Morgan
I’m weightless, and I know I’m being carried because I can feel his chest expanding and then deflating against my cheek. I can also smell the aroma of sweat mixed with something that reminds me of my grandfather’s shoe polish. His fingertips are digging into my ribcage and at my thigh, and I desperately want to pry his hands from my skin, but I can’t move my arms or open my eyes.
He whistles. It’s the same eerie tune I’ve heard many times now.
Where is he taking me?
“Oh Red, Red, Red, you’ve had a rough day out there today, haven’t you?” He sports a strong British accent.
I want to scream, who are you? But my tongue, like the rest of me, seems paralysed.
“It will all be over soon.” He speaks so calmly, and the pressure below my ribcage and digging in at my sides vanish. My body lowers.
At first, I can’t place the cold sensation travelling up my legs, over my stomach, then on to my breasts. All I know is I’m suddenly freezing. Inconsistent splashes follow. Water. I’m wet.
“Just a few more smudges to wipe away,” he says, as my lips begin to sting. “They’re busted up pretty bad.” His words are laced with contentment. “I know you can hear me now, Red.”
My head jerks back, and I hear the thud before the dull ache travels across my skull. I want to scream out, but I’m unable to open my mouth.
“This next bit I will leave up to fate. You will save yourself or you won’t. Your life is resting upon your desire to live. You can move, Red; you just have to want it bad enough.”
My only response is my heart, pumping hard and fast in my chest.
There’s a soft creak followed by the shifting of a latch, and then the sense of someone being close to me is lost. Am I alone? Every breath I take is quick and harsh. Move, Morgan; you need to move. But I can’t. Impending danger awaits me. The threat of death lingers in the air. A neck-prickling fear creeps along my skin.
Water trickles down my cheeks, and without warning I flinch. I moved. I can move. The taste of salt seeping in between my lips alerts me to my flowing tears. I’m crying. My lips twitch as tears continue to race over them, and by the time I take three long breaths to bring myself calm, I have managed to wiggle my fingers.
Move, Morgan! I scream in my mind as I continue battling my conscious state and my limbs, which feel as heavy as stone.
Left. Right. Left. Right. It’s only minimal movement, but I rock my head. Urgent warnings sound off in my brain, telling me to stop because I can’t see what it is I’m facing. Why can’t I open my eyes?
I slide. I’m slipping. I try to press my hands down to stop myself, but I can’t. Help me!
I’m halted abruptly.
Don’t breathe, don’t breathe, don’t breathe. I hear this chant as I struggle against my muscles, which ache intensely. My face becomes as cold and wet as the rest of my body.
My head is underwater.
I flick my eyes wide with ease as if I’ve been able to do so the entire time. What is happening to me? Dirty brown fills my vision and in this brown colouration drifts small clear bubbles, bubbles that resemble those created from expelling air, the air I acknowledge is escaping through my now pressed lips.
I’m fucking drowning. MOVE!
In my mind, I’m thrashing my limbs, but in reality I’m barely moving at all. I’m running out of oxygen. I know this because my desperation to claim any is frantic.
“Baby girl, Daddy’s here. I’m here. You’re strong. You can do this, Morgan. Show me. Find the surface.” I hear my father’s voice as if his lips press against my ear. “Take my hand.”
I’m reaching, and searching for his grip.
“My hand’s higher, Morgan; you need to stretch higher."
I manage to. Curling my fingers, I clutch onto something hard, and with one loud scream bursting through my gaping mouth, I yank myself upwards until I’m left, hung limp, over the side of a stable structure. It’s a gaggled gasp that has me coughing, and then my torso jerks as water exits in a vomit from my mouth.
Every breath I take burns as I moan, “Holy fuck.” I pant when I spot the concrete floor below, and the need to lift myself out of this water becomes strong … but I’m weak to the point where lifting my limbs seems impossible.
Just keep reaching, I tell myself, as I extend my arms and grunt my sheer desperation, walking my fingers along the flooring below. You can do this, Morgan. Pressing my palms downwards brings with it the suspicion I’m being tipped over, and without a second to contemplate what’s happening, my body smacks hard into the ground. “Fuck,” I wail, coiling myself into a tight ball. Protection.
I shiver.
I’m naked.
It’s cold.
Soft whimpering grows loud and more forced until my nose becomes blocked and I’m alerted to the fact that I’m the one howling. My wet hair wraps across my face, and in between the gaps it’s creating, and through the tears pooled in my eyes, I’m able to locate a wall the colour of silver.
The room. The wolf has brought me back to his prison.
I shuffle on my arse until my spine presses against the wall, and I shift my knees to my chest. I rest my chin on my knees and wrap my arms around my shins.
What the …?
I brush my fingers across thick threading, threading positioned where my once open gashes were on my shins. Sliding my feet across the concrete has my legs extended, and I gasp when I see the stitches now closing my previous injury. The wolf stitched me. Why? Isn’t revenge the point of his game and to cause pain and death?
It’s then I remember him placing me in the water and washing my lips. I’m urgent in inspecting every inch of my body. I’m terrified when I see the deep purple bruising, cuts, grazes, and rashes covering me. The five words, one through to five, that are tattooed on my inner arm remain, only now there’s a strike through ‘one’ in black.
Slowly, I bring my knees back to meet my chest and wrap my hands around each ankle. I whip my head left then right, searching, wondering if the wolf is somewhere in here, hiding, waiting to attack. I stop in a stare when I locate a clawfoot tub, one that not long ago almost claimed my life. Why? Why would he patch me up, clean me? Why did he offer care?
It takes some time to focus on the rest of my surroundings. There’s no longer a stretcher, or a table littered with blank papers. The rusty tap that dripped is also gone, as is the drum which had the backpack on its top. The only thing in the room is the tub and a tied garbage bag sitting on the floor right near where the blank projection screen hangs on the far wall.
“Where are you? Go on, show yourself. I know you can see me.” I try to yell the words, but they’re shaken and hoarse.
Will he appear on the projection screen, armed with vulgar taunts and vacant cold eyes? To my surprise, he doesn’t, yet I don’t shift my vision from the screen. Where is he? I know he’ll be watching my every move. I blink and then stare until my eyes burn, and I blink once more. I do this over and over. The screen remains blank. Where is the wolf? Is this my chance to find a way out? Is this my chance to escape? But how? There’s still no door. How can there be no door? How does he get me in and out of here?