Three Days Missing
Hope
I wasn’t in Rustin’s parents’ cabin anymore. I was in a fun house. The edges of everything—the furniture, the walls, the ugly stone fireplace—all seemed rounded and cartoonish and soft. I wanted to touch everything to see if they actually were soft, but either my brain couldn’t find my fingers or my fingers couldn’t find my brain because nothing happened.
And then I saw the boots—muddy, huge, slow and plodding—moving toward me. With every step, my brain vibrated. My teeth rattled. A new rivulet of blood filled my mouth. I was lying on my side, and every step he took shook the cheap plank-wood floor. I wanted to close my eyes and drift into that feelingless blackness again, but it was as if my eyes had been peeled open. As with my fingers, I couldn’t move my eyes. I couldn’t shut them. I couldn’t shut off the boots that were one foot away. Six inches. So close that I could nudge the rounded steel-toed end with my nose.
The man crouched, and I willed my body to arch, to move, to jump back so he couldn’t touch me but nothing, not a damn thing, happened.
The man must have been reading my mind because he smiled. Another of those grotesque, gargoyle-like smiles that curved the edges of his thin, greasy lips.
“You’re awake.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but my words were garbled, strangled.
He cocked his head. “Aw, let me help you with that.”
I could feel the sweat bead as his fingers moved close to my face. His fingernails were even and well manicured, but my stomach still lurched when they touched my face. The man moved my hair from my cheek and then pinched my skin with those nails, and my jaw hung open.
He pushed the saliva-soaked gag down my chin, and suddenly I was gasping, sucking in air, but every bone in my face ached. I felt like I’ve been punched and wondered vaguely if I had been. I breathed for a second before the anger overwhelmed me.
“Who the fuck are you? What the fuck do you want with me? Let me go, you crazy fuck!” My voice was tinny, ragged.
The man cocked his head again, looking completely unfazed. He clicked his tongue. “That language is not becoming a lady, Hope.”
Bile itched at the back of my throat.
I didn’t want him to say my name. He shouldn’t be allowed to say my name.
Those thin, greasy lips. His yellowed teeth.
He can’t say my name.
A sob lodged in my throat, but I refused to cry. I wouldn’t let him see me cry. “How do you know my name? How do you know who I am?”
“I know everything about you, Hope.”
His voice was unnervingly serene.
“How?”
He sighed and sank back on the arm of the couch, staring down at me. Still, he smiled. I wanted to throw up, spit, claw his eyes out.
“You invited me.”
The fog in my head was starting to thin—slowly, agonizingly slowly. I was trying to focus on him, to commit his horrible face to memory or to jar something loose… Did I know him? Did I recognize this guy? I was sure that I didn’t.
“I didn’t invite you. I don’t fucking know who you are.”
“Language, Hope.”
“How did you even find me?” I thought of Rustin’s cabin, of the drive deeper and deeper into the woods.
“I always know where you are. I watch you. I’ve been watching you.” He puffed out his chest. “It’s my job.” Then, a half whisper as he leaned into me: “I’m real good at it.”
“Who are you?” I spat out.
He looked genuinely pleased, like we were having a normal conversation over a couple of lattes, and I wasn’t hog-tied on a filthy wooden floor in some old house.
“Now that’s how to talk to a friend. Call me Daniel.”
Daniel. Daniel. Daniel. I turned the name over and over in my head, held it on my tongue, forced my brain to recognize it. Do I know a Daniel? Do my parents know Daniel?
“Do you work on the show?”
Daniel crossed his arms in front of his chest, pushed out those boots again, and crossed his legs at the ankles. His socks were stark white, carefully folded down. “Not exactly. Your parents are phonies.”
For some reason, a lump swelled in my throat, and I could feel tears prick at the edges of my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Daniel told me. “You won’t have to deal with them anymore.”
I blinked, desperate to stop the flood of tears that threatened to fall. “What are you talking about?”
He shrugged, ignoring my question. “This is nice. I knew you were nice.”
Thoughts raced through my head, slamming me behind the eyes. Spit. Scream. Damn him to hell. Get the fuck out of here. Kill him.
Focus, Hope.
“It would be nice if you would untie me.”
Daniel dragged his tongue across his lips, and I couldn’t help but watch the snail trail of saliva while my stomach threatened to wretch.
“I don’t know, Hope. Can I trust you?”
You have me fucking hog-tied on the floor of some godforsaken house, and you want me to trust you, you freakazoid? I was desperate to shout, to snap at him, to snap him in half.
Instead, I forced myself to nod, the action miniscule as every move, no matter how minor, pulled and tightened the ropes’ course across my body.
“You can trust me. I’m not going to do anything.” I widened my eyes, hoped they look pleading and sweet.
