I lay still, my eyes shut. It felt like it wasn't real, like it was a revolting nightmare of my darkest fears, of the terror secretly buried in the back of every vulnerable woman’s mind. Attempting to erase the mental images of the intimidating man who used his body mass to his advantage, I lift my heavy eyelids, feeling the exhaustion from my insomnia settling in, and my heart rate gradually slows again. I still can’t see anything. I try turning my head to get a better look, but everything is silky black, so dark that I probably wouldn’t be able to see my hand in front of my face if I held it there. I attempt to lift my arm from beside me, my brain telling my appendage to turn on a lamp, but a sharp pain in my wrist scurries quickly up to my forearm following the simple motion. I stupidly try tugging again with both arms, repetitive and relentless this, over and over, but something has my wrist shackled. A warm liquid rolls down my dry hands, puddling in my palms, and I pull at the restraint one more time; this time, the pain is much sharper, causing a small yelp to escape through my nose. I try opening my mouth to cry out, but a sticky adhesive covers my thin lips. Terrified, I thrash around, discovering that my hands and feet are somehow being restrained. After a few kicks and yanks, I whimper in defeat, just letting myself lay there. My head spins, as a tingling numbness races up my arms and legs, and I can no longer feel my wrists or ankles.
My back is pressed against a solid surface, my arms at my sides, and the air has a strong, musty aroma of a garbage truck full of sweaty gym socks in a swamp. Warm tears don’t have a chance to slip down my cheeks - they are soaked up by the material over my eyes, leaving the cloth moist against my skin. As my heart races, I try my best to keep my breathing steady enough to prevent a heart attack, but it’s so hard to control. It’s the same pattern every time, but panic weaves into it, causing the air to exit my nose in a broken rhythm.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Skip a beat on the exhale. Again: Inhale. Exhale. This time, skip a beat on the inhale. Exhale.
My head is spinning. The warm liquid from my wrists pool in the palms of my hands, drying up there, as my brain does gymnastics inside of my skull. I choke back the nausea that comes with the dizziness, laying still as my body gets heavier and heavier.
I wake again, groggy, yawning through my nostrils. I wonder, how long has it been? and has anyone came to see me, or have I been left for dead? When the thoughts cause tears to collect in my eyes, I shake them away and try to think of anything but that.
A dusty barren desert in my mouth, my tongue is glued to where it rests against my palette. Wincing at the sudden burning sensation, I peel it out of its place. I await a thick, metallic taste to fill my mouth, but it never bleeds. I notice that I have begun to gain feeling in my appendages again, as I brush the fingertips of my right hand over the surface that I’m laying on. The firm material is refreshingly cool, the pads of my fingers smoothly gliding over the surface. A deafening silence blankets me, and I can only imagine that I’m in a secluded place.
I know that a secluded place was never a positive thing because it means there is a lesser chance that someone would find you. My mother and I always watched those 20/20 television shows where an investigation is being conducted to find someone who went missing or to find their murderer. My mind wanders. Do my family and friends realize that I’m gone yet, and if so, is there an investigator looking for me? Maybe there’s a man with thick, greying hair and rectangular glasses that sit low on his thin, sharply protruding nose. Or maybe there’s a woman, skinny with dark hair, who wears a black blazer with white buttons over a flowing white blouse. Or maybe they're a team, and they're out there searching every corner and every security camera for me.
Suddenly, a thundering noise comes from what sounds like the clacking of the back of a moving truck abruptly opening. It stops, and my body freezes. Heavy, boot-clad footsteps march in my direction. “You awake?” a gruff voice asks over the loud clacking, as it starts again. Slam! His feet halt for a moment before they start toward me again, the clunking of his boots getting closer to my head.
My heart rate picks up again, and I nod my head quickly, exhaling through my nose. I understand that answering him is a risk, but so is not answering him.
A rough, callused hand grips my shackled ankle. “Hold still,” he grumbles, followed by a searing sting of numbing heat on my lower leg. I inhale sharply, a high-pitched squeak emitting from my nostrils. “Shut up!” he growls, whipping the area with a cloth-like material. The heat goes away. He does the same to my other leg, the pain so bad I begin gagging and throw up in my mouth, the adhesive over my mouth forcing my lips to stay shut. The scent of burnt flesh fills my nose, as he rips the stickiness off of my lips, causing my vomit to spill out and a shriek to escape my lips. A heavy hand comes down across my face. “Shut up, damn it! Shut the hell up!” he roars. I bite down viciously on my tongue, in an attempt to silence my cries, nodding vigorously. “Make another noise. I dare you.” His hands work on the restraints around my wrists, as he mumbles, “You’re gonna get both of us killed, bloody hell.”
