Page 78 of Caged
He bends down to nestle the unloaded Glock and magazine into his backpack, grabs the strap, and tosses it over his shoulder. In two strides, he picks up the weekender bag from his bed and looks down at me, his dark, soulless eyes are devoid of any remorse or humanity.
And it’s in this moment when I truly know.
No one is coming to save me.
Just like before.
Just like Kieren said.
I’m all alone.
“Food should last you until next Sunday. The windows have been sealed shut by paint, kind of a fire hazard, they’re bulletproof glass. So don’t bother trying to break them or the door. I don’t even think an axe could chop through this wood,” he says, looking at the door to his bedroom with sick admiration.
“Remember what I said.”
His last words to me ring hollow because all I hear is the deafening sound of three deadlocks sealing the bedroom, and me within, shut.
34
MONROE
Five Months Prior to Present Day,
Spring Break, Junior Year,
Sigma
Mommy, let me out! Mommy, please! Mommy! I’m hungry.
Mommy?
Mommy…
I gasp for air, unable to find oxygen. Cold sweat coats my skin. The pillow under my head is damp and musty.
This is the third night I’ve had the same nightmare. Trapped in a room I can’t quite see, with dolls I can’t quite reach, starved. The room smells like urine and tears and hunger. Sometimes, the dream is so vivid that it feels real. Sometimes, I wonder if it was real.
I don’t remember the first house I lived in with my mom before we moved in with my stepdad Kerry. I guess my dad lived there too, at some point, before he left. Now and then, an image of my grandmother standing over a stove in a smallkitchen, cooking, will pop into my mind. I see mint-green tiled countertops and birch-wood cabinets, the same style of cabinets that were in my grandmother’s house in Ohio. Maybe the image is a figment of my mind. I’ve never had this nightmare before, and I’m inclined to think it’s my imagination subconsciously responding to my forced captivity.
After Kieren left on Friday afternoon, I crawled out of the cage and across the floor to sit against the bed. My brain was in shock, I know that now. I sat and stared at the door, in a trance, listening to water drip from the faucet in the bathroom. When the room became too dark to see my own hand, I started sobbing, silently at first. Tears ran down my face, catching under my chin, pooling around the collar of my sweatshirt.
I found my voice when silver light from the rising moon pierced through the darkness. With my knees curled into my chest, I drained every tear from my body. I cried until my eyes were nearly swollen shut, and the muscles in my face ached. I cried until my bones throbbed with exhaustion. Then came the rage.
I threw my body at the heavy wood door again and again and again. Each time, I ricocheted backward. Each time, I got up and kicked and screamed and pounded at the door.
I screamed until my throat became raw.
I screamed until it was clear that Kieren was right—either no one could hear me, or no one cared.
With no phone to check and no connection to the Internet, I had no idea what time it was at any given moment. My mind had so thoroughly detached from my physical body, that it didn’t even occur to me I could turn on the lights.
Finally, I stumbled into bed and managed to pull the covers over my battered limbs. Small cuts and bruises pulsed with pain, but the discomfort paled in comparison to my fatigue.Despondency set in, and thankfully, deciding I had suffered enough, my mind shut down.
Saturday morning, or afternoon, I had no idea really, I woke with a renewed sense of determination and spent the next forty-eight hours in a productive frenzy. I rationed all the food Kieren had left, which was a fucking joke, because the only food I found in the grocery bags was loads of trail mix, granola bars, a few handfuls of protein bars, and a box of bland cereal. Water would have to be sourced from the tap since Kieren conveniently left his mini fridge empty, which was not the end of the world. To put a positive spin on things, it was like a nightmarish camping trip, unpleasant, but I would survive.
Later the same day, I felt the first trickles of blood, indicating my cycle was starting, which is when a new panic set in around the amount of bathroom supplies I would need over the course of the week. I had enough tampons to last one, maybe two, days. In addition to the half-used roll of toilet paper on the holder, I found three more under the sink. My first inclination was to sit on the toilet all day if worst came to worst, but then I decided Kieren’s t-shirts would make perfectly suitable sanitary napkins.
This discovery sparked an idea, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought to raid his drawers already. Every inch of his bedroom, closet, and en suite bathroom was scoured with a fine-toothed comb. Expired medications, old toiletries crusted over with product, random keys that unlocked nothing, multiple pairs of my underwear stashed in different drawers from three years of an on-again, off-again failed relationship, condoms we don’t use, chains, whips, fully charged magic wands, nipple and clit clamps, restraints, gags, handcuffs, butt plugs, Kieren’s abomination of a mask he wears to the Full Moon Ceremonies along with my own…
