Take Me With You(31)

Maybe Night is right. Maybe I have always been hiding, making myself easy to love by giving others what they needed and never asking for anything in return. What else could explain how my body betrays me?

Once he's done getting dressed, Night throws my blanket over my head.

“What—what are you doing?” I demand.

He bear hugs me and drags me a few feet, before deciding it's easier to do the customary fireman's carry instead. Draped in the blanket and still tied, I have no idea what's in store. Has he reached the endgame with me? Have I lost my luster now that he's fucked me? Is he going to kill me and move on to another new, shiny toy?

I feel bodies rock as he carries me up the stairs. The door creaking open and the warmth of the upper level instantly stifling me under the blanket. Footsteps I have become used to hearing from underneath the baseboards. The sound of a door swinging open. Then another.

Cooler night air. Crickets creaking. Complete darkness.

We're outside.

“Where are we going? Please tell me. Please don't hurt me.” I don't fight. In this position, I can barely breathe. If I flail, the noose connected to my hands tightens. I listen for clues. The sound of grass crinkling underneath his shoes. The crisp scent of nature that lingers on Night sometimes. A hint of animal stench. A farm? Is that why his jeans are often smudged in paint or oil and ripped?

Then it dawns on me that this is my first time outdoors since I was captured. I had hoped I would find a way outside again, even if it was under captivity, but I never knew how. Yet, wrapped in this blanket, I am still a prisoner, still confined. Just like looking at the sun beaming through those tiny basement windows, the scents and sounds are just a tease. Days ago, the blanket was the best fucking thing that ever happened to me, wrapping me in its warm embrace, lulling me into erotic dreams. Now it's just another prison, hot and claustrophobia-inducing.

Just when the panic begins to set in, that perhaps this really is a march to my slaughter, there is the sound of another door opening. It slams shut behind us.

Night sets me to my feet. He folds the blanket over from behind to keep my face covered, but expose the bindings, which he loosens and removes. I moan from the relief and shake off my arms. He takes the blanket off, but it's so dark I might as well have my eyes closed.

He slaps me on the ass, which sends me forward a bit before pulling the door open. In any other circumstance, it could be considered playful, but everything he does is designed to belittle. I try to peek outside, but it's like a pool of black ink. The kind of dark you forget exists when you live your nights by the glow of street lamps and TVs playing through your neighbor's windows. From the chorus of crickets coming through the door, I am sure we must be in the middle of nowhere.

“Where are you going? Wait!” I can't believe I'm begging him not to leave, but that basement has been my cocoon and suddenly he's thrust me from those walls and is leaving without a word. The insecurity frightens me.

He flips a switch beside the door before slamming it shut. A few latching sounds follow. I'm too disoriented by the sudden bright light to pursue his whereabouts. Besides, what I see shocks me. I'm in a tiny windowless cabin. Well, it's more like a shed, but it's freshly painted white, down to the wooden plank floors. On a twin bed, its head pushed up against the center wall, pristinely made with white sheets and covered with a pastel-toned quilt, there is a pale pink nightgown, one that looks a lot like the white one I wore when I was taken. The one he cut up, and me along with it, and used to bind and gag me. Next to that are two newspapers and a note. I run to them almost as quickly as I did that first meal, desperate to understand my new surroundings.



This is your new home. You are expected to use the attached facility to clean and groom yourself daily so you are always ready for me.

I've seen your room at home. You don't have as much here, so I hope you can keep it tidy. Maybe if you had less clutter, you would have noticed the things I had rearranged and took from your room in the weeks before my final arrival.



I gasp, remembering the moon necklace and the photo. During the saddest, lowest times, when I was starving, I thought of how grandma said she would look at the moon and think of me. I sobbed, wishing I had that necklace to hold onto, to feel like the only person who ever really understood me was somehow still connected to me. This son of a bitch had to have taken it. I know it was in the jewelry box. I have to get it back.



As usual, your composure and compliance will mean a pleasant experience for you. Acting like a bitch means that that won't be the case. Then again you like it rough. I don't care. I'll get what I want either way. I like it when you don't fight. I like it when you do. This is for you, not me. Though I will admit there are traits about you that attracted me to you out there—that flush in your cheeks, your lush hair, your healthy body. I'd prefer for you not to be starved and sullen. But it won't stop me, as you have already experienced. So, let’s agree that it's in your best interest to make the most of your time here. It's in my best interest to keep you looking like the girl I first took.

Eat. Rest.

Your quality of life is entirely dependent on the choices you make.



After the initial moment of rage, I snicker at the sardonic tone in the note before flicking it onto the bed. It's oddly…human. All this time, he's been a caricature of a kidnapper. Just elements of this idea of a person. But here, I hear a bit of the real asshole in him. That smug son of a bitch. I eagerly grab the two newspapers that he made no mention of in his note. Since he showed me the segment on TV about my kidnapping, I have had no concept of how my family or the outside world is reacting. I had time to think about his intentions since that day. My verdict is that since he won't talk to me, at least in not any way that a normal human would converse with another, it was his way of explaining the direness of my circumstances. That I was his captive, that he knows who my family is, and that the police seemed to be clueless about my whereabouts.