“I’m sorry,” I breathe out, gulping heavily.
One of my wrists comes loose, falling to my side. “Don’t speak.” Tears flood my eyes, moistening the cloth once again. I don’t recognize his voice. My other arm comes loose, and he mutters something inaudible under his breath. I can feel him beside my left hip, his feet level with my body. “Don’t move. I swear to God, don’t you dare move, or I’ll set your body on fire and watch you burn to death.” Roughly, he grasps my forearm, and something sharp punctures deep into my skin. I gasp at the pain, and he lets go of my arm, letting it drop to the floor; I find my arm paralyzed when I try to move it. His footsteps clunk out of the room, followed by the clacking sound I heard before.
God only knows how long it is before I wake up again. I peel my eyelids open to see on a low, dented, chrome ceiling, the cloth no longer over my eyes. Dizzy, I glance around the room, observing the little that is around me. In the corner, a bedside lamp sits on the floor, illuminated. The only other thing in the room is a bottle of water. There are no windows. There is no door. The floor is cement, and the room is tiny, maybe six feet by six feet, but it looks more than tall enough for me to stand up comfortably.
I sit up cautiously, my whole body aching, and examine my wrists. Rings of scabbed-over blood tell where the restraints used to be. Then I check my ankles, which have the most disgusting burn marks on them that I have ever seen. The singed skin resembles a rich, red steak, fresh from a cow, the bloody gooeyness spreading half way up my shin and all the way down to my toes, three-hundred sixty degrees around each leg. Looking at the wounds causes my stomach to flip and my mouth to fill with a sour taste before the digested food I ate so long ago revisits, and I spit it all over the cement floor beside me. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I slowly bring my weak body to my feet to stretch out my back.
My back is pressed against one of the cool, metal walls for support to keep my body from swaying like a willow tree. My brain, running slower than a dead snail, makes it difficult to come up with an escape plan. Frustrated, I stare at the lamp, a blank look on my face.
That’s when it clicks.
If the lamp is on, and there are no electrical outlets in the room, then where is it plugged into? The yellow-tinted, transparent cord lines the bottom of one wall, then disappears beneath another. Curiously, my feet mindlessly take me towards the single wall that looks slightly different than the other three. I kneel down next to the spot where the cord disappears and try shoving a finger under the rubber at the bottom, right beside the cord. It easily slips through. My whole hand slips under the wall, causing it to quake and make a soft rumbling noise. Then I realize: it’s not a wall, it's a door. I slide my other hand under and pull up with all of the muscles I never knew I had, but it doesn’t budge. “Damn,” I sigh, taking my hands out and sitting with my back against another wall.
Picking at the scanned blood on my hands, I stare numbly at the door, my brain trying desperately to come up with some kind of solution. I don’t have paper to slip a note under the door, but what do I have? A bottle of water, a lamp, and the clothes on my body. Trapped within these four walls, I need to be creative with the few things I have. Scanning the room for something else, anything else, my eyes lock on a loose screw in the wall directly across from me. Mulling over a possible idea, I crawl over to it, twisting it out of its place. I pluck the lampshade off of the lamp, carving “Help” into it with the sharp tip of the screw. Much to my disappointment, it’s almost illegible, but it will have to work. I tear the material away from the shaped wire, using the wire to push it completely under the door.
I bang on the door as loud as I possibly can, crying out, “Help me! Please! Somebody help me!” What feels like hours pass, and I eventually curl up on the floor, too exhausted to cry or yell anymore, my face near the crack under the door. “Help,” I mumble. “God, please, help me.”
“Hello?” a female voice rings out softly from behind the metal barricade.
I sit up as fast as I can, tears rushing to my eyes. “Help! Oh, God, please help! I’m trapped! Please! I need your help! I don’t know where I am,” I beseech, sliding my bloody fingers under the door to show that I am here.
“Oh, Gosh!” she exclaimed from the other side. “Oh my, darling, you’re in a storage unit. Just wait right there! I’ll be right back with someone to get you out of there!”
