Chapter 2
Emily
The lights go out and I scream, thrust into a world of darkness. Panic washes over me as I look around, trying to make out any of the fixtures that were there moments ago. I can’t see anything—it’s complete darkness all around me. A hand clasps over my mouth, silencing my scream but that only makes me panic more.
“Shhhhh,” a voice close to my ear hisses. “If he hears you, he’ll come back down here and punish you again.”
I shiver at the reminder of what he said and the moment he threatened to do just that. He held me against him, one hand grabbing my breast hard while the other slipped beneath the back of my underwear. I was convinced he was going to rape me right then and there. I think he would have if it wasn’t for Luke…
“Will you be quiet?” his voice is a mix of concern and… fear.
I nod my head, vowing not to be the reason that he comes back down here. I won’t survive him raping me—I know I won’t. I don’t think I’ll be able to survive him hitting me again either; my back feels like it’s on fire! Luke slowly takes his hand away from my mouth and resumes his careful work on my back. I don’t know how he does it though—it’s so dark I can’t even see my own hand in front of my face. I hiss when he wipes something onto one of the cuts. I don’t know how much time passes but eventually, he stops whatever he had been doing to my back, and I hear him move away. I don’t know how he can even figure out where he’s going much less how he gets there without falling.
“Your eyes will adjust,” he answers my unasked question. “You won’t be able to see much more than shadows, but you’ll learn where everything is. It helps to count too.”
“Count?”
“Count the steps between places: I know how many steps it takes me to get from the mattress to the toilet, to the shower, to the stairs even. It’s not perfect, but it helps.”
“What now?”
“Now? Now, we sleep. If we’re lucky, in the morning he’ll put a tray of food on the top step for us, but it might not be there either. This…this is where you’ll be until he decides to let you out.”
“You expect me to sleep?”
Is he crazy? I can’t sleep! Not with a fucking crazy man upstairs, waiting for me to fall asleep so he can do who the fuck knows what. Oh God, he could come back and rape me when I fall asleep. He could—
“Look,” he lets out a breath. “I know this is… I know you’re scared. I’ll do anything I can to protect you. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s going to come back tonight, as long as we both stay quiet.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep.”
“Then just… I don’t know, lay down maybe?”
“What happens tomorrow?”
I don’t know why I asked him that—he’s already told me that I’m not going to be going home. But I feel like I need to… know what will happen when we wake up. Will I just be stuck down here with Luke? Will he come down here? Will he bring us upstairs? Will he hurt me again? Will he hurt Luke again?
“Tomorrow? Honestly, I don’t know.”
He touches my hand, and I immediately jerk it back until I realize he’s offering to help me stand up. Still, though, I’m cautious as I take his warm hand and allow him to help me up from the cold floor. My skin and muscles scream at the sudden movements, the pain coming out of nowhere, nearly knocking me off my feet. Luke’s arm around my waist is the only thing preventing me from falling to the floor.
“There’s a mattress over here.” He leads me across the room, which is harder than it should be given I can’t see a thing. “There’s nothing between us and the mattress, so you shouldn’t trip over anything.”
A couple of steps later my feet hit something soft on the floor and, with Luke’s assistance, I sit down on it. He sits next to me, though he leaves some space between us. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad right now. I don’t want him close to me, because I don’t know if I can trust him completely, but at the same time I don’t want him too far from me. He stopped that crazy man from raping me. I couldn’t see him, but I heard him begging the guy to stop hitting me.
“Normally, in the morning, he will leave a tray on the top step with food on it. Another tray will come later, I guess around dinner time. There are only ever two trays, except on the days I fight then there is usually a third tray filled with carbs—”
“The days you fight?” I gulp.
“He makes me… he brings me to a boxing ring where I fight…other kids.”
“Oh my God.”
I’m going to die, there’s no way I can fight. Sure, I know to kick a guy in the balls if he gets too handsy with me, but that’s all I know. I can’t fight someone in a boxing ring—they’re going to kill me if I go there!
