Page 60 of B-ry
I got the feeling like he wasn’t really talking to me. I curled up in the corner and tried to make myself seem as small as possible. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off of him.
“I thought you were special,” he said and abruptly stopped his pacing. His eyes moved to look at me with a slowness that made my skin feel itchy. “Why hasn’t he come for you?”
I swallowed down my fear and spoke the words that I had felt were true for so long.
“Obviously, I’m not that important to him.” I sat up tall and stared him down, unblinking.
“No,” he said and shook his head wildly. “No. That can’t be it. I must have not been blatant enough in my clues for those assholes. I need to do something more. Yes, more.”
He wasn’t around all that much after that. The walls started to close in on me and I was honestly surprised that they hadn’t done that already. I counted the holes in the walls. The planks of wood on the floor. The number of bars each cage held, again and again. The clumps of random dirt and dust on the bottom of my cage. I traced the lines of that room so many times I could have mapped it out with my eyes closed.
I was glad he was gone but at the same time, a huge wave of loneliness began to hit me. I guessed it was rather silly. Or desperate. Or just complete insanity. Why would I rather have him in here than feel so alone? It made no sense.
A day went by and nothing.
No food.
No water.
No coming in to empty my bucket.
My lips were dry and though I knew better, I kept licking them to try and get some moisture there. The night was cold and a dead kind of silence hung in the air. I wondered if he was even in the house anymore.
Maybe he was just going to leave me here.
This was how I would die.
How long did it take a person to starve to death?
Was it going to hurt?
Strange as it was, I never imagined my end before all of this. I was young, and like most young people, I thought my death was far down the road. Sure, I was aware that anything could happen at any time, but it didn’t really register, you know. Not that I thought I was untouchable. I knew I wasn’t.
A sharp pain shot through my midsection. I doubled over and tried my best to breathe through it.
Would this get worse?
Would I get so hungry that I would think about eating parts of my own body?
I wondered what went through people’s minds when they were in similar situations.
And what they thought about right before they knew they were going to die.
It was maybe a bit morbid but I was at a loss. I closed my eyes and let the images float through my head.
The first Thanksgiving after Cami decided to stop eating meat. How she got our house chef to make some weird tofu thing that was supposed to look like turkey. The way our mother looked at her with disgust and said something along the lines of her always being such a difficult child. And how she didn’t understand why my sister had to act so strangely. While I had a felt a sense of pride for her. Of course, I had to keep it hidden and I wished more than anything that I had let her know in those moments how much I loved her.
The Christmas when my grandfather gave me the necklace that had the tiny pearl and diamond. He whispered that I was his favorite and not to tell the others. I knew he probably said it to all his grandchildren but it still meant the world to me. Just like that necklace.
My mother had later scoffed and said that I should never wear something so small. That it would make my neck look fat. A woman always needed something big to make her neck look dainty. That was what she had always drilled into me. Same went for rings and bracelets. If I had heard it once in my life, I had heard it a million times.Something with a lot of diamonds, preferably, because the sparkle distracts from how big your hands are, she pointed out at every chance she got. I never thought I had big hands. To me they were slender and maybe my fingers were a bit long.
Despite her nasty words, I loved and wore that necklace. Sometimes in secret, tucked behind my buttoned up cardigan.
How I wished I had that necklace now.
As my fingers came up to my chest where it would have rested, I could almost feel the smoothness of the pearl against my fingertips.
It was stupid to wonder what would happen to it. Or where it might have been at this very moment. Was it still in my apartment in my tiny jewelry box? Did I even still have an apartment? What would happen to all my stuff?
