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Kris didn’t scream. In fact, she smiled. It was forced but better than screaming.
He led us both by our elbows out of the room. The crawl space door was left swinging open on its worn metal hinges, painted white to match the walls. That seemed an odd thing for him to forget.
Maybe it was an answer to my prayer. Newbie would wake, sneak out the window, shimmy down the rain spout, or throw himself over the ledge. The row of shrubs lining the front of the house would break his fall. He’d bring help. We’d be saved.
At the bottom of the stairs, the three of us walked into the great room. Kris led, followed by myself with Joe’s warm body an inch from my back. It was a welcome relief over the master bedroom. Shadows deepening with the onset of dusk draped the room, which was empty but for four chairs situated in a circle. If the fourth chair was for Doris, she had yet to arrive.
Joe lowered his hands from our elbows to the center of our backs, guiding each of us to a chair. Kris’s eyes glanced at the front door. I silently begged her not to attempt an escape—she’d never get away, and when she failed, we’d pay dearly.
It was torture sitting us so close to freedom. But Joe knew that. He was taunting us, showing his dominance, instilling his control over us as if we hadn’t yet learned he would decide our fate.
A scuffle came from above, in the bedroom with the crawl space.
“Erin, it’s good to see you again,” Joe said, interrupting my efforts to hear what was happening upstairs. “I see you have met Kristen. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been the one to introduce you, but you know how it goes—sometimes life gets in the way.”
His calm behavior was unnerving. He was speaking like we were having a normal conversation. When he was mad, I was scared but knew what to expect. The version in front of me left me floundering to know what was to come next. Compounding my fear was Kris sitting beside me.
The instinct to survive morphed into hopelessness, followed by numbness.
I can’t save Kris, myself, or Newbie upstairs. I’ve given all I can, sacrificed everything I have. There is nothing left for me to give.
Nothing.
Resting his head against the back of one of the tall, oak chairs, Joe concentrated on the ceiling, presumably gathering his thoughts. My chest rose and fell with every labored breath I took. His image was blurring behind unshed tears. I was more terrified than I’d been since the day Joe and Doris drugged me and locked me away. I couldn’t explain what was different or why I was slipping into a catatonic state at the most benign moment I’d encountered since their arrival.
An image of Betty sitting by the window and fireplace a few feet behind Kris’s left shoulder gave me my answer. Even in the barren room, but for a few chairs and as many people, I could see her. My mind replayed a conversation we had the summer before I left for college.
“There will be hard times in your life,” she’d begun. “You will endure bad things and meet bad people. But there will be far more good, which will overshadow it all, trust me. You are brave. No matter what happens or who may try to hurt you, remember I said that, okay?”
She’d been wrong. I wasn’t the strong one; she was. She carried on long after her husband’s murder. I could never be that resilient. The thought of carrying on after this nightmare was over, long after Joe and Doris had, hopefully, been apprehended and thrown in prison for the rest of their lives, was even too daunting a task to imagine. It was one I wasn’t ready for or eager to attempt.
Maybe giving up would be better. There had to be a way to make Joe kill me to end my horror forever. Kris would have to fend for herself, but wasn’t she already? Was anything I did helping her? He’d do whatever it was his sick, twisted, fanatical mind deemed necessary, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
A sharp pain, like I’d run into the corner of a metal table, shot through my abdomen. I tumbled from the chair as Joe’s foot to my gut knocked me onto the floor. I curled into the fetal position to help alleviate the unannounced attack. Tears tickled the backs of my lids, but I didn’t cry.
My eyes were open but unfocused until I saw a piece of frayed carpet a few inches in front of me. I couldn’t turn away from its inconsistency in the house of a woman who’d never have allowed a large, noticeable fray like that to stay. Unless she never noticed it. I hadn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t visible until a person was lying inches from it. I wondered how it got there, and if Betty had noticed, was she planning to replace it?
If she were, I was canceling those plans. That carpet shouldn’t be torn up because of an imperfection. Weren’t we all imperfect? Everybody was frayed in some way, like that carpet. Some people’s frays were buried deep enough that no one would ever see them. Others were as noticeable as a black fly in milk.
Just like that carpet, I, too, had frays. They were on my skin, under my skin, in my mind and heart. I hadn’t realized before that those small frays were actually the seams that held me together—pull at one, and they all come apart.
Another painful blow to the abdomen. I was being ripped apart at the seams one fray at a time, and it hurt worse than any pain I’d endured so far.
Another crack.
I wondered what would happen to the pieces of me. Would I be as replaceable as the carpet I was lying on?
Three, maybe four more strikes came, each more violent than the last. A bitter, rotten taste dripped down my throat. Perhaps it was the taste of my soul, if I had one left. I wondered if it went sour in the days since meeting Joe or if it had always been that foul.
Time, I think that was another fray—time to do more tomorrow, to reflect on yesterday, to make amends to those I might have wronged. I wished I could have sewn that fray back on, put a patch on it so I could have just a little while longer.
The fray in the carpet and the imaginary ones ripping apart inside of me were gone. There was nothing but darkness and that rancorous, familiar taste seeping onto my tongue.
For a brief, peaceful moment, I found relief in that blackness surrounding me. As with everything in life, nothing good could last forever. Time sped up as fast as it had slowed down. I could see and feel again. I saw that fray in the carpet just as clear as I saw large feet standing in front of me. When I tried to move, sharp pain in my skull struck me motionless, as if my head had been splintered into a thousand pieces.
Over my lips and onto the floor, I spit a mouthful of blood. The beige carpet soaked up some of it, changing its color into a shade of crimson. It was almost pretty.
Oh god, what about Kris?
I screamed for her from the floor, still curled up like a baby. I’d forgotten about her, left her alone, though not by choice.
Gripping my stomach, I rotated to my left. There were no feet where a set should have been. My effort to stand failed. I got as high as the palm of my hand allowed then fell, hard, onto my left arm and shoulder.
“Where is she? What have you done with her, you sick bastard?” I yelled, gurgling my words around a pool of blood filling my mouth. Seconds later, the darkness consumed me.