“I don’t think you need to worry, I’ve never seen a girl there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t think…he probably won’t bring you there.”
“So, except for when you…fight, you’re down here?”
“Yeah… I mean he brings me upstairs once a day for an hour—”
“Oh God, what for?”
“Training,” he answers quickly probably knowing what was going through my head. “He has a gym upstairs that he locks me in for an hour. It’s supposed to keep me in shape for fighting.”
“Does he…will he come down here again?”
“Today was the first time he’s been down here in a really long time.”
I notice he doesn’t answer the question; I guess because he doesn’t know the answer. I rest my head on my arms, trying to figure out how the hell I ended up in this mess. I wasn’t even supposed to be walking home from Stacy’s house tonight. My dad was going to pick me up, but his meeting ran late, and her mom was working, so she couldn’t drive me home. We finished studying early and her brother was giving me the creeps, like he usually does, so I really just wanted to go home. I’ve walked to her house hundreds of times, but my dad’s rule was that I could walk as long as it was daylight out. He had an issue with me walking home at night, even if it was just a mile away. Now I understand why…
I should have listened to him.
“Why don’t we lie down? You don’t need to sleep, but you might feel better if you rest.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
We slowly move around each other, finding our spots on the small, thin mattress. I’m lying near a cold stone wall while Luke is on the other side of the mattress. It is much smaller than I expected, though I guess I don’t really know what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect to be grabbed on my way home, thrown to the ground behind some bushes where I was then drugged before ending up in a dark, smelly van. The fact that I’m surprised at the size of the mattress causes me to laugh.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I must sound crazy laughing in a situation like this.
“There are no blankets or pillows, unfortunately.” He almost sounds like he’s apologizing. “I don’t… there are no clothes either.”
How I forgot that I’m only wearing a bra and panties is beyond me. Suddenly I’m very aware that I’m lying in bed next to a complete stranger practically naked. If he’s been here over a year…
“I won’t hurt you, Emily,” he tries to assure me.
God, I want to believe him, I do, but…this whole situation is fucked up. I should have just stayed at Stacy’s house. I should have listened to my dad and not walked from her house at night. I should have ignored her brother, even though he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off my chest. If I had only listened to my dad, none of this would have happened. I would be at home right now, sleeping in my bed, covered in my blankets, wearing my clothes!
I don’t know how I fell asleep, but at some point I must have, because when I open my eyes again I’m still surrounded by darkness, but I don’t need to feel the mattress next to me to know that it’s empty—Luke is no longer sleeping next to me. I immediately sit up, trying to search the room but I can only make out a few shadows and they only freak me out more. What if he’s down here right now? What if he’s hiding somewhere watching me, waiting for me? Could he have done something to Luke while I was sleeping? Wouldn’t I have heard it if he did? Maybe he drugged me again while I was asleep.
I’m about to get up from the mattress, to go where I have no idea, when I hear a knock from…hell, I don’t know where exactly it came from because it’s pitch dark down here. Immediately I panic, waiting for him to grab me again, to touch me, to rub himself up against me. I try calling out for Luke, hoping like hell he’s down here, even though part of me knows he isn’t.
I stand up, needing to get away before he touches me again. I can still feel his touch on me, his foul smelling breath against my ear, and his hand on my breast. I need to hide before he can get to me again. I can’t just sit and wait for him—I need to do something. I try to look around, to find a place to hide, but I can’t see a damn thing. I head, in what I think is the opposite direction of where the sound came from, but for all I know I could be heading right to him, it’s impossible to know. The knocking noise suddenly seems closer, so I decide to head in the opposite direction, but my foot catches something and I end up falling to the floor, screaming out in a mixture of pain and surprise as I do.
“Emily?”
