Collared(58)

Maybe if I saw at that life and them and him until I’ve severed the connection, I can move on . . . to whatever life this is.

I cry again when I think that because I know I have to do it. It’s the only chance I have of being let out of this place that’s gnawing at the very marrow of my soul. I need out of here before I become one with the black, and I’ll never be able to accept this life while I’m holding on to the old one.

I curl up more tightly on the mattress. My muscles feel kind of dead from underuse, and my body feels the same. At the same time it feels softer, it feels bonier. I can count my ribs now, and I can’t lie on one side for too long or my hipbone starts to ache. My body, along with what it encases, is withering away.

I don’t have long—at least, I don’t think so. I’ve started sipping at the water now, and I’ve nibbled on the bars, but if it isn’t the lack of water and food that does me in, there’s no shortage of backups. For all I know, he’s planning to kill me. I know if I had access to something lethal, I’ve been in dark enough places that I’d do it. Lack of sunshine, lack of movement, lack of human interaction . . . I’m not sure if those can kill me, but they feel like they can.

“Sara.” That name. That voice. That trio of knocks on that thick door.

He’s wearing me down. He’s trying to break me down. Once he does that and I roll over, I’ll get something as a kind of reward. I know that. Yet another pro-con of growing up around cops.

I don’t know what that reward will be, but more will come if I continue to bend to his will. He demands. I submit. Reward. I know the whole point of bending is to get someone to their breaking point because once they’re broken, a person can build them back however they want.

I know he wants to break me. I know he wants to build me back into Sara, his daughter. I know that’s why he took me because if he did it for the typical reason men abduct young girls, that would have already been revealed. In that way, I don’t have to fear him, but at this point, bending to breaking and becoming Sara seems just as terrifying.

All I’ve got left of myself is my name and the images of the life I had. If I become Sara, all of that goes. If I bend, then I’ll break, and a knife will run across the throat of that whole life.

“Sara, are you asleep? We need to talk sometime. You can’t stay in there forever.” Three more knocks.

The dark seems to circle around me tighter until it feels like a python coiled from my ankles to my chin. I wake up feeling like this all the time. Like I’m being suffocated. I wake up feeling like I’m dying, gasping for breath, and it isn’t until I’ve managed to catch my breath and remember where I am that I wish the dark would just finish the job already. Just suffocate me and be done with it.

The dark constricts more tightly around me, and when I choke out loud, I realize why I feel like something’s choking the breath out of me—I’m picturing him. In my mind, I’m holding on to the picture of him on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, staring at me like we had forever.

We did have forever. For all of thirty seconds before someone stole it because we were both fools to believe in the promise of forever. The only promise is that there is no promise. Forever can be destroyed as easily as a blade of grass can be trampled. Forever is fragile. Forever is fleeting. Forever is finite.

Forever is gone.

When I clear the image of him from my mind, I feel the black recede. When I bury the image in the dusty, dark attic of my memory, I feel the black almost disappear completely.

“Sara? Just talk to me. We can work this out. Everything can go back to the way things used to be, I know it.”

His voice doesn’t sound as evil as it used to. Without travelling through the film of panic, I think I’ve translated his tone more accurately—it’s sadness I hear. After everything, I’m better equipped to identify it.

I haven’t spoken to him in days, maybe weeks. I gave up shouting at him and screaming for answers. I gave up demanding to be let go and threatening that he’d be found and locked away for good.

I gave up.

I guess I was finally ready to give up the rest.

“Yeah?” My voice is hoarse from underuse. It’s strange how it can become the same after hours of screaming, but I guess silence is its own kind of scream. “I’m awake.”

I feel another piece of me crumbling away into that void, but it doesn’t stop me. I’m going to fall apart either way—I might as well do it with the chance of finally getting out of this hell like he’s been promising from the beginning. I’ll earn my freedom . . . by imprisoning the old me.

Outside the door, he is quiet. When I hear him clear his throat, it sounds like he has to dislodge something from it.

“I’ve missed you so much.” He clears his throat again. “I’m sorry I had to put you in there, Sara, but I couldn’t have you getting away from me again. I know you were confused when you left with your mom. I’m not angry. I’m just happy you’re back.”

I feel tears well in my eyes, but I force them to seep back into wherever they came from. Jade was crying, but she was gone. Or about to be.

“Me too.” My hollow voice echoes in the small space. Already I don’t recognize it.

“I’m going to open the door and let you out, but you have to promise you’re not going to try running away again. You have to promise that if I let you out, you won’t try to escape.”