Suddenly overwhelmed with joy, I choke out a soft sob and a strangled, “Thank you.” I leave my hands under the door, so she knows where to find me when she returns, and I lay on my stomach. My face is buried in my arm to muffle my crying, as I listen to her footsteps pace away quickly, but the sound multiple gunshots and a feminine shriek causes my heart to drop into the pit of my stomach and my body to freeze. The door is suddenly lifted just enough for a hand to toss a burning match and a thick newspaper into the storage unit with me, the newspaper fluttering into the storage unit and spreading out as it gracefully lands on the floor. It is then that the door is slammed shut on my fingers. I cry out in pain, watching intently, as the fire catches the paper, the flames growing. Tears keep falling, but all emotion within me is no more when I realize that all I can do is watch the flames approach me.
My back is pressed against a solid surface, my arms at my sides, and the air has a strong, musty aroma of a garbage truck full of sweaty gym socks in a swamp. Warm tears don’t have a chance to slip down my cheeks - they are soaked up by the material over my eyes, leaving the cloth moist against my skin. As my heart races, I try my best to keep my breathing steady enough to prevent a heart attack, but it’s so hard to control. It’s the same pattern every time, but panic weaves into it, causing the air to exit my nose in a broken rhythm.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Skip a beat on the exhale. Again: Inhale. Exhale. This time, skip a beat on the inhale. Exhale.
My head is spinning. The warm liquid from my wrists pool in the palms of my hands, drying up there, as my brain does gymnastics inside of my skull. I choke back the nausea that comes with the dizziness, laying still as my body gets heavier and heavier.
I wake again, groggy, yawning through my nostrils. I wonder, how long has it been? and has anyone came to see me, or have I been left for dead? When the thoughts cause tears to collect in my eyes, I shake them away and try to think of anything but that.
A dusty barren desert in my mouth, my tongue is glued to where it rests against my palette. Wincing at the sudden burning sensation, I peel it out of its place. I await a thick, metallic taste to fill my mouth, but it never bleeds. I notice that I have begun to gain feeling in my appendages again, as I brush the fingertips of my right hand over the surface that I’m laying on. The firm material is refreshingly cool, the pads of my fingers smoothly gliding over the surface. A deafening silence blankets me, and I can only imagine that I’m in a secluded place.
I know that a secluded place was never a positive thing because it means there is a lesser chance that someone would find you. My mother and I always watched those 20/20 television shows where an investigation is being conducted to find someone who went missing or to find their murderer. My mind wanders. Do my family and friends realize that I’m gone yet, and if so, is there an investigator looking for me? Maybe there’s a man with thick, greying hair and rectangular glasses that sit low on his thin, sharply protruding nose. Or maybe there’s a woman, skinny with dark hair, who wears a black blazer with white buttons over a flowing white blouse. Or maybe they're a team, and they're out there searching every corner and every security camera for me.
Suddenly, a thundering noise comes from what sounds like the clacking of the back of a moving truck abruptly opening. It stops, and my body freezes. Heavy, boot-clad footsteps march in my direction. “You awake?” a gruff voice asks over the loud clacking, as it starts again. Slam! His feet halt for a moment before they start toward me again, the clunking of his boots getting closer to my head.
My heart rate picks up again, and I nod my head quickly, exhaling through my nose. I understand that answering him is a risk, but so is not answering him.
A rough, callused hand grips my shackled ankle. “Hold still,” he grumbles, followed by a searing sting of numbing heat on my lower leg. I inhale sharply, a high-pitched squeak emitting from my nostrils. “Shut up!” he growls, whipping the area with a cloth-like material. The heat goes away. He does the same to my other leg, the pain so bad I begin gagging and throw up in my mouth, the adhesive over my mouth forcing my lips to stay shut. The scent of burnt flesh fills my nose, as he rips the stickiness off of my lips, causing my vomit to spill out and a shriek to escape my lips. A heavy hand comes down across my face. “Shut up, damn it! Shut the hell up!” he roars. I bite down viciously on my tongue, in an attempt to silence my cries, nodding vigorously. “Make another noise. I dare you.” His hands work on the restraints around my wrists, as he mumbles, “You’re gonna get both of us killed, bloody hell.”
“I’m sorry,” I breathe out, gulping heavily.