I’m in full-blown panic mode–I try to push myself up from the floor to try and get away, but all I can focus on is the sound of him getting closer. I don’t know where he is, but I can hear him heading towards me. He’s going to punish me for calling out, he’s going to do to me whatever he did to Luke. I should have listened to my dad, I should have stayed at Stacy’s house, I shouldn’t have walked home by myself, I shouldn’t have–
“Emily.”
Oh God, he’s right next to me!
“Emily, you’re okay.”
“Don’t…don’t touch me!”
“It’s me, Luke…I won’t…I’m not going to touch you.”
I swear I hear his words in slow motion, barely making sense over the thoughts racing through my head. I want to believe it’s him, but how do I know that the crazy man who took me isn’t playing some kind of trick on me? What if he took Luke, tied him up somewhere when I was sleeping and is just pretending to be him to get closer to me? It’s so dark in here, I wouldn’t know if it was him or Luke next to me. My breathing is heavy, I can barely hear his words, let alone his voice to know if it is really him.
“Emily, I think…you’re having a panic attack or something. Try to slow your breathing down.”
There’s something suddenly soothing about the voice; his voice wasn’t soft like this last night. Can I trust that it really is Luke next to me and not the crazed man? I try to take a deep breath in, to slow my breathing like he said, if for no other reason so I can hear his voice more clearly—I need to know that it’s Luke next to me. Unfortunately, my lungs don’t cooperate and I nearly choke, which only makes me panic even more.
“Easy…just breathe with me. In…Out…In…Out…”
His tone stays soft and even, quickly reassuring me that it really is Luke and not him. Sensing that I’m a little less of a basket case, he shifts next to me, but the entire time he continues to remind me to breathe.
“I…I’m sorry,” I whisper between gulps of air.
“Nothing to be sorry about. What happened?”
“I heard…a noise. The bed was empty–you weren’t there…I thought…”
“Shit…I’m sorry Em. I wasn’t thinking, I should have stayed there until you woke up.”
“Where were you?”
“Shower…that was probably the noise you heard. The pipes are old; they clank and rattle sometimes. I waited until I heard him leave breakfast on the step and relock the door before…”
“Oh.”
“Next time, I’ll wait until you wake up, I promise.”
“I thought…when I woke up this…it would have just been a nightmare. But then I opened my eyes and it was still dark and I heard the knocking noise and I thought he had taken you while I was sleeping and…”
“Shhhhh.”
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point, he put his hand on my lower back. His thumb slowly rubs back and forth over my bare skin, slowly soothing me just like his voice did. Mindful of the bandages, somehow he found a small uninjured area to touch me. I feel like a fool, having been that scared over pipes making noise as he took a shower.
“One of the first nights I was here, I freaked out like that,” he admits after a few moments of silence.
“You did?”
“I woke up in the middle of the night, or at least I think it was still night, to a thunderstorm. But when I first woke up, I didn’t know that’s what it was. I freaked out, just like you did. I was convinced the thunder was his footsteps on the stairs and that he was coming back… for me. That he was going to…”
“Yeah.”
We sit on the cold, hard floor for several long moments, neither of us saying anything.
“Are you hurt?”
“No…I mean I don’t think any more than…”
“You fell.”
“I tripped. I don’t know if it was over my own two feet or something else. My ankle’s a little sore, but it’s fine, really.”
“There’s a dip in the ground. I think right around where we are now. But I kind of lost my bearings, so I can’t be certain exactly where we are.”
“That’s probably what it was. I…the sound…I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I thought I might have been getting closer to it, so I tried to turn to go the other way and that’s when I tripped.”
“The pipes are above us, I’d bet the noise you heard was from those.”
“Oh, that explains why I couldn’t figure out where exactly it was coming from.”
“You’re okay though, right?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
We sit there for several more long moments before he stands up and, just like last night, offers me his hand. He doesn’t immediately let go and slowly leads us over to where the mattress lays on the floor.
“I’ll grab the tray of food from the steps.”
