. I had no idea. My head was throbbing again. Nausea sloshed in my stomach.
I’d fallen asleep.
But for how long?
I was so tired. So damned tired.
My eyelids fluttered. My eyes prickled like they were full of sand.
I slapped myself in the face once. Then again, harder.
It roused me for a few seconds, but waves of thought, disjointed and calming, pulled me. Tugged me. This way, this way. And the watery voice was relentless.
I bit into my lip.
I tasted blood.
My mind cleared for a few more seconds.
I sat up.
Dug my nails into my palms.
Shook my head. Screamed as loud as I could.
Pumped my arms. Kicked my legs.
I fought.
I took my mind back to the last thing I could remember before waking up in a wired and padded room. I went back through the day, rifled through the minutia, searched for anything that meant something.
The last day I remembered was a Tuesday. Gabe took my suitcase down to the car for me so I could have breakfast with Dalton. We had Cheerios and strawberries. I ate with a spoon. He ate mostly with his fingers. I smiled the whole time. I hated leaving him, but until I could train Cassandra well enough to take over some of the interim meetings, I had no choice.
Cassandra. My new assistant. She didn’t mind all the traveling. That’s why I hired her. She was a great event planner, and I thought I could trust her. I wanted to pare down my schedule to include only initial consultations and the events themselves. I thought I could trust Cassandra to fill in all the gaps, do most of the traveling in between. I’d thought a lot about her that morning, about whether it was going to work out.
Then Gabe again. I kissed him goodbye. He slapped me on the ass before I stepped out the door. That made me want to stay even more. I missed my son when I traveled, but I missed Gabe, too.
I drove to the airport, like I’d done a hundred times before. I parked in the long-term deck, like I’d done a hundred times before. I got my luggage from the trunk, like I’d done a hundred times before.
But then…then, a blank.
A long, fuzzy blank that ended with me waking up in the dark. The thick, oppressive, haunted dark.
So the airport. That must’ve been when I was attacked.
I focused on the moments surrounding me getting my suitcase out. I combed back through sights and sounds, what I’d been thinking about, anything I might’ve noticed out of the ordinary. Everything was the same. Every last detail.
Except…
Except a hissing sound. Where had that come from? Was someone’s tire going flat? Had I even looked?
And then, pine.
I remembered smelling pine.
That was all.
One thought brought a tiny ray of light into my situation. I always checked in with Gabe when I landed. We made it a point to check in with each other at least one time within every twenty-four hour period. I hadn’t checked in. Surely he’d alerted the authorities, reported me missing.
Unless the guy who took me used my phone to check in for me. He could tell Gabe anything, make up any number of lies to stall him calling the cops. He just had to hold him off long enough for…for…
A heavy, cold sensation settled into the pit of my stomach.
He just had to hold him off long enough for me to die in here.