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Bree opened her eyes to find she was lying on a small cot. There were a pair of handcuffs on the ground beside her. She remembered what they had been used for. She remembered a man on top, slapping her, spanking her, fucking her — that was the only way to put it and she knew it wasn’t the first time.
The last thing she remembered was curling up like a baby, wrapped in the blanket on the floor. Now she was on the cot, not sure how she got there.
Bree also didn’t realize she’d been in her basement dungeon for a couple of days because a sheet had been thrown over the window that had been her only connection to the world.
The two-inch thick mattress she was laying on was soaked with her sweat. A metal bucket was in the corner with the word, ‘toilet,’ written on a piece of paper taped to it.
Bee was shivering. It was so damn cold and she was so damn scared.
She woke up consumed by the one, single thought that dominated her brain for a couple of days. Three simple words.
Survive. Fight. Escape.
Bree stood on the cot, gripping the damp, cement ledge of a window above her, the only window in her cell. That’s not how she was thinking of it yet.
One cot. One pee bucket. One leftover cereal bowl that appeared on the floor by her cot sometime last night.
She knew it was daytime now. Bree pushed the blanket aside and saw there was sun coming through the sheet over the window before she yanked it down.
Thanks to the daylight, for the first time Bree saw her new home was made of three sheets of plywood and one wall of cement. Shivering again, realizing again that she was naked, feeling her nudity, her vulnerability, her embarrassment, Bree covered her breasts with her arms and stood on her toes on the cot, hoping it wouldn’t break, trying to look out the window above her head.
She could see some ugly, little scrub bushes with daylight coming through the cracks. Leaves were blowing on the ground.
Red, dead leaves.
Bree shuddered. Had summer turned to autumn so quickly?
Everything was dying.
Bree might be close too. Bree could die any day.
She had to survive, fight and escape.
But even that would create a new problem.
What if she did get away? Was she going to be able to run away naked from wherever she was to only God knows where? Bree hadn’t a clue. Would she be in this basement for the rest of her life like that girl who got kidnapped, raped, gave birth and raised her baby in a backyard in California? Would she be raped and then have to keep the rapist’s child? Raising her little family in the basement? Is that all that was left of Bree’s life?
She screamed and this time not just in her head.
Bree screamed out loud, banging her fists on the plywood, kicking it, fighting refusing to give up, ready to run naked, ready to kill whoever has done this to her.
Footsteps.
Footsteps over her head.
Someone was home.
Bree fell to the ground. On her knees, she covered herself. No place to hide. The dirt and pee-soaked mud under her knees and legs so terribly cold and damp.
Footsteps.
Someone was getting closer.
Now.
Survive. Fight. Escape.
“Cinnamon! Cinnamon!”