Collared(11)

“Dad!” I call upstairs. “Your lunch is ready!”

I hear the floor creak upstairs again.

“I’ll be down in three minutes, Sara,” he replies.

His voice is kind of high for a man’s but rough. Like each word has to be processed through a tunnel of gravel. At first, that voice terrified me. Eventually I got used to it, and now . . . it’s the only voice I ever hear. Now, it’s almost a comfort.

I wander to the sink to wash my hands. My fingers are greasy from handling the chips, and I can’t stand the smell of bologna on my skin.

“Sara?”

The water from the faucet is blasting as I scrub my hands with dish soap. I hear his voice, but it takes a few minutes to process.

“Sara!” This time his voice is less patient, more like I remember it at first.

It makes me stand up straighter and turn off the sink. “Yes?” I call back, reminding myself for who knows how many million times that I’m Sara.

Sara Jackson, Earl Rae Jackson’s daughter. I’m his daughter. He’s my father. That’s the way it is. I can’t let things like dreams of the past mess up that reality or else I’ll wind up back where I started. In the closet. The one so sealed up that not even a stream of light came through the cracks.

It’s been years since I’ve spent any hard time in it, and I only have to occasionally visit it whenever a random person shows up at the front door. It doesn’t happen often, only once every few months or so. Like a couple of days ago, when that solar panel salesman showed up and Earl Rae practically threw me in the closet after plastering a strip of duct tape across my mouth and another around my wrists.

I suppose I could have made noise. I could have kicked at the walls. I could have thrown my body against the door. I could have tried screaming through the gag. I could have tried to get help, but I know what Earl Rae has been telling me from the beginning is true—I’m beyond help.

It’s been too long. Too much of me has been replaced by Sara. Too much of me has been snuffed out by Earl Rae. Help can’t help me.

So I stopped looking for ways to escape. I stopped searching for the cell phone I know Earl Rae must have somewhere. I stopped looking for metal cutters to free myself. I stopped watching the driveway for the police cruiser I prayed would show up one day. I stopped hoping.

It makes things easier.

“Dad?” I call again after he doesn’t say anything back.

I can’t hear the creaks from him moving around upstairs. It’s quiet. The television has even been turned off, and a quick check of the time shows it’s only 12:28—he still has another two minutes left of the afternoon news. He never turns it off early.

I move toward the stairs leading upstairs. “Dad?” I shout louder.

My heart’s speeding up. This isn’t normal. This isn’t predictable. This isn’t part of the schedule. Earl Rae lives and dies by his schedule. By default, so do I.

My pace picks up as I move across the kitchen floor. Something’s wrong. I slow when I reach the bottom step because I know I’ve reached it—the end of my lead. When I twist my neck to peek up the stairs, the cool kiss of hard metal cuts into my throat.

I wince but don’t cry out. I’ve gotten better about learning how to turn my head so it doesn’t pinch or dig into my skin, but every once in a while, I’m reminded by the thick metal collar cutting into my neck.

I feel a couple of warm trickles trace down my neck. I’ve broken it open again—the perpetual scab that never seems to heal, the one I sometimes tear open when I forget.

At first, my neck spent more time bleeding than scabbing, but I’ve gotten used to it. I sleep with the collar on. I shower with it on. I walk on the old treadmill with it on. I’ve gotten used to it the way people get used to a wedding ring. It might feel foreign and strange at first, but eventually, you don’t even know it’s there. Eventually, it just becomes a part of you.

“Dad?” I’m screaming as loud as I can because I know something isn’t just wrong—something is very wrong.

I angle myself so I can look up the stairs, but I can’t see him. I can’t see anything but more stairs. I’ve never been up there, but I’ve drawn pictures in my mind of what it looks like.

That’s when I hear it—the sound of feet pounding up the wooden steps to the front door. This can’t be some lost delivery man trying to find one of Earl Rae’s fellow reclusive neighbors. This can’t be some door-to-door salesman trying to sell windmills and water tanks to the off-the-grid types drawn to these kinds of remote locations.

There are too many footsteps. They’re too loud. Almost like a herd of wild horses have been set loose and are about to charge through the front door.

Since I’m getting nothing from upstairs, I rush through the kitchen toward the living room to see if I can tell what’s going on. I hear shouts, but I can’t make them out. Still more pounding. How many people are out there? There could be a thousand from the sounds they’re making.

Earl Rae keeps the windows sealed up, but there’s a peephole at the front door. I don’t want to get that close though. I feel safe here, not too close to the front door. I don’t know who or what’s on the other side of that door. I want them to go away. I want the noise and shouting to stop.

Other than Earl Rae’s voice and the household sounds, I haven’t heard anything in years. The feet pounding on the porch and the fists pounding at the door and the voices shouting outside probably aren’t as loud as they seem to me.