It’s so quiet down here, I can hear Luke’s footsteps as he walks away. I look around. The room is not quite as pitch dark as it was when I first opened my eyes. I can still only make out shadows, but more than I could before.
“What’s over there?” I point to the corner. Though I’m not sure why I point, I don’t think he can see what I’m doing. His hand falls gently on my arm, obviously trying to determine what I’m asking about.
“I guess I should give you the grand tour,” the disappointment is evident in his voice.
I hear him set something on the floor behind us, just before he takes my hand back in his.
“Forty-three steps…well it might be different for you, anyway over here is the…I guess, bathroom area. There’s a toilet–”
“Thank God.” I feared there was a hole in the ground somewhere we would have to use.
“Shit, I guess I should have asked if you needed to use it.”
“Maybe, when we’re done.”
“There’s a toilet and sink here… most days he supplies toilet paper. Um…there’s no…it’s just open. No walls or doors…”
“Oh.” I shouldn’t have expected anything else. As much as I’d love a little privacy, at least it’s not a bucket or a whole in the ground we have to use.
“If you head over here,” he holds my hand and slowly leads me across the room, counting as we walk. “This is the shower area. That’s where I was when you…anyway, just like the toilet, it’s open. There’s no curtain or even walls. Just a pipe attached to the wall and a showerhead at the end. Most of the time the water is pretty warm—I wouldn’t say hot, but it’s not cold either. There’s a drain to your right for the water. He does supply shampoo and soap, most days. There are two small towels, I don’t know if he’ll give us anything else now that…”
Now that I’m here.
“There’s no washer or dryer—I usually just wash things by hand in the sink and let them dry overnight. I don’t know if he’ll give you something to wear…”
Right, because I only have my bra and panties on. I try to remember which ones I’m wearing today…I’m pretty sure the bra is black lace. I suppose that is one good thing about it being so dark down here; at least Luke can’t see me half naked… again.
“Anyway, we’re back to the mattress. Over there isn’t much of anything, just empty space. Did you want to eat? Its cold oatmeal and a couple bottles of water, but that’ll be all for the next few hours.”
“That’s it? We’re just going to eat breakfast?”
“Uh…well if you don’t want to…”
“Shouldn’t we be trying to find a way out or something? There has to be a door or a window or—”
“I’ve searched this place top to bottom, there’s no way out,” he warns. “There are no windows, no doors, no possible ways to get out of here.”
“We need to do something! We can’t just…”
“There’s no way out. Don’t you think I’ve tried?” he snaps. “I’ve been down here for ten months, you don’t think I’ve tried to escape?!?!”
“I’m—”
“Did you know he’s always armed? That knife that he cut you down with? It’s always within his reach—always!”
“There has to be something we can do,” I sob at the realization that this is now my life.
“I tried to get out once,” he admits after a few minutes of silence.
“You did?”
“I thought…that I could get away when he took me to the fight. I thought since he was taking me outside, that I could easily run away from him.”
“What happened?”
“Obviously it didn’t work.” Something tells me I don’t want to know what happened when he was caught. “He sliced me with the knife, across my side… and then still made me fight. When I lost that fight, because of what he did, he brought back here…”
“You don’t—”
“I learned that night what his punishments are really all about,” I can barely hear him, but it’s more what he’s not saying that makes me shiver.
“Luke,” even though there’s nothing in my stomach it turns at the thought of what he must have gone through.
“So, like I said, there’s no getting out of here.”
“There has to be something…”
“You should eat. This shit tastes even worse once it’s been sitting out.”
Just like that, we’re done talking. He hands me the bowl of cold oatmeal, along with a spoon and bottle of water. The food is disgusting: thick, cold and flavorless, but I eat it anyway. If what Luke said is true, we’ll only be given one other meal today, and who knows when that might come? I’m determined that we’re going to get out of this shithole one day. I refuse to believe that I’m going to be stuck down here for the rest of my life.
There are two of us now. We’ll be able to overpower him at some point…right?