One of my wrists comes loose, falling to my side. “Don’t speak.” Tears flood my eyes, moistening the cloth once again. I don’t recognize his voice. My other arm comes loose, and he mutters something inaudible under his breath. I can feel him beside my left hip, his feet level with my body. “Don’t move. I swear to God, don’t you dare move, or I’ll set your body on fire and watch you burn to death.” Roughly, he grasps my forearm, and something sharp punctures deep into my skin. I gasp at the pain, and he lets go of my arm, letting it drop to the floor; I find my arm paralyzed when I try to move it. His footsteps clunk out of the room, followed by the clacking sound I heard before.
God only knows how long it is before I wake up again. I peel my eyelids open to see on a low, dented, chrome ceiling, the cloth no longer over my eyes. Dizzy, I glance around the room, observing the little that is around me. In the corner, a bedside lamp sits on the floor, illuminated. The only other thing in the room is a bottle of water. There are no windows. There is no door. The floor is cement, and the room is tiny, maybe six feet by six feet, but it looks more than tall enough for me to stand up comfortably.
I sit up cautiously, my whole body aching, and examine my wrists. Rings of scabbed-over blood tell where the restraints used to be. Then I check my ankles, which have the most disgusting burn marks on them that I have ever seen. The singed skin resembles a rich, red steak, fresh from a cow, the bloody gooeyness spreading half way up my shin and all the way down to my toes, three-hundred sixty degrees around each leg. Looking at the wounds causes my stomach to flip and my mouth to fill with a sour taste before the digested food I ate so long ago revisits, and I spit it all over the cement floor beside me. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I slowly bring my weak body to my feet to stretch out my back.
My back is pressed against one of the cool, metal walls for support to keep my body from swaying like a willow tree. My brain, running slower than a dead snail, makes it difficult to come up with an escape plan. Frustrated, I stare at the lamp, a blank look on my face.
That’s when it clicks.
If the lamp is on, and there are no electrical outlets in the room, then where is it plugged into? The yellow-tinted, transparent cord lines the bottom of one wall, then disappears beneath another. Curiously, my feet mindlessly take me towards the single wall that looks slightly different than the other three. I kneel down next to the spot where the cord disappears and try shoving a finger under the rubber at the bottom, right beside the cord. It easily slips through. My whole hand slips under the wall, causing it to quake and make a soft rumbling noise. Then I realize: it’s not a wall, it's a door. I slide my other hand under and pull up with all of the muscles I never knew I had, but it doesn’t budge. “Damn,” I sigh, taking my hands out and sitting with my back against another wall.
Picking at the scanned blood on my hands, I stare numbly at the door, my brain trying desperately to come up with some kind of solution. I don’t have paper to slip a note under the door, but what do I have? A bottle of water, a lamp, and the clothes on my body. Trapped within these four walls, I need to be creative with the few things I have. Scanning the room for something else, anything else, my eyes lock on a loose screw in the wall directly across from me. Mulling over a possible idea, I crawl over to it, twisting it out of its place. I pluck the lampshade off of the lamp, carving “Help” into it with the sharp tip of the screw. Much to my disappointment, it’s almost illegible, but it will have to work. I tear the material away from the shaped wire, using the wire to push it completely under the door.
I bang on the door as loud as I possibly can, crying out, “Help me! Please! Somebody help me!” What feels like hours pass, and I eventually curl up on the floor, too exhausted to cry or yell anymore, my face near the crack under the door. “Help,” I mumble. “God, please, help me.”
“Hello?” a female voice rings out softly from behind the metal barricade.
I sit up as fast as I can, tears rushing to my eyes. “Help! Oh, God, please help! I’m trapped! Please! I need your help! I don’t know where I am,” I beseech, sliding my bloody fingers under the door to show that I am here.
“Oh, Gosh!” she exclaimed from the other side. “Oh my, darling, you’re in a storage unit. Just wait right there! I’ll be right back with someone to get you out of there!”
Suddenly overwhelmed with joy, I choke out a soft sob and a strangled, “Thank you.” I leave my hands under the door, so she knows where to find me when she returns, and I lay on my stomach. My face is buried in my arm to muffle my crying, as I listen to her footsteps pace away quickly, but the sound multiple gunshots and a feminine shriek causes my heart to drop into the pit of my stomach and my body to freeze. The door is suddenly lifted just enough for a hand to toss a burning match and a thick newspaper into the storage unit with me, the newspaper fluttering into the storage unit and spreading out as it gracefully lands on the floor. It is then that the door is slammed shut on my fingers. I cry out in pain, watching intently, as the fire catches the paper, the flames growing. Tears keep falling, but all emotion within me is no more when I realize that all I can do is watch the flames approach me.