I’M SO SORRY, MOM.
The apology is spoken in a whisper, somewhere between a prayer and a sob uttered into a dark, cold void. She is alone. Forgotten. Left to die. Her most feared childhood nightmare of being buried alive actually happening.
There’s no point in shouting. She’s already tried that, of course. She yelled and begged when he walked away, when he climbed the makeshift ladder and dragged the rough piece of plywood over the hole. She screamed as he laid the heavy rocks one after the other—thunk, thunk, thunk—in rhythm to her panicked heartbeat. She’d screamed and screamed until, already exhausted, she collapsed, her throat dry as the dust beneath her feet.
He would not return. That was clear.
Was that yesterday? This morning? Three days ago? Impossible to tell here in this windowless cave. In the dimming light of the lamp, she can make out desiccated potatoes, rotted, dried, and darkened to black lumps scattered here and there on the dirt floor. The air is dank and thick. Oxygen is running low. It smells of urine and vomit. Hers.
No one will look for her here—if they even realize she’s been abducted, which is doubtful. Her captor will have fooled them with artful lies: She went on the lam to save her own hide, she is not who she appears to be. She’s cunning, ambitious, greedy—and now look what she’s done, what misery she’s caused! Good riddance to bad rubbish, they’ll all say.
Except her mother. She will keep on searching, never giving up until her daughter is found.
Though by then, it will likely be too late.