Daniel started to soften, and he came at me again with those coarse hands. I couldn’t help but flinch. He noticed.
The light flush in his cheeks went to full, rageful red. His nostrils flared. His lips curled and his teeth were exposed, bared like a snarling wolfhound’s, and I heard the smack of skin on skin before I felt the burn that tore across my nose, shredding my lip.
“I disgust you, is that it?” His voice was a low growl.
“No, no,” I shook my head, then flinched again, the tears rushing over my cheeks as the blood pooled behind my teeth. “Please untie me. Please, Daniel, just a little bit. This hurts. It really hurts! I’m not disgusted by you… You just…you…” I sniffled. “You just scared me is all. You have me tied up here and on the floor…”
Immediately Daniel dropped to his knees and started to fidget with the ropes. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to strangle me or help me. Panic flared through me, my skin tightening, my eyes bulging. I wanted to scream, to struggle, to fight back, but the will was paralyzed inside me.
Move, damn it!
React, Hope!
With each move Daniel made, another millimeter of the rope dug into my throat, cut at the skin on my wrists and ankles. I felt blood bubbling, felt the itching trails as red slid from my damaged flesh.
“Please, Daniel, please.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Hope. I would never hurt you. You’re my special girl. You’re a special little girl.”
I saw the knife in Daniel’s hand. It was the same blade from before, dull, aged, and my heart slammed against my rib cage.
He was going to kill me.
“Oh God, please no, please, no!”
Daniel stopped, staring from the knife to me. I could see his eyes—dull, blank, and shallow—reflected in the blade.
I’m not afraid of anything.
Or anyone.
But Daniel…
He had that knife in his hand. Twisting it, flipping it. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the blade, but he wasn’t even looking at it, just staring at me the whole time, dragging that tongue across his lips. I could hear him breathe. Every inch he moved closer to me was an invasion of my personal space. I wanted to say something, but all I could do was focus on that blade. Slip, roll, slide.
Slip, roll, slide.
“I’ve waited so long for us to be together like this, Hope.”
He paused, waited for me to answer, but everything inside me was trembling, no matter how hard I clenched everything down, shut everything down. I could feel the blood burning through my veins and pooling in my muscles.
“I don’t even know who you are.”
I could see from the corner of my eye as Daniel’s chin dropped.
“Well, that makes me a little sad. But you weren’t ever that observant. You always had so much going on.”
Slip, roll, slide.
“You had your friends and that boyfriend around all the time…”
Tony. I felt myself flinch.
Daniel did something between a snort and a chuckle. “All the boys were always around you. Then again…” He stopped, shuffling the knife and pinned me with a gross, dead-eyed stare. “I can’t blame them. You’re an angel.” He took a single index finger and dragged it down my bare skin. It felt like fire. It felt like I was going to split open at the seams. My stomach roiled.
“Just so beautiful.”
I shrank back, putting as much distance between Daniel and me as I could. “What are you going to do with me?”
Daniel actually seemed taken aback. Pleased, even. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to gnash my teeth, sink them into him, and tear his flesh apart—but I didn’t even want to touch him.
“Well, Hope. I was hoping we’d get to this point. You, interested in me.”
I was aghast. How the hell could he think I was interested in him? I eyed the knife again, and Daniel laughed. “Oh! You want to know what I’m going to do with this?” He brandished the thing, waved it a quarter inch from my nose. I could actually smell the cold metal. “That’s what you’re interested in! Well, Hope, I guess, when it comes to us”—he pointed the knife first at his chest, then mine—“you and me and this”—again with the knife—“well, I guess a lot of that is up to you.”
I sucked in a long, low breath. “Well, if a lot of that is up to me, I want you to let me go.”
Daniel blinked at me. “But we’ve just barely begun.”
I steeled myself, confidence coming out of nowhere. “Let. Me. Go.”
His expression darkened. “Not after how hard I’ve worked to get you here. You’re going to love it, Hope, I promise. You’re going to love it, and love me, and we’re going—”
The spit stopped him midsentence.
His nostrils flared, and fire raged in his eyes. “How dare you!”
I saw the knife in his hand. I saw him rear back. I flinched, mashing myself against the wall, holding my breath. I waited for the blade. For my flesh to slash open. I didn’t expect the wallop.
The heel of Daniel’s hand came down hard across my right cheek. I was sure every tooth was broken. I could feel the blood gush from my nose, the tears welling in my eyes and pouring down my cheeks.
Daniel sat back with a slight, satisfied grin.
I pounced.
Used every ounce of energy I had and lurched toward him, blood-covered hands clawed. I would get out of this house if it killed me. I would get back to my parents, to Tony, to my school. I would survive.